While abstract paintings that appeal to our imagination call into play the brain’s top-down processing mechanism, figurative paintings that appeal to us call into play the default network of the brain. The default network, which was discovered in 2001 by Marcus Raichle (Raichle et al. 2001), consist primarily of the three brain regions: the medial temporal lobe, which is involved in memory: the posterior cingulate cortex, which is concerned with evaluating sensory information; and the medial prefrontal cortex, which is concerned with theory of mind - that is with distinguishing between another person’s mind, his or her aspirations and goals, and one’s own mind…recent studies suggest that the default network is most active during high aesthetic experience in art. (Edward Vesesel Nava Ravin, and Gabriella Starr) This intriguing finding suggests that since activation of the default network is related to our sense of self, its activation in response to art enables our perception of painting to interact with mental processes related to the self, possibly affecting them and even being incorporated into them. This line of thought is consistent with the idea that a person’s taste in art is linked to his or her sense of identity - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science page 184, Zettel 142
Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Erick Kandel page 179, Zettel 139
Thus the reason art pases such an enormous challenge to the beholder is that it teaches us to look at art - and, in a sense, at the world - in a new way. Abstract art dares our visual system to interpret an image that is fundamentally different from the kind of images our brain has evolved to reconstruct. - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Erick Kandel page 179, Zettel 139
Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Erick Kandel page 179, Zettel 140
The art historian Jack Flam (2014) refers to this aspect of abstraction as “a new claim on truth”, By dismantling perspective; abstract art requires our brains to come up with a new logic of bottom-up processing. - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Erick Kandel page 179, Zettel 140
Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, by Erick Kandel page 130, Zettel 128
In focusing on color, Rothko was searching for a new style of abstraction that would link modern art forms that reach out to the infinite. To achieve this, he abandoned figuration and focused exclusively on the expressive power of large fields of color. His experiments inspired a number of artists to follow his lead, to free color from objective contexts, inhibit access to figurative associations, and make it a subject of its own. In a way, Rothko succeeded in achieving what biologists, including biologists of perception and memory, try to do with reductionist science. - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, by Erick Kandel page 130, Zettel 128