ramachandran on the brain and art

Ramachandran

In this lecture – which is the most speculative one in the series of five – I’d like to take up one of the most ancient questions in philosophy, psychology and anthropology, namely what is art? When Picasso said: “Art is the lie that reveals the truth” what exactly did he mean?

As we saw in my previous lectures neuroscientists have made some headway in understanding the neural basis of psychological phenomena like body image, how you construct your body image, or visual perception. But can the same be said of art – given that art obviously originates in the brain?

In particular what I’d like to do is raise the question: “Are there such things as artistic universals?”

more from the BBC radio series “The Emerging Mind” here.