An exhibit at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art challenges viewers to look at and think about art differently. But it’s not an empty challenge — the show aims to give people some of the tools to start doing that.
"Brains and Beauty: At the Intersection of Art and Neuroscience," explores the emerging field of neuroaesthetics, which aims to find a biological basis for aesthetic experiences.
Laura Hales, curator of Learning and Innovation at Scottsdale Arts, collaborated with the director of Neuroaesthetics at Penn to design the exhibit, which is centered around three large neural systems that activate during an aesthetic experience, like being in an art museum. Neuroaesthetics incorporates psychology and neurology to try to find out what’s happening in our brains during an aesthetic experience, and why people react the way they do.
"This is what I would identify as an educational exhibition where and the way I described that is that it's not as much about the artwork as it is about the idea that I'm trying to talk about," Hales said.
Hales joined The Show to discuss neuroaesthetics, which incorporates psychology and neurology to try to find out what’s happening in our brains during an aesthetic experience, and why people react the way they do.
Full conversation
HALES: As a museum educator, I'm fascinated by what people are thinking when they come into a museum and I did not even realize there was a scientific discipline about this, but it's, you know, when people look at artwork, you know, sometimes they look at it for just a few seconds and walk away. Other times, you know, they'll, they'll stand in front of it for a very long time. And to me, it's interesting to find out what neurology is interested in, about art and aesthetic experiences because it helps me to be a museum educator actually.
BRODIE: The galleries are organized into three sections representing something called the aesthetic triad. It describes three large brain systems. When I met Hales at SMOCA, we started in the emotion valuation system section and I asked her to explain what that is and how the art in that area related to it.
HALES: The motion valuation system is your emotional response obviously to artwork. And it's very subjective, although some artworks can elicit a more universal reaction. So, for example, I had this Rufino Tamayo here, and it is a person who is holding his, his or her ears, and I would say her ears and she, she's got a red mask on. Well, red has been found to actually make you sweat more when you look at red. The same thing happens when you're anxious or when you're angry. So, although the artist I'm sure didn't realize that at the time that he created this painting intuitively, he knew that red is a color that can evoke that kind of response in somebody.
BRODIE: Well, and over this way, there are a couple paintings of people by Chris Rush, and these are people who I guess I could say don't look like the types of people you would typically see in a painting.
HALES: Yeah. Chris Rush painted people with facial anomalies and in a very dignified way, and I like this work because it brings up an issue with human behavior. When we look at somebody who is not part of what we consider to be our ideal beautiful person, it creates a reaction in our brains that is actually kind of troubling, but with education, you can get over it and most people do I hope, and that is that the area in the brain that's responsible for high attention increases.
So you're paying a lot of attention to somebody who might be different than you or but then the empathetic response, the your feeling of warmth and kindness towards that person is decreased. Now, this has to do with everybody's own idea of what beauty is and that is subjective to a point, although we are kind of hardwired to look at symmetry as one of the is something that's beautiful.
BRODIE: Throughout the galleries, there are monitors set up for each part of the triad with animations of the brain. Hale says that's so viewers can see which parts of the brain light up during aesthetic experiences that involve specific systems. Just behind the emotion valuation system, we find the knowledge meaning system. Again, Hales explains.
HALES: The knowledge meaning system is you'd consider that a top down cognition, whereas the other two are sort of bottom up to cognition. Because in the top down, you need to know about context and you have to have a little bit of maybe of background information or at least read the label and then reconsider the artwork through what you know.
Whereas say the emotion valuation system, you can just feel an artwork without having that information. Although most aesthetic experiences, I'd say all aesthetic experiences actually involve all three of these systems, some combination of the three.
BRODIE: Whether or not we know it at the time or not, right.
HALES: Exactly. Yeah.
BRODIE: So are these pieces and is maybe this section less maybe a visceral reaction and more of a OK, let me look at it, then let me learn a little more about it, then let me figure out how I feel about it.
HALES: I think these are examples of artwork that when you know the context, it makes you think of it a lot differently.
BRODIE: The third aspect of the triad is the sensory motor system. Hale says this refers to what you perceive when you look at a piece of art, like an initial gut reaction. What color it is? What is the piece depicting? That kind of thing. She says, it also refers to the brain areas that automatically recognize things like landscapes and faces and includes motion, both real and implied.
And as Hales and I are standing in the galleries looking at art and talking about how the brain reacts to it, it occurs to me that this is a pretty good deal for a museum having an exhibit that tries to figure out how people respond to art, which is a reason people would come to a museum in the first place.
HALES: Yeah, exactly. It is in a sense. But it, this exhibition is more so people, I want people to learn about neuroaesthetics because it's a growing field. It's only been around about 20 years and it's kind of exploding all over the place. There's lots of implications for neuroaesthetics in architecture in medicine in education and, and all of that.
So I want people to start thinking about it because it's going to be, you know, more and more known in the future. But also because to me, it's fascinating that art is a major part of this research and that I think that this was a really fun way to show that and to explain the research through the artworks.
BRODIE: Have you found that you are looking at pieces of art differently, knowing what you know about neuro aesthetics?
HALES: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that is interesting. These galleries are set up to, to sort of strongly suggest one of the three parts of the triad, but all aesthetic experiences incorporate all three. So when I look at art now, I try to analyze, OK, now, what, what's the knowledge meaning and what's the sensory motion and, yeah.
So, and, and that's, of course, I, you know, this exhibition is, I don't know if that's going to last for the rest of my life. But, but for right now, yeah, absolutely. I'm looking at art differently.
BRODIE: Well, it's very meta, right? You're thinking about in an art gallery, thinking about how you, an art educator, are thinking about art.
HALES: Yeah, exactly. It's meta cognitive for sure.
