Artistic Creativity and the Brain

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http://www.jstor.org ESSAYS ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY- V- ,

. . . I Artistic Creativity and the Brain , Charles Darwin arguedin The Origin variability have had little social or legal im- of Species that variability, one of the plications. But when neurobiology starts chief determinants of evolution, is charting the neurological foundations of greatest in structures that evolve fastest. In variability,the results will affect profoundly humans, the brain is the most variable and our social organization at all levels, includ- fastest evolving organ. We cannot at pres- ing the educational, political, and legal. ent ascribe this variability to any well-de- If the quirks of humanity that find ex- fined structure or component in the brain. pression in artistic works are ultimately a Rather, we infer it through the wide differ- result of the as-yet-unchartedvariability in ences in, for example, intelligence, sensi- the structureand functioning of the cerebral tivities, creative abilities, and skills. Art is cortex, so is the variability in how we expe- one expression of this variability. Its neu- rience art. This is why we normally assign rological study will therefore elucidate not art to a private, subjective world; its rich- only the source of one of the richest sub- ness lies in the fact that its power to disturb jective experiences of which we are capa- and arouse varies between individuals. In so ble but also the determinants of the vari- doing, we do not acknowledge sufficiently, ability in its creation and appreciation, and if at all, the extent to which that subjectivity Semir Zeki hence elucidate one of the most important and variability is based upon a commonali- characteristics of the human brain. ty. It is commonality that allows us to com- is professorof Neurobiologyat University Variability confers huge advantages: it municate about art and through art, with or College Londonand cohead of the enriches our cultures immeasurablyand is a without the use of the written or the spoken Wellcome Departmentof Cognitive key factor in the furtherevolution of _ Neurology.A Fellowof the RoyalSociety human societies. Yet, as an evolu- and a member of the American tionary imperative, it also exacts a PhilosophicalSociety, he specializes in high price. It is often the cause of studyingthe visual brain.Recently, he has serious injustice and marginalizes extended his workto includevisual art, from society those whose conduct about which he has publishedarticles and or inclinations are judged to be de- two books, InnerVision and LaQuete viant from the norm. Paradoxically, de I'Essentiel,coauthored with the late this may benefit art and hence con- Frenchpainter, Balthus. tributeto cultural evolution. Art ren- ders the destructive, isolating, and individualizing effects of variability ics. For example, years before the discovery safe in its pages, canvasses, and of orientation-selective cells* (which re- scores. Mozart's Don Giovanni sets spond selectively to straight lines and are to sublime music the life of a lecher widely thought to be the neural "building and serial rapist who would find no blocks" of form perception), Mondrian, in respite in the courts. His doom, an- search of "the constant truths concerning nounced musically in the opening forms," settled on the straight line as the -- bars of the opera, is dictated largely major feature of his compositions (see the E by his biological constitution. He Composition in Red, Yellow, and Blue.-Piet Mondrian first figure, this page). The straight line has < faces that biological destiny with also been used artistically in variable ways i courage and dignity, as do Racine's incestu- word. Nor do we sufficiently acknowledge by many other painters, including Kazimir ous Phedre and Shakespeare's Coriolanus, that the almost infinite creative variability Malevitch and Barnett Newman. Similarly, o who is constitutionally blighted by pride that allows different artists to create radical- long before the visual motion center of the o and arrogance. These artistic studies of ly different styles arises out of common brain was charted, kinetic artists z (area V5) neurobiological processes. By probing into such as Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely the neural basis of art, neurological studies composed works that, in differentways, em- | The author is in the Department of Cognitive Neurol- o ogy, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, can help us to understandwhy our creative phasized motion and de-emphasized color u UK.E-mail: [email protected] abilities and experiences vary so widely. and form. Their compositions were thus ad- But it can only do so by first charting the mirably suited for stimulating the cells in *D. H. Hubel, T. N. Wiesel, J. Physiol. (London) 160, common neural that makes the 106 organization V5 and anticipated artistically the physio- t (1962). creation and of art trS. Zeki, Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the appreciation possible. logical properties of motion-selective cells. u Brain (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1999). A beginning in this direction can be This is why I believe that artists are, in a z tJ. Constable, 10 December 1771, in Discourse. Art made by studying visual art, a productof the sense, neurologists who unknowingly study 5 (No. 4), (1975). visual brain about which much has been the brainwith techniques unique to them.t K. etal., Curr.Biol. 552 §N. Logothetis 5, (1995). learned in the 25 Artists and neu- |iP. Picasso, interview with C. Zevros, Cahiers d'Art, past years. Visual art contributes to our under- a 173 (1935). robiologists have both studied the perceptual standing of the visual brain because it ex- b ¶J.Schulz, Art Bull. 58, 366 (1975). commonality that underlies visual aesthet- plores and reveals the brain's perceptual

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL293 6 JULY2001 51 SCIENCE'S COMPASS capabilities. As Paul Klee once wrote, "Art How the brain forms abstractions is a timable quality of ambiguity a character- does not reproduce the visible; it makes central problem in cognitive neurobiology. istic of all great art that allows the brain things visible." But visual art also obeys Through a process that is only now begin- of the viewer to interpret the work in a the laws of the visual brain, and thus re- ning to be physiologically charted,? cells in number of ways, all of them equally valid. veals these laws to us. Of these laws, two the brain seem to be able to recognize ob- In art, Schopenhauer wrote, "something, stand supreme. jects in a view-invariant manner after brief and the ultimate thing, must always be left The first is the law of constancy. By this exposure to several distinct views, which over for the imagination [the brain] to do." I mean that the function of the visual brain they obviously synthesize. The artist, too, Art has been a creative refuge for oth- is to seek knowledge of the constant and es- forms abstractions, through a process that er unsatisfied ideals created by the brain sential properties of ob- may share similarities through its abstractive process, thus jects and surfaces, when with the physiological hastening our cultural evolution. Dante the information reaching it visual art ... processes now being un- had a life-long, unconsummated love for changes from moment to raveled but certainly goes Beatrice, who died early in the poet's moment. The distance, the obeys the laws beyond them, in that the life. No woman, not even his wife, ever viewing point, and the illu- abstract idea itself mu- replaced "the glorious lady of my mind," mination conditions of the visual tates with the artist's de- the ideal woman that his brain construct- change continually, yet the L i and thus velopment. In a prescient ed through her. Artistically metamor- brain is able to discard Lra an d statement that anticipates phosed and further idealized, she leads these changes in categoriz- reveals these brain imaging studies, Pi- him to Paradise in the final section of ing an object. Similarly, a casso once said, "It The Divine Comedy. Similarly, Richard great work of art tries to laws to would be very interesting Wagner, seemingly never finding his ide- distill on canvas essential us. to preserve photographi- al romantic attachment, wrote Tristan qualities. A major function cally ... the metamor- und Isolde as the "greatest monument to of art can thus be regarded phosis of a picture. Possi- the greatest of all illusions, romantic as an extension of the function of the brain, bly one might then discover the path fol- love." But an illusion is a construct of the namely, to seek knowledge about the world. lowed by the brain in materializing a brain. Here, the impossibility of ever Indeed, it was an unacknowledged attempt dream."IlThis Dossibility finding, in individual ro- to mimic the perceptualabilities of the brain is now well within our mantic attachments, the that led the founders of Cubism, Pablo Pi- reach. ideal romantic condi- casso and Georges Braque, to eliminate the But abstraction, a key tions constructed by his point of view, the distance and the lighting feature of an efficient brain is emphasized by conditions in their early,analytic period. knowledge-acquiring sys- the belief that only The acquisition of knowledge by regis- tem, also exacts a heavy in death can this be tering the constant and essential character- price on the individual, achieved. istics of objects is the primordial function for which art may be a The future field of of the visual brain. It is also the primordial refuge. The abstract "ide- what I call neuroesthetics function of art. That is why many great al" synthesized by the will, I hope, study the philosophers concerned with the problem brain from many particu- neural basis of artistic of knowledge, from Plato onward, have de- lars can lead to a deep creativity and achieve- voted large parts of their work to discus- dissatisfaction, because ment, starting with the sions of art. the daily experience is elementary perceptual The second supreme law is that of ab- that of particulars. process. I am convinced straction. By abstraction I mean the pro- Michelangelo left three- that there can be no satis- cess in which the particular is subordinat- fifths of his sculptures factory theory of aesthet- ed to the general, so that what is repre- unfinished (see the figure ics that is not neurobio- sented is applicable to many particulars. on this page), but he had -~~~~~~~IX logically based. All hu- This second law is intimately linked to not abandoned them in man activity is ultimately the first, because abstraction is a critical haste. He often worked on a product of the organiza- step in the efficient acquisition of knowl- them for years, because, tion of our brains, and edge; without it, the brain would be en- Giorgio Vasari tells us, subject to its laws. I slaved to the particular. The capacity to "time and again the sub- therefore hope that neu- abstract is also probably imposed on the limity of his ideas lay be- roesthetics will broaden 5 brain by the limitations of its memory yond the reach of his to tackle other issues, system, because it does away with the hands."? I would put it such as the neural basis need to recall every detail. Art, too, ab- differently Michelange- The Rondanini Pieta. -Michelangelo of religious belief and the stracts and thus externalizes the inner lo realized the hopeless- Buonarroti relation between morali- 0 workings of the brain. Its primordial ness of translating into a ty, jurisprudence, and function is thus a reflection of the func- single work or a series of sculptures the brain function questions that are funda- tion of the brain. In the words of John synthetic ideals formed in his brain. Critics mental in man's quest to understand him- Constable, "The whole beauty and have written in emotional and lyrical terms self Like art, these play a critical role in grandeur of Art consists ... in being able about these unfinished works, perhaps be- our lives and are also subject to the quality to get above all singular forms, local cus- cause, being unfinished, the spectator can of variability that is at the heart of our civ- a toms, particularities of every kind.... finish them and thus satisfy the ideals of his ilization. I shall be surprised if such an un- 0 [The painter] makes out an abstract idea or her brain. This is only qualitatively dif- derstanding does not modify radically our ... more perfect than any one original."I ferent from finished works with the ines- view of ourselves and our societies.

52 6 JULY2001 VOL 293 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org