MODERN ART HAS HAD a love affair with psychoanalysis. And psychoanalysis has had a romance with the human face. No object enamors us more, apparently, and neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, a Noble winner in medicine, has explored this art-and-biology tie as much as anyone.
In his writings, and splendid book The Age of Insight—about the art and psychoanalysis renaissance in Vienna at the time of Sigmund Freud—Kandel has made much of how reductionism in science led to understanding the human psyche. It also led to great art, in particular, what now is called “Expressionism.”
Both brain science and Expressionism emerged in Vienna. Both the medical proponents and the artists were aware of each other’s “insights.” Kandel, a Jewish émigré from Vienna, illustrated this moment of ferment by looking at such Jewish creatives as Freud and the painters Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele; and also Oskar Kokoschka, a Gentile whose patrons were the Jewish elite in the city.
By reductionism, Kandel means a biology-based understanding of the human mind, tracing its nature to lobes, nerves, cells, and chemical-electrical impulses. Freud, trained in this new reductionism, went on to propose influential theories of human development. Today there is much skepticism toward them, but Kandel defends their general thrust.
As to art, reductionism looks at what fundamentally attracts human attention. Researchers of both infants and apes, for example, find that two dots with a line between them—like eyes and a nose—are the first thing thr minds respond to. Later comes gestures in the mouth and body, and then hands. Kandel says that the Expressionists—Klimt, Schiele, and Kokoschka—all realized this, and applied it to the human face and figure.
Of course, this was not traditional portraiture. The three artists reveled in caricature, distortion, and innuendo of human internal struggle—sex and death, especially. As innovative Expressionists, they were not shy about using line, paint, and decoration to suggest all the most uncomfortable truths about human experience.
All three had good academic training and, at points, public acclaim. When their human portrayals became more and more desiccated and erotic, however, polite society was offended. So they retreated to new rebel movements (one called The Vienna Succession). They all, except perhaps Kokoschka, lived lives as libertines, so controversy surrounded their own sexual exploits as well.
Nevertheless, Kandel argues, the painters revolutionized portraiture in two ways. By reducing the face and body to their most extreme expressions and characteristics, they engaged the human brain of viewers in new, and perhaps deeper, ways. They also reduced art to its minimums—color, shapes, and line—which, like the dots and line of the eyes-nose, seem to grab human attention more forcefully than complex and subtle painting styles (read traditional).
We must also note that the Expressionists hold heroic standing during the rise of Nazism in Germany, for it was they especially who were persecuted for their “degenerate art.” Hitler, and later Stalin, both preferred hoary realism. It was not a good time for liberal democrats of the West who were innocent upholders of traditional art. By contrast, the aesthetic appeal of Expressionism was bound up with the glory of being hated by Nazis.
Portrait painters have always tried to capture and inner character of their subject. It’s a very subjective interpretation, naturally. What can a look on a face, a gesture, and the position of the hands tells us about the person? Happy, sad, aloof, evil, deeply suffering, wise, or stoical? There might be as many interpretations as there are viewers.
According to brain science, fundamental to our perception is recognition of the subtle lines and wrinkles in the face. It’s hardwired, apparently. What Kandel is arguing, it seems, is that great portraiture—since he’s partial to modern art—enhances human characteristics to some extreme, making biological traits more compelling still.
Remember, Freud gave us the concept that every human being is a kind of pressure cooker. Inside each is a torrential, suppressed, dark, volcanic psyche—and the lid is barely holding it in. The Id (driven by sex and death) wants to get out, the Ego strikes a middle pose, and the Super Ego (society and convention) keeps the explosion from happening. It’s not a pretty picture.
What engages us about the portrait works of Klimt, Schiele, and Kokoschka, according to Kandel and other critics, is the visual sense of that volcanic, suppressed, nature. It continues to fascinate, even as Freud’s technical theories have been widely rejected. The Freudian “age of insight” put human study on the path of “abnormal psychology.” Later generations questioned that, scientifically, and pursued a positive psychology.
Abnormality exists, and that is what makes Expressionist portraiture alluring. But it does so by celebrating the extremes. A certain portion of humanity is, indeed, either pulled to debauchery and ruin, or to insanity. And that’s part of the appeal of Expressionist portraiture, which is meant to disturb. We can say, however, “But for the grace of God, there go I.”