abvg,

After my last post, I had resolved to leave the forum. But I'm so completely put-off by what you did in your BRAIN WARS post - together with the fact that Ilia apparently swallowed your whole theatrically staged right-brain/left-brain art-paradigm "hook, line and sinker" - that I feel compelled to not let it go without a more in-depth commentary.

You've obviously lifted the bulk of your thesis almost verbatim - margin notes inclusive - from Betty Edwards' perennial bestseller "Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain". I could also quote from this book, which I possess now for over ten years. But no need to worry, I won't - my copy is the German version and I don't want to go to the trouble of translation (I will say, by the way, that the German version sounds far better than the original - if this is imaginable.)

Further, on the basis of the above, there is no evidence that you've ever laid your hands on a book by Roger Sperry - let alone a single more recent study in the area of brain research. I even suspect that you derive your idea that since you are a painter, you express yourself in writing better with pictures than words (as you wrote in one of your posts) from Edwards' quote from George Orwell (you know the one I mean).

Have you ever tried to use Edwards' book as a teaching aid in an adult drawing instruction course? I have. And I'll tell you what you'll find if you do. The book is practically useless for adults whose perceptual (gestalt) capacities were damaged or impaired before the age of puberty - as is the case with the majority of people. In her book Edwards gives us, naturally, her "success stories" - but one has no knowledge whatsoever concerning the students who failed to "learn how to draw", nor does one have any idea over the early experiences of those students who were, thanks to Edwards, able to unleash their dormant "creativity". And you talk about fraud?

But this is not to suggest that Edwards' book is fraudulent! (well, not deliberately fraudulent). No, Dr. Edwards is first and foremost a respected art pedagogue, who I assume has only the success and wellbeing of her students uppermost in mind. "Drawing From the Right Side" IS, nevertheless, totally misleading for the scientifically uninformed - but especially for those already duped by the peculiarly American, "New Age" tripe concerning "creativity". And it should be more than obvious that Edwards has made a nice little profit - mucho $$$$$$ - from everybody and their pet canary who mistakenly equates "being able to draw like Ingres" with "being a creative person". Edwards' book finally has little to say about what I'd call genuine creativity (tending to be a little less popular than what Edwards is selling) and practically nothing to say about art - except in the most rudimentary sense imaginable. The huge success of "Drawing From the Right Side" - with its "old master" illustrations to give it just the right note of authenticity - should more be seen as a symptom of the progressive loss in western culture of a sound relation to "art" and "creativity" transcending the purely technical than as some kind of supreme corrective to "The Death of Painting/Autonomous Art". You'll get a tremendous amount more out of what the psychologist Abraham Maslow had to say about human creativity in "Toward a Psychology of Being" written over thirty-five years ago. And what is most important, in contrast to Edwards' bestseller, "Toward a Psychology of Being" is scientifically reliable. Maslows study also has the virtue of being written in an elegant, accessable fashion understandable for the non-specialist - without over-simplification.

-David