Throughout history, humans have been driven to create visual art. From the earliest cave drawings to the work of world-renowned modern and postmodern artists, our species has an endless capacity to produce, and hunger to consume, visual representations of human existence. Artists and art aficionados have long pondered the source of our endless creativity. How and why do humans thrive on producing art?
In the past two centuries, two theories dominated the philosophy of visual art. First, Paul Cezanne's popularly accepted modernist theory postulated that our creativity stems from subconscious brain activity, while decades later, Marcel Duchamp's postmodernist theory upended modernism, claiming that artistic creativity stemmed unequivocally from our conscious thoughts and acts.
For many years, these theories remained untestable, for without scientific data to enable objective comparative analysis, theorists had no way to examine these strikingly different hypotheses.
In CUVISM, collage artist and art educator George J. E. Sakkal uses precise neuroscientific data to examine the validity of modern and postmodern art theories. Sakkal's research offers the first wholly objective analysis of art theory, resulting in new paradigms that will benefit art educators and students while forcing the established artistic community to reevaluate their methods.
About the Author: George J. E. Sakkal, discoverer and father of CUVISM, has a master's degree in city planning from Harvard University's School of Design and has done postgraduate work in policy studies at the University of Maryland. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer architect in Iran, where he helped design and develop a low-cost housing development and received an official commendation from Iran's Ministry of the Interior.
In addition to his long professional career serving the state of Maryland in various government agencies, Sakkal is a noted collage artist. The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Baltimore City Paper, and The Jewish Times have reviewed his one-man exhibits, and several French galleries and competitions have shown his work.
Sakkal lectures on collage creativity and history, as well as CUVISM, his groundbreaking original art theory based on extensive neuroscientific research.
