Chapter 3 begins with a brief explanation of the nature and properties of processes, which forms the basis for an explanation of the fundamentals of dynamical systems, followed by an explanation of complex systems, which will be used as the framework from which the visual arts will be explored in this book. The concepts of complex dynamical systems will appear throughout the book, with illustrations from a wide range of phenomena giving concrete content to the theoretical concepts. This chapter can be used as a frame of reference for later consultation, but it can also be read as an introduction to the chapters that follow.

Chapter 4 provides a definition of the visual arts through the lens of complex dynamic systems. Art is defined as (1) a temporally contingent, iterative process involving many interacting components; (2) a distributed and situated process of enactment; (3) an emergent phenomenon; (4) a unique and authentic visual embodiment of self-determined artistic meaning; (5) an embodied meaning that exploits meta-stable, critical state dynamics of values; (6) a pluriform complex dynamic; and (7) a process governed by a dynamic of presentation, re-presentation, and reference. Finally, definitions of art are presented as critical state attractors in artworld systems (all the technical concepts are explained in Chapter 3).

Chapter 14 presents a dynamic model of long-term, art historical trends and shows the complexity of overlapping styles and movements. It is based on a modification af a dynamic model of development on the timescale of the human life course. The basic evolution rules are those of simultaneously operating processes of consolidation of the status quo and processes of innovation driven by a familiarity-novelty optimum. The simulation explores different scenarios, one of which generates the typical art-historical pattern of overlapping continuous as well as discontinuous processes.

Chapter 9 describes the timescale of the emergence of artistic excellence and celebrity, which involves processes that may be shorter or longer than the artist’s life course, in this case the historical appreciation of the significance of a particular artist and work. The chapter first discusses the standard model of excellence from the behavioral sciences and explains why this model cannot account for the empirical data. The chapter discusses the emergence and distribution of excellence and celebrity, including artistic superstars, and shows how these processes illustrate fundamental features of complex systems such as asymmetric distributions, power laws, and self-similarity.

Chapter 7 discusses the short-term timescale of artistic activity, which includes both the creation and experience of art and shows how the creation or the experience of a painting or installation is a dynamic system with typical features of complexity. The creation of a work of art is described as a process in an attractor landscape, with self-organizing attractors as emergent types of creative activity. Existing linear models of creation are compared to a complexity model. An example is given of how a very short-term activity, namely, a single brushstroke, is a complex system in itself, interacting with higher and lower timescales. The discussion of the experience of art begins with existing sequential models and shows how they can be reinterpreted as non-linear, complex, metastable processes occurring on interacting timescales.

Chapter 6 is the first chapter in the second part of the book, titled “Entangled Timescales of the Visual Arts.” Chapter 6 explains the meaning of this title by focusing on an important feature of complex systems, namely, that they consist of interacting processes on different time scales, from very short to very long. These processes are entangled, that is, they occur in continuous interaction and are interdependent. These entangled processes form the basis for important complexity features of the arts, such as self-organization, emergence, novelty and creativity, attractors, critical states, variability, and so on.

Chapter 2 begins with an overview of existing definitions of art and connects these definitions with philosophical ideas about the fundamental nature of reality – including the arts – in the form of ontologies or worldviews. It analyzes the properties of those ontologies in the context of the visual arts and concludes with the introduction of process ontology (readers who don’t like philosophy and definitions might wish to skip this chapter, or read it later once they have come to think that philosophy and definitions are not uninteresting after all).

In Chapter 1, I explain how the book can be read and used in a nonlinear fashion, providing affordances for further exploration, comparable to the way the book approaches the creation and experience of works of art. The chapter proceeds to present a detailed advance organizer in the form of a point-by-point overview of the main messages and ideas of this book, providing a framework for the way the book can be read and used.

Chapter 8 focuses on the timescale in which the short-term timescale of activity and experience is embedded, namely, the creative artist’s life course. It discusses artistic talent, art school and training, the artist’s personality, including the relationship between psychopathology and art, the outsider phenomenon, motivation, inspiration, and drives for artistic creation, artistic identities, intersectionality, and the artistic persona, all of which are complex phenomena. The chapter also discusses the complexity of the relationship between personality and artistic creation, based on a complex dynamic systems approach to personality itself.

Chapter 5 describes the functions of the visual arts as a web of interacting forces and influences that form the basis of the complexity and flexibility of the visual arts and the openness of their developmental, historical, and even evolutionary changes. The functions of art are interaction-dominant, autotelic and are aimed at self-presentation. The important functions of art are figuration, namely, giving a particular visual form and shape to a variety of content; expression and disclosure; value-raising (making special); ideological and economical; co-creating rituals and cults. This web of functions is interaction-dominant, that is, its dynamic depends on the way these functions (or any relevant subset of them) interact over the course of time.

Chapter 11 deals with the timescale of history and human evolution. It offers a complexity approach to the evolution of art that attempts to move beyond simplistic theories of the survival function of art, including the much-debated issue of the function of art in the context of sexual selection. After discussing the basic principles of evolution from a complex systems approach, the chapter outlines different evolutionary scenarios: the survival-enhancing function, on the one hand, and the view of art as an evolutionary by-product, on the other. By showing how both evolution and human activity are entangled, interaction-dominated dynamics, the chapter provides an alternative to simplistic gene-for-art assumptions.