Age of Insight

AGE OF INSIGHT:
THE QUEST TO UNDERSTAND
THE UNCONSCIOUS IN ART, MIND,
AND BRAIN, FROM VIENNA
1900 TO THE PRESENT
by Eric Kandel.
Random House, 2012 (656 pages)

OUTLINE OF BOOK'S
FACTS & IDEAS
1-20-16

PREFACE (xiii-xviii)

PART 1 — A PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY AND ART OF UNCONSCIOUS EMOTION (1-181)

1) An inward turn — Vienna 1900 (3-18)

2) Exploring the truths hidden beneath the surface — Origins of a scientific medicine (19-27)

3) Viennese artists, writers, and scientists meet in the Zuckerkandl Salon (28-35)

4) Exploring the brain beneath the skull — Origins of a scientific psychiatry (36-47)

5) Exploring mind together with the brain — The development of a brain-based psychology (48-62)

6) Exploring mind apart from the brain — Origins of a dynamic psychology (63-76)

7) Searching for inner meaning in literature (77-89)

8) The depiction of modern women's sexuality in art (90-123)

9) The depiction of the psyche in art (124-159)

10) The fusion of eroticism, aggression, and anxiety in art (160-181)

PART 2 — A COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF VISUAL PERCEPTION AND EMOTIONAL RESPONSE TO ART (183-221)

11) Discovering the beholder's share (185-204)

12) Observation is also invention — The brain as a creativity machine (205-213)

13) The emergence of twentieth-century painting (214-221)

PART 3 — A BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE OF THE BEHOLDER'S VISUAL RESPONSE TO ART (223-361)

14) The brain's processing of visual images (225-237)

15) Deconstruction of the visual image— The building blocks of form perception (238-255)

16) Reconstruction of the world we see — Vision is information processing (256-280)

17) High-level vision and the brain's perception of face, hands, and body (281-303)

18) Top-down processing of information : Using memory to find meaning (304-321)

19) The deconstruction of emotion — The search for emotional primitives (322-329)

20) The artistic depiction of emotion through the face, hands, body, and color (330-346)

21 Unconscious emotions, conscious feelings, and their bodily expression (347-361)

PART 4 — A BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE OF THE BEHOLDER'S EMOTIONAL RESPONSE TO ART (363-436)

22) Top-down control of cognitive emotional information (365-377)

23) The biological response to beauty and ugliness in art (378-393)

24) The beholder's share — Entering the private theater of another's mind (394-402)

25) The biology of the beholder's share — Modeling other people's minds 403-421)

26) How the brain regulates emotion and empathy (422-436)

PART 5 — AN EVOLVING DIALOGUE BETWEEN VISUAL ART AND SCIENCE (437-509)

27) Artistic universals and the Austrian expressionists (439-448)

28) The creative brain (449-460)

29) The cognitive unconscious and the creative brain (461-472)

30) Brain circuits for creativity (473-484)

31) Talent, creativity, and brain development (485-498)

32) Knowing ourselves — The new dialogue between art and science (499-509)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (511-515)

NOTES (517-530)

BIBLIOGRAPHY (531-574)

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS (575-586)

INDEX (587- 636)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (637)

AUTHOR NOTE &
BOOK DESCRIPTION

AUTHOR NOTE = Eric R. Kandel is University Professor and Kavli Professor at Columbia University and a Senior Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Kandel is founding director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, and recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on memory storage in the brain. He is the author of In Search of Memory, a memoir that won a Los Angeles Times Book Award, and co-author of Principles of Neural Science, the standard textbook in the field. He was born in Vienna and lives in New York with his wife, Denise.

SUMMARY = A brilliant book by a Nobel Prize winner. The book takes readers to Vienna in 1900, where leaders in science, medicine, and art began a revolution that changed forever how we think about the human mind--our conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions--and how mind and brain relate to art.

This is a splendid book both on Vienna 1900 and the workings of the brain. With the 150th birthday of the painter Klimt this June one has now one more compendium at hand to join the festivities of the cognoscenti of the Fin de Sičcle. Here we learn in a cerebral and very readable style about the influence of Europe's premier Medical School of the time in Vienna to have the artists and scientists look below the surface and how they did it. Freud is discussed, as are his contemporaries the writers Schnitzler and Hoffmannsthal who have looked to the subconscious. But the focus is on Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele, the Austrian Modernist painters. Their work is analyzed from a Nobel brain scientist's perspective in a tour de force. This book continues and expands on a route several others have taken. One of the first to point out the importance of Vienna 1900 as a founder of Modernity was Carl Schorske Fin-De-Siecle Vienna, perhaps more for the academically minded. Tim Bonyhady Good Living Street and Hermes O Tassilo's guide to Klimt's Kiss/ Paintings of Vienna's Belvedere give more personal accounts. None have gone so deep into the brain so far to make Vienna shine. Your whole perspective of looking at art will be changed. You will learn a lot about yourself.

BOOK DESCRIPTION = At the turn of the century, Vienna was the cultural capital of Europe. Artists and scientists met in glittering salons, where they freely exchanged ideas that led to revolutionary breakthroughs in psychology, brain science, literature, and art. Kandel takes us into the world of Vienna to trace, in rich and rewarding detail, the ideas and advances made then, and their enduring influence today.

The Vienna School of Medicine led the way with its realization that truth lies hidden beneath the surface. That principle infused Viennese culture and strongly influenced the other pioneers of Vienna 1900. Sigmund Freud shocked the world with his insights into how our everyday unconscious aggressive and erotic desires are repressed and disguised in symbols, dreams, and behavior. Arthur Schnitzler revealed women's unconscious sexuality in his novels through his innovative use of the interior monologue. Gustav Klimt, Oscar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele created startlingly evocative and honest portraits that expressed unconscious lust, desire, anxiety, and the fear of death.

Kandel tells the story of how these pioneers—Freud, Schnitzler, Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele—inspired by the Vienna School of Medicine, in turn influenced the founders of the Vienna School of Art History to ask pivotal questions such as What does the viewer bring to a work of art? How does the beholder respond to it? These questions prompted new and ongoing discoveries in psychology and brain biology, leading to revelations about how we see and perceive, how we think and feel, and how we respond to and create works of art. Kandel, one of the leading scientific thinkers of our time, places these five innovators in the context of today's cutting-edge science and gives us a new understanding of the modernist art of Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele, as well as the school of thought of Freud and Schnitzler. Reinvigorating the intellectual enquiry that began in Vienna 1900, The Age of Insight is a wonderfully written, superbly researched, and beautifully illustrated book that also provides a foundation for future work in neuroscience and the humanities. It is an extraordinary book from an international leader in neuroscience and intellectual history.

"This book offers not only a stunning organic (in every sense of the word) view of fin de siecle culture but also opens new vistas in bioesthetics. It explores the often shocking neurology of the beautiful. And it shows how artist and scientist interlace in the common quest to discover the innards of reality. ‘I don't render the visible,' said Paul Klee, ‘I make visible.' He echoed Edna St. Vincent Millay's ‘Euclid alone looked on beauty bare.' Eric Kandel is of that company." – Frederic Morton

"Nobel laureate Eric Kandel's path-setting exploration of the connections between neuroscience and the painters Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka establishes a new frontier in the study of this all-important historical period. The shift toward a biological conception of self, which began in Vienna over a hundred years ago, has since decisively shaped our understanding of human nature." – Jane Kallir, director, Galerie St. Etienne

"With infectuous enthusiasm and limitless reverence for his multiple subjects, Kandel deftly steers the reader through a vast and inviting territory of science, the creative process, the mind, emotion, eroticism, empathy, feminism, and the unconscious. Years in the making, this highly readable book presents a magisterial study of brain, mind, and art." – Alexandra Comini, University Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita, Southern Methodist University

PROFESSIONAL BOOK REVIEWS

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY = In this engrossing if overstuffed treatise, Nobel-winning neuroscientist Kandel (In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind) excavates the hidden workings of the creative mind. He starts with the art of Viennese Modernist painters Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele, linking their distorted imagery, intense evocations of neurotic emotion, and frank erotic themes to Freud's contemporaneous theorizing on the unconscious mind and repressed sexuality. From there Kandel leaps to the hard science of how unconscious neural mechanisms underlying everything from visual perception to emotional impulses determine conscious aesthetic reactions. (It's the varying acuities of the retina's cone cells, he contends, that make the Mona Lisa's smile so enigmatic.)

Kandel writes perceptively about a range of topics, from art history (the book's color reproductions alone make it a great browse) to dyslexia. Inevitably, his brush-strokes-to-brain waves ambition to integrate so many subjects feels ill-chewed; it's either too dense or too sketchy, and too quick to assimilate Freudian-modernist notions of the unconscious to scientific concepts. Still, Kandel captures the reader's imagination with intriguing historical syntheses and fascinating scientific insights into how we see—and feel—the world. (Mar. 27)

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN = A fascinating meditation on the interplay among art, psychology and brain science. The author, who fled Vienna as a child, has remained captivated by Austrian artists Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele (each of whom was profoundly influenced by Sigmund Freud and by the emerging scientific approach to medicine in their day) calls for a new, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mind, one that combines the humanities with the natural and social sciences.

LIBRARY JOURNAL = Nobel Prize winner Kandel (neuroscience, Columbia Univ.; In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind) has written a book about the flowering of art, psychology, and medicine in his native Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. He describes the linked influences and interactions of Sigmund Freud; artists Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele; writer Arthur Schnitzler; and art historians Alois Riegl, Ernst Kris, and Ernst Gombrich, and he follows their work to the present day in order to paint a coherent picture of what cognitive scientists now believe is occurring in the brains of artists as they create and audiences as they encounter powerful works of art.

VERDICT Kandel, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in finding the physical location of memory within neurons, here uses neuroscience to take on the creative mind. The result is a fascinating synthesis of art, history, and science that is also accessible to the general reader. A distinctive and important title that is also a pleasure to read; highly recommended to even the occasional reader of serious nonfiction. Mary Ann Hughes, Shelton, WA

KIRKUS REVIEW = In a polymathic performance, a Nobel laureate weaves together the theories and practices of neuroscience, art and psychology to show how our creative brains perceive and engage art--and are consequently moved by it. Kandel (Biochemistry and Biophysics/Columbia Univ. College of Physicians; In Search of Memory, 2006, etc.) is uniquely equipped for this vast task. Born in Vienna, a collector of Klimt and Kokoschka, a scientist of the first rank, the author possesses in abundance the myriad requirements for such an integrative enterprise. Moving seamlessly and effortlessly between the worlds of art and science, Kandel begins with a look at the art world of Vienna, 1900. Then it's off to Freud, whose theories and discoveries the author treats with great respect, awarding credit where it's due, noting but not condemning errors. Kandel also glances at innovations in literature, especially the technique of interior monologue pioneered by Arthur Schnitzler in his Lieutenant Gustl (1900). Some sexy chapters ensue as Kandel discusses sexuality in art, and sex remains a leitmotif. He looks at how painters reveal the interior states of their subjects, and he examines the theories and discoveries of neuroscientists--though he continually returns to the art world for illustration, elaboration and example. Kandel reminds us that the brain creates the world for us: Our poor eyes bring in only a fraction of what's there; the brain assembles and interprets, using memory as a principal guide. Readers will also learn how artists can make a subject's eyes seem to follow the viewer, how scientists have used animals and imaging to explore the brain and how artists employ models' faces, hands and attitude to affect us, to prompt our empathy. Kandel also investigates the nature of creativity. A transformative work that joins the hands of Art and Science and makes them acknowledge their close kinship.

BOOKLIST REVIEW = Inspired by his interest in expressionist artists Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele, Kandel subjects their oeuvres to intensive analysis that integrates Freudian and Gestalt psychology, art history, and neuroscience. A Nobel laureate for his scientific research, covered in his memoir In Search of Memory (2006), Kandel sets several aims for his discussion. The radical direction taken by the expressionists induces Kandel's consideration of their immediate influences, be they fascination with Freud's theories (by Klimt, especially), the emotional tides of their personal lives, or painting's general drift from realism. This trio certainly accelerated the last, and the human emotions evoked by their portraits and nudes, dozens of which the book reproduces, attract Kandel's discerning observations. Art historians Ernst Kris and Ernst Gombrich, who later critiqued the revolution Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele wrought, help Kandel link his application of scientific studies of visual perception and the viewer's experience of the expressionists and art in general. Can science and art appreciators coexist for Kandel's prime readers? Yes, if they are not casual readers and are ready for his involved explorations of their interests.--Taylor, Gilbert.

REVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

[1] "Eric Kandel has succeeded in a brilliant synthesis that would have delighted and fascinated Freud: Using Viennese culture of the twentieth century as a lens, he examines the intersections of psychology, neuroscience, and art. The Age of Insight is a tour-de-force that sets the stage for a twenty-first-century understanding of the human mind in all its richness and diversity." - Oliver Sacks, author of The Mind's Eye and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

[2] "In a polymathic performance, a Nobel laureate weaves together the theories and practices of neuroscience, art and psychology to show how our creative brains perceive and engage art--and are consequently moved by it. . . . A transformative work that joins the hands of Art and Science and makes them acknowledge their close kinship." - Kirkus Reviews (STARRED)

[3] "A fascinating synthesis of art, history, and science that is also accessible to the general reader. A distinctive and important title that is also a pleasure to read" - Library Journal (STARRED)

[4] "Engrossing … Nobel-winning neuroscientist Kandel excavates the hidden workings of the creative mind. Kandel writes perceptively about a range of topics, from art history--the book's color reproductions alone make it a great browse--to dyslexia. … Kandel captures the reader's imagination with intriguing historical syntheses and fascinating scientific insights into how we see--and feel--the world." - Publisher's Weekly

[5] A fascinating meditation on the interplay among art, psychology and brain science. The author, who fled Vienna as a child, has remained captivated by Austrian artists Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, each of whom was profoundly influenced by Sigmund Freud and by the emerging scientific approach to medicine in their day … [calls] for a new, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mind, one that combines the humanities with the natural and social sciences." - Scientific American

[6] "Eric Kandel's book is a stunning achievement, remarkable for its scientific, artistic, and historical insights. No one else could have written this book--all its readers will be amply rewarded." - Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education

[7] "Eric Kandel's training as a psychiatrist and his vast knowledge of how the brain works enrich this thoroughly original exploration of the relationship between the birth of psychoanalysis, Austrian Expressionism, and Modernism in Vienna." - Margaret Livingstone, Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School

[8] "This is the book that Charles Darwin would have produced, had he chosen to write about art and aesthetics. Kandel, one of the great pioneers of modern neuroscience, has effectively bridged the 'two cultures'--science and humanities. This is a task that many philosophers, especially those called 'new mysterians,' had considered impossible." - V. S. Ramachandran, author of The Tell-Tale Brain

[9] "Eric Kandel has created a masterpiece, synthesizing brain, mind, and art like no one has before." -- Joseph LeDoux, NYU, author of The Emotional Brain and Synaptic Self

[10] "[This book] offers not only a stunning organic (in every sense of the word) view of fin de siecle culture but also opens new vistas in bioesthetics. It explores the often shocking neurology of the beautiful. And it shows how artist and scientist interlace in the common quest to discover the innards of reality. 'I don't render the visible,' said Paul Klee, 'I make visible.' He echoed Edna St. Vincent Millay's 'Euclid alone looked on beauty bare.' Eric Kandel is of that company." - Frederic Morton

[11] "Nobel laureate Eric Kandel's path-setting exploration of the connections between neuroscience and the painters Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka establishes a new frontier in the study of this all-important historical period. The shift toward a biological conception of self, which began in Vienna over a hundred years ago, has since decisively shaped our understanding of human nature." - Jane Kallir, director, Galerie St. Etienne

[12] "With infectuous enthusiasm and limitless reverence for his multiple subjects, Kandel deftly steers the reader through a vast and inviting territory of science, the creative process, the mind, emotion, eroticism, empathy, feminism, and the unconscious. Years in the making, this highly readable book presents a magisterial study of brain, mind, and art." -- Alexandra Comini, University Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita, Southern Methodist University.

REVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

"Eric Kandel has succeeded in a brilliant synthesis that would have delighted and fascinated Freud: Using Viennese culture of the twentieth century as a lens, he examines the intersections of psychology, neuroscience, and art. The Age of Insight is a tour-de-force that sets the stage for a twenty-first-century understanding of the human mind in all its richness and diversity." - Oliver Sacks, author of The Mind's Eye and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

"In a polymathic performance, a Nobel laureate weaves together the theories and practices of neuroscience, art and psychology to show how our creative brains perceive and engage art--and are consequently moved by it. . . . A transformative work that joins the hands of Art and Science and makes them acknowledge their close kinship." - Kirkus Reviews (STARRED)

"A fascinating synthesis of art, history, and science that is also accessible to the general reader. A distinctive and important title that is also a pleasure to read" - Library Journal (STARRED)

"Engrossing … Nobel-winning neuroscientist Kandel excavates the hidden workings of the creative mind. Kandel writes perceptively about a range of topics, from art history--the book's color reproductions alone make it a great browse--to dyslexia. … Kandel captures the reader's imagination with intriguing historical syntheses and fascinating scientific insights into how we see--and feel--the world." - Publisher's Weekly

A fascinating meditation on the interplay among art, psychology and brain science. The author, who fled Vienna as a child, has remained captivated by Austrian artists Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, each of whom was profoundly influenced by Sigmund Freud and by the emerging scientific approach to medicine in their day … [calls] for a new, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mind, one that combines the humanities with the natural and social sciences." - Scientific American

"Eric Kandel's book is a stunning achievement, remarkable for its scientific, artistic, and historical insights. No one else could have written this book--all its readers will be amply rewarded." - Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education

"Eric Kandel's training as a psychiatrist and his vast knowledge of how the brain works enrich this thoroughly original exploration of the relationship between the birth of psychoanalysis, Austrian Expressionism, and Modernism in Vienna." - Margaret Livingstone, Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School

"This is the book that Charles Darwin would have produced, had he chosen to write about art and aesthetics. Kandel, one of the great pioneers of modern neuroscience, has effectively bridged the 'two cultures'--science and humanities. This is a task that many philosophers, especially those called 'new mysterians,' had considered impossible." - V. S. Ramachandran, author of The Tell-Tale Brain

"Eric Kandel has created a masterpiece, synthesizing brain, mind, and art like no one has before." -- Joseph LeDoux, NYU, author of The Emotional Brain and Synaptic Self

"[This book] offers not only a stunning organic (in every sense of the word) view of fin de siecle culture but also opens new vistas in bioesthetics. It explores the often shocking neurology of the beautiful. And it shows how artist and scientist interlace in the common quest to discover the innards of reality. 'I don't render the visible,' said Paul Klee, 'I make visible.' He echoed Edna St. Vincent Millay's 'Euclid alone looked on beauty bare.' Eric Kandel is of that company." - Frederic Morton

"Nobel laureate Eric Kandel's path-setting exploration of the connections between neuroscience and the painters Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka establishes a new frontier in the study of this all-important historical period. The shift toward a biological conception of self, which began in Vienna over a hundred years ago, has since decisively shaped our understanding of human nature." - Jane Kallir, director, Galerie St. Etienne

"With infectuous enthusiasm and limitless reverence for his multiple subjects, Kandel deftly steers the reader through a vast and inviting territory of science, the creative process, the mind, emotion, eroticism, empathy, feminism, and the unconscious. Years in the making, this highly readable book presents a magisterial study of brain, mind, and art." -- Alexandra Comini, University Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita, Southern Methodist University.

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