This chapter analyzes the creation of artwork and of aesthetic objects, especially with regard to portrait painting. In this chapter we will start from the definition and function of portraits both as meaning-making objects and utilitarian ones. After this, we will focus on the reasons for which art is created, the modality in which aesthetic objects are created and on defining the artist/creator as an aesthetic expert.

Hello and welcome to a new unit and a new overview! I hope you have enjoyed your journey into neuroaesthetics so far! This chapter proposes something different from the rest of the book, which mainly focuses on problems of perception and the objective/subjective reactions one has to those perceptions. However, this focus of the book mirrors the focus of research. Currently, there are very few studies that focus on problems of creating art in particular or aesthetic objects in general. Steven Brown, for example, stressed out that aesthetic production is completely neglected in research and that, given the fact that creators are those who imbue art with aesthetic features, it would be fundamental to consider the production as well as the perception of art (Brown, 2022, p. 20).

  1. 1.

    Why is the production of art less studied than the perception of art?

  2. 2.

    Why is it difficult to study the creation of art?

Why is it that so little research is devoted to the production of art? One of the reasons is that there are a lot of types of art. If we take the examples of portraits, both Titian’s Self portrait and Salvador Dali’s (1904–1989) portrait of Pablo Picasso(1881–1973), are portraits. Neuroaesthetics tries to use objective ways of analyzing the aesthetic experience and it is plausible to compare these works using aesthetic traits such as symmetry, composition, contrast and so on. But it is far more difficult to compare objectively Tiziano Vecellio (1488–1576), a man living in the 1500s, and Salvador Dali, a man living in the twentieth century. Moreover, it is even more difficult to compare their motivations for painting these portraits and their motivations for choosing the aesthetic and artistic means that they did. The contexts in which these two paintings were created extremely are different and the obstacles and limitations faced by the two artists were different as well. In a neuroaesthetic study, all these variables should be accounted for and their influences studied and explained. In comparison, when studying perception, both paintings are comprised of shapes and colors on a canvas. The number of variables in the case of perception is significantly lower and the area of research is considerably more limited.

Going outside the examples of portrait painting, there are extremely varied forms of art. It is therefore even more difficult to compare the means and motivations of a painter with those of a theatre director. Also, it is a matter of defining the field of neuroaesthetics. There are researchers who argue that art is not the object of neuroaesthetics and that studying art as part of aesthetics is a stereotype from the Renaissance. They say that both aesthetics in general and neuroaesthetics in particular are about what we like and dislike, what we find beautiful and ugly, what we find attractive or repulsive and that the object of our studies should be very general issues of preference that apply to any object (Brown, 2022, p. 18). Therefore, a car is an object that has aesthetic properties inasmuch as a sculpture, and neuroaesthetics studies have comparatively researched these aesthetic properties. But how is it supposed to study the creation of a car comparatively with the creation of a sculpture, as the designer of a car has a whole different set of motivations, of techniques and limitations in comparison with the sculptor.

Going forward, from our comparison between a sculpture and a car comes the third difficulty in studying the production of aesthetic objects: the authorship problem. We can safely say that Constantin Brâncuși (1876–1957) is the author of Bird in space, but who is the author, the creator of a car? Is it the designer? Well, what if someone designed the wheels and someone else designed the car body? Also, how about if some of the choices were made by engineers concerned with practical matters such as speed or safety? Also, how do we study differently the process of creation from the process of production? The story gets considerably more difficult if we add in the following example.

I am a horrible sketch artist. Horrible. You can see below my personal rendition of ‘a sketch of a beautiful cow’. Also, below you can see a rendition of ‘a sketch of a beautiful cow’ created by the AI Stable Diffusion. Which do you find more aesthetically pleasing?

We probably agree that in Fig. 1 we have an objectively ugly drawing, especially compared to the AI-generated one. According to the classical Theory of Art, however, the fact that mine is signed and an original makes it more valuable as an artistic and aesthetic object than the one in Fig. 2 (Vartanian & Chatterjee, 2022, p. 29). Also, in the case of Fig. 2, who exactly is the author? If the car is authored as an aesthetic object by the designer, and not by those who build it, then the AI-generated image is created by me as an artistic object, right? That affirmation is difficult to agree with given that we have seen in Fig. 1 what a beautiful cow created by me really looks like!

Fig. 1
A drawing of a cow. It has black spots.

Teodorescu—Personal sketch of ‘a beautiful cow’

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Fig. 2
An illustration of a cow. The cow appears realistic with black spots, and distinct features such as large eyes, and two nearly oval-shaped ears.

Teodorescu—AI sketch of ‘a beautiful cow’

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  1. 1.

    The production of art is more difficult to define as a field of study than the perception of art. The hope is that extensively studying the perception issues will offer us further insights into the way in which art is created.

  2. 2.

    The main issues with studying the creation of art are:

    • It is very difficult to have objective means of comparing different aspects of creation.

    • It is very different to study creators across different fields of creation, keeping in mind that almost everything can be thought of as an aesthetic object.

    • When speaking about creation, the whole idea of authorship, skills used and the definition of an artist become an issue that must be discussed and objectively studied.

We have seen what are the problems with neuroaesthetic research in the production of art and of aesthetic objects. We will try in the rest of the chapter to highlight some answers to these issues. For that, we will use the example of visual art, especially portraiture, because it is easier to delineate examples. We will try to discuss three key aspects: why we create art, how we create art and who creates art. Let’s start with defining what is a portrait:

‘Potraits are a representation or delineation of a person, especially of the face, made from life, by drawing, painting, photography, engraving etc.; a likeness’, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In addition, portraits always engage with the idea of perceiving and representing the sitter’s identity (character, personality, social standing, relationships, profession, age, etc.) (West, 2004, p. 11).

Specific to portraiture is the fact that both the way the sitter looks and his or her identity are unrepresentable as a whole. One will never be able to portray all sides of one’s look, as portraits generally show a partial view of the subject. Also, no one will be able to insert into a given portrait all elements of a subject’s biography, social status and so on. Despite this all, portraiture has historically been seen as a form of imitation and not so much a form of free creation (West, 2004, p. 12). This is why it is easier to discuss the creation of portraits: because it is rarely intended as a social/political/cultural statement on its own. However, all art has a point, as William Sheeley argues:

Artworks always, not often, not sometimes, but always, have a point or purpose. We can loosely call the point or purpose a work expresses its “meaning,” what it is about. A work might be about an idea, an emotion, a sociopolitical comment, the aesthetics of a composition, the content of a self-reflective aesthetic experience, an art theoretical position, or simply the possibility of making art. The meaning of a work is, in turn, embodied in its content, in the set of formal-compositional elements an artist has used to render its subject (whether naturalistic or abstract) in order to articulate what it is about. If we want to know how artworks work we should focus our attention on how artists use the content of a work to express its point or purposes. (Seeley, 2022, p. 133)

In other words, the work of art should be understood more in terms of what artworks do (Tuckwell, 2018, p. 8) and less as something that is worked on (created) by the artist. We can observe in the quote from Sheeley that art either has a point, or has a purpose. This means that artists either create out of passion, out of the need to express something, or because their work will fulfill a certain, almost utilitarian function. Traditionally, art is defined expressly as not having utility, as a higher spirit function, which is a view that originated in the Enlightenment. However, over the past century, art theorists (and people working in neuroaesthetics alike) have reached the conclusion that an object of art always has a purpose. We buy a vase that is created by an artist at ten times the price of a vase produced in a factory not only because it is beautiful, but also because we want to show our status, because we want to commemorate a certain moment or for a thousand other reasons.

Studies have shown that we are actually neurologically predisposed to react to the meaning we derive from aesthetic objects. We are heavily influenced by the context in which we see the work of art and other properties of aesthetic engagement define the contribution of the knowledge-meaning system to the aesthetic perception of an object (Vartanian, & Chatterjee, 2022). This is the case especially in works of art ‘with a point’, where the artist not only has a specific idea or feeling in mind when creating the work, but also usually explicitly shapes the way in which the artwork is presented to the public. Think only of the example of Marcel Duchamp’s (1887–1968) Fountain.

In 1917, Marcel Duchamp smuggled a urinal signed ‘R. Mutt’ into a gallery. The point he wanted to make was that a mundane object (a readymade) would become art simply because it was exhibited in a gallery and because he, as an artist, stated that the object was art.

Hence, the fact that an object is presented in a certain way in a certain manner can transform it from a simple one to an artistic one and vice-versa. This point was actually made extremely clear by another artist, Kendel Geers, in 1993 at a show in Venice, when he urinated on the sculpture, arguing that it was only a urinal and it could be used as such. However, the context and the meaning we ascribe to an object are not the only qualities that the artist instills in his or her work. It turns out that we can automatically differentiate between artistic and non-artistic abstract images. A study conducted by Kana Schwabe and her team discovered that when we are confronted with an abstract piece of art created by an artist and with an abstract piece of art that was had its composition randomized by a computer, subjects could differentiate between the two and only ascribed artistic qualities to the former (Schwabe et al., 2018). The conclusion of the study is that the human brain can detect differences in image properties and from here differentiate between images with and without artistic composition (Menzel et al., 2022, p. 105).

We argue that the difference between the two types of images that are perceived is exactly this intentional quality (the point) of the artwork. As Per Olav Folgerø argues at length, following the work of Vittorio Galesse (see Chapter 1), embodiment and mirror neuron studies suggest that we can mirror the movements of an agent that has performed them even if we are only presented with traces of that movement, as is in the case of Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) painting. Despite the lack of studies in this respect, we support the idea that we can also mirror the intentional aspects behind those traces. In other words, when we see an abstract painting created by an artist we can trace in it the intention of the artist, even without understanding that intention exactly, explicitly. In comparison, when we see an abstract painting created by a computer, we do not recognize any intentionality in it, and therefore find it less valuable, less interesting and less engaging.

A second reason for creating art, as we have stated above, is that it has a purpose, from a utilitarian standpoint. Shearer West, in his book Portraiture, discusses at length the reasons why portraits came to exist and the functions they fulfill. In this case, the creation of portraits is not seen as much as an aesthetic or artistic endeavor, but as a practical one. One should only think of the political function of portraits: when a leader has his portrait reproduced on a variety of media, such as coins, paintings, banners, etc., and has them distributed to the public and posted in a variety of places. These copies of the paintings will not only remind the viewer of the ruler’s appearance, but ‘also could spread that likeness everywhere and give a sense of omnipresence’ (West, 2004, p. 67).

Using portraits for political purposes was a tactic that was successfully used by Roman emperors, who ruled over vast areas without means of mass communication and who used such portraits as a means of creating a sense of unity and loyalty throughout the population.

Another important purpose of portraits was to stand in for the people they represented (West, 2004, p. 59). Having a portrait of a person of power, such as king or queen, was not only practically useful in order to deter conspirators or for documentary reasons, but they were also used in locations such as courthouses, or by local barons or lords in order show that they had been granted power by that person in the portrait. As such, a peasant coming to seek advice or judgment would know that he or she would receive it from a person who is a direct representative of the king, and, through this, of God. It is a powerful symbolic function of portraiture. One last historical function that must be noted is the documentary one. Lacking technological means, such as photography, ‘portraits were the only way of conveying the appearance of an absent or unknown person, and they were a method of preserving the physical appearance of someone that would remain after their death’ (West, 2004, p. 54).

However, the functions come more from a theory of art than from neuroaesthetics. Sadly, it is also highly impractical for neuroaesthetics to study these reasons for creating portraits, since they are historical elements pertaining to art history and anthropology. We have no scientific means to study the phenomenon from a historical neurological perspective. We can, nonetheless, try to draw conclusions from similar contemporary practices, like taking selfies. We find taking selfies as more than a documentary operation with regard to a given moment or context. Given the advent of social media, posting selfies online has become a means of showing off one’s social, financial or moral status. What could be more similar to a noble person creating a portrait of himself, preferably in a flattering context, so that all people who encounter that portrait would be interacting with an idealized image, rather than with the true self, who could harbor defects?!

  1. 1.

    Why do people post selfies on social media?

  2. 2.

    What is the function of selfie editing in this context?

Ma Long and Zheng Lu created a study in which they tried to explore how one’s personal traits, ego networks and Social Networking Services affect selfie posting behavior. They found out that two factors that positively correlate with selfie posting are a higher degree of opposite sex members in their network and a higher network density. Factors that correlated negatively with selfie posting were embeddedness in a strong-tie network. So, those who were in connection with more members of the opposite sex and those who had larger audiences tended to post more selfies, while those who had stronger ties with individuals in their network had a smaller tendency to do so. The study concludes that one’s ego network exerts strong influences on the way we post selfies on social media (Ma & Zheng, 2023).

We can draw on this study and say that selfie posting on social media is linked to one’s image and how he or she wants to project it. Selfies are a form of self-portraiture and it seems to mirror the individualistic mentality that pushed portraiture from the Enlightenment to the present day. Shearer West points out that portraiture as a means of preserving an individual and presenting their specific traits is largely a Western idea, linked to the cult of personality that can be seen in Western culture, in contrast with Oriental philosophy, which is centered on a lack of individuality, and where portraits and similar artistic practices such as mask-making, focus on universal features, emotions and events (West, 2004).

The only note-worthy difference between portraiture and selfie posting with regard to function is the expected impact. Historically, people who commissioned portraits wanted to preserve their image for the future and consolidate their connection to a family past. Contemporary selfie posting behavior focuses on an immediate response and engagement with a large number of people in a short period of time. This observation is in line with a study conducted by Jyotik Bhachech in 2021, which found that ‘selfie and narcissism are closely linked among young adults and a matter of psychological wellbeing during personality development’ (Bhachech, 2021). Thus, one of the main motivations behind taking selfies and especially behind posting them online is the affirmation of one’s identity and, more than that, of the identity that one wants to portray (persona).

Shearer West points out that studies around portraiture must focus also on the degree of similitude between sitter and painting, as reflected in the negotiations that take place between sitter and painter:

all portraits represent something about the body and face, on the one hand, and the soul, character, or virtues of the sitter, on the other. These first two aspects relate to portraiture as a form of representation, but a third consideration is concerned more with the processes of commissioning and production. All portraits involve a series of negotiations—often between the artist and the sitter, but sometimes there is also a patron who is not included in the portrait itself. The impact of these negotiations on the practice of portraiture must also be addressed. (West, 2004, p. 21)

It was mentioned above that one characteristic of portrait painting is that it was a negotiated endeavor and that imitating the image of the sitter was not necessarily the ultimate purpose. The degree to which the painter idealized the sitter’s image or not depended on the relationship between sitter and painter and on the purpose of the portrait—to immortalize or to flatter. Similarly, in the case of selfies, we can observe the use of selfie editing, using filters. These filters can alter the image itself, acting as comical or as a semiotic tool, but can also only make the sitter more similar to beauty standards. With regard to the motivations (functions) of such actions, it is suggested that selfie editing is positively associated with cybervictimization and low self-esteem. It seems that body comparison with celebrities and models, who are considered to define and represent body standards is not correlated with selfie editing, unlike body comparison with peers. Selfie editing is also more frequent among those with social media addiction and considerably less frequent in those who manifest a high level of life satisfaction (Fastoso et al., 2021).

  1. 1.

    Selfies seem to be more frequent in people with narcissism and are a behavior centered around affirming one’s identity.

  2. 2.

    Selfie editing is a process that is more frequent in those with low self-esteem, low life satisfaction and who tend to compare their body with those of their peers.

Returning to the problem of portraits, seen through the lens of selfie editing, we can safely assume that one of the main reasons behind idealizing sitters in portraits is the low self-esteem of the sitters. However, if editing selfies is a way of complying with beauty standards and if portraits are not a means of showing beauty, but status, then ‘portrait editing’ is a means of complying with the ideal socio-political stance of the time. That is why there are painting manuals developed throughout the ages that suggest poses or physiognomical ideals that transmit certain qualities or social positions. Also, we must keep in mind that the portrait is not only about the person who is portrayed, but also about everything else in the painting, from objects to scenery and even text. These all are codified aspects and reflect trends and fashions specific to certain periods and styles. These aspects create a detour from the aesthetic reasons behind the creation of art: sometimes painters do not choose to paint a nose in a certain manner or the sitter in a certain pose or scenery because the painter deems them beautiful or interesting, but because the sitter specifically asks for that or because it was considered fashionable to do so at that time. We can easily study the perceptual effect of a pose or scenery or physiognomy, but it is considerably more difficult to know the reasons behind the artistic choices of the painter.

It has become clear so far why portraits are commissioned and which functions they fulfill. How do artists, however, create beautiful art? And why do they create beautiful art and not ugly art? First, we must remember from previous chapters that beauty elicits activation in our value systems (see introduction). Thus, the artwork will be valued by those who buy it or admire it because this value system is positively activated. Therefore, the artist will naturally try to make his or her works beautiful for practical reasons.

What is interesting is that we will make something beautifully (even in the case of grotesque works or simple day-to-day objects) without specifically trying to achieve that. Mariselda Tessarolo argues that the artist becomes a user of his or her own work in the second he/she decides that the work is finished. At that moment of decision, he or she evaluates the work of art as any other user would (Tessarolo, 2015, p. 145). We would further this claim as such:

The artist is a user of his or her own work with every glance he or she takes at the work. The artist takes the first stroke on a blank canvas and looks at it before the next stroke. He will then perceive the same aesthetic traits as any other user and evaluate them in the same manner. The completed work of art is attained through a succession of perceptions and valuations undertaken by the work’s first user: the artist.

It has been shown that even when given tasks such as thinking about the identity of those in a painting, the viewers make judgments in terms of beauty and the visual cortex reacts to beauty to the same extent as when we make intentional valuations with regard to beauty (Chatterjee, 2022, p. 49). This means that with each stroke of the brush, the artist will make automatic judgments of whether his or her creation is beautiful, even if the artist is focused on technical aspects. The photographer trying to photograph a given sight or animal or person will automatically decide while aiming his or her camera whether the photo he or she takes will be beautiful or not and because we are programmed to value more objects we perceive as beautiful in comparison to non-beautiful objects, the photographer will choose to take the most beautiful shot possible.

This tendency to achieve beauty is not only seen in artists, but in all human activities. If beauty valuation is automatic, it means that whatever one produces, he will choose to make it beautiful rather than ugly. With comparable effort, we will always try to produce a beautiful utilitarian object (a spoon or a car or a washing machine) rather than an object without aesthetic qualities, except in the specific case in which ugliness is a desired quality in that productive activity. Also, given that people value beauty, for the same cost they will always choose to buy the most beautiful variant of the utilitarian object (assuming equal utilitarian technical aspects) possible. If they cost about the same and if they consumed just as much electricity, and had the same dimensions and capacity, people would tend to buy the fridge in Fig. 3 over the one in Fig. 4. Thus, we can speak of a form of beauty-centered socio-cultural selection of the most beautiful objects that further makes us strive to create beauty in all artificial objects.

Fig. 3
A photograph of three miniature fridges. It has a door and a freezing section. Each fridge is painted in a different color.

Teodorescu—Beautiful utilitarian object—a fridge

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Fig. 4
A photograph of a single-door fridge. A Pepsi carton and a can are kept above the fridge.

Teodorescu—Not-so-beautiful utilitarian object—a fridge

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Viewing the creation of aesthetic objects from a socio-cultural evolution point of view can also explain the tendency of artists to search for novel modes of expression. Edward Vessel (Vessel et al., 2022, p. 62) shows that humans prefer viewing scenes that are novel and that have a high degree of interpretability. Artists, in order to have their works be bought and appreciated try to achieve novelty and an unstable semiotic structure in their art. Going back to the idea that artists are the first viewers of their own creation, they will also try to imbue their art with novelty from this perspective, as they will prefer creating art that interests them as viewers, above all.

Vessel also found in the same study (Vessel et al., 2022) that we prefer stimuli that present a learning opportunity for the observer, while also being within the reach of the viewer’s understanding. We started this chapter arguing that artists create because they have a point to express. It is similar to having a thesis and, hence, a learning opportunity for the viewers. This, from the standpoint of the evolution of culture, would prove why the viewers also prefer works of art which are based on a point, in comparison with those which are not.

The last inquiry that we feel we must make is with regard to the creators of art themselves. What makes one an artist? Christy Mag Uidhir and Cameron Buckner propose altering the classical Theory of Art, saying that art is not defined by having artistic properties, but by being created by an artist, possessing an artistic concept and artistic expertise. They also define expertise as those distinctive psychological capacities required for art that we find best represented in master artists (Mag & Buckner, 2014).

The Aesthetic-Concept Theory of Art states that all artworks are based on an aesthetic concept and that possessing or employing that artistic concept is constitutive for the production of that work of art Mag & Buckner, 2014.

Experts that can be considered master artists will possess superior memory capacities compared to non-experts, in the field in which they exercise their activities. The authors of the paper theorize that these capacities are due in part to higher perceptual and conceptual abilities. Experts have long been known to possess superior memory capacities compared to novices and being able to use superior abstract concepts in order to decode and describe what they perceive. Also, these skills are largely trainable, showing that the contribution of innate talents to artistic expertise has been overrated. Even in the respect of higher perceptual abilities, they are thought to be rooted in constant and deliberate practice with the specific stimuli of the art in question. What seems to distinguish expert artists in comparison with artists in other fields is their higher flexibility in their perceptions of the environment and them being less likely to fall into rigid patterns of perceiving. Thus, unlike other fields, where expertise would depend exactly on the acquisition of rigid patterns, ‘expertise in the arts may consist precisely in not falling into such patterns’ (Mag & Buckner, 2014).

In conclusion, perceiving and aesthetic valuation in art is considerably easier to study than the creation of art. Creation is something done in a variety of ways and contexts and is usually context-dependent. Creation has a higher degree of individuation, because beauty itself is a subjective thing, even if its neurological imprint is universal (Di Dio, & Gallese, 2022, p. 23). This makes it harder to isolate and study. However, the findings of neuroaesthetics with regard to perception and valuation can be successfully transferred to theories about the creation of art because artists are themselves perceivers of their own art. Integrating these findings into existing theories from domains such as the philosophy of art seems a valuable direction for neuroaesthetics, at least for the time being.

This chapter highlights the main reasons behind creating art in general and portraits in particular, which are centered around manifesting one’s identity, conveying a message or an idea and socio-political reasons such as standing in for a given person and creating a cult of personality around a ruler. Also, this chapter shows that what lies at the base of creating art is the artist’s exceptional perceptual capacity in his or her art field, coupled with the needed technical skill for attaining the intent of the artist. Moreover, we have highlighted the lack of studies in neuroaesthetics with regard to the creation of art and of aesthetic objects, while also pointing out the main difficulties in designing such studies, mainly the fact that creation is very hard to isolate and define, especially in the field of art.