by Jon Lackman | 18 April 2006 | News, Theory
Contributor Ross Finocchio reports: “At NYU Friday night, Oxford philospher John Hyman refuted the claims of ‘neuroaesthetics’ researchers V. S. Ramachandran and Semir Zeki (last seen at the Columbia ‘Forum on Art and the New Biology of Mind‘). Hyman first challenged Ramachandran’s notion that ‘all art is caricature,’ in that it exaggerates the depicted’s essential nature. Ramachandran maintains, for example, that the enhanced curves of goddesses in classical Indian sculpture produce a ‘superstimulus’ for those parts of the brain that respond to round, feminine forms. In Hyman’s view, however, this is not a theory of art at all, but rather a theory of ‘why men are sometimes attracted to women with big breasts.’ For this reason, he continued, Ramachandran could just as well have used Pamela Anderson to demonstrate his ideas. Hyman drove this point home with a photoshopped image of the neurobiologist admiring the Baywatch beauty.
He next tackled Zeki’s assertion that ‘the inestimable quality of great art is the opportunity that the brain is offered to give several interpretations, all of them valid.’ Using a Chardin still life and some sexy verses from John Donne, Hyman endeavored to demonstrate that ‘imaginativeness and technical control’ contribute more to the aesthetic experience than polysemy. ‘Is nearoaesthetics the next big thing?’ Hyman asked in conclusion. ‘Extrapolating from the present, the answer must be no.’ He faulted Ramachandran and Zeki for basing their arguments on inadequate knowledge of the history and philosophy of art. Ignoring these intellectual traditions, he said, can only lead to ‘amateurish, ramshackle, and jejune ideas.’”
