Description
Book SynopsisA critical study of the growing use of evolutionary theory and neuroscience to interpret art. Explores the question of what is gained from using ideas and methods from the biological sciences in the analysis of art.
Trade Review“A lucid historiography of the many manifestations, in art, of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Summing Up: Recommended.”
—D. L. Schuld Choice
“For decades, neuroarthistory, neuroaesthetics, and other biological approaches have been assembling a version of art’s history that is alien to the discipline of art history. Outlandish claims have been made about the significance of brain functioning to works of art, provoking defensive criticism about the pertinence of science to art history. Matthew Rampley advances and opens the discussion by taking up the same scientific criteria advocated by the writers he analyzes, including questions of evidence, hypothesis forming, and explanatory value. In that sense this book is not a polemic but an attempt to find ground for conversation. At its heart is a broad and widely informed concern with the sense of culture that art history might bring to bear in the coming decades.”
—James Elkins,editor of The Stone Art Theory Institutes series
“A thoughtful examination of the attempts to reduce aesthetics and art history to neurophysiology or evolutionary science. It provides a comprehensive survey and penetrating analysis of the efforts to impose biological models on the understanding of the arts that have proliferated in recent decades.”
—Branko Mitrović,author of Rage and Denials: Collectivist Philosophy, Politics, and Art Historiography, 1890–1947
Table of ContentsContents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Art, Biology, and the Aesthetics of Selection
2 Memes and Trees: Art History as Evolution
3 Brains, Caves, and Phalanxes: Neuroaesthetics and Neuroarthistory
4 Self-Organizing Evolution: Art as a System
Conclusion: On the Multiple Cultures of Inquiry
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
