The Art of the Brain

Neuroscience is a predominantly left-brained activity. This is a good thing, as the logical, analytical gaze of the left-brained has revealed much of what we know about the three-pound wet blob that lives in our heads and directs our lives. But as brain imagery becomes commonplace, perhaps it was inevitable that the right-brained among us would take on the brain as an artistic subject. In fact, as moist agar is to a bacterial colony, the dark, ephemeral, and hidden nature of the brain may be the ideal environment for artistic inspiration to thrive. And thrive it has, to the point where brain art could almost be considered a genre.Images of the brain have the power to shape the way we understand the mind and consciousness itself, according to Suzanne Anker, Chair of the Fine Arts Department at the School for Visual Arts in New York City, and co-curator of...