The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain (review)

There has been a recent spate of titles in which eminent scientists of one sort or another have applied theories from their own field to the analysis of art (several have been reviewed in Leonardo). The art in question is almost invariably painting from the period prior to the second half of the last century, and mainly drawn from the corpus of the major European museums. So, we tend to get neurological accounts of Van Gogh or cognitive accounts of Manet, and the like. To be fair to Robert Solso, The Psychology of Art does consider several examples of artifacts from Africa and Asia alongside those from Europe and North America, but otherwise it follows in much the same vein as others. It offers a "cognitive neuroscience account of aesthetics" based on a conventional evolutionary theory of mind (along the lines of "our perceptual systems evolved to find ripe berries and avoid tigers") while efficiently summarizing the current state of knowledge on perception, dealing with topics such as visual processing, cognition and illusion. All this is illustrated with frequent (although not always necessary) references to well-known paintings.

Solso's major theoretical contribution in the book is what he calls AWAREness, or "the five facets of consciousness." These include attention, wakefulness, architecture (the neural structures underpinning consciousness), recall and emotions, plus several other facets that combine to form a working definition of consciousness as "a state of attentional wakefulness in which one is immediately aware of his subjective sensations" (p. 27). His aim is to arrive at an objective scientific account of what is an essentially subjective experience by attempting to "reduce the variance in defining the subjective experience we call consciousness." "Variance" is a technical term from psychology referring to that which is controlled or minimized in experiments and is used here in order to create "an objective science of art" (p. 27). The notion of variance thus presented seems crucial to the methodology of Solso's project, and yet we are given little by way of further explanation; there are brief mentions (such as on p. 128) but no reference in the index, where the inquisitive reader would naturally look.

Much of the book is spent outlining a range of topics that gives empirical insights into the way we see and think, including neuroanatomy, the visual system, perceptual illusions and evolutionary biology. But while there is plenty of anatomical and empirical data to help us understand the primary processes of sight and perception, "the neurological trail goes cold," as Solso puts it, when we get to the bit that seems to matter—conscious experience itself. In order, then, to explain phenomena such as aesthetic experience, we are reduced to making "intelligent inferences" based largely on the principles of evolutionary necessity (survival and reproduction), out of which the basic attributes of consciousness and aesthetic sensitivity somehow emerge. So, for example, our brute, primal reactions to objects of attraction like the smell of roses were initially tied to survival needs but later acquire "secondary valences" such that "things become 'beautiful', not just 'pleasing'. Food became 'delicious' more than simply consumable" (p. 255). Whether this forms the basis of an "objective science of art," or is just informed speculation, I found hard to judge.

As I was reviewing The Psychology of Art, I met an undergraduate art student who, by chance, was also reading the book. She had found it useful for its clear and well-illustrated presentation of topics and data from the contemporary psychology of perception. It is less useful, I feel, as a contribution to our theoretical understanding of art or its relationship to mind. Of the 100 or so bibliographic references in the book, only around 10 are books specifically on art, and several of these are general histories. What this fact reveals is a lack of depth and complexity...