´´Man has overcome the passive state of the aesthetic by entering an active career as an artist. The pleasure of admiring fruits, flowers, birds, butterflies, shells and precious stones of nature is not enough, but he increases his supply of colored objects with the application of pigments. [1](Allen, 1879)
The man in his origins obtains stimuli from primary and bright colors because they serve him to find food and generate sexual attraction, but over time he develops an acquired taste for more subtle and complex colors. The transitory taste for found objects becomes an ulterior, abstract need, along with the desire to achieve prestige and power through the acquisition of sumptuous and aesthetic objects.[2] (Allen, 1879)
The light that surrounds us allows us to see shapes and colors that impact our being. These experiences shape our psyche along with our genetic makeup.
To what extent are we aware of the impact generated by the visual, both emotionally and chemically and physically? To what extent does what we see define us and influence our way of acting?
What value does art have in this sense and what is the artist’s task or responsibility – if he has one – with respect to the rest of society?
The artist’s eye – following Descartes’s metaphor that compared the gaze to the cane used by the blind to grope in real space -[3] (Mitchell, 2003), is like a cane of a “more experienced” blind man. that has a particular way of ordering the chaos that feels in the dark. It approaches and zooms in on what it touches, frames it and highlights it in a particular way to exhibit it again, already decanted, so that it flows with its own life in the viewer’s mind. It is like a game in which the “interlocutor” or observer receives an imaginary gift from the artist to process it and make it his own in his sensory memory.
I intuitively conceive art like this, as a gift for the senses. It cannot be elitist and pigeonholed into words that only a few understand, distancing itself with complex meanings that precede or describe what should be understood and felt. All people should have access to the emotions that art can bring. Works of art are creations that must be able to move, seduce and excite, and thus complement reality with an imaginary world.
My position is romantic but I raise this question because of my concern to understand the relevance of my profession as an artist. I seek answers about the value of an artist’s production and its social function. I perceive a polarization between art and aesthetics that can be harmful. I have discovered with this research that the sensory impact of art influences the origin of emotions, feelings and the genesis of thought and consciousness.
Just as there is a popular tendency to say that ´´we are what we eat´´ – inferring that the food we consume generates a chemical context that together with our biological characteristics define our being, it could also be said that ´´we are what we see´ ´. Author Steven Johnson reflects on the mind and the origin of thoughts from another perspective. Brains are like fingerprints – each of us has a unique neurological topography. We now have the technology to visualize that inner map and explore the inalienable of our mind. Each human brain is capable of generating various patterns of electrical and chemical activity. What this modern technology promises is to decipher these patterns in order to later be able to understand how our thoughts arise and to what extent we are aware of everything that our mind stores on its hard drive. [4](Johnson, 2004)
To approach this complex topic empirically, I decided to focus on the effect that art can have on a group of people living in extreme poverty in the Fronteras Unidas sector of Pamplona Alta, in Lima.
The Last Supper is a small popular dining room by Bertha Sulca Poma. She is originally from Ayacucho, from the town of Potica, province of Cangallo. She arrived in Lima with her mother and her brothers, fatherless, fleeing the terror of Sendero Luminoso in the 1990s.
Bertha cooks daily together with 4 women from the area to be able to offer a hot meal to people even poorer than them. They feed the stomach and I would like to see what happens if the soul is also “fed” with art.
I have found in the work of Lev Vigotsky, “Imagination and Art in Childhood” theories regarding human psychology that describe the characteristics of generating knowledge based on experiences and the ability of our intellect to be creative and imagine beyond of reality. I agree with Vygotsky that what one sees and then recreates in the imagination concretely affects our senses and vice versa. According to Vygotsky, man, by being able to conceive through other people’s stories and descriptions what he did not experience directly, would be freeing himself from the narrow circle of his own experience, acquiring other skills and knowledge of a historical or social nature.
He goes on to say that “the form of link between the imaginative function and reality is the emotional link (…) It is well known that we see the circumstances that surround us with totally different eyes when we are happy than when we are melancholy. Psychologists have long observed that every feeling has, in addition to the external, corporeal manifestation, an internal expression manifested in the selection of ideas, images and impressions. They have designated this phenomenon with the name of the law of the double expression of feelings. Thus, for example, fear is not only manifested in paleness, trembling, dry throat, shortness of breath and accelerated heartbeat, but it also makes all the impressions that man receives, all the thoughts that come to your brain.5
However, the importance of the impact of emotions and their transcendence in the nature of people was somewhat underestimated in scientific laboratories for many years. Antonio Damasio emphasizes this fact in his book on the body, emotions and the generation of consciousness. ´´The emotion was too subjective, vague and slippery. Emotion was the opposite extreme of reason (…) This was one more turn of the romantic approach of humanity, which had located emotion in the body and reason in the mind.´´[6](Damasio, 1999) For Damasio emotions are central in the physiological and biochemical balance of the organism: how to regulate temperature, for example, the concentration of oxygen, pH, etc. Therefore, having a key role in this internal self-regulation, emotions are central to understanding the biology of consciousness. That is to say, the external stimulus passes to the interior as an emotion, it generates here a presentiment, and from this presentiment arises a feeling and from this a reaction and according to Damasio this sequence is the origin of reason and knowledge.
Accepting this premise about the absolute importance that external stimuli have on our being, how our body and soul work together within a symphony of chemical, physical and psychological processes, it is evident to me that the appreciation of art is fundamental in the development of our being. F
or Bertha, Juana, Nora and Natividad, having a painting in the room where they cook has been a total Verfremdungseffekt . The Fronteras Unidas neighborhood is a place where nothing green grows. All around is dust and earth. The dining room is not plastered or painted. It also has no windows. The color of the Lima sky most of the year is very gray and misty, like a ´´donkey belly´´, which only accentuates the feeling of melancholy that the sadness of the whole place imprints on the senses.
The pictures have been a color accent. The art has been a source of surprise for all the guests, who number around 120 per day. The painting generated a reason for dialogue and activated the imagination of the visitors. I will transcribe some of the notes written in the log:
About a painting by Lorena Schutz of a portrait of a distinguished woman, Bertha had this to say:
The painting that is in the dining room makes you think many endless thoughts and also when looking at the lady it is as if you were talking to her and the earrings that are in the bottom of the painting are like a rainbow and imagination is that I am in a open field.
Joan commented:
The painting is very striking, it has rings that make you think a lot and the lady is like she would talk to me when I am cooking and she would tell me about the food like that. and the lady’s company makes me feel happy.
Nora saw something different:
The painted picture is of a young lady as if she were chained. she has her hands as if tied and the chains that can be seen around the woman and her look and her face is very sad.
Regarding another painting, Regata , by María Albina Correa, Natividad says:
Despite the problems at home today, I arrived at the dining room and I found this painting so full of spirit and I sat down and wanted to be inside the painting for a moment and feel the breeze and waters of the sea the wind of the waves and the heat of the sun is my feeling when I see that beautiful painting, it inspired a feeling of tranquility, peace and above all, patience in spite of everything. Thank you for a moment and days of wisdom that you give us every week with the paintings.
About the painting Regatta Bertha wrote:
The painting made the dining room look nice because of its colors that have the blue candle, red and white, striking colors. water is one more part of life and with water we cook in the dining room. the truth when seeing has a socabon for houses in the mountains made of stone. that’s my thinking.
Shows a button. These texts are tremendously moving and show that the paintings, as objects of contrast in that precarious and gray environment, were a focus of color that generated an impact. However, this impression went beyond the sensation generated by the touch of color for the retina: the ladies felt accompanied and show a mobilization of ideas, memories and dreams. It derives the possibility of having illusions, of imagining other places and of indirectly generating feelings. Art generates emotions and emotions originate a cascade of feelings and association of ideas. You can vibrate with second-hand experiences. This does not mean that they are less powerful. The impact of what is seen generates emotions that have the ability to color people’s moods. sensory impact, initially unconscious it will be kept in the mind as an indelible imprint in memory. These traces are what give the distinctive characteristic to the topography of our being.
In conclusion, we artists must be very clear about the importance that images take on when they are internalized by others. The images leave their mark. They are cultural signs, a vestige of a physical cause that, although not present, moves us for better or worse both physiologically and intellectually.
We are responsible for the art we produce and the effect it may have on others. ´´The immense diversity of imaginary realities that Sapiens invented and the resulting diversity of behavior patterns that they generated, are the central components of what we call ¨culture¨. ´´ ´´ 7 (Harari, 2015)
[1]Allen, G.1879 ´´The aesthetic value of color´´.The Color-Sense: Its Origin and Development. London: Trübner & Co, pp.222-249 [traducción libre]
Consultation: November 10, 2011
[2]Allen, G.1879 ´´The aesthetic value of color´´.The Color-Sense: Its Origin and Development. London: Trübner & Co, pp.222-249 [traducción libre]
Consultation: November 10, 2011
[3]Mitchell, WJT 2003 ´´Mostrando el Ver: una crítica de la cultura Visual´´. Los estudios visuales en el siglo 21. CENDEAC, pp. 18-23
Consultation: November 11, 2016
[4]Johnson, S. 2004 ´´Preface: Kafka´s Room´´. Mind Wide Open – Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
New York: Scribner, pp. 12-32 [traducción libre]
Consultation: November 11, 2016
https://www.scribd.com/book/225111274
[5]Vigotsky, L. 1986 [1930] ´´Imaginación y Realidad´´. La imaginación y el arte en la infancia.
Madrid: Akal pp. 7-14
Consultation: November 11, 2016
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hlyoi_LRHY6eL5eCIGLtpXjet1ljuc6IsJFKoRFxp1s/mobilebasic?pli=1
[6]Damasio, A. 1999 ´´Emotion and Feeling´´. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. SCRIBD. ISBN:0151003696
Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. pp. 41-87 [traducción libre]
