https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NzShMiqKgQ
This guy starts by explaining visual mental disorders and optical illusions and how they effect areas of the brain, and goes on to explore the science of how the brain responds to art. He suggests that effective art stimulates areas of the brain more than usual by exaggerating important features, mainly using ancient Indian sculptures as examples. Here's an example he gives:
What about the Chola bronze. What's he doing? The epitome of feminine sexuality, grace, dignity, poise. How do you do that? Well, what he does is, he takes the average male form, the average female form, subtracts the male from the female, you get big breasts, big hips, narrow waist, and he amplifies it. When he amplifies it you don't say "Yuck! That's abnormal anatomically." You say "Wow, what a woman".
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He does bring up some Expressionist trash, and makes a few digs at philosophers, amongst other bullshit, but, hey, he's only a scientist.
I wonder if this sort of research might be useful in understanding the specifics of stylization eg. what is it about Japanese illustration that makes it more attractive that western illustration. As he says about half way through:
Clearly art involves distortion ... But you can't just randomly distort something and call it art — though some people do.
I thought people here would be interested in seeing it. Of course, if it's worth your time, I'd love to know what you think, icycalm.
