This January I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Semir Zeki, neurobiologist at London College, on aesthetics, content and the brain.
After hearing his brilliant presentation at the TRAC2015 Conference in Ventura, held by California Lutheran University, I wanted to tap him about how the brain differentiates between beauty, the Sublime and ugliness.
My intention was to include some of his observations in a documentary that my husband David Rasberry and I are doing about the great Max Ginsburg. We hope to be deep into editing and have a complete film by autumn.
It is my plan to follow Dr. Zeki's work as it has applications to current art theory dialogues, especially as his work indicates that education, social status, income, country and culture of origin, are meaningless as to how the brain receives and processes beauty in art. It appears that the intellectual exercises of art criticism that evolved during the 20th Century only prove that talking about art is not the same as processing art. So I'll stop talking for the moment!
