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23 Jul 09

Unlocking the Mysteries of The Artistic Mind | Psychology Today

Jonah Lehrer on how art heightens natural stiumlus-response. He uses this Picasso quote: "Art is the lie that reveals the truth." -- or, as neuroscience shows, art isn't a complete lie, but a deliberate exageration.

www.psychologytoday.com/...he-mysteries-the-artistic-mind - Preview

jonah lehrer picasso neuroscience art abstraction symbols hyperbole peak-shift effect herring gull ramachandran neuroaesthetics

  • Through careful distortion, he found a way to intensify reality. As Picasso put
    it, "Art is the lie that reveals the truth."

  • What's surprising is that such distortions often make it easier for us to
    decipher what we're looking at, particularly when they're executed by a master.
    Studies show we're able to recognize visual parodies of people—like a cartoon
    portrait of Richard Nixon—faster than an actual photograph. The fusiform gyrus,
    an area of the brain involved in
    facial recognition, responds more eagerly to caricatures than to real faces,
    since the cartoons emphasize the very features that we use to distinguish one
    face from another. In other words, the abstractions are like a peak-shift
    effect, turning the work of art or the political cartoon into a
    "super-stimulus."

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