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A review by marginaliant
The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present by Eric Kandel
3.0
Yikes, this gave me uncomfortable flashbacks to my intro to psych class.
I'm sure this book is good for... someone. But that someone is certainly not me.
The book really needs to be rebranded somehow, maybe "The Age of Insight: What Artists in Fin de siècle Vienna Can Show Us About Our Brains," or something like that. This book spends the majority of its time with early 1900s Viennese artists Klimt and Schiele and only mentions artists that come after them in passing, making the "to the Present" claim of the title kind of misleading (the psychologists and neuroscientists that Kandel references do come up to the presents period, in fairness, but he misses a big opportunity to really delve into contemporary artists approaches to studying and depicting the brain, especially those that incorporate science into their works.) Also, he talks about artists before Vienna 1900 as well, notably Velasquez and Van Gogh, so I'm not sure who came up with this title but it's a hard pass from me, friend.
Sorry to focus so much on the title but I really felt misled by how this book was pitched to me and found it boring to boot. There were only a few sections in here relevant to me and my studies and the rest was so much noise. Kandel also has an irritating way of writing with very grandiose generalizations about who was the most significant artist or who did work that hasn't been repeated to this day and etc. which is distracting and, in some cases, just foolish.
I'm sure this book is good for... someone. But that someone is certainly not me.
The book really needs to be rebranded somehow, maybe "The Age of Insight: What Artists in Fin de siècle Vienna Can Show Us About Our Brains," or something like that. This book spends the majority of its time with early 1900s Viennese artists Klimt and Schiele and only mentions artists that come after them in passing, making the "to the Present" claim of the title kind of misleading (the psychologists and neuroscientists that Kandel references do come up to the presents period, in fairness, but he misses a big opportunity to really delve into contemporary artists approaches to studying and depicting the brain, especially those that incorporate science into their works.) Also, he talks about artists before Vienna 1900 as well, notably Velasquez and Van Gogh, so I'm not sure who came up with this title but it's a hard pass from me, friend.
Sorry to focus so much on the title but I really felt misled by how this book was pitched to me and found it boring to boot. There were only a few sections in here relevant to me and my studies and the rest was so much noise. Kandel also has an irritating way of writing with very grandiose generalizations about who was the most significant artist or who did work that hasn't been repeated to this day and etc. which is distracting and, in some cases, just foolish.