The idea that art makes you smarter is not new. Winston
Churchill wrote an essay about painting that inspired George W. Bush to take it
up. In his essay Churchill notes that besides being enjoyable, art develops the
“highest properties of mind”. Our sense of proportion and balance underlies
reasoning in many areas. His primary subject matter, landscape, is probably
best allied with structures of reasoning since it begins with finding a
correspondence between the scene and the inner feelings seeking expression.
This reinforces the relationship between emotion and visual structure, image
and psyche. A panorama of choices surrounds every point in a location and that
first choice is the initial creative act of the painting. Choosing what view to
paint clarifies what’s important to the individual perceiver. It reinforces
visual wisdom and the brain areas that inform it.
We understand meaning in the space around us from our
earliest experience of moving in our surroundings. The distance between here
and there is a primary visual concept that starts with crawling across the
floor, feeling gravity when we fall and all of the early experiences of moving
in space that later provide the foundation for mature reasoning. As adults we
might describe differences in points-of-view in terms of the distance between
them. Seeing something as inside or outside is the structure for our sense of
categories. A painting of a landscape is the experience of a point-of-view that
contains a feeling about what’s being seen. It includes the sense of here and
there, the press of congestion or expanse of space. The feeling represents the
meaning of the whole and guides conscious nonverbal observations. Developing
receptive attention to scenes and situations as wholes strengthens understanding
of the big picture and how the structure of one situation relates to the
structure of another. The larger the frame, the more comprehensive the
understanding.
The findings of modern neuroscience show that the parts of
the brain we use the most grow the biggest. It’s the essence of building skills
and knowledge. Looking at art educates the part of the mind attuned to the
gestalt, building sensitivity to expressive structure. The relationship of
feeling to thinking is now better understood; the feeling of the whole
directing the analytical rational thought. Insight is led by structure.
Today taking pictures is not just keeping a record, it’s a
means of communication. Being more mindful of the act would weave an artistic
attitude through day-to-day life. It could start with zooming in. A recent
study reported on NPR showed that most picture taking interfered with how much
about a subject was taken in and remembered. But it had one qualifying
circumstance. When the subjects were asked to zoom in as they took the picture
they remembered more. Zooming in requires looking longer and making a choice
about what is most important. This is the first step in artful attention. Once
something is singled out as significant then expression moves beyond the
general. Something of particular interest has been uncovered which often
stimulates more interest. Curiosity leads to purposeful attention, to
investigating a particular aspect of the world of information. Discovering an
area of fascination opens the realm of peak experience whenever it’s wanted, an
individual portal to the larger world.
Cultivating visual attunement is one way to think like an artist.
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