WEEK 7 | NEUROSCIENCE + ART | 🌹💭

This week’s lecture revolves around the topic of neuroscience and its influence on art. Before viewing the lectures, it honestly never crossed my mind that neuroscience would overlap with art since before enrolling in this course, concepts of science and art, to me, were two contrary subjects. The topic of Freud that was brought up in one of the lectures influenced my understanding of the role neuroscience plays in the creation of art, specifically with the Spanish artist, Salvador Dalí. 

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory (1931)

One of Dalí’s greatest motives was to portray the interior world, our inner brain, to the exterior world, our current physical reality (Dalí Paintings). As Vesna touched upon, Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams argues that unconscious forces are manifested through the expression of dreams. As a result of the unconscious mind's influence on the brain, these suppressed and underlying feelings, emotions, desires, and thoughts are symbolically represented in dreams (Vesna). Notably, Freud focused his research primarily on sexuality and sexual desire. Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí has claimed Freud to be one of his biggest inspirations or “father” when it comes to creating art. Dalí, inspired by Freud, focused his work on expressing sexuality through surrealism, that is, an art movement prompted to creatively depict the unconscious mind and the vividity of dreams (The Art Story). 

Salvador Dalí, Rose Meditative (1958)

As you can see, Dalí’s art pieces are colorful and full of symbolism. During the creation of these two art pieces, Dalí expressed his dreams as the catalyst of his creative vision. After all, as a philosopher once said, dreams are the starting point of imagination (Wolfe). Using Freud’s ideas influenced by neuroscience and psychology, Dalí created paintings that reflected his subconscious state and that represented his artistic mindset of going beyond what our limited vision allows us to see (Richman-Abdou).

This scene from the 2003 movie, Looney Tunes: Back In Action, is a fun depiction of how one can enter the window art creates! Remarkably, this scene starred Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory and greatly visualizes the vivid dream-like state Dalí’s paintings express. After studying this week’s concept, I can now say I can recognize the influence neuroscience has on art. As someone interested in the interpretation of dreams, it was very interesting to see how art is one of the many ways in which dreams are reflected and transferred from an abstract thought to a physical canvas. 

Citations

ARTExplorer. “The Persistence of Memory - Salvador Dalí 1931.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 1 Oct. 2010, www.flickr.com/photos/artexplorer/5042254324. 

Dalí Paintings. Meditative Rose, 1958 by Salvador Dali, Dalí Paintings, 2022, www.dalipaintings.com/rose-meditative.jsp. 

Dias, Jorge. “Looney Tunes Paintings Scene.” YouTube, YouTube, 16 Aug. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut9AAfKBpHs. 

The Art Story. “Surrealism Movement Overview.” The Art Story, THE ART STORY FOUNDATION, 2022, www.theartstory.org/movement/surrealism/.  

Richman-Abdou, Kelly. “Exploring Salvador Dalí’s Strange and Surreal ‘Persistence of Memory.’” My Modern Met, My Modern Met, 1 July 2019, mymodernmet.com/the-persistence-of-memory-salvador-dali/. 

Rose Meditative (1958). “17 Top Surrealist Paintings by Salvador Dalí.” Kooness, Kooness, 26 Sept. 202AD, www.kooness.com/posts/magazine/i-am-dali-and-only-that. 

Vesna, Victoria. "Neuroscience+Art: Lecture III." Lecture. 10 May. 2022,  UCLA, Los Angeles, California. Class lecture.

Wolfe, Shira. “The Art of Depicting Dreams. How Dreams Have Influenced Art History.” Artland Magazine, Artland Magazine, 4 June 2021, magazine.artland.com/the-art-of-depicting-dreams/.