The relationship between biology and consciousness is clearly central to our experience of the world. Visual art is obviously one of the prime mediums for divining what human consciousness is and biology increasingly reveals the physical underpinning of the mind.
It is therefore surprising that there has not been more interaction between biologists and artists. Perhaps this is partly because until quite recently consciousness was not regarded as a viable subject for scientific study.
Whether artists are dealing with ideas of representation, beauty, space, cognition, political systems or gender the conception and execution of their artwork lies in the biological function of their brain. Their abstract constructs exist as neurological processes. Art and science meet at this point
The first record of human consciousness dates to the paintings in Chauvet cave in southern France executed 30,000 years ago. We look to art for an understanding as well as a record of consciousness, and now biology hints at its structure.
The beginnings of a new dialog between biology and art began in 1995 with an essay by Gerald M. Edelman entitled The wordless Metaphor: Visual Art and the Brain written for the catalog of the 1995 Whitney Biennial. This exhibition was curated by Klaus Kurtess, who saw the enormous implication for artistic practice within Edelman’s book Bright Air Brilliant fire published in 1992.
Since that time there have been a great number of essays and books on the subject leading to Semir Zeki’s proposal that there exists a whole new area for cognitive and artistic inquiry that he refers to as neural aesthetics.
—Peter Nadin
