Alison Adams

Art & Visual Perception

Elizabeth Johnston

Long Blog Post: Readings for 3/14

         I found this article “Motion, emotion, and empathy...” on the interaction between our emotions and works of art really interesting. It certainly got me thinking about the way that I react to art and the feelings that art can provoke and why that happens.

         Freedberg and Gallese say that: “Even when the image contains no overt emotional component, a sense of bodily resonance can arise. These are all instances in which beholders might find themselves automatically simulating the emotional expression, the movement or even the implied movement within the representation" (pg. 197). I thought about this statement for a while and tried to think back to some reactions I've had to paintings in the past. I don't think that I've ever been aware of a bodily resonance or physical reaction to a painting but I don't doubt that its possible.

          Freedberg and Gallese also say that: “When we see the body part of someone else being touched or caressed or when we see two objects touching each other, our somatosensory cortices are activated as if our body were subject to tactile stimulation. Empathetic feels can no longer be regarded as a matter of simple intuition and can be precisely located in the relevant areas of the brain that are activated both in the observed and in the observer.” I often do feel this when looking at movies or advertisements- that I want to be what doing what I see. And even Livingstone talked in Chapter 10 about how advertisements are able to use certain techniques to catch our attention. And this thought alone with this quote showed me that its really possible to evoke feelings of empathy and need in others in art if the right techniques are used.

          One of my favorite quotes from the article was: “We propose that even the artist’s gestures in producing the art work induce the empathetic engagement of the observer, by activating simulation of the motor program that corresponds to the gesture implied by the trace. The marks on the painting or sculpture are the visible traces of goal-directed movements; hence, they are capable of activating the relevant motor areas in the observer’s brain.” The way that they described the sense of movement we can feel when looking at the strokes of a Jackson Pollock painting was not something I really took into account much before I read this. This made me think about my last long blog post about how art is not about the finished product and rather about the journey the artist takes to get there. This even took it one step further in claiming that we gain a sense of movement by paying close attention to the detail of the skill the artist put into each stroke. Creating a painting is a “goal-oriented action” and because of this we think back to how the artist went about creating that goal. There are so many feelings that art can evoke and this article showed me that there is so much more to it than just that.