Suppose you first read an essay, and then look at a picture. In both cases, information is being received into your brain. The question I want to address here is, does the brain process this information in different ways, and if so, why and how, and what difference does it make in the long run, as far as making or viewing pictures is concerned? I think that this is a pretty important question for anyone who is interested in fine art, especially a practitioner. Another subject, that I will not be discussing here today, but which is related, and will be addressed in a future essay, is the subject of what happens to light after it enters the eye, and then goes to the brain, and how the brain interprets it. That will certainly be more technical and involved, so this essay must logically precede it, to lay some groundwork.
Since I am not a scientist, this paper will not be as rigorous as a scientific treatise, although I am taking pains to make sure that it is as accurate as possible. If anyone sees any flaws in the information, please let me know. I am more interesting in the information I am presenting being correct, than in being personally right. The text that I relied on most heavily for reference in preparing this paper is 'The User Illusion' by Tor Norrestranders.
The human brain is an enormously complex organ, capable of performing many different tasks simultaneously. At present, there is no computer that can match the human brain in overall performance, although there are some things that a computer can do better than a brain, like adding and subtracting numbers. This has more to with the nature of the task, and how it relates to our survival and procreation imperatives than it does with the actual power of the brain per se, though. Performing mathematical calculations did not offer as great a survival advantage as facial recognition did, and so today we can recognize whether a person is the bully who beat us up last week, or the pretty girl we would like to get to know better instantly; a task that no computer is yet able to do, but we still need a pencil and paper, or a calculator to do our math.
It is a natural habit for us to see ourselves 'as' our consciousness, the little moment-to-moment sliver of self-awareness, but of course, this is not the whole picture. The brain is busy running the body, and is doing so without and conscious effort on our part. One of the big jobs that the brain is performing outside our conscious realm is the processing of incoming information from the senses. It has been estimated that approximately one millionth of the data our senses perceive winds up in our consciousness, and this fraction, I would guess, sinks even lower when we are using our awareness for other things, like day dreaming, or mulling over the past, or solving a puzzle. The brain receives this huge amount of sensory data, and then decides which one part in one million the consciousness needs to be informed about, and deals with the rest itself, without us even being aware that we are missing something. That isn't to say that the sensory data we are unaware of is discarded.... it is not.
Consider when you are driving, and talking with your friend, sitting in the passenger seat. You are flying down the road at 55 mph, and your senses are taking in data, and your muscles are steering the car to avoid other cars, potholes, etc, but most of your consciousness is involved in the conversation, until, suddenly, just in the nick of time, you become aware of a potential hazard, and even before you have time to fully apprehend the situation, your reflexes have steered the car safely out of harms way. The brain knew what was going on before your consciousness did, and the only reason it 'woke you up' to the situation was because the event did not fall into the 'potholes and other usual stuff.' category.
Our brains, and hence our consciousness evolved the way they did because we were able to survive better and procreate more often than those people whose brains were organized in other ways. Our ancestors didn't get eaten by predators or fall into tar pits or quicksand as often, and did wind up successfully mating more often than those people with other, competing methods of brain organization. Because consciousness is so small, and able to hold only a miniscule amount of data, it is important that such data be organized in the most efficient manner possible, so that it will contain the most information possible. Since survival and procreation in the human species depend so much on interpersonal communication, it is not surprising that language seems to be tailor made for our consciousness; small bits of data that contain (or can contain, depending on the individual) more information per unit of space they occupy than any other form of conscious data. Whether language even exists as such outside the conscious sphere is good question. The brain certainly doesn't need it for most of the chores it has to take care of from moment to moment, and there is clearly no time for words when we are cut off in traffic at seventy mph, or a saber-toothed tiger springs. Consciousness seems to love words, and keep itself filled up with them whenever possible, even when those of us who practice meditation would prefer for it to be otherwise.
So now I arrive at the questions: If our brains seem to be seeing, perceiving, analyzing and acting on all sorts of incoming sensory data without our consciousness becoming involved, and loves to keep itself full of words as much as possible, what happens when we look at a picture (worth a thousand words), and how does the experience differ from when we read an essay, and finally, what happens when we paint a picture, and write and essay, and how do they differ??
Let's look at the essay. Whether you read it, or write it, the essay will be in words, and since words appear to be most at home in the consciousness, it is my opinion that the principle directing force in either writing the essay or interpreting it, will be conscious. This is not to say that other, non-conscious parts of the brain will not be adding their input to the effort (the Freudian slip being an extreme example of this), but that the effort, being itself verbal, will most likely be controlled by that part of the brain that is most adept at verbal tasks. Also, words are small bits of data, and taken a few at a time, they can fit comfortably into our moment of awareness.
When we read an essay, we attack it a few words at a time, we do not consciously try to 'see' the whole essay at once, the way we at first view a picture. There is an interesting difference here, in how our consciousness manages these two different tasks. With the essay, it starts with the words, the small bits of information, and slowly builds upward toward full understanding of the whole. With a picture, it starts with the whole picture, and gradually works its way down into the details. Our consciousness cannot hold either an entire essay or an entire picture in its consciousness at one time. For some reason, it prefers to approach these two tasks from opposite ends. This may be the result of the task being predominantly processed by different areas of the brain. Consciousness, which is the area (I mean this metaphorically, since what we perceive as consciousness does not really arise from any one geographic location in the brain, but is more the result of many areas working together in concert) most adept at language, manages the essay task, using language methods, with input from the rest of the brain. The picture, on the other hand, is managed by areas less completely enclosed in the consciousness, which would mean that both in the painting and the 'reading' process, there is a chance for more information to be passed between picture and brain than our awareness can apprehend. Although I feel certain that the parts of our brain that are unconscious are managing a part of the essay, I think it is after the fact, the brain drawing on its stored associations, etc, after the words themselves have been processed. In the non-verbal context of the picture, however, the situation is different; the data can pass directly into the unconscious, just as the sensory input does when you are driving and talking with your friend at the same time, with significantly less conscious input or awareness.
This may be part of the reason for two common phenomena; first, the often heard statement "I don't know anything about art (intellectually), but I know what I like" (emotionally), and the painters (or sculptor's) 'happy accident.' I know from personal experience that I get so lucky with the mistakes I make while painting, and the sudden, near the end of the painting 'EUREKA!' type composition corrections, that nobody is that lucky. I am sure that some part of my brain must be directing the show, but where and how, I can't say.
I believe that many, many differing unconscious factors are at work in an individual who is at work making a painting, regardless of whether it is a job for someone else, or a work strictly for him or herself, or whatever. The result of that process, both unconscious and conscious, is seen in the finished product, but that does not mean that the painter's conscious mind is ever fully 100% aware of the total content that his entire mind put into the painting. Consciousness is great for some jobs that are encountered in painting (like detail work), and lousy for other tasks (like composition, and determining the whole 'point' of the exercise. Paintings can contain all sorts of clever 'Freudian Slips' in them, that the painter's conscious mind did not mean to include, and even refuses to acknowledge after the fact.
So there you have it; a first, still somewhat rough draft of my ideas on this subject. I think I have the essence of what I am trying to say here, but it is still hard to get my mind around the whole idea well enough to say 'I have it.' Basically, the idea is not a new or a revolutionary one, any surrealist would have and probably did say the same thing 75 years ago, except that I am saying that what the surrealists made into a 'school' of painting is and has always been active in every school of art, and is an inescapable part of the picture making process. The Abstract Expressionists tried to do away with those parts of painting that have to do with the conscious process, and while it may have been for a time a noble experiment, I think it will in the end have no lasting voice, any more than a painting that was wholly of the conscious mind would.
The point of art is that it is a resonance between intellect and emotion, between conscious and unconscious. Words may not exist, that can describe that resonance, but when we feel it.... we know.
In my opinion, it is easier to hide behind our words than it is to hide behind our pictorial works. If I had any real idea of what I am giving up to the world every time I do a self-portrait, I would probably stop doing them...or perhaps not.