What is art?

You’re at the art gallery and standing in front of a giant canvas. The artist has painted it a thick pitch black save for a brush stroke of egg yolk yellow in the left hand corner. You look at it, don’t like it much and ask yourself, ‘Is this art?’

Professor V.S. Ramachandran, a keynote speaker at Mind & Its Potential in October, is a neuroscientist and well known for his brave and creative hypothesising. Several years ago, he wrote a book, The Artful Brain, in which he presents his own compelling ideas about art.

Intrigued? Then click on this link to hear his thoughts on what is one of the wiliest subjects. It’s not for nothing that Richard Dawkins has described Ramachandran as “a latter day Marco Polo, journeying the silk road of science to strange and exotic Cathays of the mind.”