Word: artful
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...less convinced of the merits of the scientific approach to artistic interpretation. “There’s a methodological problem at the core of the entire approach, and it has to do with consciousness and subconsciousness,” says Frank Fehrenbach, Professor of History of Art and Architecture. “What are you testing? What is your primary material? All these people [researchers] start with vocal response from their test persons. If you develop ideas about how art works on us then you determine that art must work on us in a certain...
Fehrenbach, familiar with the advances in neurobiology and psychology and what they offer art historians from a seminar he recently taught, says that a more science-oriented approach is a prominent channel in art history that seems to be gaining momentum. His concerns with it, however, range from the methodological issue mentioned above to more fundamental areas of disagreement...
...hand, Fehrenbach argues that asking subjects to respond to a work of art to analyze what’s happening in the brain can’t offer anything more than simple questions to an audience or to oneself. On the other hand, he stresses that this type of research-oriented approach is only a new substitute for formalism and places an undue emphasis on immediate response. Neurological or psychological studies could easily fall short in explaining such instantaneous reactions. If scientists observe that subjects have similar responses to a work of art, can they necessarily prove that similar mental...
Ultimately, the biggest problem for Fehrenbach is not the research itself or its impact on art history, but the implicit promise that we will be able to develop a new art theory. “It’s impossible to create a set of categories that would allow you to understand what art is or how it works on us,” he says...
...taken by Cavanagh, Livingstone, and the Vision Sciences Laboratory in the interpretation of artworks could be a fertile foundation for greater understanding. These areas, however, are not particularly numerous; nor do they initially seem to offer the same boundless opportunity that researchers like Cavanagh envision in the confluence between art history and the science of perception...