With the original release of Vision and Art in 2002, Harvard professor Margaret Livingstone successfully bridged the gap between science and art, exploring how great painters fool the brain: why Mona Lisa’s smile seems so mysterious, or Monet’s Poppy Field appears to sway. In the revised and expanded edition, Livingstone presents two new chapters of her latest observations, has substantially expanded other chapters, and updates the rest of the existing text with new insights gleaned from her ongoing research, bringing the book to the cutting edge in the field of neuroscience. Accompanying Livingstone’s lively prose are many charts and diagrams that lucidly illustrate her points, as well as in-depth analyses of the phenomena found in major works of art. Be it the explanation of common optical illusions or the breakdown of techniques painters use to create those illusions, Vision and Art provides a wealth of information for artists, scholars, and scientists alike.

A Harvard neurobiologist explains how vision works, citing the scientific origins of artistic genius and providing coverage of such topics as optical illusions and the correlation between learning disabilities and artistic skill.

The exchange of art provides a vehicle for creative interaction between East and West, a process in which great civilizations preserve their own character while stimulating and enriching each other. Here scholar Michael Sullivan leads the reader through four centuries of exciting interaction between the artists of China and Japan and those of Western Europe. 24 color plates. 174 halftones.

EDUCATION / Arts in Education

This title presents a celebration of vision, of art and of the relationship between the two. Artists see the world in physical terms as we all do. However, they may be more perceptive than most in interpreting the complexity of how and what they see. In this fascinating juxtaposition of science and art history, ophthalmologists Michael Marmor and James G. Ravin examine the role of vision and eye disease in art. They focus on the eye, where the process of vision originates and investigate how aspects of vision have inspired - and confounded - many of the world's most famous artists. Why do Georges Seurat's paintings appear to shimmer? How come the eyes in certain portraits seem to follow you around the room? Are the broad brushstrokes in Monet's Water Lilies due to cataracts? Could van Gogh's magnificent yellows be a result of drugs? How does eye disease affect the artistic process? Or does it at all? "The Artist's Eyes" considers these questions and more. It is a testament to the triumph of artistic talent over human vulnerability and a tribute to the paintings that define eras, the artists who made them and the eyes through which all of us experience art.

How science changed the way artists understand reality Exploring the Invisible shows how modern art expresses the first secular, scientific worldview in human history. Now fully revised and expanded, this richly illustrated book describes two hundred years of scientific discoveries that inspired French Impressionist painters and Art Nouveau architects, as well as Surrealists in Europe, Latin America, and Japan. Lynn Gamwell describes how the microscope and telescope expanded the artist's vision into realms unseen by the naked eye. In the nineteenth century, a strange and exciting world came into focus, one of microorganisms in a drop of water and spiral nebulas in the night sky. The world is also filled with forces that are truly unobservable, known only indirectly by their effects—radio waves, X-rays, and sound-waves. Gamwell shows how artists developed the pivotal style of modernism—abstract, non-objective art—to symbolize these unseen worlds. Starting in Germany with Romanticism and ending with international contemporary art, she traces the development of the visual arts as an expression of the scientific worldview in which humankind is part of a natural web of dynamic forces without predetermined purpose or meaning. Gamwell reveals how artists give nature meaning by portraying it as mysterious, dangerous, or beautiful. With a foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson and a wealth of stunning images, this expanded edition of Exploring the Invisible draws on the latest scholarship to provide a global perspective on the scientists and artists who explore life on Earth, human consciousness, and the space-time universe.

A 50-year-old classic, which was revised and expanded in 1974. Explains how the eye organizes visual material according to psychological laws.