Preview

This is a detail of an eighteen inch figure I've been working on since August.

The Visual Idea

When I talk about art as idea what I’m thinking about is different than verbal idea. Just like the beauty and order of the universe, it can be apprehended without breaking it down into parts. Different people connect to different qualities. The visual idea is the seed from which many ideas can unfold. Revealing particular relationships, it stimulates new ideas, allows loose fragments of thought to organize from that example. The feelings we get from the form in the spectrum between being drawn to or repelled by it signify the kind of relationship we have with it, the inner dynamic it expresses. What you can say about it has many levels. Art is more about the question, the exploration of implications. A visual idea is open-ended, stirs what connects to the structure emphasizing what matters about it.

The bigger role for art in the future has to do with its attention to essences. This is the overlap with the brain sciences. Neurobiologist Semir Zeki writes of how the focus on constants in art helps scientists distinguish the priorities in different regions of the brain’s processing. The focus of a particular artist can stimulate regions of brain cells specialized to particular forms. The goals of the artist aren’t stated in those terms but what they are exploring is what is most important to them in the organization of form, the conscious perception of which is paralleled by the visual brain.

In David Foster Wallace’s first book, “The Broom of the System”, one of the underlying messages was to look for meaning in how something functions. Definitions and ideas can actually confuse and mislead us since words mean different things to different people and context affects relationships. The phrase, “broom of the system” might seem like nonsense at first, but everyone knows what a broom does, so sweeping out the system would suggest clearing away the dust and garbage. The image initiates the idea. Seeing what something does is a clear fact influencing other facts. Actions and results demonstrate meaning in the moment. Reality is not meaningless. Traditional modes for finding meaning have become outdated. We have to let go of the need to pin it down. Meaning points forward.

The meaning we see increases the scope of our understanding. Looking at the whole is the only way to see significant relationships and not definitions of things. Biases related to inner categories skew thinking toward maintaining them. With self-awareness we can see what’s being protected and how that blocks a clearer picture of what’s happening at a particular time. The more we include in our picture the better our understanding will be. Intelligence grows as perspective increases and art increases the range and sensitivity of our perspective.

Coping Strategy

Art and Evolution

A recent TV news report celebrated a museum in Arkansas that brought

in underprivileged children to see the collection and talk about it.

The report ended with the comment that their test scores improved in

other subjects after that. Such a small exposure, such a big result.

This is the real news story. Art’s benefit to intelligence is showing

on many fronts. Many of our most evolved brain regions are stimulated

by art. Active areas get more fuel and grow larger and stronger.

Housen and Yenawine’s “Visual Teaching Strategy” has been succeeding

for years, showing that discussion of art improves all academic

performance. One of their techniques to begin a discussion about a

painting is asking kids, “What’s going on here?” This lets their

imagination and creative thinking loose without any fear of right or

wrong. They can generate new ideas and invent stories stimulated by

the mood and structure of the work. Art strikes deep chords of

feeling. The work of neurologist Antonio Damasio has shown that

feeling precedes and directs thinking. What we experience as a feeling

is the result of the bodily adjustments as the image is processed. Art

has always shown what it feels like to be human at a particular time.

The feeling stirs thinking and practice in thinking is more important

than any particular knowledge they might learn. The children are

exposed to how others use language and discover how much is within the

deepened attention to a subject. Art stimulates the mind to create new

meanings. The urge to look deeper is reinforced by reward chemicals so

carries over into all other subjects.

With the twentieth century approach to knowledge being overcome by the

volume of information solutions that look at the whole are essential.

When knowing something better meant closer examination of parts,

localized solutions were the norm, often creating negative side

effects. Looking at over arching patterns and relationships is the

emerging approach. When the existing organization is overloaded it

needs to be reorganized to handle the increased complexity. The new

supporting system starts with the belief system as image, a way of

seeing the world that organizes the rest of thinking. Looking at the

whole includes us all within it. A me first attitude is discordant and

eventually should evolve out as the intellectual scope of more

intelligent generations ascends. The truth is in how things function

together. Having one point of view running the show, based on power

instead of what fits circumstance seems hopelessly archaic in an

interconnected universe where influence grows from what matters to

people, not what has been anointed by empire.

The role of art in the mind’s evolution is multilayered. Just looking

at it stimulates the parts of the brain that make us more sensitive to

what is significant in the whole, attuned to proportions and to what

will balance the system. Talking about art develops creative thinking

and the core of ideas, allows for the freedom to theorize and invent.

Understanding of essential ordering structures boosts intuition and

big picture awareness of the interacting systems.   And today’s

artists can search out constants that help us see what is most

essential in today’s reality and what we haven’t yet envisioned.