engleski

Fine Arts & Brain

Historically, the five main fine arts include sculpture, painting, architecture, music and poetry, with performing arts including theatre and dance. Today, the fine arts commonly include additional forms, such as film, photography, conceptual art, and printing. In this article I will first and foremost deal with the perception of sculpture and painting. I shall also explore and present different theories of evolution of arts through history. Was it just a mean for attracting mating partners via advertising one's own creative abilities? What role do fine arts play in our everyday life, end how it came to be that way. Art is a form of communication, thorugh art one expresses him or herself, as well as recieves more or less subtle information. When one enters, for example, the St. Peter's in Rome, how does he or she feel, what do they experience and what happens in their brains? How does that building, the art works it holds, the „Gesamtkunstwerk“ it represents, how does all that communicate with it's visitors? One definition of art speaks of it as a deliberate setting of things which is intended to evoke emotional response in the observer. The process of visual perception is relatively clear and well researched, from rods and cones, through optic nereve to the primary visual cortex in occipital lobe. What happens after that is relatively unclear, and some of the researches carried out consearning the mechanisms behind the perception of art will be tackled in this work. One of the important puzzle pieces in this mosaic are mirror neurons. They represent a special breed of nerve cells , that activate during the observing of a meaningful or purposeful action. They enable the humans and some other mammals to interpret the body language of others, to give meaning to their actions, an as such are held responsible for assuming the intentions, motivations and mental states of an observed individual. In a word, they may be the key behind the „Theory of mind“, which in turn is responsible for compassion, but also for experiencing a work of art. In other words, one does not necessarily have to witness a specific action to produce an emotional response, but a mere representation of it is enough to produce such a response. Beside mirror neurons there is a multitude of other, cells (such as von Economo neurons) and neuronl circuits that are thought to play different roles in art perception. With growing knowledge concerning this field we may be close to examine one of the most important claims of all time, that that the beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Fine arts ; Mind ; Mirror neurons

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