Human Ethology Group, Max-Planck-Institute for Ornithology, Seewiesen, Germany.
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Psych J. 2021 Apr;10(2):224-243. doi: 10.1002/pchj.416. Epub 2021 Jan 14.
Art in general perception is something that transcends our notion of reality. In view of the earliest findings in Paleolithic sites, their abstract appearance and sometimes ceremonial context increased their status of a secret language. Even the first figurative cave paintings remained in a context of an encoded semantic whole. The highly symbolic value of art seemed invulnerable. It was just the claim for "mimesis" in Greek antiquity (Plato) that urged artists to "realistically" depict what can be seen-as to stay in track of eternal messages behind. This devaluated the artistic oeuvre to a purely imitating craft and had to overcome at once several inherent obstacles. First, that reality (the phenomenal world) is in general only a pale reflection of what lays behind (Platonic ideas) and second, that the human eye, unlike the human mind, cannot penetrate to more than ephemeral impressions. Moreover, it mixed up reality with what we are able to see (i.e. visual perception), thus supposing a pinpoint representation of the world by our senses. Aristotle was the first to qualify art as picturing more than we usually are meant to see, filling the gap between the sensual and the spiritual world. Aristotelian aesthetics includes concepts of reduction and selection of composition and emotion, thus a summarized view within any performance of poetics or painting. And it took centuries to close the gap between natural and aesthetic perception or art. Life sciences in the 20th century discovered the evolutionary basis of sensory perception as being highly biased and organized, concept as emotion-driven and thus, mentally equipped as well. This sets a new approach in our understanding of perception, art, and aesthetics as an ongoing communication in process on common bases. Art may cooperate or disagree, but never can cut the nexus with its perceptual prejudices and substrate.
艺术在一般认知中是超越我们对现实的理解的。从旧石器时代遗址的最早发现来看，它们的抽象外观和有时的仪式背景提高了它们作为一种秘密语言的地位。即使是最早的具象洞穴壁画也仍然处于一个编码语义整体的背景中。艺术的高度象征性价值似乎是坚不可摧的。正是古希腊（柏拉图）的“模仿”主张促使艺术家“真实地”描绘出可见的东西——以便紧跟背后永恒的信息。这将艺术作品贬低为一种纯粹的模仿工艺，必须立即克服几个内在的障碍。首先，现实（现象世界）通常只是背后（柏拉图式理念）的苍白反映，其次，人类的眼睛与人类的思维不同，无法深入到转瞬即逝的印象之外。此外，它将现实与我们能够看到的东西（即视觉感知）混淆在一起，从而假设我们的感官能够准确地再现世界。亚里士多德是第一个将艺术定义为描绘出我们通常认为的更多东西的人，他填补了感官世界和精神世界之间的空白。亚里士多德的美学包括构图和情感的简化和选择的概念，因此是任何诗歌或绘画表现的概括观点。几个世纪以来，人们一直在努力缩小自然和审美感知或艺术之间的差距。20 世纪的生命科学发现，感官感知的进化基础是高度偏向和有组织的，概念是由情感驱动的，因此也是精神上装备的。这为我们理解感知、艺术和美学提供了一种新方法，将其视为一种在共同基础上不断进行的过程中的交流。艺术可以合作或不同意，但永远不能切断与它的感知偏见和基质的联系。
