Art of the Old Brain

Art of the Old Brain
10:30 mins

Lye understood the appeal of art that was neat, elegant and intellectually complex – the art of ‘the new brain’ as he called it - but his own preference was for art made in a spirit of freedom, spontaneity, and risk-taking – the art of ‘the old brain’ (or unconscious mind). Like the Surrealists (with whom he exhibited in the 1930s), he sought to generate new kinds of imagery through the process of ‘doodling’ or ‘automatic drawing’. He related strongly to ‘old brain’ artists such as Miro and Dubuffet, and admired those such as Monet, Matisse and Picasso whose style became even freer as they got older.

Lye’s conception of the ‘old’ and ‘new brain’ was based not only on his experience as an artist but also on his reading of contemporary scientific work on the different levels of the brain by scientists such as Paul D MacLean. The brain has a more ‘primitive’ level that is closely linked with the body and the senses (and with art), and also a ‘neocortex’ or ‘new brain’ associated with conscious, intellectual forms of thought such as science and mathematics. Lye valued both types of thinking and he was concerned about the tendency for education to put too much emphasis on the new brain. He implies that the free-wheeling art of young children should be admired and enjoyed for its ‘old brain’ energies. Whimsically he compares the children’s pictures with two of his own paintings, Watershed and The King of Plants Meets the First Man (the ‘brain cell’ image that Lye sees as a case of science meeting art or the new brain greeting the old).

Download full pdf 'Notes on the Talks'

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These versions of Lye's slide/tape talks were prepared by:

The Len Lye Foundation, PO Box 647, New Plymouth, New Zealand,
with the assistance of the Govett Brewster Art Gallery / Len Lye Centre
(42 Queen Street, New Plymouth, New Zealand), and Ngā Taonga
Sound and Vision (National Library Building, Wellington).

Research: Evan Webb, Roger Horrocks, Paul Brobbel, Sarah Davy
Digitizing: Olivier Wardecki, Next Technology
Writer: Roger Horrocks