Art, Illusion and the Brain

By focusing on the groundbreaking work of neuroscientist Eric Kandel and others, this course addresses works of art from turn of the 19th-century Vienna (mostly portraiture by Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele) and from the New York School of Abstract Expressionism (de Kooning, Pollock and Rothko among others). Aspects of mind (cognitive and Freudian psychology) and brain (neuroscientific discoveries) will be considered. The course concludes with examples of visual illusions that illustrate the functioning of the brain.