LECTURE 8 Oct 30, 2013
"What My Art Tells Me About You" - Knowing Others: Response Art
Main Points:
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Empathy, accurately understanding another’s feelings, entails several phenomena related to the arts including mimicry and imagination
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Ancient wisdom, Gestalt psychology and neurobiology (mirror neuron system) all point to a powerful connection between visual stimuli, emotional response and empathy
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Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, an art educator who taught in the Nazi Terezín ghetto, espoused a philosophy of “aesthetic empathy” – that creating art about someone or something can increase resonance, understanding and intimacy between artist and subject
Video Links:
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Psychologist Carl Rogers describes empathy.
2. A video from the Cleveland Clinic that demonstrates empathy as the power to see the world through another’s perspective.
3. A slideshow of art created by children in Terezín under the direction of their teacher Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. The images show scenes from living in the ghetto and demonstrate the philosophy of aesthetic empathy.
Photos:
Further Information:
From Mirror Neurons to the Mona Lisa, Visual Art and the Brain: http://www.nyas.org/publications/EBriefings/Detail.aspx?cid=c9e01685-57ed-4a63-b917-f3bb862caa2b#
“Coping through Art - Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the children of Theresienstadt”: http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/27/coping_art.asp