martes, 6 de diciembre de 2011

¿El gran arte sólo está en nuestra mente?

Great art? It's all in the mind - being told a painting is fake changes how our brains respond to it

By ROB WAUGH



Rembrandt's Self Portrait as a Young Man, 1634: 
Rembrandt was chosen because there are several 
high-profile fakes of his portraits - but MRI scans 
show our brains respond differently from thinking 
a portrait is a fake


Being told a painting is fake instantly reduces our sense of 'reward', even if we are looking at the real thing.

Looking at an original stimulates parts of the brain that deal with rewarding experiences such as tasting good food or winning a bet.

But when told it was not legitimate the area that is associated with planning and strategy showed a complex range of activity instead.

The researchers said that their findings showed how our response to art is ‘not rational’.

They also said it showed that there are more than one areas of the brain involved with judgements about art.

The experiment involved 14 participants who underwent brain scans as they looked at pictures of Rembrandt portraits.

The 7th century Dutch painter was chosen as there are a number of convincing copies of his work which have come under scrutiny in recent years.

By examining the brain signals there was no apparent way the test subjects could tell the fake or the real painting apart 

More...

But when the researchers looked at the areas of the brain which were being stimulated, they saw very different things indeed.

Even if the person in question was looking at the real thing, their brain patterns changed if they thought they were looking at a fake.

The research was carried out by Oxford University in the UK and involved the use of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain, or FMRIB.

It was published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.


Rembrandt self-portrait: When volunteers see a portrait they think is 'fake', the reward 
centres in their brain (also associated with tasting good food) fail to light up

Different areas of the brain 'light up' under an MRI scan dependent 
on whether volunteers think that a painting is real or fake

'The way we view art is not rational - even when we can't distinguish between two works, knowing that one was painted by a famous artist makes us respond differently,' says Professor Kemp. 

Andrew Parker, Professor of Physiology at Oxford University and the study’s senior author, said: 'Our findings support the idea that when we make aesthetic judgements, we are subject to a variety of influences.

‘Not all of these are immediately articulated. Indeed, some may be inaccessible to direct introspection but their presence might be revealed by brain imaging.

‘It suggests that different regions of the brain interact together when a complex judgment is formed, rather than there being a single area of the brain that deals with aesthetic judgements.’

Professor Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at Oxford University, said: ‘Our findings support what art historians, critics and the general public have long believed – that it is always better to think we are seeing the genuine article. 

'Our study shows that the way we view art is not rational, that even when we cannot distinguish between two works, the knowledge that one was painted by a renowned artist makes us respond to it very differently. 

‘The fact that people travel to galleries around the world to see an original painting suggests that this conclusion is reasonable.’

He added that as a follow-up he wanted to carry out the experiment again - only on art experts.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2070626/Brain-scan-test--using-fake-Rembrandt-painting-shows-great-art-mind.html



BREVE COMENTARIO

Por Armando Almánzar Botello


Una buena copia, imitación o plagio de una obra de Rembrandt no deja de ser un hallazgo de la autoría de Rembrandt... 

El Gran Arte no está sólo en la mente del receptor del mensaje estético sino en la organización semiótica de dicho mensaje, en las características de un 'artefacto' que permite diferentes lecturas en una constelación de posibilidades significantes objetivadas en un soporte particular. 

La experiencia estética es el resultado de una interacción entre el objeto estético y la subjetividad de aquel que lo contempla con su particular competencia para el desciframiento y el goce de dicha configuración sígnica. Ese valor estético es subjetivo-objetivo. 

Lo que el experimento en cuestión demuestra no es que los valores estéticos sean caprichosamente subjetivos, sino que el conocimiento, por parte del receptor, del carácter plagiado o de mera copia de una obra artística, disminuye en dicho sujeto receptor su goce estético. El especialista que distingue desde el principio el 'original' de la 'copia' reaccionaría de otro modo y podría llegar a descubrir valores estéticos en esa imitación a pesar de saberla copia. Pero el valor creativo sería siempre de Rembrandt, si de él es la autoría del cuadro original. 

El que realiza la copia, si no aporta una transformación estructural a la obra de partida, es decir, si no aporta un valor agregado significativo, se constituye exclusivamente en buen artesano o 'amanuense' que reproduce los logros semióticos del artista realmente creador... 

Me pregunto: ¿A quién le importa saber si Shakespeare o Cervantes, por ejemplo, eran quienes dice la tradición que eran para poder disfrutar del valor real y objetivo de sus textos?...   Y, con perdón de los que puedan leerme, yo mismo me respondo: le importaría a una persona que no sabe o no puede distinguir subjetiva-objetivamente, por falta de la debida formación, adiestramiento y competencia semiótica, lo que es 'valor estético' de aquello que no lo es, y por ende, tiene que guiarse por un juicio de autoridad ajeno proveniente de 'especialistas'. A.A.B.

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