Viewing art is good for us, but new research may now tell us why — and that therapeutic uses may be better than previously ...

Joel Shapiro died June 14, at age 83. In the final weeks of the sculptor's life, Max Norman interviewed him for a career-spanning profile. What follows are some of Shapiro's reflections on his storied ...

Unlike abstract art, representational art depicts recognizable subjects from the real world, such as landscapes or figures. The work might be executed in a wide range of styles, from impressionism ...

The results shed light on how we respond to art and provide a scientific test of a longstanding idea in art theory. Researchers at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute found that people’s brain activity ...

These paintings are both by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian but display strikingly different styles. The house on the left is ...

Published in the journal PNAS, the study provides insight into how the brain engages with different forms of art and constructs subjective experiences. The researchers say their findings support the ...

Fred Schwaller 04/08/2025 Researchers studying people's brain activity when looking at abstract art have revealed why we interpret blobs of paint on canvas so differently.

The artist’s bulbous tubular forms share something with Abstract Expressionism’s paint-as-paint pours. Like Pollock’s late abstractions, Hankwitz’s art expands beyond the painting’s edges.

It is an art form, and because faces are its subject, it happens to provide double duty for the same part of our brains. We feel we understand someone, identify them, remember them, “read ...