As art insatiably feeds our exchanges, and as the concept of art is changing depending on eras and civilizations, it is essential to focus on its effects rather than questioning art itself. And in this opposite way the question of art is resolutely clearer simply because we know that it imposes a mental elaboration. Our elaboration is distilled through a filter that is linked to the moment when we are looking at work, to the place where it is located, to the cultural symbolism of this place, to the quality of the people around us, to the environment of the observer, and to his or her personal experiences. Neuroscientists seem to agree on this point: art imposes a mental elaboration and requires us to think about our own conceptions of art. This is part of the answer to the question of art, since this polymorphous, reflective material is alive and constantly transforming itself in the eyes of the viewer.
Gaston Bachelard asserts that space does not exist in and of itself, but is the result of reconstruction, adding that the quality of a work itself is important. And he’s right. I intervene, with fervor, to accompany people’s daily lives with artworks in busy places. The latter become for the users of these spaces an aesthetic referent, since they are part of the register of each person’s own experiences. In the long term, my in-situ creations become associated with the memory of moments lived. They invite reconstruction, and this happens because our perception is the fruit of re-creation. We don’t see the things around us as they are, our perception of things is not a copy-paste, but we re-create what we see, and our perception is global. Although Emmanuel Kant addressed this subject in his Critique of Pure Reason, he didn’t have the same tools at his disposal as we do have today to understand the interactions between our mechanism and our artistic experiences. There is a fertile dialogue between phenomenology and neuroscience, and the points of interaction are numerous. According to neurophysiologist Alain Berthoz, “thought does not precede action, nor does action precede thought: action contains all thought”. In so doing, he sweeps with the back of the hand Kant’s claim that art can be a purely cerebral thing, as well as the analytical philosophy of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, which maintains a small oligarchy so small that it doesn’t want people to evolve. This oligarchy claims to be the sole custodian of art, whereas “connoisseurs” are only those who have understood what they have read. Denying the sensory experiences between the artwork and the audience – as advocated by analytic philosophy – is to prevent people from rising with art. Art is a sensitive thing and refers to everyone’s sensibility. So, it’s through our sensory experiences, through action and immersion, that we experience art. I recently read an article (whose author I won’t name) where it was written that “the artist doesn’t just draw shapes, but his drawings are truly engaged messages”. If art is supposed to help us evolve, then we’re in big trouble! For a start, the artist is not an example of morality, and we should distinguish between the man and the work. Secondly, engaged art kills the possibilities of art: art is a vital breath, and engaged art is a dubious cerebral asphyxia, often at the service of covert propaganda – as in France – or overt propaganda. Our societies are in tension – we need to escape the rules of propaganda and maintain the condition of the artist as an individual freed from social elaborations. Pierre Bourdieu, for his part, says that “… in order to make people talk about their tastes, you have to make them talk about what disgusts them”. He therefore believes that art expresses our position in the social world. In fact, he denies the idea of immutable, natural beauty. For him, our tastes betray us more profoundly than our opinions. According to Pierre Bourdieu, the museum is a sacred place, analogous to the church, and it has a distinguishing function, separating those who can enter from those who are not. For Pierre Bourdieu, science can explain the structure of colors, but not the pleasure of colors. This is a mistake on his part, because it is possible today to observe how colors can act on us, to observe the flows in our brain and to map the cerebral zones that are activated when we look at a work of art. Neurobiologist Semir Zeki has observed that, for most people, paintings by the painter Lucian Freud, for example, activate the viewer’s amygdala – the amygdala is an area of the brain that is, among other things, linked to fear. Humans need to project themselves and dream. The artist – who, incidentally, is dangerously close to extinction – is a social bonding agent, and this idea is illustrated by the poet in Fellini’s film Satyricon. Unfortunately, the players on the old continent feed on their own complexes and guilt, and the price they pay is prohibitive. The Fields Medal (Nobel Prize) winning mathematician Cédric Villani explains in a television presentation that the level of mathematicians is good, but not recognized on the old continent. He explains that even a scientist like Turing was devalued by English institutions, to the point of asking him to take courses with American mathematicians! Sadly, very few artists work full-time, and most live on government subsidies. Artists must emancipate themselves from these to fulfill their social role.
The implication on this subject is extensive and allows new perspectives to art. This concern has become a global issue, and, in 2019, the World Health Organization confirmed that a work of art can make a significant contribution to our mental and physiological health. In particular, it can improve behavior and influence the social landscape by reducing psychological tensions – it can reduce feelings of isolation, comfort, make us happier and more elegant… Eric Kandel, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology-Medicine in 2000, shows that abstract art modulates even more new neurons than figurative art, and that it helps us distance ourselves more from the things that surround us. The painter Henri Matisse was right when he wrote that “the painter’s duty is to give what photography does not give”. If we were to consider the mechanisms of the human being to generate artistic proposals, we could allow art to fully unfold and amplify its vocation to serve the general interest. When you look at a painting, you follow the lines and look for the intersections – they make it easier to grasp. In this sense, lines are fundamental, because the public must interact with the work. If the public doesn’t appreciate a work of art, its cognitive activity will be greatly reduced, as neuroscientist Oliver Sacks has shown. In in this case, it’s quite simply a “missed appointment”.
Nevertheless, Eric Kandel shows that the dissolution of lines is necessary to force cognitive activity and modulate new neurons. He takes as an example the paintings of American painter Mark Rothko, with their diffuse contours. As far as I’m concerned, I create gradations that open space towards the invisible. Also, the support gives an impression of infinity and of extending beyond the frame of the work, which optimizes the capacity of creation. It also modulates more neurons, as it encourages the viewer to recreate what he or she sees. The artist’s task is not to show off, but to disappear in favor of creating possibilities for the viewer to move, to amplify the work’s possibilities for his or her own benefit. The neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran’s research on seagulls seems to me fundamental – through his experiments, he shows that our appetence for artwork is linked to the synthesis of forms. This could explain, for example, the success of Aristide Maillol’s sculptures. Art reduces our sense of loneliness and isolation – we look at work not as an object, but as if we were looking at a person. It activates mirror neurons, which are the same as those we activate when looking at someone we really like. This implies that we should accompany with works of art people who suffer from loneliness, people who are going through difficult times – such as people in palliative care, for example – or that we should install works of art in centers for the elderly. The powers of art are gigantic, and we can measure their effects from our sensory experiences. The World Health Organization confirms that art can reduce social tensions and contribute to individual mental health. So, what are we waiting for?
Art must inspire and nourish our imagination. It is as a free soul that the artist can play his role and enable societies to always have that glimmer of hope that escapes the meshes of the net. Art is polymorphous and adapts to our needs, and we feed on its sap. Its beneficial substance adapts to our evolution, our re-creation and our individual needs. The richness of a work of art necessarily induces a polysemous and open writing style, in the words of philosopher Marc-Alain Ouaknin.