The Science of Art

When you look at an image or a painting, in your first thoughts, you try to analyze or describe what you see. You want to discover new thoughts and feelings through art. Art has always shown you hidden emotions and thoughts which we thought never existed. This is the science behind art.

Retired UW-Madison chemist Rodney Schriener said “Abstract art when you actually look at it gives you another way of looking at everything by not showing you anything in particular. It removes all the particulars and just shows you the general,” If you’re trying to find patterns in the world, looking at the general is better than being overwhelmed by the specifics.

The brain interprets visual information in two different ways. The brain takes parts of an image like lines, edges, colors, and shading, and uses that information to come to an understanding of the whole image, through ‘BOTTOM UP’. These features help the brain perceive a three-dimensional object from its two-dimensional representation on the retinas in the eyes. Likewise, in representational paintings, artists take advantage of those features to portray the three-dimensional world within a two-dimensional artwork. In contrast, the ‘TOP DOWN’ processing refers to how memories and emotions assign meaning to an image. Artists attempt to tap into that uniquely subjective experience within their work in trying to evoke a response from their audience.

Representational art deliberately makes clear its subject, but Schreiner speculates that some of the barrier to engaging with abstract art comes from the frustration at not being able to satisfy the desire to see “something.”

“When we look at something, the very first thing that our brain does is identify objects in space, and when you look at abstract art, it’s not there,” said Schreiner. “You can develop an appreciation for abstract art by noticing how you react, and if you look at enough abstract art you can associate the way you feel with a particular feature in the artwork.”

In Michelangelo’s Expulsion from Paradise, a fresco panel on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the fallen-from-grace Adam wards off a sword-wielding angel, his eyes averted from the blade and his wrist bent back defensively. It is a gesture both wretched and beautiful. But what is it that triggers the viewer’s aesthetic response? Is it the sense that we’re right there with him, fending off blows?

Recently, neuroscientists and an art historian asked ten subjects to examine the wrist detail from the painting, and using a technique called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation monitored what happened in their brains. The researchers found that the image excited areas in the primary motor cortex that controlled the observers’ wrists.

“Just the sight of the raised wrist causes an activation of the muscle,” reports David Freedberg, the Columbia University art history professor involved in the study. This connection explains why, for instance, viewers of Degas’ ballerinas sometimes report that they experience the sensation of dancing the brain mirrors actions depicted on the canvas. 

Art and science have always co-existed. There is art in science and there is science in art. Art has brought about a revolution in science and has made us reach many milestones in the field of science. Artists have improved their work in art through science. They find new ways of showing their creativity and hidden emotions by applying science in their art. So, the next time you look at a painting, observe the emotions it evokes in you, and you can tell us later, what you analyzed.