Publisher's Synopsis
Throughout history, humans have been driven to create visual art. From the earliest cave drawings to the work of world-renowned modern and postmodern artists, our species has an endless capacity to produce, and hunger to consume, visual representations of human existence. Artists and art aficionados have long pondered the source of our endless creativity. How and why do humans thrive on producing art?
In the past two centuries, two theories dominated the philosophy of visual art. First, Paul Cezanne's popularly accepted modernist theory postulated that our creativity stems from subconscious brain activity, while decades later, Marcel Duchamp's postmodernist theory upended modernism, claiming that artistic creativity stemmed unequivocally from our conscious thoughts and acts.
For many years, these theories remained untestable, for without scientific data to enable objective comparative analysis, theorists had no way to examine these strikingly different hypotheses.
In CUVISM, collage artist and art educator George J. E. Sakkal uses precise neuroscientific data to examine the validity of modern and postmodern art theories. Sakkal's research offers the first wholly objective analysis of art theory, resulting in new paradigms that will benefit art educators and students while forcing the established artistic community to reevaluate their methods.
