A Man of Both Worlds: ___ 'Leonardo Da Vinci bridged the gap between Art and Science.'
Copyright © 2011 Tomitheos Photography - All Rights Reserved
Leonardo da Vinci's was very controversial in his time but today his art as well as his scientific observations, his inventions, and interesting facts about his life make him nothing less than a genius which, in return, have earned him a permanent place in our history.
Art in History:
In the Middle Ages 'the artist' had an immutable purpose to his life accompanied by an obligation to his society to serve the gift of divinity. This was because Art was nothing more nor less than a representation of the World of God, and the artist, the medium through which this Universe becomes visible. Therefore the artist, like God was a creator: a manufacturer of physical things of beauty from thought, and the artist was a well respected 'craftsperson' that was perceived at a much higher level than a blacksmith or a shoemaker that also had important roles in societies of that time.
As we analyze an artist's talent we come to understand that the greatest gift to an artist is visual memory with the talent to convey and replicate that on a physical medium. To understand this one must understand how neuron networks store and retrieve memories, how synapse molecules change to define a network path and, hence, how information flows through the brain to the extremities like the hand and fingers.
How Memory Works:
Information flows from the outside physical world through our sight, hearing smelling, tasting and touch sensors. Memory is simply the way we store and recall things we have sensed.
Recalling memories sparks many of the same neural paths we originally used to sense the experience and, therefore, almost re-creates the event. For an artist, the key is to articulate that imagery with detailed dexterity.
Our brain will store, for fractions of a second, sensory information in areas located throughout the cortex. Then some data moves into short-term memory. Finally, some of that information goes in long-term storage in various parts of the cortex, much of it returning to the sensory cortex areas where we originally received it.
Only the data that catches our attention, like a red light while driving or an important street name, will go into short-term memory. We can hold short-term data for about a half minute.
We use the hippocampus to consolidate new memories. An event creates temporary links among cortex neurons. For example, in seeing a red apple the color 'red' will get stored in the visual area of the cortex, and the sound of eating a red apple gets stored in the auditory area. When a new fact is remembered like 'fresh apple,' the new memory data converges on the hippocampus, which then sends the information along a path several times over to strengthen the links.
Perhaps that is why artists tend to draw and paint multi colored fruit on a tabletop setting, because in their fruitful simplicity, fruit can be the ideal drawing exercise of how the brain can remember a familiar color and its associated shape.
The Science of Drawing:
The memory information follows a path which is called the 'Papez Circuit' which starts at the hippocampus and then circulates through more of the limbic system which in return evokes emotion in the brain. For an artist, emotion would allow for inspiration to set in which in return can physically manifest into an art form. Inspiration is key in motivating an artistic individual to draw-out the thought and/or memory that is in mind onto a blank canvas, thus in conclusion, creating a visually artful masterpiece.
