The human brain is wired in such a way that we can make sense of lines, colors and patterns on a flat canvas. Artists throughout human history have figured out ways to create illusions such as depth and brightness that aren’t actually there but make works of art seem somehow more real.
And while individual tastes are varied and have cultural influences, the brain also seems to respond especially strongly to certain artistic conventions that mimic what we see in nature.
Our brains have a special affinity for faces and for finding representations of them (some say they see the man in the moon, for instance). Even infants have been shown in several studies to prefer face-like patterns over patterns that don’t resemble anything.
So our brains readily find faces in art, including in Impressionist paintings where faces are constructed from colored lines or discrete patches of color. This “coarse information” can trigger emotional responses, even without you bearing aware of it […]
To trick the brain into thinking something looks three-dimensional and lifelike, artists add elements – lightness and shadows – that wouldn’t be present in real life but that tap into our hard-wired visual sensibilities.
So was Picasso right – is art a lie? The description of Zeki’s exhibition in Italy may highlight the truth:
“Our purpose is to show how the brain reality even overrides the objective reality.”