The alleged 'death' of painting has shaped the recent course of art, but the model of the human mind upon which it rests is no longer considered accurate. Cognitive science has shown that the mind is not a blank slate but content-rich, and as such humans bear an array of innate expectations of reality and non-reality, which apply to painting as well as other human behaviours such as religion or music. This creative thesis takes in a series of case studies tracing the prehistory of painting in light of these cognitive propensities, from the beginnings of human culture, to Bushman rock art and the experiences of painters today, to uncover a perennial function for painting which cannot die: the ubiquitous sensation of an 'otherworld' beyond the canvas or rock face. This approach to painting demands its rehabilitation as a humanising self-expression in a world increasingly estranged from art, abandoning artistic ideology in favour of an image-based communion with human nature.
The use of psychedelic drugs plants is rising, and with it the number of reports narrating encounters with otherworldly visionary beings. Approaches to these experiences have often been literal, archetypal or dismissive. Evolutionary psychology and the cognitive science of religion suggest innate and non-imagistic mental foundations for these phenomena arising from easily-triggered evolutionary functions during emotive periods of high cognitive demand. Such functions include agent detection, social intelligence faculties and metacognition. This wide-ranging book explores how our deepest mental processes predispose us as humans to believe in supernatural agents, and presents a new hypothesis of how these same cognitions facilitate the emergence of those agents to become present when psychedelic drugs and plants are ingested. Bruce concludes that visionary beings shimmer within as awe-inspiring products of the mind, an experience which rests at the heart of what it is to be human.
A nameless young man finds himself wandering half-naked through the frozen wintry Bristol night, when he falls – or is he pushed…? – into the river and is washed out to sea. Arriving lost and exhausted upon a strange island enmisted, he comes to a fortress which holds a lithe, enchanted-but-broken, eternal youth in chains, who tries to kill him. It is only through sharing stories of his life that he is able to avert the youth's wrath at being disturbed, easing his traumatised heart by offering him something no other visitor to this dark place has ever given him: presence, and care. This unearthly mythical narrative becomes the poetic frame story by which Bruce, the nameless wanderer, unfolds his life story in fractured, allegorical and dreamlike ways. We move from migraines and his lived experience as a gay/queer person with ADHD, into visionary experiences that changed the course of his life, the ecstasies of true love, and expressions of his personal philosophies and spiritualities, as well as a curious catalogue of artworks he has created over the years as an artist. As this most unusual of autobiographies unfolds, we move deeper into Bruce's queer/neurodiverse, homoerotic/hyperactive inner world, gliding from one theme to another in a genre-baffling, lilting symphony of images, ultimately uncovering his one true mirror soul with all its fragilities, strengths and wonders. He must try to save his own life as well as the youth's, so they can escape this otherworldly prison together. At once melodious and magic, joyous and tragic, ‘Nine Nights Awake’ is not for the faint of heart: simultaneously riddlingly absurd, sexually graphic and brutally honest, its mythical wildness might well be the oddest and most eccentric memoir you are ever likely to read! ‘Nine Nights Awake’ is all at once, a kind of thematically arranged autobiography of an idiosyncratic inner life, with all its feelings, colours, dreams, armchair philosophies and psychological agilities; an epic poem grounded in fragments of Celtic and Germanic myth telling the story of a lost soul found; an ad-hoc set of narrative allegories from personal, gay/Queer, neurodiverse, contemporary and archetypal human life; an extensive artist’s talk enfolded into a dreaming fall and confinement; an intimate and winding conversation with the soul; a lengthy meditation upon the Medieval Welsh poem ‘Preiddeu Annwn’ attributed to Taliesin, which in turn liberates further personal musings on poetry itself; and a radically parallel series of multiple threads, sidenotes, sidetracks, circular narratives, premonitions, postmonitions and quirky references, misquotes, paraphrased song lyrics and other inspirations… all rolled into one!
Art meets science in this guide to creating color with earth’s extraordinary pigments and exploring their fascinating uses today and throughout history Part anthropological study, part art book, and part how-to, Book of Earth immerses you in the world of ochre, a naturally occurring mineral used to make pigment. Each chapter delves into author Heidi Gustafson’s rare pigment archive and provides a thorough exploration of natural color, while challenging our notions of the inanimate world. The book includes practical advice and techniques for creating your own pigments and applying these skills in everyday life. Called the “ochre whisperer” by American Craft, and noted as the “woman archiving the world’s ochre,” in the New York Times, her personal collection of more than 600 pigments from around the planet is a unique treasure, and her passion and field experience will captivate you from the first page to the last.
�Dissanayake argues that art was central to human evolutionary adaptation and that the aesthetic faculty is a basic psychological component of every human being. In her view, art is intimately linked to the origins of religious practices and to ceremonies of birth, death, transition, and transcendence. Drawing on her years in Sri Lanka, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea, she gives examples of painting, song, dance, and drama as behaviors that enable participants to grasp and reinforce what is important to their cognitive world.��Publishers Weekly�Homo Aestheticus offers a wealth of original and critical thinking. It will inform and irritate specialist, student, and lay reader alike.��American AnthropologistA thoughtful, elegant, and provocative analysis of aesthetic behavior in the development of our species�one that acknowledges its roots in the work of prior thinkers while opening new vistas for those yet to come. If you�re reading just one book on art anthropology this year, make it hers.��Anthropology and Humanism
Being Brains offers a critical exploration of neurocentrism, the belief that “we are our brains,” which became widespread in the 1990s. Encouraged by advances in neuroimaging, the humanities and social sciences have taken a “neural turn,” in the form of neuro-subspecialties in fields such as anthropology, aesthetics, education, history, law, sociology, and theology. Dubious but successful commercial enterprises such as “neuromarketing” and “neurobics” have emerged to take advantage of the heightened sensitivity to all things neuro. While neither hegemonic nor monolithic, the neurocentric view embodies a powerful ideology that is at the heart of some of today’s most important philosophical, ethical, scientific, and political debates. Being Brains, chosen as 2018 Outstanding Book in the History of the Neurosciences by the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences, examines the internal logic of such ideology, its genealogy, and its main contemporary incarnations.
Recipient of the Jo Anne Stolaroff Cotsen Prize The product of ten years of fieldwork at Little Lake Ranch in the Rose Valley, the southern gateway to the Owens Valley, this book presents the results of intensive rock art analyses carried out by the interdisciplinary research team of the UCLA Rock Art Archive. The research attempts to establish a connective web of associations to break down traditional but artificial barriers between rock art and the rest of archaeology. Through time-honored methods of stylistic analysis, the focus is on recent breakthroughs in the analysis of meaning and religion in the context of landscape attributes and ecological opportunities. Regional or ethnic differences suggested by the rock art record has made it possible to create a flexible analytical framework containing previously unpublished or overlooked archaeological excavation and object data. This book describes the occurrence, concentration, distribution, and formal variation of pecked and painted motifs. Scratched, pecked, and painted patterns are analyzed separately. Full-color illustrations throughout enhance the physical appeal of this beautiful book.
Humans have engaged in artistic and aesthetic activities since the appearance of our species. Our ancestors have decorated their bodies, tools, and utensils for over 100,000 years. The expression of meaning using color, line, sound, rhythm, or movement, among other means, constitutes a fundamental aspect of our species' biological and cultural heritage. Art and aesthetics, therefore, contribute to our species identity and distinguish it from its living and extinct relatives. Science is faced with the challenge of explaining the natural foundations of such a unique trait, and the way cultural processes nurture it into magnificent expressions, historically and ethnically unique. How do the human mind and brain bring about these sorts of behaviors? What psychological and neural processes underlie the appreciation of painting, music, and dance? How does training modulate these processes? Are humans the only species capable of aesthetic appreciation, or are other species endowed with the rudiments of this capacity? Empirical examinations of such questions have a long and rich history in the discipline of psychology, the genesis of which can be traced back to the publication of Gustav Theodor Fechner's Vorschule der Aesthetik in 1876, making it the second oldest branch in experimental psychology. The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Aesthetics brings together leading experts in psychology, neuroimaging, art history, and philosophy to answer these questions. It provides the most comprehensive coverage of the domain of empirical aesthetics to date. With sections on visual art, dance, music, and many other art forms and aesthetic phenomena, the breadth of this volume's scope reflects the richness and variety of topics and methods currently used today by scientists to understand the way our mind and brain endow us with the faculty to produce and appreciate art and aesthetics.
This edition of "The Canadian Encyclopedia is the largest, most comprehensive book ever published in Canada for the general reader. It is COMPLETE: every aspect of Canada, from its rock formations to its rock bands, is represented here. It is UNABRIDGED: all of the information in the four red volumes of the famous 1988 edition is contained here in this single volume. It has been EXPANDED: since 1988 teams of researchers have been diligently fleshing out old entries and recording new ones; as a result, the text from 1988 has grown by 50% to over 4,000,000 words. It has been UPDATED: the researchers and contributors worked hard to make the information as current as possible. Other words apply to this extraordinary work of scholarship: AUTHORITATIVE, RELIABLE and READABLE. Every entry is compiled by an expert. Equally important, every entry is written for a Canadian reader, from the Canadian point of view. The finished work - many years in the making, and the equivalent of forty average-sized books - is an extraordinary storehouse of information about our country. This book deserves pride of place on the bookshelf in every Canadian Home. It is no accident that the cover of this book is based on the Canadian flag. For the proud truth is that this volume represents a great national achievement. From its formal inception in 1979, this encyclopedia has always represented a vote of faith in Canada; in Canada as a separate place whose natural worlds and whose peoples and their achievements deserve to be recorded and celebrated. At the start of a new century and a new millennium, in an increasingly borderless corporate world that seems ever more hostile to nationaldistinctions and aspirations, this "Canadian Encyclopedia is offered in a spirit of defiance and of faith in our future. The statistics behind this volume are staggering. The opening sixty pages list the 250 Consultants, the roughly 4,000 Contributors (all experts in the field they describe) and the scores of researchers, editors, typesetters, proofreaders and others who contributed their skills to this massive project. The 2,640 pages incorporate over 10,000 articles and over 4,000,000 words, making it the largest - some might say the greatest - Canadian book ever published. There are, of course, many special features. These include a map of Canada, a special page comparing the key statistics of the 23 major Canadian cities, maps of our cities, a variety of tables and photographs, and finely detailed illustrations of our wildlife, not to mention the colourful, informative endpapers. But above all the book is "encyclopedic" - which the "Canadian Oxford Dictionary describes as "embracing all branches of learning." This means that (with rare exceptions) there is satisfaction for the reader who seeks information on any Canadian subject. From the first entry "A mari usque ad mare - "from sea to sea" (which is Canada's motto, and a good description of this volume's range) to the "Zouaves (who mustered in Quebec to fight for the beleaguered Papacy) there is the required summary of information, clearly and accurately presented. For the browser the constant variety of entries and the lure of regular cross-references will provide hours of fasination. The word "encyclopedia" derives from Greek expressions alluding to a grand "circle of knowledge." Our knowledge has expandedimmeasurably since the time that one mnd could encompass all that was known.Yet now Canada's finest scientists, academics and specialists have distilled their knowledge of our country between the covers of one volume. The result is a book for every Canadian who values learning, and values Canada.
