NEUROSCIENCES AND CONNOISSEURSHIP The neuronal physiology of Beauty and the attribution of Old Master Paintings DRS JAN

DE MAERE Thesis in order to obtain the title of Ph.Doctor in Art Sciences. Supervisor: Maximiliaan P.J. Martens, University of Gent, Faculty of Letters and Philosophy Public defense: Friday, September 30th 2011, at 14h, in the anatomical auditorium of the Bijloke Rsum The present thesis adresses the following questions: "Under what circumstances is the intuitive talent of connoisseurship1 a valid instrument for old master paintings expertise and attribution? Who are the connoisseurs and how did they obtain this status? What is the validity of the attribution of old master paintings? Are attribution and esthetic appreciation indispensable instruments to art history? Do neurosciences allow us to understand better the relative validity of attribution and do they lead to a more efficient practice? What are the strategies of nowadays connoisseurs? Despite the progress made by the material analysis of paintings, old master painting expertise suffers from a lack of referentiality and scientific validity. Top experts have been considered connoisseurs since the 16th century. Throughout centuries, this aspect of art history underwent various challenges. Sciences revealed fakes and errors in attribution which caused the disconsideration of connoisseurship after the second World War. The high hopes of the material analyses as a solution for all problems (RX, IRR, pigment analysis) have faded ever since. It has been noticed recently that although material analysis eliminates a number of fakes and wrong attributions, it does not allow differenciation between the hand of an apprentice and that of the master, without connoisseurship. Consequently, the "enlightened connoisseurship" becomes once again actual. A number of world-renowned connoisseurs subjected themselves to the questionnaire, the interview and the f-MRI analysis of their brain activity of the present thesis. The experiences still ongoing in the University College London are conducted by Semir Zeki (University College London) together with the author of the present thesis. The connoisseurs judge 50 images of paintings projected inside the helmet they are wearing in the scanner. They tag them in terms of authentic-fake, beautifulugly, familiar-unfamiliar, afterwards they fill in a detailed questionnaire in which they assess the precision of their answers under f-MRI. The present author demonstrates by taking into consideration multiple factors, such as the analysis of the provisory results of these ongoing experiences, the study of neurosciences, the anatomical and psychological analysis of cognitive perception, the study of connoisseurship history and the analysis of four great expertise projects (Rembrandt, Rubens, Michelangelo's figure drawings and the Corpus of Flemish Primitives), the progress and the limits of the attribution as currently practiced. He proposes a definition of connoisseurship as "a synthesis of talents". By means of neuronal correlation of brain activity, the present author explains that the cognitive sensorial esthetical experience remains the observable basis of the perceptive-cognitive emotion produced during critical observation of the painting (authenticity and quality). This theory has been influenced by the works of Semir Zeki, Jean-Pierre Changeaux, Eric Kandel and Lionel Naccache. The author of the present thesis refers to art as a hypothetical strategy 2, an illusion that exists only in the mesmerized eyes of the amateur, to whom this feeling gives pleasure, consolation and inner peace, depending of the horizon of his expectations. All the creations of an artist are thus not necessarily to be considered as art. Despite the subjective aspect of his appreciation, art aims at a shared interpersonal recognition in the reference-frame of a common culture. The intuitive observation is the interdisciplinary instrument par excellence of the connoisseur, an expert on top of the lot.
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In the opinion of the present author, connoisseurship of old master painting is a term that refers to the talent of attributing the paternity of an anonymous painting to a certain artist, after the expectations one has from the artist and after the scolarship of the connoisseur. This identification has to be sanctioned by success (peer-review). The adequate opinion of a connoisseur is more valuable than that of a normal expert - it is an exceptional capacity of expertise, that starts by giving an immediate and not necessarily definitive opinion upon the identity of a masterpiece and its quality (> 250 ms, in three stages: soon, intermediate, late). (Chapter II deals with this aspect in detail). This talent leads to the practice of attribution of paintings not seen before, by means of comparison and experience, by observing the pictural impasto and by simultaneously developing the classification criteria linked to the erudite memory. The creative "Flash EUREKA" is prolonged by an alternance of continuous brain activity between perceptive intuition and conscious reasoning, verified by the ongoing observation of the painting. This opinion may or may not include the artist's name. It is an immediate mnesic inference, perceived as decisive, focused upon the elements of the painting, unconsciously admitted as such, and allowing a postfactum conscious reflexion. 2 Visual art is a form of non-verbal perceptive learning which triggers emotion and empathy without additional desire, and subjects itself to rules, to the artistic personality and to the laws of the development of the genre. Is Art whatever is conceived as such by the brain.

The "Theory of Mind" in the present thesis is not reducible to the physico-chemical interactions of our neurones. However, this activity is the indispensable condition of all mental activity. Humankind needs belief and illusion. Brain-physiology is the basis of the esthetic experience, a visual and cognitive process involved in the critical perception of the painting. As any real object, paintings are created of material, energetic and informational structures. But without the selection of indications exercised by emotion and experience, information can not become knowledge. Following the tradition of the English empirical virtuosi, the present thesis questions the primacy of cognition in the comprehension of art. The connoisseur intuitively selects a pattern of minimal indications (whose significance escapes the understanding of non-connoisseurs) as essential for the identity of the painting he has not previously seen. This immediate decision is continuousily consciously and inconsciously refined afterwards. The brain unconsciously settles harmoniously (>250ms) an ambiguity produced by the uncertainties due to the interpretation of a great number of variables (stimuli). While creating meaningful concepts, the observer projects his expectations upon the painting. Based on fragmentary data and uncertainties, he completes the mental image he creates on the paintings with the whole of his personality. His identity is an incident and organic "millefeuille de mmes", composed more of myths than of facts. The reciprocal influence of the conscious and the non-conscious mind plays a very important part in this process. A voluntary action such as attributing a painting to a certain painter always begins non-consciously before attention raises it to conscience. The non-conscious is a psycho-corporal unity implying, among others, the limbic system (emotions), the associative cortex and the sensorial areas. The brain deals with words and evokes mental concepts more or less in the same way as physical sensations. Our imaginary world is the road towards the non-conscious. Art is thus the echo of our inner exile, our secret aspirations and our concealed desires. Neurosciences show that the quality of painting expertise depends on the talent of the observation, as well as on the erudition and experience of the connoisseur. The intuitive observation, according to the horizon of expectations and to the reference framework created by art history, is the best interdisciplinary instrument that leads to success. The nominative and arborescent labelling of characteristics produced by the cognitive perception of a painting is essential to art history. Observation is always richer than verbal formulation. The author of the present thesis indicates the need of an adequat vocabulary that best adheres to the current state of our knowlegde of northern paintings of the Ancient Regime and proposes a gradation in 17 steps. He also analyses the network and group-expertise, as well as the peer-review, and studies the impact on the legal application and on the art market. At the current state of information, in the present author's opinion, the best definition of Beauty is neurobiological. Specific esthetic pleasure defines this experience by connecting the "engrammes" to mental representations encouraged by the limbic system (reward). The concept of authenticity and quality in a masterpiece is also for the best connoisseurs a subjective mental construction with variable parametres. So far, the deeply humain aspect of connoisseurship has been taken too little into account. Its relation with the ruling consensus and tradition is turbulent. Each person builds an Idealbild of the artist, but often there is no visually convincing causal relation, only coincidence. This Idealbild precious to Friedlnder, a metaphor similar to Otto Pacht's "Gestaltungsprincip", does not have specific physiological reality in our brain. It is an inherent strategy that appeals to a configuration of non-formal indicators derived from the totality of the artist's work, in function of our quality expectation. The present thesis demonstates that the connoisseur's talent needs an innate basis that is subsequently developed in a favourable environment by practice and encouragement, mostly during adolescence. Most connoisseurs have learnt to observe paintings with a master (supervised learning). It is the eye that gives the evidence, educated through our incidental and conscious learning. Science is the referee necessary to connoisseur's observation, whose attribution is the least inaccurate of all ephemeral certainties, indispensable to the progress of the sciences of art. The eye of the connoisseur permanently changes the normative canon of art history. The valid subjective certainty is solely born unconsciously in the enlightened eye that masters all the disciplines of the sciences of art. It is the specific situational intuition of the enlightened connoisseur that builds his talent. Neurosciences do not explain the unexplainable, but rather observe the neuronal implication of of the whole of the expert's personality during his cognitive perception of art, when he names and analyses the painting. Humankind has no direct connection to reality, each perception is subjectively influenced by our beliefs. It is the reason why, in the light of neurosciences, the enlightened connoisseurship is essential to the expertise of old master paintings and to art history. Despite its current lack of absolute referentiality and scientific validity, it permanently proposes a solution that reduces ignorance. JAN DE MAERE