David Freedberg, Pierre Matisse Professor of the History of Art at Columbia University, discusses how new developments in cognitive neuroscience help us better understand viewers’ responses to works of art. He gives examples of motor responses to paintings and sculptures, examining the ways our aesthetic senses are activated by our emotional and physical engagement with the visual arts.
Image: “Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière”, André Brouillet, 1887.