Picasso and the art of distortion and dislocation: the artist as researcher and experimentalist

This paper is divided into four parts. In the first part, some general ideas about Picasso are set forth including: his association with multiple artistic innovations; his use of many different media; his notions of beauty and the relationship between art and nature; his ideas about the placement of body parts, symmetry, and color; and his relish in producing paintings with shock value. Emphasis is placed on the relationship between art and science and on Picasso's role as a researcher and experimentalist. In the second part, works of art during the cubist and postcubist years are discussed with emphasis on the development of simultaneity--the coexistence of different views of an object in the same picture. Topics included are: facial grafting; facial accommodation; multifacialism; profile insertion; snout formation, elevation, and rotation; concurrent faces; and more comprehensive simultaneity. In the third part, other influences on Picasso are presented including: the effects of action, motion, and activity; Surrealism and sexual symbolism; and Picasso's artistic treatment of women. In the fourth part, a comparison is made between Picasso's experiments and nature's experiments.     

Goethe's Morphology: Urphänomene and Aesthetic Appraisal

This paper examines the relationships betweenGoethe's morphology and his ideas on aestheticappraisal. Goethe's science of morphology was toprovide the method for making evident purephenomena [Urphänomene], for makingintuitable the necessary laws behind theperceptible forms and formation of livingnature, through a disciplined perception. Thisemphasis contrasted with contemporary studiesof generation, which focused upon hiddenformative processes. It was his views onaesthetic appraisal that informed theseepistemological precepts of his science. Hisstudy of antique artefacts convinced Goethethat these should be prototypes for all art,since they made perceptible the ideal of art,its archetypes or objective forms. His ambitionwas to eliminate the subjective elements hecontended were leading contemporary art astray.He argued that the techniques he developed forcultivating the perception of the idealexemplars of art could become a model forscience, enabling the intuition of theobjective forms of nature through a similardisciplined and cultivated perception. Thispaper also examines some of the widermotivations for the particular emphases Goethegave to his science and aesthetics, noting asimilar impulse to discipline unruly forces inhis life – in his work as an administrator forthe Weimar court and Jena University, in hisvision of an ideal German culture centred onthe aristocracy, and in his literaryproductions and biographical writings. Finallyit discusses the extent to which those unrulyelements nevertheless remained a potent anddisturbing presence in his understanding ofnature, his art and his life.     

Mind the gap: Encountering contemporary art through play

Knowing how to approach and experience contemporary art is a challenge to many people outside the art world. Emerging contemporary art, as the newest of this genre, is often the most challenging. This article recounts my own early struggles as a researcher in this field, and proposes a way of understanding the interaction between artist, artwork and perceiver based on my observations of how contemporary artists encounter each others' work. I argue that contemporary art, and especially emerging contemporary art, creates a space to play by creating an intentional gap in the physical form and/or the semantic structure of the artwork. The object of play is the co‐investigation of an idea initiated by the artist, facilitated by the form of the work and furthered by the encounter. Play, it is argued, is essential to emerging contemporary art as an activity, a communicative frame and a disposition. I draw from earlier theoretical connections between art, play and liberation, challenging some of these assertions, and bringing others into relevance in the contemporary context.     

Personal Meaning and the Transformation of a Mental Image

It is generally accepted that the reflection of reality in human consciousness is by no means an exact photographic reproduction of reality. "An image is the reflection of an object, and an object is reflected in an image in just the same guise as it exists in the real life relation between it and the subject" (Rubinshtein, 1957. P. 230). Thus, an element of personal, subjective partiality, the reflection of not only phenomena or objective relations themselves but also of their meaning for the person and their relation to his needs (Rubinshtein, 1959. P. 124; Leont'ev, 1977; Vilyunas, 1983; etc.), is necessarily present in a mental image. Personal meaning is also a component of individual consciousness; in it the partiality of that consciousness finds expression, a partiality conditioned by the link between that consciousness and the subject's need and motivational sphere and the reality of his life in the world (Leont'ev, 1977. Pp. 152-53). The objects and phenomena of reality are presented to us in direct perception and in our imagination in a form that is "colored" by the personal meaning they have for us as a result of their objective place in our life activity and their relation to the realization of our needs. It is not always possible to differentiate between objective content and personal relation even in reflection. Often, the meaning of an object cannot be separated from the object itself and examined impartially, from the sidelines, so to speak. This is most patently in evidence in the example of one's perception of other people, especially those who are very familiar.     

Abstraction and art

In a given social context, artistic creation comprises a set of processes, which relate to the activity of the artist and the activity of the spectator. Through these processes we see and understand that the world is vaster than it is said to be. Artistic processes are mediated experiences that open up the world. A successful work of art expresses a reality beyond actual reality: it suggests an unknown world using the means and the signs of the known world. Artistic practices incorporate the means of creation developed by science and technology and change forms as they change. Artists and the public follow different processes of abstraction at different levels, in the definition of the means of creation, of representation and of perception of a work of art. This paper examines how the processes of abstraction are used within the framework of the visual arts and abstract painting, which appeared during a period of growing importance for the processes of abstraction in science and technology, at the beginning of the twentieth century. The development of digital platforms and new man-machine interfaces allow multimedia creations. This is performed under the constraint of phases of multidisciplinary conceptualization using generic representation languages, which tend to abolish traditional frontiers between the arts: visual arts, drama, dance and music.     

The marriage of art and science in health care

This paper invites the reader to consider the marriage of art and science as antidote to much epidemic disease, for our greater personal and societal health. The history of arts medicine is reviewed, identifying its persisting although often tenuous link with health care from pre-history to the present. The author describes his personal encounter with art at the bedside, and how it led to his establishing a comprehensive artist-in-residence program at his university hospital. The scientific evidence underscoring the efficacy of art-making for physical and psychological health are outlined, together with the physiological and biochemical data. The author describes his own program, and offers examples of healing art in action.     

Construction of biochemical computer models

This paper described methods for constructing (digital) computer models of biochemical systems when the main object is to investigate the system itself, and not to fit experimental data (e.g., from tracer kinetics) to a set of equations. The author describes model-building as an art which is difficult to communicate, but nevertheless gives valuable tips on the conceptual and practical aspects, from his own considerable experience.     

The global evidence of early human symboling behaviour

A model of art origins based on the author’s first-hand studies is presented, which differs significantly from the dominant paradigm of these developments. The earliest known evidence for art, art-like or presumably non-utilitarian activities collectively provide the principal information about human symboling behaviour. These corpora are systematically considered from each continent, including rock art and various surviving forms of portable art. The immense age of some of this evidence is illuminated, and the record’s poor resolution with increasing age is presented as an essentially taphonomic phenomenon. It is shown, nevertheless, that the available record provides a considerably broader basis for hypotheses about symbolism, language and cognitive evolution than is often assumed, and that the evidence favours a model of comparatively early origins of the human capacity of concept-mediated thought and culture. These beginnings may be found in the endeavours of Lower Palaeolithic hominids to create taxonomic systems of physical reality. The available record renders it likely that such capacities existed several hundred thousand years ago.     

Haeckel und das Schöne in der Natur

The influential evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), well‐known as a highly disputatious defender of Darwin's work, sought to unite science, philosophy, ethics and art in an all‐embracing world view that he called ?monism“. In this essay his ideas and reflections on aesthetics in nature and their application are reviewed. According to Haeckel, art should be based on motifs that are to be found in the diversity of life forms, which represent, in his opinion, the highest imagineable specification in aesthetics. Beauty in nature should open men's way to nature, and man must not place himself in opposition to nature. Haeckel himself, who was also a gifted artist, helped find the way to such an attitude by publishing thousands of drawings of organisms, mostly microscopically small marine species. His illustrations made organismic structures accessible that a broader public was previously almost unaware of. With these representations he was most influential in almost all areas of art around the turn of the century, including architecture, interior design, painting, glass art and furniture design.     

IX. Meaning and the Semantic Act

Shpet concludes his definition of the structure of the word as follows:

Indeed, if one accepts that morphological forms are external and agrees to call ontic forms of named things pure, then the logical forms lying between them will be inner forms with respect to both the former and the latter since, in this latter case, the "content" of an object is inner content veiled by its pure forms. It is this content, being internally logically formed, that constitutes sense. Logical forms are inner forms as forms of ideal sense, expressed and communicated; ontic forms are pure forms of real and possible corporeal content.     

Galen's intermittent fever

In his comprehensive Oeuvre, Galen of Pergamon, who interpreted and perfected Hippocratic medicine, made many times and in various contexts mention of the intermittent fevers, among which malaria undoubtedly held a prominent position. The following article gives an outline of Galen's theoretical concept of this infectious disease, which was of utmost importance for the history of Italy. Galen describes three different types of intermittent fevers, of which, according to his theory of humoural pathology, each one is caused by a special humour with its respective qualities. Thus the quotidian fever is caused by phlegm, the tertian fever by the yellow bile and the quartan fever by the black bile. Apart from the three basic types of fever Galen describes a number of other mixed forms which can either be developed out of identical types or out of different ones. A mixture of a special kind is febris semitertiana: a continuous quotidian is accompanied by an intermittent tertian. It is the worst and most dangerous of these fevers. On the whole Galen's theory of malaria is a paradigm for his forming the reality of diseases on the basis of his pre-knowledge of humoural pathology into a closed system of theory.     

The art of seeing and painting

The human urge to represent the three-dimensional world using two-dimensional pictorial representations dates back at least to Paleolithic times. Artists from ancient to modern times have struggled to understand how a few contours or color patches on a flat surface can induce mental representations of a three-dimensional scene. This article summarizes some of the recent breakthroughs in scientifically understanding how the brain sees that shed light on these struggles. These breakthroughs illustrate how various artists have intuitively understood paradoxical properties about how the brain sees, and have used that understanding to create great art. These paradoxical properties arise from how the brain forms the units of conscious visual perception; namely, representations of three-dimensional boundaries and surfaces. Boundaries and surfaces are computed in parallel cortical processing streams that obey computationally complementary properties. These streams interact at multiple levels to overcome their complementary weaknesses and to transform their complementary properties into consistent percepts. The article describes how properties of complementary consistency have guided the creation of many great works of art.     

Speaking for itself: Art,meaning and power in New Ireland,Papua New Guinea

Taking the example of the tubuan masked figure, an art form of New Ireland, I explore recent theoretical debates on the question of meaning in art. Challenging approaches that privilege the semiotic, I argue that this form of art is more appropriately seen as a revelation of power. The tubuan brings forth the concealed efficacy, capacities and intentionality of the producer, which elicit responses from, or act upon, the audience in various negative or positive ways. This art object is a form of disclosure in itself, and thus speaks for itself. The appreciation of this art is not a matter of cerebral contemplation, the unearthing of ideas and the translation of images into verbal form, but in an embodied form that is experienced directly as affect. I take seriously the embodied nature of social action, of which the production of art is one form.     

On Meaning: A Biosemiotic Approach

A life form and its environment constitute an essential unit, a microcosm. This microcosm is sustained by a privileged dialectic relationship in which the embedded agent- an entity endowed with a particular physical architecture- and its specific environment, coupled, mutually influence each other. Identical principles rule both the basic forms of semiotic organisation and the upper forms. When we distinguish these two levels of semiotic structuring we are distinguishing the semiotic relations that involve a stimulus-response relationship, which is dyadic in nature, from those that involve a more complex relationship where the capacity of symbolically encoding allows organisms to go beyond the immediacy of sensory awareness. However in all instances of semiotic structuring, there is the presence of a living system that evolves in an environment individuating and assigning a value to typical environmental features. Acknowledging this fact is crucial: the inquiry into how elemental life forms interact with their environments leads to the identification of the fundamental role played by the physical architecture of the agent and sheds light on the semiotic process that is common to all life forms, ultimately highlighting the very nature of meaning and reality.     

Adding Value: Rethinking Late 19th-Century Torres Strait Islander Drawings in Anthropological Inquiry

This article focuses on the cultural and artistic value of a collection of Torres Strait Islander drawings that were commissioned and collected in the late 19th century. I argue that these drawings, made during Alfred C. Haddon's “salvage anthropology” expeditions, can provide insight into the nature of Islander graphic systems and the production of contemporary Islander art. By focusing on stylistic links between the drawings and other forms of decorative art, and their role as resources and inspiration for contemporary Islander artists, I explore the role these collections play in investigating regional artistic traditions, and how they act as agents in reaffirming Islander identity.     

Lessons from a great developmental biologist

The announcement that Sir John Gurdon had been awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology was received with great joy by developmental biologists. It was a very special occasion because of his total dedication to science and turning the Golden Rule of western civilization – love your neighbor as yourself – into a reality in our field. This essay attempts to explain how John became such a great scientific benefactor, and to review some of his discoveries that are less well known than the nuclear transplantation experiments. A few personal anecdotes are also included to illustrate the profound goodness of this unique man of science.     

Productive Perception

Many generations of psychologists have been concerned with the problem of how we see things as they are in reality. The science of vision has accumulated extensive material on this subject; and many more or less correct hypotheses have been proposed, formulated in the various conceptual terms of philosophy, art, psychology, physiology, biophysics, mathematics, and technology. Investigation into the working of the visual system has not developed equally in these fields. One instructive fact will not go unnoticed in the future history of the science of vision: in psychology, interest in image phenomena has fallen sharply, first because of behaviorism, then because of too broad an interpretation of the classic teachings on conditioned reflexes, and later because of cybernetic ideas. It has been maintained probably in a single area, psychiatry, in which investigative and medical material has not permitted image and hallucinatory phenomena to be ignored. In the early 1960s representatives of various psychological and physiological schools and disciplines returned anew to the long-for gotten topic of image phenomena. As Holt has aptly remarked (15), images are returning from exile. As generally happens in science, the rekindling of interest in a traditional topic occurred through the internal logic of studying the problems of perception in the light of the relatively new fields in science and technology. If we trace the development of only some of them — design theory, engineering psychology, and the theory of creative activity (as a separate subdivision of art, science, and the psychology of creativity) — it becomes clear that the return to image phenomena is due to the inability of behaviorism and associated physiological conditioning theories to explain complex forms of behavior and mental activity.     

‘Pho’ Phai and faux phais: The market for fakes and the appropriation of a Vietnamese national symbol

When Hanoi's favorite painter Bui Xuan Phai died in 1988, he became a legend in Vietnamese art circles. He was known as much for his paintings of ‘Old’ Hanoi streets ‐ earning him the nickname of Pho'Phai or ‘street’ Phai‐ as for his frequent visits to the underground cafes where banned writers spent their evenings drinking and philosophizing. As the Vietnamese economy improved in the early 1990s, a clientele for his paintings began to develop among Westerners visiting Hanoi. Gradually, it became increasingly clear that most of the paintings on the market attributed to Phai were in fact forgeries. This article will discuss the expectations of Westerners and their interest in an ‘authentic’ Vietnamese painting and its contrast to Vietnamese visions of their city in decay. The article illustrates how opposite notions of ‘authenticity’ and history define the cultural production of taste and alter perceptions about art and the ‘Orient.’