The Feelings You've Felt Before

As far as evolutionary science is concerned, it is a stated fact that we, as humans, use prior memories to inform our current situations. In nature as modern day hunter gatherers in both giant metropolis cities and urban farm settings, categorically stored experiences and memories are essential to daily survival. What is perceived by the mind becomes stored, and possibly either relived or remembered at a later date. 

In class upon discussing the paper "Visual Art and the Brain" by Anli Liu and Bruce L. Miller, we discussed both Utermohlen's self portraits throughout his dementia, and  also Willem de Kooning's later works. We also discussed, some dimentia patients (frontotemporal dementia?) and people with left hemisphere damagewho often become upsessed with art without any previous specific interest in the form itself. 

This led me to do a little more research into De Kooning himself, and left me to think a bit more on the idea of a "return to simplicity" in art as the artist grows older and gains experience. De Kooning himself said that "It seems like a lot of artists, when they get older, they get simpler." This really resonated personally with my many of my experiences in music and spending time around aging artists.  I've had many conversations and even in my own experience have felt a shift towards simplicity in composition. As one finds a specific style, that style is crafted and then re-tailored into the dimensions of that specific artists "style."

When looking at dementia patients, Liu and Miller, describe the "the ingenuity of the brain" as a having an strong capacity to compensate for whatever perception is missing. Although all those memories must be intact somewhere, it seems more like the key is lost and that trigger has been shown using music (to be similar to muscle memory,) but it seems almost innate that visual art should cue up similar sets of memories being that the visual experience is also clearly also an emotional one. 

                 I think that any given experience we may have calls upon many more experiences than we realize are being called upon. We immediately sift through these experiences, and automatically re-categorize everything else. It's also funny that, in our thought process, often times it's the funny or stand-out moments which tend to gravitate to the top of the list, granted many of these experiences first called upon are at the top of the list for a reason, they've either happened before or, have previous insight into what's happening at that moment.