Another related study — Zeki is nothing if not ambitious — involves an attempt to define connoisseurship. When someone has "an eye" what does it mean in neurological terms? Zeki tells the story of a friend who can tell at a glance whether something is by the artist, by his school, or whether it is a fake. His services are regularly used by museums. "If you talk to him he will say this ‘eye’ comes from a deep knowledge of a whole lot of things working together, color, texture, style, this and that, but it is also what we like to call a gut reaction. He reaches his conclusion almost instantaneously and further study rarely helps. The interesting thing for brain study is this: Is there a particular center in the brain for connoisseurship? Or is it more that when you see a color ascribed to Watteau that is indeed not a Watteau color, your color center immediately reacts abnormally?"

Zeki acknowledges that we are only at the beginning of understanding all these possibilities. Like the cosmologist who will tell you about the material nature of the heavens or the evolutionary biologist who will explain the selfish gene, he argues that the growing field of his discipline does not seek to remove the mystery or wonder of artistic creation. In fact, it deepens it — what a piece of work is man, and in particular his concept-compulsive brain.

A recreational painter himself — "what could be better than to set up an easel and pour yourself a nice glass of wine and see what happens?" — Zeki believes creativity is not just therapeutic. "Art is not a luxury for the brain, it is a necessity."  "Neuroaesthetics" originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' April 2009 Table of Contents.