APPLICATIONS - Structural Visual Art Research

25 Oct

Sometimes, human nature strikes you with an astonishing force that discourages any desire for a rational explanation of essential visual-artistic structural phenomena. What you wish to bring to the surface through the power of rigorous scientific discovery is already to be found in the human example, with such spontaneity, clarity, and ease that it is not the solidity and applicability of the theory that matters but the integrity of the artist's personality, which must be followed and respected in its boldness and uniqueness of exploring the horizon of visual creation. In this case, scientific thinking merely obstructs the direct contact between the author and the viewer and must give way to the naturalness of experience.

However, not all children are born into families of artists, where they can receive a creative education with attention, patience, love of beauty, and respect for creation. Such bonds have an intimate and spiritual nature that cannot be replicated instrumentally in the pedagogical environment without the model of deeply human and artistically formative personalities. And yet, how can we pedagogically deepen our knowledge of the visual artistic act beyond its workaday routine and beyond its usual theoretical landmarks? How can we understand this interiorization of the artistic act without external prejudices? A cup of coffee and a walk in the park for inspiration are not enough. They are only the spur to participation. Scientific discovery also has a say here. Scientific theory strengthens the human example of the artist or teacher and helps them communicate more coherently and openly with the viewer or student, deepening the mystery and story of the creative pathways in their lives. These have their initiatory role, but the formation of scientific reasoning-based thinking offers the possibility of clarifying confusing notions and developing a formative and self-forming perspective with varying degrees of structural essentialization, which we do not have today. In addition, such thinking can resolve the contradictions of schools and socio-artistic framework by proposing a more comprehensive cultural horizon - both historical and contemporary - open to synthesis and structural and cultural-semantic essentialization. The uniqueness of the artist and his work are not defined by isolation but by lucidity and power of exploratory penetration, which he must also transmit to the viewer who follows him on the path of creation.

In the past expositions we talked about the structural properties and relations that support the VISUAL SPACE: COLOR and IMPLICITE MOTION. They help deliver the MORPHOLOGICAL MODEL. Beyond this, applying the MORPHOLOGICAL MODEL involves his retrieval among the compositional landmarks of visual THEMES. Although we believe the themes are free of any norm of shaping, it is not entirely true because they have a particular and prototypical overall morphological structure that sustains the recognized and represented objects and helps to identify the correspondent NATURAL SCENE directly or indirectly visualized.

SPACE is not an external stimulus. It is an internal processual horizon of grounding the external and internal reality through COGNITIVE (1) and CORTICAL MAPS (2). The object and environment that we model and visualize directly are not SPACE itself but stimulating, egocentric, and allocentric external landmarks (3) of orientation and memory of the inter-individual and corporal-cognitive communication activity. It is through them that we constitute our bodily identity and find ourselves together in the COGNITIVE CHARACTER of the ecological and social environment of the place and time in which we live (4). We thus ensure not only the needs of everyday life but also the civilizational and cultural continuity of the community of which we are part (5). The internal basis of the process of spatialization and long-term memory is the locomotor COGNITIVE MAPS, processed in the hippocampus and medial entorhinal cortex. These are the most scientifically and experimentally investigated at present. Basically, they function as a network of coordinates made up of points isometrically arranged around the body, which are internally activated by the lighting of GRID CELLS when the individual passes through the respective place in the network, in the locomotor physical perimeter that he occupies (6).

The relationship between COLOR and MOVEMENT provides the spatial character of the compositional structure. We have two relational-spatial resolutions: VOLUMETRIC and MORPHOLOGICAL.

1) The VOLUMETRIC resolution aims at reconstructing the external stimulating environment or object - called stimulating MODEL - as an external three-dimensional geometric and physical reality. In the theory of visual perception, the process is called mental rotation (7) and is internally supported by the activity of the Brodman area, cortical area V5, and primary parietal and contralateral motor cortex (8). In academic practice, the VOLUMETRIC resolution develops through the systems of representation: optical perspective, aerial perspective, and anatomy, unified by lightning (9). These correspond in Renaissance structural theory to the notions of DECORUM (decoro it.), CAMPO, and FIGURA or PERSONA. They express thematic categories based on the object's recognition, specific to the ecological-visual niche, projected in the human VISUAL FIELD. In conclusion, through mental rotation, proper to the exterior and VOLUMETRIC relationship, the human individual establishes the external visual landmarks of locomotor and motor-corporal COGNITIVE MAP, which help him to orient and access the external environment through the sense of sight.

2) The MORPHOLOGICAL resolution has as finality the internal setting of the sense of the object inside the FORM to achieve the interior selective-attentive guidance of the viewer along the structure of the static image, shaped and represented in a mono-dimensional and iterative way. In the theory of visual perception, the internal neural processes that underpin the interior shaping of the MORPHOLOGICAL module are the collinearity effect(10), the effect of symmetrization (11) – processed at the level of cortical areas V1, respectively v3 and V4 – and the effect of implicit motion (12) – found at the level of cortical area V5. They contribute to displaying the sense of the MORPHOLOGICAL OBJECT as a cortical target in the morphological band. However, the constructive development of MORPHOLOGICAL properties happens by correlating the mentioned effects with the compositional surfaces, identified in the CORTICAL MAPS of the VISUAL FIELD as a RETINOTOPICAL projection (14). Although activated by specific lucrative and visual stimulatory traces - or stimulatory physical traces - in itself, the visual FORM is not a stimulus or an external property of visual stimuli. It is a topological foundation for the integration and relational shaping of the cognitive-visual material at the level of the pre-frontal lobes (15). Here, the exterior landmarks of surfaces are analytically represented by CONSTRUCTION and organized by attentive selection inside the synthetic and interior representation of the visual FORM by reference to the IMPLICIT MOVEMENT of the emphasized object.

In artistic critique, from an intuitive point of view, the MORPHOLOGICAL spatial tendency can be related to SYNTHETISM, currently associated with H. R. Rookmaker (16) with Gauguin and the Nabis. However, in occidental-European art, the SYNTHETIST concerns overcome the limits of anti-naturalism in the art of Gauguin, the Nabis, and Romanticism. They extend in the past, parallel with the VOLUMETRIC practice, also on the baroque, Venetian Renaissance and of the Low Countries that is till the perfecting of linseed oil painting in the first part of the 15th century, and even beyond this moment. Also, we can assign it to currents with a positivist and scientific orientation from the last part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, like impressionism, pointillism, fauvism, and cubism. From this extended perspective, ABSTRACTIONISM is a direct consequence of the SYNTHETIST structural and historical conception expressed by Maurice Denis in the definition of the painting as ”a flat surface covered by colors disposed in a certain order” (17). Consequently, the abstractionist painters gave up on the exterior representation – both VOLUMETRIC and naturalistic appearance of the image – and adopted the most geometric figuration, rectilinear and rectangular, applied to the concrete nature of the working support. Therefore, inevitably, within the MINIMALISM, painters like Marc Rothko or Barnet Newman arrived more or less intentionally at the basic morphological model (18).

In conclusion, the VOLUMETRY is comprised visually of mental rotation with an exterior navigational finality and an external orientation of body locomotion motricity due to the COGNITIVE MAP (19) – while the MORPHOLOGY is comprised as an interior representation of composition due to the internal attentive-visual orientation of the viewer in the CORTICAL MAP of the VISUAL FIELD retinotopic projection. Maybe this is why it is more convenient to develop the motor-lucrative and VOLUMETRIC way of the artistic and visual act, with a diminished MORPHOLOGICAL censure and mainly intuitive, because it grounds us in an exterior reality, more physically accessible than the interior and implicitly imaginative reality of selectively-attentive MORPHOLOGICAL dynamics. Now, we don’t have the structural possibilities of absolute and hierarchical determination of the dominant spatial character within the composition of works of art images. Scientifically, we have to rely on investigative tests and experiments to show the activation of specific neural formations. It is a correct solution but contributes only partially to the purpose of free visual-artistic practice and observation. It doesn’t happen by a simple exposure to visual stimuli of the viewer, but it is a complex act of learning by reception and visual feedback. That’s why I believe it is more appropriate to study the compositional SPACE on images of works of art with a dominant MORPHOLOGICAL nature – selected intuitively in the present text – and by comparison between works with VOLUMETRIC nature and MORPHOLOGICAL one – in a future presentation.

The classification of pictorial THEMES of investigated works of art does not directly depend on the SPATIAL approach of the author. We can have both VOLUMETRICAL and MORPHOLOGICAL approaches for each theme. However, we can say that the exterior VOLUMETRIC representation favors the academic hierarchy of minor genres (landscape, still life and portrait, bust, with hands and entire figure) and major ones (composition with figures, like the compositional portrait with hands and scenes with different subjects) because there is an increased representational, intellectual and constructive complexity through the major themes (20). Despite this, from a MORPHOLOGICAL point of view, the THEMES are not about the skill of VOLUMETRIC representation, nor about the semantic complexity of the work, but about the attentive clarity in the organization of the structural material (21). A major theme must have the clarity and morphological simplicity of a minor theme without neglecting its scenic nature. The THEME is the first-place categorization of NATURAL SCENES due to internal and ecological visual recognition of objects and their stimulatory properties (22). The development of the MORPHOLOGICAL MODEL differs from the morphological deepening of a work of visual art. The study of a complex composition of a work of art does not resume itself just to the relation between the basic properties and correspondent effects materialized at the level of V1, V3, V4, and V5 areas extracted as a perceptive target from the cortical projected image. The NATURAL SCENE involves a cortical and detailed retinotopic projection of the visual field and a fast categorization (23) based on structural landmarks of assemble, in which we can find the relations between the properties of the basic morphological model. The direct-observational deepening of NATURAL SCENES is a complex task that we can achieve only after multiple applications with comparative structural and thematic research. Also, their thematic categorization involves the processing of NATURAL SCENES in non-striate cortical areas of VENTRAL PATHWAY for stimulatory object recognition as objects (24), architectural (25) and natural places (26), faces (27), human hands (28), and biological human body movement (29) – both in general and their particular properties (30). The representation of these recognized objects corresponds in the structural theory of the Renaissance with the notions of DECORUM (decoro it.), CAMPO, FIGURA, or PERSONA, and with the main themes of the academic genres like the still life, the architectural and natural landscape, the bust, with hands, and entire figure portrait, and, respectively, the composition with characters. For certain terms, we need an erudite presentation to clarify the etymological origin and domains they came from, as follows.

• DECORUM used by Leonardo resembles the notion found in the treatises of Vitruvius and adopted by Alberti, of architectural order, unity, and suitability of characters' proportions with the structure of buildings represented in the composition (31). Alberti and Poussin also adopted it with the poetic meaning of appropriating characters' representation with their age, social status, and nationality, as recommended by Horace and Dolce (32). Also, as the scenographically and theatrical meaning of gestures, mimicry, and clothes adequacy of characters to their narrative, social and age status, we found the use of the term in the realization of the literary dialogues written by Baltazare Castiglione in Il Cortigiano and used as a model of mannered diplomatic discussions and behavior at the renaissance courts (33). Synonymous with the Greek term prepon – used by Aristotle in Retorica – DECORUM has his origin in the letters of Cicero about rhetoric with the meaning of total matching of speech parts with his semantic content to persuade the auditorium, and can be synonym with many other notions used in this domain (34). In the French academic ambiance, the term was assimilated with vraissemblance, which attenuates the need for compositional unity in the naturalistic sense of representations (35).

• CAMPO is the technical term – used with piano – that defines the composition in Renaissance next to FIGURA and PERSONA, and even in Pre-Renaissance. Thomas Putfarken (36), following a study of the term realized by Jeroen Stumpel (37), identifies three types of CAMPO:

1) Gilded background, present in Pre-Renaissance (37);

2) Background found in the interval between characters, painted with features of aerial, aquatic, vegetal, geological or terrestrial landscape, with the purpose to emphasis the characters (36);

3) The background expressed by the term piano refers to the horizontal plane sustaining the characters; it can be a suggestion of the soil with geological details or a perspectival pavement that makes possible the development of architectural details – casamenti – or of characters of different heights in depth (37). Present also in the agreements upon frescoes works, but also in the anecdotes about the activity of Italian painters, the evolution of the term CAMPO offers the transition of the artistic and technical mentality of the Italian ambiance in painting from execution attached to the price of working materials – like gold and ultramarine – to the appreciation of drawing innovations, chromatic relations, and representation. Therefore, the most cherished background by Vasari, under the influence of Michelangelo, ends up being the one with characters with different degrees of fading and integration in the obscurity of the distant plane, like the one practiced by Rosso Fiorentino in the Wedding of the Virgin (37).

• PERSONA is found alongside FIGURA to specify a character's resemblance to a particular person in the subject's narrative or the author's contemporary reality in a genre scene or portrait. The term's origins can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers, who used it to signify the mask of a particular character worn by an actor. Some Latin authors identify a homonymy with the syntagm per-sonare (lat.), indicating the expression of the theatrical character's personality through his verbal exteriorization during the theatrical and poetic performance (38). In the 20th century, the term appeared in Gustav Jung's theory of personality and was defined as a metaphor for the individual's availability to the outside world. It is opposed to the shadow, or the reverse of the mask, as everything the individual does not accept about himself (39). In contrast to PERSONA, FIGURE represents the actual modeling of the characters, with their anatomy, proportions, gestures, and appearance of age (40).

The actual application of the tools of structural research of visual artworks implies following a series of steps and operations necessary for the spatial-compositional processing of the IMAGE. But what is IMAGE? We can consider:

• The STIMTIMULUS-IMAGE as the working traces laid down on the working support, or their reproduction, by printing techniques. They have no relevance in themselves, constituting the raw visual information;

• The TARGET-IMAGE as the result of perceptual processing of visual information in the lateral geniculate nuclei and integrated as a perceptual target in visual areas V1 and V5. It is the landmark initiating the filtering and processing of the constructive and morphological maps of the NATURAL SCENES, retinotopically projected onto the visual cortex as the CORTICAL MAP of the VISUAL FIELD. Within them, recessive quantitative surface variations are simplified by integrating them into the overall – dominant quantitative trends. This leads to synthetic maps in which the dimensional categories of the surfaces and their morphological character vectorially established. Thus, the STAGES proceed as follows:

1) The TARGET-IMAGE found in NATURAL SCENES with thematic character;

2) The map of the chromatic indexes resulting from the filtering of the reproduced image;

3) The map of the continuity for the quantitative-chromatic dominants of the overall surfaces;

4) The map of the continuity for the directional dominants of the boundaries of the overall surfaces;

5) The map of deconstruction of concave ensemble surfaces and vectorization of their constructive components;

6) Collinearization map of ensemble surfaces within morphological bands;

7) The map of the variation of distances in the IMPLICIT MOVEMENT of morphological components;

8) The map(s) of the morphological iterations and the equilibrium of the IMPLICIT MOVEMENTS of infra-iterative and trans-iterative morphological objects.

The reduction stages also advance towards the essentialization of the IMPLICIT MOTION as a morphological landmark of selective attention. We can categorize the stages into representations of CONSTRUCTIVE-ANALYTIC aspects, which can be traced along the ventral pathway by:

- chromatic identification;

- quantitative-chromatic identification;

- identification of dominant directions through quantitative contiguity;

- identification of basic surfaces; and in MORPHO-SYNTHETIC representations, which can be traced according to V1, V3, and V4 activity by:

- collinearization of the basic surfaces;

- symmetrization of basic surfaces;

and in the perspective of dorsal path initiation through V5 by:

- the sense of the basic surfaces.

In the following applications, the ANALYTICAL steps comprise the mapping of constructive components, followed by their deconstruction, vectorization, and dimensionalization. The SYNTHETIC steps are related to the processing of morphological components - object and background - by implicit collinearization and dynamization of the constructive components.

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(3) Egocentric & Allocentric Landmarks

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(4) The Cognitive Map of the Ecological and Social Environment

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(5) Civilization and Cultural Continuity by Decorative Models

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(6) Grid Cells

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(9) Representation Systems in the Academic Program

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(10) Colinearity

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(11) Symmetry

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(12) Implicit Movement

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(13) Recognition Objects (Surfaces) Along Ventral Pathway

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(14) The retinotopic projection of the Visual Field

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Press, W. A., Brewer, A. A., Dougherty, R. F., Wade, A. R., & Wandell, B. A. (2001). Visual areas and spatial summation in human visual cortex. Vision research, 41(10-11), 1321–1332. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0042-6989(01)00074-8

Wandell, B. A., Dumoulin, S. O., & Brewer, A. A. (2007). Visual field maps in human cortex. Neuron, 56(2), 366–383. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2007.10.012

(15) Thinking Processes at the Level of Prefrontal Lobes

Fang, Z., Dang, Y., Ling, Z., Han, Y., Zhao, H., Xu, X., & Zhang, M. (2024). The involvement of the human prefrontal cortex in the emergence of visual awareness. eLife, 12, RP89076. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.89076

Freedman, D. J., & Assad, J. A. (2006). Experience-dependent representation of visual categories in parietal cortex. Nature, 443(7107), 85–88. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05078

Rahnev, D., Nee, D. E., Riddle, J., Larson, A. S., & D'Esposito, M. (2016). Causal evidence for frontal cortex organization for perceptual decision making. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(21), 6059–6064. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1522551113

Rainer, G., & Miller, E. K. (2000). Effects of visual experience on the representation of objects in the prefrontal cortex. Neuron, 27(1), 179–189. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0896-6273(00)00019-2

Vishne, G., Gerber, E. M., Knight, R. T., & Deouell, L. Y. (2023). Distinct ventral stream and prefrontal cortex representational dynamics during sustained conscious visual perception. Cell reports, 42(7), 112752. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2023.112752

Wood, J. N., & Grafman, J. (2003). Human prefrontal cortex: processing and representational perspectives. Nature reviews. Neuroscience, 4(2), 139–147. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1033

(16) Synthetism

Rookmaaker , H.R (1959). Synthetist Art Theories. Genesis and Nature of the Ideas on Art of Gauguin and His Circle. Amsterdam, Swets & Zeitlinger.

(17) Definition of Painting

Denis, M. (1920) : Théories 1890-1910: Du Symbolisme et de Gauguin Vers un Nouvel Ordre Classique, quatrleme edition, L. Rouart et J. Watelin (ed.). 6 Place, Saint-Sulpice, 6 Paris-VI e M C M X X.

(18) Discovery of the Basic Morphological Model

Hess, T. B. (1971). Barnett Newman. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Space: p.73.

Mondrian, P. (1986): The New Art-The New Life: The Colected writings of Piet Mondrian, Edited and Translated by Harry Holtzman and Martin S. James, G. K. Hall & Co. Boston. p. 196, 197; p. 392,393.

Newman, B., O'neill, J., & McNickle, M. (1990). Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews. Space: p. 249-250; object, subject: p. 253; whole form: p. 254.

Rothko M. (2006). Writings on Art, Edited and with an Introduction, Annotations, and Chronology by Miguel Lopez-Remiro. Yale University Press, New Haven and London. p.75-79; p. 119.

(19) Ecological Locomotory Purpose of Mental Rotation

Campos-Juanatey, D., Tarrío, S., & Campos, A. (2021). Mental rotation and spatial orientation in maps. North American Journal of Psychology, 23(4), 677–688.

David L. Weatherford: Representing and Manipulating Spatial Information from Different Environments: Models to Neighborhoods in Cohen, R. (Ed.). (1985). The Development of Spatial Cognition (1st ed.). Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203781654, Ch. 3, p. 43.

Farrell, M. J., & Robertson, I. H. (1998). Mental rotation and automatic updating of body-centered spatial relationships. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24(1), 227–233. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.24.1.227

Gardony, A. L., Taylor, H. A., & Brunyé, T. T. (2014). What does physical rotation reveal about mental rotation?. Psychological science, 25(2), 605–612. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613503174 https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/mental-rotation-spatial-orientation-maps/docview/2642418051/se-2?accountid=17261

Kozhevnikov M, Motes MA, Rasch B, Blajenkova O (2006) Perspective-taking vs. mental rotation transformations and how they predict spatial navigation performance. Appl Cogn Psychol 20:397-417. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24211

Sasaki, Y., Vanduffel, W., Knutsen, T., Tyler, C., & Tootell, R. (2005). Symmetry activates extrastriate visual cortex in human and nonhuman primates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(8), 3159–3163. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0500319102

van der Zwan, R., Leo, E., Joung, W., Latimer, C., & Wenderoth, P. (1998). Evidence that both area V1 and extrastriate visual cortex contribute to symmetry perception. Current biology : CB, 8(15), 889–892. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0960-9822(07)00353-3

(20) Minor and Major Genres in Academies, Favoring the Majors

Barasch, M. (1985): Theories Of Art: From Plato to Winckelmann, New York University Press, New York & London. p. 342-344.

Belton, R. J. (1996). Art History: A Preliminary Handbook. University of British Columbia. Faculty of Critical and Creative Studies. p. 3-6.

Felibien, A. (1667). Preface. In Conferences de l’academie royale de peinture et de sculpture pendant l’année 1667. A Paris : Chez Frederic Leonard...

Goldstein, C. (1996). Teaching art: Academies and Schools from Vasari to Albers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p.63; p.88.

Walsh, L. (1999). Charles Le Brun, 'art dictator of France'. In Art and its Histories, Academies, Museums and Canons of Art. Perry, G. & Cunningham C. (ed.). New Haven : Yale University Press in association with the Open University. p. 93,94.

(21) Reconsidering the Minor Genres

Boime, A. (1976). The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century. Yale University Press New Haven & London. p. 133-146.

Zimmermann, M.F. (1999). Painting of Nature—Nature of Painting. A. Burmester, C. Heilmann & Zimmermann, M.F. (ed.). In Bayerischen Staats-gemäldesammlungen cat., Munich (Munich: Klinkhardt und Biermann, 1999). pp.18-55.

(22) Natural Scene

Lauer, T., Cornelissen, T. H. W., Draschkow, D., Willenbockel, V., & Võ, M. L. (2018). The role of scene summary statistics in object recognition. Scientific reports, 8(1), 14666. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-32991-1

Scimeca, J. M., & Franconeri, S. L. (2015). Selecting and tracking multiple objects. Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science, 6(2), 109–118. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1328

(23) Rapid Processing

Cohen, M. A., Alvarez, G. A., & Nakayama, K. (2011). Natural-scene perception requires attention. Psychological science, 22(9), 1165–1172. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611419168

Evans, K. K., & Treisman, A. (2005). Perception of objects in natural scenes: is it really attention free?. Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 31(6), 1476–1492. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.31.6.1476

Fabre-Thorpe, M., Delorme, A., Marlot, C., & Thorpe, S. (2001). A limit to the speed of processing in ultra-rapid visual categorization of novel natural scenes. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 13(2), 171–180. https://doi.org/10.1162/089892901564234

Fei-Fei, L., Iyer, A., Koch, C., & Perona, P. (2007). What do we perceive in a glance of a real-world scene?. Journal of vision, 7(1), 10. https://doi.org/10.1167/7.1.10

Greene, M. R., & Oliva, A. (2009). The briefest of glances: the time course of natural scene understanding. Psychological science, 20(4), 464–472. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02316.x

Kihara, K., & Takeda, Y. (2012). Attention-free integration of spatial frequency-based information in natural scenes. Vision research, 65, 38–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2012.06.008

Vanrullen R. (2008). The power of the feed-forward sweep. Advances in cognitive psychology, 3(1-2), 167–176. https://doi.org/10.2478/v10053-008-0022-3

Identification of:

(24) Objects

Bar M. (2004). Visual objects in context. Nature reviews. Neuroscience, 5(8), 617–629. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1476

Gauthier, I., Skudlarski, P., Gore, J. C., & Anderson, A. W. (2000). Expertise for cars and birds recruits brain areas involved in face recognition. Nature neuroscience, 3(2), 191–197. https://doi.org/10.1038/72140

Tanaka K. (1996). Inferotemporal cortex and object vision. Annual review of neuroscience, 19, 109–139. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ne.19.030196.000545

Tanaka K. (2003). Columns for complex visual object features in the inferotemporal cortex: clustering of cells with similar but slightly different stimulus selectivities. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 13(1), 90–99. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/13.1.90

Tanaka, K., Saito, H., Fukada, Y., & Moriya, M. (1991). Coding visual images of objects in the inferotemporal cortex of the macaque monkey. Journal of neurophysiology, 66(1), 170–189. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.1991.66.1.170

(25) Architectural Places

Aguirre, G. K., Zarahn, E., & D'Esposito, M. (1998). An area within human ventral cortex sensitive to "building" stimuli: evidence and implications. Neuron, 21(2), 373–383. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0896-6273(00)80546-2

Choo, H., Nasar, J. L., Nikrahei, B., & Walther, D. B. (2017). Neural codes of seeing architectural styles. Scientific reports, 7, 40201. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40201

Jones R. (2011). Tuning into places. PLoS biology, 9(4), e1001042. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001042

(26) Natural Places

Epstein, R. A., & Ward, E. J. (2010). How reliable are visual context effects in the parahippocampal place area?. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 20(2), 294–303. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhp099

Epstein, R., & Kanwisher, N. (1998). A cortical representation of the local visual environment. Nature, 392(6676), 598–601. https://doi.org/10.1038/33402

(27) Human Faces

Bernstein, M., & Yovel, G. (2015). Two neural pathways of face processing: A critical evaluation of current models. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 55, 536–546. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.06.010

Collins, J. A., & Olson, I. R. (2014). Beyond the FFA: The role of the ventral anterior temporal lobes in face processing. Neuropsychologia, 61, 65–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.06.005

Duchaine, B., & Yovel, G. (2015). A Revised Neural Framework for Face Processing. Annual review of vision science, 1, 393–416. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-vision-082114-035518

Haist, F., Lee, K., & Stiles, J. (2010). Individuating faces and common objects produces equal responses in putative face-processing areas in the ventral occipitotemporal cortex. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 4, 181. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2010.00181

Kanwisher, N., & Yovel, G. (2006). The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 361(1476), 2109–2128. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2006.1934

Pitcher, D., Walsh, V., & Duchaine, B. (2011). The role of the occipital face area in the cortical face perception network. Experimental brain research, 209(4), 481–493. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2579-1

Rossion, B., Caldara, R., Seghier, M., Schuller, A. M., Lazeyras, F., & Mayer, E. (2003). A network of occipito-temporal face-sensitive areas besides the right middle fusiform gyrus is necessary for normal face processing. Brain : a journal of neurology, 126(Pt 11), 2381–2395. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awg241

Scott, L.S., B., S., & Nelson, C.A. (2004). Developmental Neurobiology of Face Processing. In Review of psychiatry series. Casey, B.J. (ed.). (Vol. 23), Ch. 2, 29–68. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publish-ing.

(28) Human Hands

Bracci, S., Ietswaart, M., Peelen, M. V., & Cavina-Pratesi, C. (2010). Dissociable neural responses to hands and non-hand body parts in human left extrastriate visual cortex. Journal of neurophysiology, 103(6), 3389–3397. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00215.2010

Conson, M., Polito, F., Di Rosa, A., Trojano, L., Cordasco, G., Esposito, A., & Turi, M. (2020). 'Not only faces': specialized visual representation of human hands revealed by adaptation. Royal Society open science, 7(12), 200948. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200948

(29) Embodied biological human movement

Bellot, E., Abassi, E., & Papeo, L. (2021). Moving Toward versus Away from Another: How Body Motion Direction Changes the Representation of Bodies and Actions in the Visual Cortex. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 31(5), 2670–2685. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaa382

Lorteije, J. A., Kenemans, J. L., Jellema, T., van der Lubbe, R. H., de Heer, F., & van Wezel, R. J. (2006). Delayed response to animate implied motion in human motion processing areas. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 18(2), 158–168. https://doi.org/10.1162/089892906775783732

Orgs, G., Dovern, A., Hagura, N., Haggard, P., Fink, G. R., & Weiss, P. H. (2016). Constructing Visual Perception of Body Movement with the Motor Cortex. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 26(1), 440–449. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhv262

Urgesi, C., Moro, V., Candidi, M., & Aglioti, S. M. (2006). Mapping implied body actions in the human motor system. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 26(30), 7942–7949. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1289-06.2006

(30) Particular Properties

Donnelly, N., & Davidoff, J. (1999). The Mental Representations of Faces and Houses: Issues Concerning Parts and Wholes. Visual Cognition, 6(3–4), 319–343. https://doi.org/10.1080/135062899395000

Tanaka, J. W., & Farah, M. J. (2003). The Holistic Representation of Faces. In Peterson, M. A. & Rhodes, G. (eds.), Perception of Faces, Objects, and Scenes: Analytic and Holistic. Oxford University Press.

Taylor, J. C., & Downing, P. E. (2011). Division of labor between lateral and ventral extrastriate representations of faces, bodies, and objects. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 23(12), 4122–4137. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00091

Xu Y. (2009). Distinctive neural mechanisms supporting visual object individuation and identification. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 21(3), 511–518. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.21024 Compositional Terms: Decorum:

(31) Vitruvius, Alberti

Di Stefano, E. (2021). Decorum. An Ancient Idea for Everyday Aesthetics?. ESPES. The Slovak Journal of Aesthetics, 10(2), 25-38. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5866405

(32) Horatio, Alberti, Leonardo / Dolce, Poussin, and Others

Haug, A. & Kröger-Hielscher, A. (2023). "The Concept of decorum in the Design of Architecture and Artefacts. Interdependencies of Form and Material". Materialität und Medialität: Grundbedingungen einer anderen Ästhetik in der Vormoderne, edited by Jan Stellmann and Daniela Wagner, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2023, p. 27-50. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110988413-002

Lee, R. W. (1967). Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting. New York, W.W. Norton. p. 228-235.

(33) Castiglione

Falvo, J. D. (1992): The Economy of Human Relations, Castiglione’s Libro del Cortegiano, Studies in Italian culture. Literature in history ; vol. 5, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York. p. 4.

(34) Cicero

Riklius, S. T. (2023). Innovation and Fusion: Sarbiewski’s Th eory of Baroque Literary. In Baroque Latinity: Studies in the Neo-Latin Literature of the European Baroque. Glomski, J., Manuwald, G., Taylor, A. (ed.). Bloomsbury Publishing, Sep 7, 2023. p. 73, 74.

(35) Poussin & Academy

Goldstein, C. (1996). Teaching art: Academies and Schools from Vasari to Albers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 93; p. 235.

Campo, Piano, Casamenti, Figure:

(36) Puttfarken, T. (2000). The Discovery of Pictorial Composition. Theories of Visual Order in Painting 1400-1800. New Haven/London : Yale University Press, p. 110-118.

(37) Stumpel, J. (1988). On Grounds and Backgrounds: Some Remarks about Composition in Renaissance Painting. Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 18, 219.

Persona:

(38) Greek and Roman Origin

Perlman, H. H. (1968). Persona: Social role and personality. U Chicago Press. p. 4.

Sánchez, R.M. (1997). Persona and decorum in Milton's prose, 1997 by Associated University Presses, Inc. p. 35-36.

(39) Psychoanalysis

Kline, P. (1984). Psychology and freudian theory: An introduction. London: Methuen. p. 38-39

Stein, M. (1998) Jung’s Map of the Soul Chicago: Open Court. p. 108-124.

(40) Constructive-Anatomical Cases to Leonardo

SOURCES OF EDITED IMAGES:

PIET MONDRIAN: COMPOSITION WITH YELLOW AND BLUE, 1932

https://www.boijmans.nl/en/collection/artworks/2347/composition-no-ii

NICOLAS DE STAËL: AGRIGENTE, 1954