Neuro-Esthetics and Mapology

When you are looking at paintings (like Barnett Newman's "Cathedra"), you may be shifting (see also Shiftology and Mapology!) your gaze across the painting from the left to the right in order to build up visual (etc.) maps (see animation below: top row).

If you are an art historian or neurobiologist in addition, you may also be ABLE to build up other maps in addition (art historical maps: see second row; neurobiological maps and fMRI-images: see third row).

And if you are a physicist, mathematician, or computational neurobiologist, you may further be ABLE to build up mathematical or physical maps in addition (see fourth row).

All in all, the MORE maps you POSSESS, the (perhaps) RICHer your POTENTIAL landscape (see also Potential landscapes), and hence the perhaps better your Self-control while looking at (and not attacking) Barnett Newman's painting:

In fact, the whole History of Art may only have been (apart from being business and power/sexual display for "rich" people, and apart from being a stabilizing factor for dumb social networks) a solving of mapological problems (and hence also "social problems", i.e., a problem of map-makerS in general).
Take, e.g., the anonymous architect of Le Thoronet (see Le Thoronet and Troyes) as well as neolithic architects (discovering SPACE, music, sound, and acoustics), stained glass painters like the ones at Troyes, Pietro Cavallini, the master of Flémalle, and Brunelleschi (discovering light, cubist shadowing, chiaroscuro, sfumato & lustre-effects as well as central projection, i.e., one kind of a mathematical mapping), Barnett Newman (discovering the problem of the TPJ and of body/Self distinction), and Mark Rothko (the problem of the LOC, i.e., a giant attractor for ALL ARBITRARY closed objects you can think of), Piet Mondrian (the problem of formal equilibrium) and some neolithic painters (discovering sharp [out]-lines and blurry backgrounds...), as well as the figure-stripe-painters of the Carolingean era discovering closed figures in front of seemingly "infinite" backgrounds (Moutier-Grandval bible).

However, there is no "biggest artist", but there are some (very few!) nearly perfect works of art -- but all of them carried out by mostly anonymous artists long before 1500 AC (i.e., long before the practising and rather infantile-primate-mammalian homosexuals Leonardo and Michelangelo), beginning with the "Grotte de Chauvet", Imhotep, Thutmosis (Nefertiti), Polyklet, Apollodor of Damascus, the late roman / carolingian / ottonian book painters, the anonymous monk and architect of Le Thoronet, and perhaps ending with (already arguably...) Leon Battista Alberti, Johannes Gutenberg, and the last stained glass painters of Troyes in around 1500 AC...

And by the way: all these nearly perfect works of art are still erect (stable) and existing (unlike paintings by artists after 1500, that already have to be heavily restored).

And by the way: most of these perfect artists never portrayed "females" vs. "males" unambiguously (i.e., they had no "sexual-mammalian-primate bias"), but rather a-sexual bodies or even no bodies...
And: all those artists mentioned above were either autistic shamans (Chauvet), priests (Imhotep), monks (carolingian book painters, the architect of Le Thoronet), or non-practising homosexuals... So these few perfect artists were not involved in some "sexual selection" or "beauty" at all (pace Nicholas Humphrey...), but rather with some absolute mapological perfection, i.e., some absolute resonance with neural maps and the playing with maps (and the play with other "map-makers" within some "mind-reading" and "social synchronization"). Accordingly (and alas...), all these artists had no children -- so that perfect works of art have been EXTREMELY RARE in the (quite brute) history of H. sapiens...

In fact, these innovative and perfect artists were not involved in some "sexual selection", but rather in the survival of some "whole populations of map-makers" (as priests, monks, shamans, technicians, scientists, etc. keeping the populations upright, innovating, synchronized, and stable).

OR IN SHORT: all these perfect artists discovered their own brains (i.e., their own invisible neural maps) -- and tried to optimize them as best as possible (to the highest possible intensity and resonance). AND THIS IS NEURO-ESTHETICS.

Hence, perfect artists always tried to optimize and to perfect their (invisible!!!!) neural maps and brains VIA material (visible) works of art as detours serving also communicative purposes, i.e., to stimulate and synchronize "other" map-makerS (if possible), and to stimulate their brains to the highest maximum possible.

And since works of art are "made" (see Giambattista Vico) and directly related to neural maps, they are ABSOLUTELY transparent and can MORE OR LESS easily be "understood" by "other" map-makers (in contrast to some rather opaque "nature").
As man-made artefacts cut off from the web of life, works of art (especially a still-life, i.e., a "nature morte") are much less complex than nature (the web of life) itself, i.e., they are (like all maps) extremely "reduced", "bounded", "limited", "selective" and hence much more easily understandable.
And: while nature is (biologically) "meaningless", perfect works of art make really "sense" (i.e., they are "meaningful") and are easily comprehensible.

AFTER ALL, H. sapiens has been selected for his tremendous and outstanding big capacity for perfect "mind-readings" and "mass-synchronizations" (via art and artists: see Adolf Hitler et al.), so that artists have indeed played an important role in some social synchronizations and the improvement of maps and map-readings (mind-readings).

HOWEVER, as already hinted at by Piet Mondrian (see Art), in my best of all worlds -- as described by me in detail in my book "A Day in Paradise" (Elbs 2010, see Publications) -- there will be no art any more, because the highest art will have become identical with the highest technics, the highest esthetics, the highest science, and the highest ethics.

HENCE, the best artists will boil down to nothing else than the best map-makers -- but maps are always invisible. Hence, future artists will rather optimize the INVISIBLE, not the VISIBLE any more...

And those who will have the "best" maps...

(=> See also my new essay, Publications, "Wer ist der grösste Künstler?", Elbs 2010, in German).