What Happens When We Look at Art?

Abstract works of art put us in a different state of mind than portraits of faces and other figurative pieces. That’s according to new research at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute that showed people different kinds of art and monitored their behavior. The findings, from the laboratories of Eric Kandel, MD, and Daphna Shohamy, PhD, are a step toward understanding how the brain decodes the visual information in a Rothko or a Rembrandt: a concept called the beholder’s share.