Rhythm in Art, Psychology and New Materialism

This is a multidisciplinary study of the rhythms depicted in abstract art, the body's rhythms, and neural oscillations.

Gregory Minissale (Author)

9781108831413, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 March 2021

300 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.59 kg

'Gregory Minissale offers an enthralling analysis of the vibrant materiality of abstract art. He brilliantly shows that to be truly open to the encounter with art one needs to embrace perceptual ambiguity and let go of rigorous cognitive control. Masterfully intertwining theories of art reception with phenomenology and recent findings in cognitive sciences, he casts light on the complexity of aesthetic relations unfolding beneath the surface of the conscious mind.' Cristina Albu, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA, and author of Mirror Affect: Seeing Self, Observing Others in Contemporary Art

This book examines the psychology involved in handling, and responding to, materials in artistic practice, such as oils, charcoal, brushes, canvas, earth, and sand. Artists often work with intuitive, tactile sensations and rhythms that connect them to these materials. Rhythm connects the brain and body to the world, and the world of abstract art. The book features new readings of artworks by Matisse, Pollock, Dubuffet, Tápies, Benglis, Len Lye, Star Gossage, Shannon Novak, Simon Ingram, Lee Mingwei, L. N. Tallur and many others. Such art challenges centuries of philosophical and aesthetic order that has elevated the substance of mind over the substance of matter. This is a multidisciplinary study of different metastable patterns and rhythms: in art, the body, and the brain. This focus on the propagation of rhythm across domains represents a fresh art historical approach and provides important opportunities for art and science to cooperate.

Acknowledgements
List of figures
Introduction: a rhythm analysis of art
Part I. Rhythms of Mind and Matter: 1.1. Philosophical approaches
1.2. Henri Bergson
1.3. Recent mind and matter complications
1.4. The matter of the brain
1.5. The matter of sensation
1.6. Anton Ehrenzweig: daydreaming matter
Part II. Rhythms of the Brain and Matter Outside of It: 2.1. Buzsáki
2.2. Metastability across brain, body and art: Pollock
2.3. The aesthetics of mind wandering
2.4. Mind wandering and creativity
2.5. Metastability and emotion
Part III. Rhythm, Dirt, Art: 3.1. Emergence
3.2. Henri Matisse
3.3. Cubism
3.4. Surrealism
3.5. Abstraction
3.6. Informel
3.7. Andre Masson
3.8. Jean Fautrier
3.9. Jean Dubuffet
3.10. Antoni Tàpies
3.11. Alberto Burri
3.12. Zen and abstraction
3.13. Further developments in dirty rhythm
3.14. Earth art and trends in contemporary art
References.

Subject Areas: Neurosciences [PSAN], Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Psychology [JM], History of art / art & design styles [AC], The arts [A]