THE POSSIBILITY OF A BRIDGE. PERSPECTIVES AND LIMITATIONS OF NEUROAESTHETICS

In the traditional study of humanities non-humanitarian inputinto the study of culture has usually been rejected. According tohumanist theories, only the meanings and values derived fromhistory and culture can be attributed to art. Recently a disciplineknown as neuroaesthetics has risen to the fore from among thevarious disciplines that use non-humanitarian methods to approachthe subject of aesthetics. Triggered by the invention of varioustechnological devices (EEG, fMRI, PET), neuroaesthetics is nowbeing used to tackle the role of the brain in the processes of creation,reception and even thinking about arts.When introducing new perspectives, such as neuroaesthetics, it isimportant to acknowledge the limitations of the different methods.A narrow reductional approach to art and the brain clearly does notsuffice – a satisfactory explanation must also involve non-physicalfactors, such as knowledge about the history of art. On the otherhand, as with any theoretical approach, the explanatory capacityof neuroaesthetics varies when applied to different kinds of art.Neuroaesthetic theories tend to stress the visual, mimetic andemotional nature of art, often associating artistic features with theactivity of the visual brain as well as evolutionary psychology.Instead of stressing historic and local differences and culturalexceptions, researchers with a natural sciences background tend to search for the universal qualities of art. This appears to beirreconcilable with the institutional theory of art that implicitlyunderlies the entire contemporary paradigm of art. It can be assumedthat some of the reasoning behind the sceptical attitude shared bymost mainstream humanitarian discourse is hidden in this conflict.It can even be claimed that, under the banner of institutionalist ideas,the art of the modernist period constituted a systematic negation ofthe conditions of art prescribed by the universal qualities of art basedon the laws of the brain. Therefore, one of the challenges in this earlyphase of the biologically and psychologically based analysis of artshould be to shed light on this inherent and ideological bias that isdeeply rooted in the humanistic discourse of arts.