A Scientist's Vision Of Art A Review of Margaret Livingstone's Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing

reviewed. Livingstone's analysis balances genes and experiences in proposing explanations that illustrate commonalities between art and visual perception. The book contributes to the literature that applies visual perception research to artwork, although it fails to probe where artistic visual processing might differ from visual processing per se. Visiting a museum one is often surprised to see how many of the works incorporate modalities studied by visual scientists (e.g., depth perception, blurring, texture, etc.). Yet, when reading the scientific literature one finds scant indication of these overlaps. Similarly, in the art literature one is likely to find these features characterized in terms of context, narrative iconology, intuition, and subjectivity rather than visual science. Margaret Livingston's book, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing is an exception to this. Successfully linking art with visual perception, she demonstrates that commonalities exist between artistic sensibility and our visual apparatus. As a full-fledged neurobiologist, moreover, she has the background to simplify the range of scientific information that demonstrates intersections between visual art and visual science, without explaining away the power of art