ART & ORGANISM
READING
excerpts from
ART and ILLUSION and THE STORY of ART
EH GOMBRICH
FOR DISCUSSION:
There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists. Once these were men who took coloured earth and roughed out the forms of a bison on the wall of a cave; today some buy their paints, and design posters for hoardings; they did and do many other things. There is no harm in calling all these activities art as long as we keep in mind that such a word may mean very different things in different times and places, and as long as we realize that Art with a capital A has no existence.
For Art with a capital A has come to be something of a bogey and a fetish. You may crush an artist by telling him that what he has just done may be quite good in its own way, only it is not ‘Art’. And you may confound anyone enjoying a picture by declaring that what he liked in it was not the Art but something different.
“THE BEHOLDER’S SHARE”
“The artist gives the beholder increasingly ‘more to do,’ he draws him into the magic circle of creation and allows him to experience something of the thrill of ‘making’ which had once been the privilege of the artist”. (Gombrich)
To complete a work of art, we invoke THE BEHOLDER’S SHARE.
Look in on A&O NOTES: https://neilgreenberg.com/ao-reading-eh-gombrich-excerpts/ and consider how each beholder fill’s in the gaps necessarily left by the artist THEN look in on A&O NOTES on FILLING-IN
“The Beholder’s Share: Bridging Art And Neuroscience To Study Individual Differences In Subjective Experience”
“Our experience of the world is inherently subjective, shaped by individual history, knowledge, and perspective. Art offers a framework within which this subjectivity is practiced and promoted, inviting viewers to engage in interpretation. According to art theory, different forms of art—ranging from the representational to the abstract—challenge these interpretive processes in different ways. Yet, much remains unknown about how art is subjectively interpreted. In this study, we sought to elucidate the neural and cognitive mechanisms that underlie the subjective interpretation of art. Using brain imaging and written descriptions, we quantified individual variability in responses to paintings by the same artists, contrasting figurative and abstract paintings. Our findings revealed that abstract art elicited greater interindividual variability in activity within higher-order, associative brain areas, particularly those comprising the default-mode network. By contrast, no such differences were found in early visual areas, suggesting that subjective variability arises from higher cognitive processes rather than differences in sensory processing. These findings provide insight into how the brain engages with and perceives different forms of art and imbues it with subjective interpretation.”
Excerpt From Durkin Et Al. (PNAS, 2025)