Introduction

Humans are highly visual creatures. Evolution has honed the human brain into a supremely efficient tool for extracting information from visual images, which far exceeds the capabilities of the most powerful computer vision systems available today. The areas of the brain devoted to our visual sense are much larger than the areas devoted to all of our other faculties. Vision begins with an image cast onto the inside surface of the eyes. Large populations of brain cells analyse this image in terms of several essential visual characteristics, including shape, size, texture, colour and motion. These highly complex brain processes underlie all visual experience but they are largely hidden from conscious awareness. The detailed characteristics of brain function must have a profound role to play in our experience of visual art. The aim of this book is to put forward an approach to understanding visual art that is founded on our knowledge of how the eyes and brain function together to create visual experience.

Before we can embark on this task, it is important to define some fundamental terms of reference. Everyone agrees on what we mean by the brain, namely the 1.4 kg jelly-like mass of nerve cells and fibres cradled inside the human skull. The visual system of the brain includes the eyes, the neural pathways connecting the eyes to the brain and all the neurones in the brain that respond primarily to visual stimulation. On the other hand, it is much more difficult to agree on a definition of art. Philosophers continue to debate the virtues of alternative ways to define art; however, one point is clear: any attempt to define artworks in terms of a single characteristic such as their representational properties or their expressive qualities is bound to fail. Counter-examples to single characteristics such as these can always be found. Maps, for example, are representational because they represent the layout of the land but they are not usually considered to be art; human postures have expressive properties but are not usually considered as art unless adopted during an artistic performance such as ballet. On the other hand, it is difficult to consider the collection of Italian Renaissance paintings in London’s National Gallery as anything other than works of art. What about Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ (actually a manufactured urinal), or Carl Andre’s ‘Equivalent VIII’ (actually a rectangular arrangement of 120 firebricks)? Are these objects works of art?

Introduction

The outermost surface of the human brain is covered by a thin sheet of neurones called the neocortex or cerebral cortex. The sheet fits inside the skull only because of its extensive folds, rather like an umbrella furled up inside a case. The cerebral cortex is only 3 mm thick but has a total surface area of over 2 m2 when unfolded and contains about ten thousand million (billion) brain cells. It covers the brain like the shell of a nut, or the bark of a tree (cortex means bark or shell in Latin). The cortex is larger in humans than in any other species and is thought to endow us with uniquely human attributes.

The brain is divided vertically front-to-back into two hemispheres, one on each side of the head, which are interconnected by a massive band of nerve fibres called the corpus callosum. Anatomists subdivide each half of the cerebral cortex into four lobes, named as the frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes after the bones that lie above them (Figure 3.1). The frontal lobe is at the front of the head behind your forehead, and the occipital lobe is at the back. The parietal and temporal lobes occupy the territory at the side and top of your head. A key feature of the cortex is specialisation of function. Like a medieval town in which different trades gather in different neighbourhoods – spice merchants here, money lenders there – small, circumscribed regions of the cortex specialise in serving particular mental functions. About one-fifth of the cortical surface is devoted to primary sensations (vision, sound, touch, balance, smell and taste) and to movement control. The rear-most part of the occipital cortex, known as the primary visual cortex (V1), receives input from the eyes and is responsible for vision, while a narrow strip of the cortex running side-to-side over the head from ear to ear receives sensory input from the body surface and mediates our perception of touch. Outside of these primary sensory areas, the remaining four-fifths of the cortex specialises in secondary cognitive functions. Research has shown that each lobe performs a specific set of tasks.

Introduction

This chapter concentrates on how the eye works and how this function impacts on art. To set the scene, it will be useful to know a little about the physical properties of the stimulus for vision, light. The precise physical nature of light has perplexed philosophers and scientists for centuries and is not yet completely understood. Light is a form of energy known as electromagnetic energy because it has both electrical and magnetic properties and it is carried in small packets called photons. The electromagnetic field of each photon has a characteristic vibration frequency that can vary from a few thousand vibration cycles per second to many billions of cycles per second. The standard way of measuring vibration frequency is in terms of the distance between adjacent peaks in the vibrating wave, known as its wavelength. Across the full electromagnetic spectrum, wavelength can vary from extremely short wavelengths that are a fraction of the size of atoms (X-rays and gamma rays, the very highest frequencies) to very long wavelengths that can be many kilometres long (the lowest frequencies). The energy that you can see as light spans only a tiny proportion of the electromagnetic spectrum, corresponding to wavelengths between 400 nm and 700 nm (billionths of a metre). Light wavelength is associated with colour experiences, with the longer wavelengths appearing red or orange and the shorter wavelengths appearing blue or violet. Yellow and green sensations are evoked by middle wavelengths. Electromagnetic energy in the visible band-light is well behaved in the sense that it reflects off most surfaces and can be focused by lenses. As the sense organ for vision, the eye takes advantage of this good behaviour.

Preface

The opportunities for people to engage with visual art are greater now than they have ever been before. In recent years, increasing numbers of people choose to attend major international gallery exhibitions that celebrate visual art both past and present, often at significant cost in terms of time and money. Most houses, shops, restaurants and public buildings display some form of visual art on their walls. It seems that everyone has an opinion about visual art, perhaps a favourite artist, artistic genre or historical era. Where does this universal interest in art spring from? Why have certain visual forms preoccupied artists across generations? What visual qualities underlie our reactions to artworks? Such questions have traditionally been tackled from the perspective of the humanities, especially disciplines such as art history and philosophy.

Psychology is the scientific study of people, the mind and human behaviour. The creation and consumption of visual art is an ancient and universal human activity and, as such, it should also be a prime focus of research in psychology. As a discipline, psychology dates from the mid-nineteenth century, when a small group of European scientists devised new experimental methods for measuring simple human behavioural responses. Over the last 150 years, psychologists have adopted concepts and techniques from a very wide range of scientific disciplines in their quest to understand the human mind and behaviour. Advances in neuroscience have had a crucial impact on psychological theories, providing researchers with fundamental information about the structure and function of the human brain. Mathematics and computer science have supplied deep theoretical principles that help us to understand the information available in visual images and the constraints within which any physical system must operate when trying to make sense of visual information.

Introduction

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution came to the fore in the previous two chapters during discussions of aesthetic preference. Humans may have evolved a preference for certain landscape features in art such as mystery and vantage points because these features are important for survival in a natural environment. Similarly, humans may have evolved a preference for certain images because their statistical and organisational properties afford the most efficient neural processing. This final chapter discusses the relevance of evolutionary theory to two general but important questions about visual art, namely the perennial artistic fascination with certain aspects of the human form and the enduring human compulsion to create works of art. Beforehand, it will be useful to reiterate some salient features of evolutionary theory and to introduce the concept of a ‘fitness indicator’ because it is an essential component of the evolutionary theory of art.

The theory of evolution underpins modern biological science. It proposes that all persistent, universal human traits, including those which relate to art, should be considered as evolved adaptations. According to Darwin’s theory, new traits arise initially by chance due to genetic mutations during reproduction. If a specific trait confers an advantage on a particular individual by enhancing his or her chances of survival and reproduction, then it is passed on to that individual’s offspring who, in turn, passes it on to his or her own offspring. Conversely, traits that do not confer an advantage do not become established in the gene pool. Over generations, adaptive traits can become established across an entire population, even if they enhance survival rates by only a tiny amount. The eye itself is a good example. Primitive sensitivity to light should confer an advantage on any organism that depends on sunlight for energy, leading to more successful transmission of the genes coding for light sensitivity. Sensitivity to ambient illumination, therefore, is a universal adaptation found in even the simplest organisms. Complex mobile organisms have evolved sophisticated light-sensing organs, which typically take the form of a pit or enclosed chamber that forms an image of the outside world on a sheet of light-sensitive cells. Images are extremely useful for performing complex tasks such as visual navigation and recognition, provided that the organism possesses a brain with sufficient processing capacity.

Introduction

Paintings traditionally present a single, static view of the world. Indeed, still life paintings are, by definition, unchanging and inanimate. Portraits also disregard time in the sense that they capture the relatively stable demeanour of the sitter, which conveys their character (refer back to the portrait of Erasmus in Figure 5.7, p. 85). Some paintings do convey the passage of quite long periods of time, particularly narrative paintings that tell a story in a series of episodes integrated in a single composition. Several traditional pictorial devices are available to artists striving to convey the passage of time in a narrative painting. In ‘continuous narrative’ paintings, the same protagonist appears in several places, often separated by architectural structures that mark out different episodes in the story. Jacopo Pontormo’s elegant ‘Joseph with Jacob in Egypt’ (Plate 17; see colour plate section) presents several episodes from Joseph’s life as Viceroy of Egypt. Joseph appears in four locations, always wearing a red cap, lavender cloak and amber tunic. The story begins in the left foreground with Joseph presenting his father Jacob (kneeling) to the Pharaoh. In the right foreground, a messenger presents Joseph with news of his father’s illness. In the middle distance, Joseph is shown ascending a staircase with one of his sons to visit his ill father. In the top right, Joseph is shown presenting his sons to his dying father. Pontormo uses subtle pictorial cues of movement to convey the passage of time. Movement always produces a progressive change in position. Notice that the successive episodes in the story unfold progressively across the canvas and into the distance from foreground to middle distance (the figures in the far distance are thought to be references to Joseph’s earlier arrival in Egypt to seek grain; Langmuir, 2003).

How can artists convey events that unfold much more rapidly, involving brief bursts of dynamic action? This chapter will explore the techniques that artists use to convey a sense of action and the reasons for their effectiveness. The next section considers techniques used in still images such as paintings (Cutting, 2002), and the subsequent section considers animated images. The success of the various techniques is related to their ability to excite activity in the motion-detecting neural circuits of the visual cortex, which were mentioned in Chapter 3.

On September 11, 2001, the world watched in horror as terrorists hijacked commercial aircraft and flew them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York's financial district and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and caused another plane to crash in Pennsylvania. Foreign terrorists took at least 2,996 American lives that day, and their audacity thrust terrorism firmly into public consciousness. Until then, studies of global security had been based primarily on analysis of state power as measured by factors such as economic, diplomatic, and military capabilities. Since then, there has been a shift to try to understand new forms of warfare, and international violence has become an important focus of global studies. Today, terrorism and counterterrorism are central features of international security.

Terrorism is not a goal or end in itself. It is a means or tactic to achieve a desired consequence or end state. Terrorists, by definition and necessity, employ asymmetrical warfare: while great powers have vast sums of money and advanced weaponry at their disposal, all terrorists possess is their commitment; their lives (which they may sacrifice in suicidal attacks); and relatively small, unsophisticated weapons. There are, however, grave concerns that terrorists may obtain weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Unlike insurgencies and civil wars (discussed in Chapter 10), terrorism is not aimed at obtaining control of a territory or state. Its proponents attempt to frighten governments into believing that unless they change their approach to politics there will be further violence. Terrorist methods commonly include kidnapping, bombings, arson, and hijacking airliners to create public fear and to force governments to respond to their demands; today they include cyberattacks on computer and data systems. Since terrorists do not represent states, and by definition are less powerful than the states they attack, standard patterns of responding to them may be inappropriate and ineffective. Against whom or what does a state retaliate? Dealing with terrorists has also created new issues in the fields of prisoners, torture, civil liberties, and international law.

Political leaders and their security advisers are constantly obliged to make choices about how to maintain order in light of their citizens’ expectations and actions. In responsible and viable political systems the resulting transactions are relatively clear and harmonious, but when public demands cannot be met, political order may break down. Bombings, riots, rebellions, and even civil wars may ensue, and the political system may fail or collapse. A few countries engage in perpetual strife and violence that trigger insurgencies or wars. Such local warfare cannot always be kept within state boundaries today, as it is to some extent internationalized by the forces of globalization and the new security issues.

Armed conflict and wars within and among states are endemic in world history. In much of the academic literature on warfare there is an assumption of a degree of symmetry among protagonists. This is because most scholarship is about general war, the relations and conflict between and among states, or limited wars, those that involve states but have restricted objectives, such as the Korean War (1950–53), which was fought to prevent a China-backed Korean army from taking over the entire peninsula. Countries that are relatively weak are thought to be unlikely to go to war with more powerful states; they are more apt to capitulate or negotiate their way out of disagreement and conflict. But wars come in various types, and many are among distinctly uneven military forces.

Global politics is replete with crises. As we conclude our survey, it is clear that understanding and debating this theme is an essential part of our study of international relations. In Chapter 1, we introduced globalization and the new security issues and factors that drive modern world politics and showed how they affect governments. In the next 14 chapters we analyzed how individuals, states, and international organizations cope with these factors.

Myriad unexpected, horrific events occur intermittently around the world, creating crises that quickly move to the top of global policy agendas. They regularly force politicians and decision makers to appraise and judge which principles should guide their responses and to grapple with difficult conceptual, ethical, and policy issues.

Crises and contingencies

As we witnessed in the first fifteen chapters of this book, dangerous events are ubiquitous; we truly live in a world of risk. We see this in daily news reports, where various types of crises make up the bulk of daily headlines. At the individual level, the crises range from the tragic to the absurd, as almost any event can be a crisis for someone. At the state level, crises arise continually in the form of natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes, as well as human-made disasters such as mining accidents and even nuclear accidents. At the global level, crises also are perpetual, ranging from saber rattling among states to shared issues such as health pandemics and internal and interstate war. Television and the Internet relay a constant stream of horrifying pictures about massacres, earthquakes, hurricanes, and famines. The pool of events is seemingly endless. Indeed, a startling phenomenon of modern global politics is how many contemporary crises span state borders and sometimes even continents. It is the complexity and multiplicity of such crises that is the greatest challenge.

The first four parts of this book examined the degree to which globalization is fostering an interconnected world and how new security and economic issues impact on today’s global problems. In Part V we highlight major problems of the 21st century that require the attention of the world community – issues that are “intermestic” in nature and cannot be solved by single states, no matter how powerful. Understanding the interconnectedness and multiplicity of these issues and what can be done about them requires knowledge of governments and international relations. The list is indicative of the problems facing world leaders, and readers are encouraged to research and explore the quest for policy answers on these and other topics.

Chapter 14 addresses human rights. The events of September 11, 2001, sounded the alarm on international terrorism, led to quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, and foreshadowed tumultuous and violent change in the Middle East and North Africa. It has become increasingly important to reassess and respond to the new security issues around the world. How can states and international agencies react effectively to threats arising from ethnic hatred, religious bigotry, and failing states generally? Should states interfere in other states when human rights are under attack? Chapter 14 highlights these and many other human rights concerns, such as genocide and children in armed conflict.

Human rights abuses are as old as history, but this is perhaps the first era that has demonstrated widespread global concern about them. Modern communication systems such as television, radio, and the Internet thrust human tragedies before us on a daily basis and convince people not only that something should be done about them but also that something can be done about them. There is no denying that human rights abuses abound, and there are many examples in which they have gone unpunished, but at the same time, there is increased global awareness of the issues, and even some progress has been made.

Global issues concerning human rights entail core values and call individuals and governments to examine their perspectives on the value of life. When antiapartheid and black leader Nelson Mandela was released from prison after twenty-seven years and became president of South Africa in 1994, we all extolled the virtues of human will and dignity in world politics. In that case, international economic sanctions and a strong determination to be free of white rule won out over Afrikaner prejudice and authoritarian rule. When Aung San Suu Kyi was allowed to leave house arrest after seven years, and contest the 2012 election in 2012, we all hoped for the best for her and Myanmar. Her struggle for freedom was highlighted by her claim that, “I’m not free until the people are free.” Bigger-than-life actors on the world stage, like Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi, draw attention to human rights and the importance of ethics in politics, and they illustrate how contrasting viewpoints about the proper role of states in the lives of their peoples are important factors in global politics.

The field of developmental economics is characterized to a large extent by the same controversies and differences in perspectives that confront governments in global politics generally. Is the economic pie growing or contracting? How is it shared? Is its distribution just, or are there major global intra- and interstate inequalities? These issues are central to the study of international political economy; however, to a great extent, specialists who examine inequality tend to be little interested in macroeconomic issues such as global trade and the supply of credit.

Despite impressive improvements in the global economy since World War II, inequalities remain within and across states. Overall, the gap between rich and poor around the world has increased, and poverty, hunger, and disease are more prevalent in some specific, marginalized parts of the world than others, creating complex patterns of winners and losers. Significant economic inequalities inside many states have also grown. Contrasting perspectives on these facts are widespread. As we saw in Chapter 12, despite other differences, liberals, nationalists, and even state capitalists focus on the overall economic gains of states, especially the huge improvement in per capita incomes in both developed and developing countries over the past half century. Radical, Marxist, or critical theorists, in contrast, emphasize the unequal patterns in the distribution of gains within global society and within states rather than overall growth patterns. They point to facts from the UN’s Millennium Development Goals Report that confirm the extent to which disadvantaged people are trapped in poverty: 1.4 billion people live below the global poverty line of $1.25 a day, and the numbers are likely to increase by 2015; every few seconds a child dies from malnutrition somewhere around the world.

It is impossible to conceive of a world without states. But as we witnessed in Chapter 2, the modern form of the state is only a few centuries old. At various times in history tribes, bands, city-states, empires, and religious or other authorities performed many of the functions of governing people. Unlike the modern state, government, the organization of people for the resolution of dispute and conflict, has always been present in some form. Government first appeared about one hundred centuries ago in the early civilizations of Asia Minor, Egypt, and northern Mesopotamia (today's Iraq) well before modern states were formed.

The modern state, with its emphasis on legitimacy and consent of the people, as well as authority and order, is today the paramount actor in global affairs. The world is conditioned and constrained by the governments of states because they provide and regulate most aspects of public affairs both domestically and internationally and influence (directly or indirectly) the choices made by citizens in conducting their private lives. Modern states are defined not by cultural, ethnic, or language homogeneity but by sovereignty and power. States may or may not coincide with nations. Often they do not. For example, is Palestine a state, a nation, or something else? Just how much power do states have? The answers are neither simple nor static. A few countries – those with larger economies and extensive technologically advanced militaries – have dramatically more significance than others, but most states are relatively weak and have to rely on the more powerful militaries of other states or international organizations for political leverage. Some states, even though their sovereignty is officially recognized by other states, barely exercise meaningful authority over their own territory.

Chapter 1 introduced the idea that the world has become more interdependent and discussed the term globalization, a broad term that refers to a reorientation of cultural, economic, political, and technological activities in such a way that it transcends state or country borders. The term has become so popular that it is used to explain various major international trends from social relations to world terrorism. In fact, the term globalization has become so pervasive and controversial that critics have termed it nothing more than capitalism or even “globaloney.” In response, its proponents claim that fear of change has led to “globalphobia.”

Much of the recent change in global politics comes from developments in economics. This chapter, therefore, focuses on international political economy (IPE), a field that studies the complex interrelationships of politics and economics. It highlights the significance of globalization and shows how the study of international political economy has become central to international relations. The current global market for widely used products and financial services developed rapidly as a result of reduced barriers to cross-border trade and investment, increasing similarity in state economic regulations and laws, and technological advances in transportation, telecommunications, microprocessors, and the Internet.

Ethnicity, nationalism, and religion greatly affect global politics. They provide a sense of belonging that helps to shape political activity within states and across state borders. Families, peer groups, and educational and religious institutions all socialize new generations with ideas, values, and beliefs about social interactions, including peace and war. Together they help create a political culture that underpins the behavior of both leaders and masses in multiple and important ways. People identify with, fight for, and often even die for their blood, faith, and beliefs. Leaders of political movements and other elites target these basic identities to mobilize support or incite mass action in their attempt to achieve or thwart specific goals. Adolf Hitler infamously extolled blond Aryans as the “Master Race.” Winston Churchill rallied the British people to fight the same Germans in World War II. Although their political causes were diametrically opposed, both men spoke to deeply held sentiments about national identity in an effort to steel their peoples for the horrors of war.

This chapter is concerned with transnational movements in which identity provides a sense of community and belonging. An identity group consists of people who share a characteristic or characteristics that define them and set them apart from others. Ethnicity, nationalism, and religion are three components of social identity that have gained prominence in international relations theory in recent years. Many sources of international political conflict involve one or more of them. Secular ideas and ideologies such as human rights, feminism, environmentalism, and antiglobalism movements are also significant components of identity, but we cover those topics later in Chapters 14 and 15. Here we are concerned with how transnational movements affect political choices and structure collective decisions that affect global politics.