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?

The Third International Conference on Neuroesthetics, subtitled "Emotions in Art and the Brain," was held earlier this month at the Berkeley Art Museum and tried to get a start at least on answering such questions. It was a showcase for the progress that's been made in figuring out what goes on in the brain when art is seen or made. The fundamental premise of the field, stated by several of the invited speakers, is that every time something out there in the world makes us feel a certain way, it's because some particular bits of our brains are being tickled by it. A close look at a brain (the "neuro" part of the discipline) as it gets lit up by art (the "aesthetics" part) should give us insight into the links that exist between the two.

Form follows function-that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union"
-Frank Lloyd Wright

"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
- Buckminster Fuller

"But it isn't Easy," said Pooh to himself, as he looked at what had once been Owl's House. "Because Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get _you_. And all you can do is go where they can find you."
- A.A. Milne, "The House At Pooh Corner"

Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
- Bertrand Russell

Article in NY Times Travel section

In the words of Alan Watts:

"...to watch the sun sink behind a flower-clad hill, to wander on and on in a huge forest without thought of return, to stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands, to contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds... When the vision is the sudden perception of something mysterious and strange, hinting at an unknown never to be discovered..."

It Must be Beautiful - Great Equations of Modern Science
Copyright 2002
Edited by Graham Farmelo

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
- M. C. Escher

The passion for science and the passion for music are driven by the same desire: to realize beauty in one's vision of the world.
- Heinz Pagels

"Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness.
It's in our hands."
- Cathy Better

If you try to make something beautiful, it is often ugly. If you try to make something useful, it is often beautiful.
- Oscar Wilde

Do not all charms fly
At the touch of cold philosophy?
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine–
Unweave a rainbow...
- John Keats

The Geometry of Art and Life
Copyright 1977
By Matila Ghyka

The Divine Proportion - A Study in Mathematical Beauty
Copyright 1970
By H. E. Huntley