We would like to recall here, succintly, the main points that have been discussed in the course of what is no more, and no less, than a brain-storming session on a topic of increasing interest to many people, from scholars, philosophers and scientists, to artists and the lay public. The conference was conceived on the basis of general, ‘meta’ questions. In our call for papers, we merely asked authors to reflect on whether the cognitive sciences could tell us anything of relevance about art; and vice versa, whether an analysis of artistic experience could tell us anything of particular interest about the brain. The resulting ten papers and discussions all represent attempts at addressing these ‘meta’ questions, through which a number of key themes emerged. The ‘round-table’ discussion which this concluding text opens should be an occasion to evaluate the extent to which these themes represent satisfactory answers and to pinpoint the questions that arise out of them.

1. Art and language

The nature of the relation between art and language was raised in at least three papers. Avigdor Arikha explored what he calls “pictorial language”, suggesting that pictures obey a syntax which, once learned, enables one to understand them. In a completely different perspective, Roberto Casati defined works of art as essentially communicative objects that prompt conversation. David Cohen insisted on the role of communicative intentions in the understanding of a work of art. Even if the parallel holds, however, one may argue that language and art each are powerful and highly structured systems of representation, whose primary function is to represent the world, and not necessarily to communicate. How, then, is the “syntax” of the representational systems that are both language and art connected to their communicative use?

2. Art and consciousness

Another central theme of discussion was the view that art itself makes us aware of our perceptual experience. Alva Noë talked of the artist as “a kind of experience engineer”, where “The painter literally enacts the content of a possible experience”. Nicolas Bullot defined experimental art as “any action (whatever media are used for the memory of this action) based on the building of an anchoring situation that takes into account, or reveals, any cognitive or political problem”. In this way one role of art is to make the spectator aware of his/her own way of perceiving the world. How does this notion help us understand the phenomenology of artistic experience? Could it be that this emphasis on awareness is a specific feature of contemporary art, embedded in the historical motivations of the twentieth-century avant-garde? Or is it a fundamental ingredient of all artistic experience, and in this way a key to the understanding of consciousness?

3. Cognition and awareness

Connected to the issue of art’s function in making us aware of our representations is the view that art exploits our perceptual, emotional and cognitive systems but that we do not actually realize that this is the case. François Quiviger’s work on proprioception in Renaissance art and David Freedberg’s theory of response seem to go in the same direction: artistic representation may be a function of the universality and stability of our emotional response to it, but the awareness is of the work as experienced via the response, not of the response itself. How crucial is the awareness of our perceptual and emotional experience in the perception of a work of art?

4. Universality

The measure of emotional response would seem to be a central aspect of the study of art cognition, but questions did arise in the course of the discussion about what criteria such a study should adopt. If one takes artistic experience to have universalisable qualities, and if one assumes that there is a class of specifically artistic emotions, such an investigation should be possible. But a certain scepticism with regard to claims of universality was present throughout the discussion of these issues. The question of the unity of the kind “work of art” - to borrow the title of Roberto Casati’s paper - may indeed presuppose an answer before investigative work on the response to art can be conducted. V. S. Ramachandran’s view of an “Aha” experience as central to such response arises out of such investigative work; but how plausible is it?

5. Historicity and normativity

Underlying these questions, and returning often to the forefront of discussion, was thus the difficulty of studying artistic experience without establishing norms for the definition of what counted as artistic experience in the first place. The problem was raised in various ways, by John Armstrong in his description of Kantian aesthetics, by Alain Grumbach in the analysis of collective efforts at very new sorts of works of art, and by Nicolas Bullot in his recognition of a “normative” undercurrent to many of of the reactions to his paper. Art historians, attuned to the ways in which the inflections of artistic production are specifically configured within historical moments, all tended to share, in this conference, an explicitely normative stance with regard to the objects of artistic experience, but the possibility of a dialogue between cognitive scientists and art practitioners in general clearly depends on a resolution of this debate. Is it possible not to adopt a normative stance, and to suppose that appreciation is a different matter from cognition? In the same way, to what extent is the cognitivist approach to art in conflict with a historicist one?

Feedback

We would like to ask all of you - authors, discussants, participants, silent onlookers - to give us your reactions to the discussions that took place during these few weeks. Clearly, we are left with more questions than answers: does the perception of works of art require specific cognitive resources? How can one evaluate it? Is this evaluation necessarily dependent on norms? And would these norms be meaningful without their history? Can one investigate artistic experience without over-simplifying artistic intention?

What themes do you think should have been introduced or developed further?

We also would appreciate your feedback regarding the technical dimension of the event: Did you find the format useful? Is it easy to use? In what ways could it be improved? Did you find the rhythm of two texts a week satisfactory? Too fast? Too slow? Would you have liked more images? More links? More bibliography? More contact with us, the moderators, or with the authors?

Over to you!

Lastly, we would like to thank you all for your participation. An interactive event of this kind depends for its success on the enthusiasm of the participants, and, if we are to judge by the intensity and the high calibre of the discussions, the idea to launch this conference has clearly paid off.

And now, the debate is wide open. Feel free to submit any comment and any question, on whichever text of the conference, for further discussion.