TOPICS: PSYCHOLOGY AND ART in Fall 2024 (PY3091A)

A particular quality of art is that it creates psychological worlds of their own. Art and aesthetic experience come with passions and tears. There are fantasies and flowers, there is revelation and drama. But there are also intricate processes of perception, reflection, and other forms of cognition. There is wonder, love, and despair. There is the impossible, the unspeakable, the unbelievable. Still, we fall for it, even using images from films, novels, operas, and music videos to conceive of our own lives. Where, then, is the borderline between thought and aesthetic experience? Between life and art? The psychology of art is a wide and surprising field of multidisciplinary research, ranging from neuroscience to sociocultural and historical psychology. This class offers an introduction to it.

It surveys important psychological approaches to art, from the classics of the field (such as Freud, Dewey, Vygotsky, Arnheim, and Bruner) to today’s spectrum of scientific psychology. This spectrum ranges from experimental and neurocognitive research on phenomena of art and language to cultural, narrative, and philosophical psychology. Students are invited to critically think through different notions and models of art and culture and to explore their relevance for human self-understanding. Central to our work will be the encounter with artworks from a variety of genres, types, and media – taking advantage of the resources of Paris as the city of art.