Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

by Eric R. Kandel

Are art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Can they find common ground? In this book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how reductionism--the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components--has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths. He draws on his Nobel Prize-winning work revealing the neurobiological underpinnings of learning and memory in sea slugs to shed light on the complex workings of the mental processes of higher animals. In Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Kandel shows how this radically reductionist approach, applied to the most complex puzzle of our time--the brain--has been employed by modern artists who distill their subjective world into color, form, and light. Kandel demonstrates through bottom-up sensory and top-down cognitive functions how science can explore the complexities of human perception and help us to perceive, appreciate, and understand great works of art.

Genres: Art, Science, Nonfiction, Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Art History

240 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2016

About the author

Eric Richard Kandel is an Austrian-born American medical doctor who specialized in psychiatry, a neuroscientist and a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He was a recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons. He shared the prize with Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard.
Kandel was from 1984 to 2022 a Senior Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He was in 1975 the founding director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, which is now the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University. He currently serves on the Scientific Council of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. Kandel's popularized account chronicling his life and research, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind, was awarded the 2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.

Reviews

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clearly written introduction and elegant survey. I needed to get past my knee-jerk reaction to the term reductionism - a dirty word when I was taking anthropology classes in the early 90s (and which I was probably combining/confusing with positivism). I could more readily accept the idea of reductionism in art (as stripping away to reveal a new way of seeing) than in science, where my old biases linger. But I came to understand that Kandel is talking about reductionism as a tool, and course, we would understand very little in the phenomenal world without isolating for study and then "putting it back together again."

Kandel's explanations of brain science are delightfully basic, with helpful diagrams: he describes the research into how the brain senses stimuli and perceives images - color, shapes, faces - and how this affects our understanding of figurative and abstract art (the two of which are processed differently in the cortex). The art chapters accumulate into a sort of survey of the history of non-representational art since the early twentieth-century, with mini-biographies of groundbreaking artists (no one new here) and elegant reproductions of their most significant and iconoclastic works.

[Dan Graser · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Nobel Prize-winning Columbia Professor Eric Kandel's latest work, he offers an introduction to the idea that the study and practice of Reductionism in modern (visual) art and brain science offers great benefit to both disciplines when treated as two sides of the same coin. He eloquently sums this idea up early on: "Appreciating the reductionist methods used by artists in no wary diminishes the richness or complexity of our response to art. In fact, the artists I consider in this book have used just such an approach to explore and illuminate the foundations of artistic creation." Through frequent helpful diagrams and passages detailing our understanding of the functions various regions of the brain carry out, particularly focused on memory (not a huge surprise given his specialty), he also makes a clear distinction between Bottom-Up Information Processing (those elements that are built into the brain at birth and allow us to extract key elements such as contours, intersections, line crossings and junctions) as well as Top-Down Information Processing (elements including attention, imagery, expectations, and experience/learned visual associations). He also provides a great amount of history and context for several of the artists mentioned here, especially de Kooning and Rothko (his affinity for Rothko is abundantly obvious, one of the many reasons I enjoyed this work...) and also introduces familiar names not commonly associated with visual art such as composer Arnold Schoenberg. While his description of Schoenberg's conception of harmony as being one, "that had no central key, only changes in timbre and tone," is hugely oversimplifying a massively complicated system of composition, his analysis of Schoenberg's contribution to the visual arts is very much on point. Kandel is most effective when quickly going from an analysis of the works of color-field painters to an analysis of the brain's processing of color and its associations. This is a wonderful introductory work with gorgeous full-color images and a wealth of information. Highly Recommended!

[Alina Lucia · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I construct lines and colours on a flat surface in order to express general beauty with utmost awareness. Nature(or that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation(still just an external foundation!) of things.” Mondrian 1914.

Something similar could have been said by any passionate scientist, and this is why this book is fascinating. The parallels it draws between science and art are incredibly stimulating, and many times I found myself in awe of a certain realization that every concept is connected to all others, forming a network of ideas culminating in a kind of totality of things. It made me think of these lines from a poem by Aldous Huxley, “First Philosopher’s Song”, in which he describes a human as a

“[…]nimbler beast, possessing a thousand sinewy tails, a thousand hands, with which it scales, greedy of luscious truth, the greased poles and coco palms of thought, thrids easily through the mangrove maze of metaphysics, walks the taut, frail, dangerous liana ways that link across wide gulfs remote analogies between tree and tree; outruns the goat, out-hops the hare, mind fabulous, mind sublime and free!”

This book is definitely a liana way that “links remote analogies between tree and tree”, across the seemingly “wide gulf” between science and art. Both sides of the gulf are looking for the essence of things and I think each side can draw incredible inspiration from the other, in ways that can lead to a transcendence of the ordinary and to real progress. This book builds an incredible bridge over this gulf.

[Ignacio Luna · Rating 3 out of 5]

An orthodox approach to both art history and neuroscience, and the two sections never seem to connect as well as I'd hope from a book trying to bridge the two cultures. The whole thing seems to just rest on the fact that top down processing is involved in viewing abstract art as opposed to bottom up in figurative art. Altogether, a little too light and disconnected. Sort of feels like an ophthalmologist trying to connect art to science by revealing that art is seen through the eye. It's not wrong but a lot seems to get overlooked.

Would recommend his previous book Age of Insight over this. A longer read but much better demonstration of Kandel's strengths in art and science

[Kamilė Čelutkaitė · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although parts on abstract art lack some erudite nuance (e.g., Kandel retells Clement Greenberg’s accounts on abstract expressionism rather uncritically or presents the classical - predominantly male - canon of abstract expressionism without questioning it), the parts on visual perception and brain science are absolutely illuminating! This is why this book (or at least these ‘biology’ chapters) should be a compulsory reading in Art History programmes.

Perhaps to reach the real “bridging of two cultures”, future books on this topic should be co-authored by both art historians and brain scientists so that a true and fruitful dialogue could be born.

[Rachel Spivey · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a self proclaimed hater of modern art and abstraction, this book did make me rethink WHY these works can be considered art. Kandel does an excellent job of dumbing down neuroscience for the casual consumer, and his connections with artists ranging from Jackson Pollock to Chuck Close make sense. The neuroscience behind our vision and how we process what we see provides fascinating context for what might otherwise be considered (by me, the abstract art hater) "nonsense artworks".

[Lukas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book (i) compares reductionist approaches in art and science, (ii) gives an overview of the most influential artists and their work when abstractionism reached its historical climax (and addresses the impact of historical events like the publication of Einstein's relativity theory), (iii) teaches us how the brain processes different visual stimuli and why abstract art is special to the brain.

(i) Reductionism = focussing on the essential elements: in science that means designing and testing models that capture a part of a complex whole; in abstract art it means reducing images to their "essential elements of form, line, color, or light." This book does a fantastic job in (i) discovering the parallels in the minds of artists and scientists; and (ii) making abstract art and the way it affects audiences more accessible to non-artists.

(ii) The most influential early contributions to abstract art include the work of Turner, Monet, Schoenberg, and Kadinsky. At the time, Einsteins theory of relativity questioned "absolute notions of space and time" and motivated artists to go beyond figurative art. Modrian was "the first artist to create an image from pure lines and color." The New York School of painters, formed mainly by de Kooning, Pollock, and Rothko, is symbolic for the a movement of abstract expressionism searching for the meaning of art in the aftermath of World War II. Each of them drove abstraction to a different extreme: while Modrian focussed on lines and their geometry, Rothko instead had a radical focus on color.

(iii) Can the subjective experience of art be studied objectively? This book guides us through relevant findings of modern brain science. Visual stimuli activate different regions in the brain; many of which are interconnected. Therefore, when we consume art, emotions are elicited, memories are brought to our attention, and new associations are built. "The abstract painter does not attempt to provide pictorial detail, but rather to create conditions that enable the viewer to complete the picture based on his or her own unique experience." Abstract art is often seen as much more complex, because it cannot rely on "hard-wired"/"bottom-up" brain processes (face-recognition, identification of objects, etc.), but the inherent ambiguity requires more "top-down" contribution of the brain: you have to make sense of it by "constructing and testing hypotheses."

https://www.cbs.mpg.de/departments/so...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/20...
https://youtu.be/ELpfYCZa87g

[Doan Trang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting at the beginning but lose me at the end cuz it's kinda repetitive on the neuroscience arguments. I was looking for fundamental/ neuroscience visual principles, but it didn't have it. The history of abstract art was interesting tho. Also it didn't account for any other art style than European abstractionism. I feel like East Asia's brush paintings might have mastered the same techniques ages ago.

[Mason Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty similar in content to Age of Insight, but a bit more concise and focused on abstract expressionism rather than modernism. I did feel it was a bit rushed and less thorough than AoI, and sometimes that came at the cost of cohesiveness, but if you prefer a fast-paced read this would be more your style. Endlessly fascinating and a lot of fun.

[Kawakoala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glad I read it. A good, clear and concise synthesis of research in brain science related to visual art. Art people might be irritated by some things: the cursory treatment of art historians and critics, the absence of female artists, the triumphalist modernist narrative, and inattention to traditional formalist evaluations of abstraction.

[Martin Riexinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of the book is quite misleading, as the author does not deal with art as such but with "New York school" abstract painting and its European predecessors from Turner to Kandinsky and Mondrian. None the less the content is very interesting.
Kandel explains how the processes at work when we look at, or more importantly learn to look at abstract art (and to listen to atonal music) involve certain parts of our brains and shapes their relation to each other. Hence in this form of art the viewer is much more actively involved in a creative process as the spectator of figurative art.

When it comes to art history I have some minor complaints. The book is from 2016, so the work of Hilma af Klint had been rediscovered, and one can no longer claim that Kandinsky was the first truly abstract painter. Moreover, the esotericist background of early abstract painting is never referred to.

[Desollado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing cross discipline piece, although as the author is a Nobel laureate in medicine his vision of visual art is the most mainstream one and assumes it's discourses without question.
also you can sense a very heavy bias for American artistic movements, but overall you can feel a richness of thought and references from philosophy, literature and psychology.

[Kunal Sen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scientific books that talk about art are rare, and the few that I have come across generally deal with certain simple forms of visual art. This was one of the very rare exception, and unsurprisingly it comes from Eric Kandel, the Nobel Prize winning scientist known for his groundbreaking research in the neuroscience of learning and memory. What makes this book unique is that it lays out a neuroscientific basis for why people enjoy not only figurative art, but the appeal of abstract art. The author takes us step by stem from the appreciation of classical western art all the way to American Expressionism, action painting, pop art, and even more abstract color field paintings of Rothko and the light installations of Flavin.

To pull this off, it is not enough to know your science, but the author must have a deep understanding and appreciation of contemporary art. Who else is better suited for this than Eric Kandel. I was first introduced to his astonishing span of knowledge when I read The Age of Insight. He is one of those rare people who can effortlessly traverse between the worlds of art and science. He is probably the best realization of the dream that E.O. Wilson expressed in many of his books – of someday bridging the gap between humanities and science by bringing the proven methods of science into the world of humanities.

A short but profoundly illuminating read.

[Mad Hab · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading the booking hoping to learn to appreciate modern/abstract art. I still have some problems with that, but the way I was thinking about abstract art is changed forever.

[Anders Demitz-Helin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not exactly brainresearch. Oh, it was 😀. Interesting topic, but not very thorough.

[Stella B.]

dnf-ing this because it's bringing my college trauma back (I don't want to read about Gombrich, sorry)

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A year ago I thought of how arts and science have common paths and if they could work together they could become the perfect educating tool. Then I came across this book, introducing us to some basics of brain science while studying paintings of abstract art. More than rewarding!

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is why I'm a neuroscientist but I'm hardly a Kandel! He is brilliant in the way I know his academic work and this book displays his genius beyond his academic content. Few people can so eloquently discuss two diverse content areas and he does it without a hint of arrogance or pomposity. He explained abstract expressionism in terms of neuroscience that contributed to the beauty of the art. He set out to bring together art and science using reductionism. Whereas in science we use it "to explain a complex phenomenon by examining one of its components on a more elementary, mechanistic level", artists use it "to perceive an essential component of a work in isolation, be it form, line, color, or light." Reducing art to line, color, light, and form in a way that the brain contemplates and interprets the work helped me to understand the meaning of abstract expressionists in a way I hadn't considered. I'd never appreciated Rothko's work this way. The entire concept of this book is clever and he executed it masterfully.

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 2 out of 5]

Roundly disappointing. The plague of all popular writing is it never relies on an accumulation of knowledge in its readers. For a book as short as this, I feel Kandel (and his publishers) should be at the liberty to stress prerequisites. Know these artists, read this or that book on neuroscience (Kandel has written several himself.

That aside, I actually think Kandel lapses into some bad behavior as a scientist, ultimately doing a disservice I think to the spirit of CP Snow’s Two Cultures.

I got the most out of the last third of the book, when Kandel turns his attention from figurative to abstract art.

… we respond more strongly to the exaggerated depiction of a face by an Expressionist artist such as Oskar Kokoschka or Egon Schiele because the face cells in our brain are tuned to respond more powerfully to exaggerate facial features than to realistic ones. How, then, do we respond to abstract art? What machinery in the brain enables us to process and perceive paintings whose images have been radically reduced, if not eliminated? One point that emerges clearly is that many forms of abstract art isolate color, line, form, and light, thus making us implicitly more aware of the functioning of the individual components of the visual pathway

In other words, abstract artists are formally, intuitively, exploring hardwired areas of our brain that are responsible for interpreting visual signals.

One concrete example of this is when artists started disassociating color from form (which Kandel credits to Matisse alone, but probably belongs to the entire school of Fauvists), Kandel argued that our brains were ready to accept the objects as beautiful due to our hard wiring

Moreover, the separation of color from form is consistent with what we know about the anatomy and physiology of the primate visual system. That is, form, color, movement, and depth, are analyzed separately in the cerebral cortex.

I’m not entirely convinced by this line of reasoning, mostly because I can’t understand why it matters. Because Kandel never identified art that “fails” due to our neural wiring, it was hard to see his position presented in a falsifiable way, which is anathema to the project of science.

Kandel also appears to step on artists’ toes as well. Ignoring some of his sweeping generalizations or claims about the preeminence of certain works, Kandel also is happy to interpret artists intentions when he suggests they all expect audiences to experience pareidolia:

… thus, what abstract artists contend, and abstract art itself bears out, is that an impression, a sensory stimulation of the retina, is merely a spark for associative recall. The abstract painter does not intend to provide pictorial detail, but rather to create conditions that enable the viewer to complete the picture, based on his or her own unique experience.

I love that a book like this was attempted. I hope to read a better one like it one day.

[Jim Angstadt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures
Eric R. Kandel

One might wonder about the concept of reductionism. What is it? How can it apply to the two apparently very different domains of art and brain science?

In a very readable way, with lots of examples and graphics, Kandel alternates between art and brain science to explain reductionism.

What is the smallest, least complicated, living organism that one can study to understand brain function. Reduce the complexity to the point that one can understand all inputs and responses. Then that can be the basis for the study of more complicated organisms.

In art, Kandel explains how an artist can reduce the non-essential details of a work. This leads to abstraction, which allows, or forces, the viewer to add their own input to the work. More reductionism, or a variety of what to withhold, can lead to impressionism or radically abstract forms.

Kandel notes that neurons in the primary visual cortex of our brains will respond to the orientation of lines seen by our eyes. One could understand how this hints at some of the appeal of Pier Mondrian's work, for example: Broadway Boogie Woogie.

As Kandel continues to discuss recent trends in abstract art, one begins to question just how strongly reductionism connects science and art. Must one strongly appreciate and follow abstract art to 'get' the connection? If there really is a strong connection, then shouldn't most people appreciate the abstractions? One suspects that many people do not appreciate art that is without content, art that is mostly a product of our own mind.

Page 154
"People are wedded to the idea that colors are properties of objects, when they are in fact made up by the brain (Hughes 2015)."

"... in every case it is the beholder who assigns meaning to the color, just as the beholder does to lines and textures."

[Guli · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is divided into four parts, where Kandel explores the reductionist approach to both brain science and art and the emerging dialogue between the two. As any well-written interdisciplinary book, Kandel's work brings beautiful insights to the table and leaves the reader with a sense of admiration about many more connections that are yet to be found between the science and abstract art.
As Kandel explains through a number of experiments and scientific facts, the brain processes color separately from light and from form, whereas 'people are wedded to the idea that colors are properties of objects, when they are in fact made up by the brain'. What the abstract artists of the New York school succeeded in, was reducing the complex visual world around us to its essence of form, line, color, and light. For all their seeming simplicity, however, the abstract art pieces do manage to move the viewer enormously as they pose a challenge to the beholder by teaching to look at art in a new way. Thus, abstract art dares the visual system to interpret an image that is fundamentally different of images our brain has evolved to reconstruct. Finishing the paragraph, here is just a quote from David Hume: 'The creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience". And as 'to be abstracted is to be at some distance from the material world', it is abstract art at its most powerful stage that can most likely create such a state.

[Mads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric Kandel deftly crafts this book in the same way Abstract Art utilizes reductionism.

Kandel brings science and art theory down to the (approximate?) level of the average reader. In making these topics accessible, Kandel successfully "reduces" both subjects to a challenging but understandable level. He devotes equal time to both art and science, and both describes and questions how they intersect. While it irked me that Kandel didn't include Rosalind Franklin in his description of DNA discovery (a personal pet peeve of mine), what actually knocked off a star from my rating is that I didn't absolutely adore this book—rather, I felt it appropriately interesting and insightful, but I didn't feel persuaded to read without ceasing, as I do some other books. Still, I'm glad I read it; I think both art and science would do well to see the similarities between their subjects and would benefit from more interaction.

A solid read.

[K R N · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this (especially more toward the end), and Eric Kandel is amazing. I heard him talk at ANFA once (a similar discussion but possibly more related to his other book Age of Insight, which I haven't read yet) and it was awesome:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPIDL...

Editing wise.... a few things bugged me about this consistently. For example, the book uses the word "pure" over and over, e.g. "pure color" and I found myself having a problem with it (e.g. in a work of art referred to as "pure" color -- there is also material, size, texture, context, etc.). In some instances like this, I thought there were some unexamined assumptions on the arty side of the discussion.

In other words -- Dr. Kandel please hire me to edit your next book! You're amazing! :D

[Akanksha Chauhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coming from a humanities background, part 1 & 2 did not captivate me as much as Kandel traversed the physiology of the human brain. Had to frequently go back and reread to recall the more scientific terms. Part 3 onwards the book was absolutely riveting as he begins dissecting the evolution of abstraction through various periods of art. Especially loved his critique of De Kooning's work. Tbh it kept getting better and better. I strongly urge you not to give up on this book after the first couple of chapters. It makes you contemplate and question - signs of a great book.

[Tzvia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply (but not too simply) explained and to the point, this was a quick and enlightening read. I finished it feeling a sense of awe in the instinctual and biological basis of artistic expression.

[Trpti Sanghvi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Explains how artistic abstraction translates to scientific perception through the Abstract Art Movement & Neuroscience. SHEER BRILLIANCE! I heart Kandel.

[Kat Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric Kandel takes an audacious leap in Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, connecting two worlds that seem worlds apart but are, in fact, intertwined at their core. This is a book that asks big, ambitious questions: How do the intricate workings of our brain shape the way we perceive art, and how does art, in turn, reflect the essence of human thought?
Kandel’s approach is deeply interdisciplinary, bridging the gap between neuroscience and modern art with remarkable precision. He explores how reductionism (the act of breaking down complex phenomena into simpler components) applies not only to scientific inquiry but also to the creative process. Through the lens of abstract art, he examines how artists like Mondrian and Pollock reduced visual elements to their barest forms, challenging the brain to make sense of what it sees.
What I loved most is how Kandel connects the scientific and the emotional without diluting either. The neuroscience sections are detailed without being alienating, and his exploration of modern art is vivid and engaging, even for those who might not typically gravitate toward it. He doesn’t just explain the science behind how we see; he also dives into why we feel.
That said, this isn’t a light read. It’s as much a textbook as it is a thought experiment, and there are moments where Kandel’s prose leans a bit too heavily into scientific jargon. But if you’re willing to wade through the denser passages, the payoff is extraordinary. He builds a compelling case for why understanding the brain is essential to understanding art… and, by extension, humanity itself.
What stays with you after reading Reductionism in Art and Brain Science is the sheer beauty of its premise: that art and science are not opposites but reflections of the same human drive to uncover meaning. Kandel’s book is a testament to the power of cross-disciplinary thinking, showing how the tools of one field can illuminate the mysteries of another.
For anyone fascinated by the intersection of science, art, and philosophy, this is a book that demands your attention. It’s not just an intellectual exercise, it’s an invitation to see the world (and yourself) in a profoundly different way.

[Inhye Baik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads like a liberal arts student's senior thesis paper, Essays in [my first major my parents wanted me to study] and [my secondary major that I actually like] (I am entirely projecting here hahaha). If you're new to neuroscience or art topics, this book has more potential for awe. Otherwise, I'm going to be critical.

Organizationally, this book is part neuroscience and part art theory/history/criticism, but structured in a discordant way. It switches jarringly between sections of fully just art (sumptuous, implicit, overwrought language) to fully just neuro (objective, concrete, technical language) -- the bridging/blending of the two occurs scantily as ephemeral transition paragraphs.

I was hoping for more of the bridging, and with stronger arguments. Rather, Kandel explains (too) in-depth about theories and findings from research papers and loosely relate it to why we like certain art pieces, which become indulgent essays in themselves. Many times I found myself saying, "Um that's a real stretch but sure ok...." Or, "we like abstract art because it gives us more room for our imagination? lol duh."

The arguments and evidence are lightweight. I'm aware this book isn't a research publication but it sure flexes like one (and scientific-cites like one lol), but without the gravitas and rigor. He didn't recognize many points of view but so forcefully pushes his own without acknowledging caveats. Why do we dislike certain reductionist art pieces over others, even from the same artist and genre? And please don't attribute this to differences in just "personal preference", i.e. everyone's nature and upbringing/top down processing -- it's a cop out argument. I didn't get lost in the fluffy arguments and narrative evidence.

TLDR Too weak and subjective for neuroscience and too unoriginal for art criticism. One could argue the whole topic of reductionist art could be replaced with 'Disney Movies', 'certain Instagrams', 'iPhone cases'. The whole book is unnecessarily high brow and a stretch in hypothesis, with arguments loosely held. 3 stars for the attempt. Better neuroscience books: Oliver Sacks' Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and even Helen Keller for beautiful sensation and perception writings.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinarily incisive introduction to the intersecting relationships between art and neuroscience. Eric Kandel provides all the tools by giving a thorough and even-handed crash-course in art history and how these artists impacted painting, and how those paintings affect the brain.

Major bonus points for not shying away from anatomy for greater precision, and for expressing such elegance and richly complex topics in a surprisingly approachable and completely non-pretentious way. In fact, the prose is so fluid and palatable that is easy to forget one—or at the very least, myself—knew nothing of either neuroscience or art history beforehand. But Kandel makes one feel they did, and feel smarter for it. In my humble opinion, that takes incredible talent. (It's no wonder he won the Nobel Prize for his research.)

Even more noteworthy for me is how he helped me understand how Color Field Painting differs from figurative painting, and affects one's brain differently, especially because color is processed differently than light and form. This is even more important to bring up, because I previously had great difficulty appreciating 'modern art', but now I at least respect (some of) it because I can see the contrast from figurative art and the gradual evolution of art that mirrored the time it was produced.

Anyways, if you love art and you love neuroscience, I guarantee you'll adore this work.

[Shhhhh Ahhhhh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. Somewhat informative. Gave me a different perspective with which to judge art (especially modernist, post-modernist).

My only gripe, and the only reason i felt I couldn't give this 5 stars, was that the bridge the author built was exceedingly shallow. Now I'm certain that they built the bridge between the two areas of art with which they have the greatest familiarity with (visual art, specifically paintings and the history of artists using paint on comparatively flat surfaces, and brain science). i felt that the entirety of art and the entirety of science could have been handled much more generally with a lot more touch points, including the ways in which different niches, disciplines, genres have historically benefited from reductionism. With that said, I think that there is only but so much we can expect in a single lifetime from someone whose contributions have already netted them a nobel.

One of my big takeaways from this book was the perspective that art, as a field, moves logically and in a goal-oriented fashion. To me, until this book, I didn't rally consider art in that way. i considered it to be a technical skill with results that other people find appealing and where innovation happens in the subject being expressed or in the composite elements of that technical skill, with no greater goal than making money by selling paintings. That part exists too, for sure, but seeing the part of art that is more ladder than treadmill has reframed entire swaths of my memory in a single stroke.