Here’s a teaser from the Washington Post:

Does a Rembrandt portrait or a van Gogh still life press some special buttons in every human being’s brain? Will a red painting speak to us in ways a blue one never could? Are we wired in ways that make every one of us enjoy a smiling bust and shiver at a frowning one?

And if our brains determine how art works on us, what does that tell us about art, or us — could studying the way we’re wired determine crisply that the “Mona Lisa” is truly great, or do we need some history to tell us how a complex painting speaks, or not, to all its different viewers?

–Blake Gopnik, Science, Trying to Pick Our Brains About Art

(via Arts & Letters Daily)