From Neurons to Emotions
Authors: Laegring Kasper 
Published: January 2025

In recent years, neuroaesthetics has made its way into art history. Most notably,
art historian David Freedberg and neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese have
promoted a theory based on the discovery of so-called mirror neurons. In
brief, it has been shown that a mirror neuron fires an electrical signal both
when a movement is performed by one’s own body and when the same movement
is observed in another body, in another individual. Gallese calls this
circuit embodied simulation, and Freedberg, either alone or in collaboration
with Gallese, has taken these results and simply identified this effect with
empathy. Building on the theory of embodied simulation, Freedberg has
generally contextualized artworks through a range of neuroscientific findings,
including Antonio Damasio’s as-if body loop and Paul Ekman’s theory of
linking basic emotions with specific facial expressions. Altogether, this paradigm
can be called simulation theory.
Freedberg’s resulting neuroaesthetic theory has some radical implications for
the analysis and interpretation of artworks, even for the practice of art history
itself. This article explores and challenges Freedberg’s assumptions and arguments,
which are sought to be refuted, partly by consulting phenomenology
and the history of emotions. In particular, his peculiar concept of empathy
is rejected, as it is limited to unconscious, pre-cognitive bodily automatism.
The article examines his selection of artworks and finds that the scope of
his theory makes it challenging to apply to modern and contemporary art. It
also takes issue with Freedberg’s atomistic style of analysis, where specific
body segments, forms of gestures, and facial expressions, as well as motifs of movement, are isolated from their compositional context and identified
as the meaning and message of the image itself. Similarly, the article faults
Freedberg’s dependence on Paul Ekman’s tautological attempts to locate a
set of basic emotions in the face, not observed but predefined.
The article then moves on to first provide an account of the promising results
generated by the intersection of art history and emotional history in recent
decades. It subsequently uncovers how Freedberg ignores these recent findings
and how the history of emotions challenges the neuroaesthetic perspective
on emotions in artworks, at least in the form represented by Freedberg
and Gallese.
The article goes on to discuss how Freedberg’s theory fails to distinguish
between art and reality or between art, kitsch, and propaganda. Avant-garde
concepts like estrangement and shock are introduced to demonstrate that
the application of Freedberg’s approach—his peculiar concept of empathy—
would lead to misinterpretations of the aesthetic message of avant-garde art.
Finally, the article argues that Freedberg’s neuroaesthetics lacks aesthetic
explanatory power and fundamentally deprives artworks of meaning. It also
returns to his concept of empathy, which is challenged through both emotional-
historical and neuroscientific approaches. Overall, the article concludes
that while the emergence of emotions as objects of study in art history and
aesthetics is a positive and promising correction to traditional ways of studying
artworks, Freedberg’s theory is of little assistance when explaining the
occurrence and function of empathy and emotions in aesthetic phenomena.