tHeArtLocker

Bastille

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:16:55 -0400

Bastille

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:38:03 -0400

thetuesdayafter: Zhu Jinshi at Pearl Lam

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:37:25 -0400

thetuesdayafter:

Zhu Jinshi at Pearl Lam

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Thu, 23 May 2013 21:36:56 -0400

artruby: Simon Starling, Inverted Retrograde Theme (2002).

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:36:45 -0400

artruby:

Simon Starling, Inverted Retrograde Theme (2002).

hitrecord: “Moments” Illustration by myanamo == Contribute to...

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:36:31 -0400

hitrecord:

“Moments”

Illustration by myanamo

==

Contribute to the “Scenery Collab” HERE!

artlog: Laurel Nakadate’s eerie family portrait with distant...

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:36:05 -0400

artlog:

Laurel Nakadate’s eerie family portrait with distant relatives

fetishofsilence: Egon Schiele, Death and the Maiden,...

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:35:29 -0400

fetishofsilence:

Egon Schiele, Death and the Maiden, (1915-16)

Author Explores How Art Impacts the Brain | ABC News : “Neuropsychiatrist and Nobel laureate Eric Kandel’s recent book on the brain, art and the creative process is a fascinating look into the brand new area of research called ‘neuroaesthetics.’”

Considered one of the world’s most important neuroscientists, Kandel recently published a book about the creative power of Vienna, the city of his birth. In an interview, he discusses the demonic side of man and the postcoital perspectives offered in Gustav Klimt’s paintings. (as well as Schiele, Kokoshka, et al.)

The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present, to be published this spring, is a 656-page excursion that takes the reader all the way to the depths of the soul, the cavernous chasms of sex and the secrets of beauty. Here, in Vienna, the former capital of the Habsburg Empire, the author traces a major revolution in Western thinking.

‘I See Psychoanalysis, Art and Biology Coming Together’

The salons of fin-de-siècle Vienna served as a meeting place for poets, painters, philosophers, architects and researchers who were creating nothing less than a radical new perception of who we are.

“They abandoned the ideal of the Enlightenment and revealed, below the surface of presumably rationally-acting Homo sapiens, that human beings are driven by instincts and urges.” Sigmund Freud became the quintessential figure of this movement. But others also delved into the realm of the unconscious: Freud apparently saw Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler as an intimidating “double.” In a remarkable letter written on the eve of Schnitzler’s 60th birthday, the great psychoanalyst wrote to him: “I believe that fundamentally you are an explorer of the depths.”

But, Kandel is primarily fascinated by the Viennese painters’ incipient interest in sexual drives and repressed desires. In his drawings, Gustav Klimtembarked on a daringly overt exploration of female lust. Oskar Kokoschka saw his portraits as “soul paintings,” in which he sought to divulge the layers of an individual’s inner life, which remain invisible to the naked eye. And Egon Schiele revealed himself in his self-portraits as plagued by extreme anxiety.

In The Age of Insight, Kandel theorizes about a new area of research called “neuroaesthetics,” a conglomeration of his research in neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and historicism. His late work can be read as a manifesto for a new branch of science: neuroaesthetics. Kandel says that it’s time to use the tools of his field — neuroscience — to unravel the mystery of human creativity, the enigmatic impact of art and the dark depths of the unconscious mind. His goal is to draw a connection between our emotional reaction to a Klimt and Schiele portrait and the electrical flickers of individual neurons.

In an interview with Spiegel Online, the author explains further:

SPIEGEL: In your book, you make a case for using neurobiology to help understand art and the creative process. That’s quite ambitious.
KANDEL: There’s a Jewish phrase called chutzpah, which means a “bit of nerve” to try to do this. It is ambitious — and even more so, since some critics have the idea that as soon as you try to explain art in biological terms you take away from the pleasure you get from just looking at it.
SPIEGEL: And how do you respond to that accusation?
KANDEL: I don’t think biology is replacing the feeling experienced through art. Biology is capable of giving additional insights. It’s a parallel, not a substitutive process.

Interviewed by Johann Grolle. Read the rest on Spiegel Online.

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:34:43 -0400

kadist: Ben Kinmont will reactivate his piece On becoming...

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:34:24 -0400

kadist:

Ben Kinmont will reactivate his piece On becoming something else in six Bay Area restaurants in collaboration with SFMOMA.

For the original presentation of the piece at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Kinmont made a broadside reproducing seven paragraphs he had written, each devoted to an artist who had become something else. Long interested in antiquarian cookbooks, the history of gastronomy, and restaurant culture, he then invited seven Parisian chefs to each create a recipe, based on one of the paragraphs. Each dish served as an homage to the corresponding artist’s decision to leave the art world. The public was invited to each chef’s restaurant to literally consume these representations of the paragraphs, effectively moving the work outside the traditional spaces of the art world.

Kinmont will be working with Bar Tartine, Rich Table, State Bird Provisions, Outerlands, Bar Jules in San Francisco and Camino in Oakland. Each restaurant will be creating a dish about artists who had become something else.

For more information about the project, click here.