Art is Beauty in the Brain of the Beholder
Physician and neurobiologist Dick Swaab has kicked up quite a bit of dust with the findings derived from his brain research and his conclusion that we don’t have a brain but we are our brain. In this book he enters the relatively new area of research known as neuroaesthetics: the branch of learning that examines the various mechanisms in the brain that are involved in making or looking at art. And once again, many a sacred cow is under threat. Creativity, it turns out, is determined by our brains and, not uncommonly, even by brain defects. So according to Swaab the saying ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ is simply not true. Art and the appreciation of art are generated not in the eye, but in the brain!