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 ESSAYS ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY-
V- ,

. .
. I

Artistic and the Brain

,

Creativity
Charles Darwinarguedin TheOrigin 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 memberof the American
tionary imperative, it also exacts a PhilosophicalSociety,he specializesin
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 publishedarticlesand
or inclinations are judged to be de- two books, InnerVisionand LaQuete
viant from the norm. Paradoxically, de I'Essentiel,coauthoredwith the late
this may benefit art and hence con- Frenchpainter,Balthus.
tributeto culturalevolution. 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 straightline 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 artiststo 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 (area V5) was charted, kinetic artists
z
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:zeki.pa@ucl.ac.uk 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 organizationthat makes the V5 and anticipated artistically the physio-
t 106 (1962).
trS. Zeki, Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the creation and appreciationof art 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
§N. K.Logothetis etal., Curr.Biol. 5, 552 (1995).
learned in the past 25 years. Artists and neu- Visual art contributes to our under-
|iP.Picasso, interview with C. Zevros, Cahiers d'Art,
a 173 (1935). robiologists have both studiedthe 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 informationreaching it visual art ... processes now being un- had a life-long, unconsummated love for
changes from momentto 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 would be very interesting Wagner, seemingly never finding his ide-
distill on canvas essential
laws to 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,analyticperiod. 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
ed to the general, so that what is repre- unfinished (see the figure
sented is applicable to many particulars. on this page), but he had
-~~~~~~~I X factory theory of aesthet-
ics that is not neurobio-
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