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Bertie du Plessis
IMAGINATION FOR THE BUSINESS MIND Listen to the podcast
In September 2008, Damien Hirst took an unprecedented move for an artist of his status by selling a complete show, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby's by auction and by-passing his long-standing galleries.The auction exceeded all predictions, raising £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a one-artist auction as well as Hirst's own record with £10.3 million for The Golden Calf, an animal with 18-carat gold horns and hooves (pic above right). Click here to read more about Damien
The philosophy behind the course is that the visual arts confront us with the out of the ordinary, even the weird and outrageous. Bereft of our usual intellectual crutches for understanding, we need to think freshly, differently. This approach has now been bolstered by scientific evidence. Gregory Berns, a Harvard neurologist has published this research in popular format, “Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently!”. The gist of his argument is that the easiest route to thinking differently is simply to look at things that you normally won’t look at. Thinking differently begins with a fresh visual experience. His argument, supported with proof from magnetic brain imaging techniques is: The brain is compelled to economise on its use of energy because it is so energy intensive. So, the brain will always use a shortcut and fall back on conventional frameworks. You literally have to shock the brain out of its complacency by confronting it with material that is so novel that it cannot make sense of this new perception from past experience. Secondly the brain defends against spending excess energy by and inbuilt, involuntary reaction against the new. We instinctively fear the new. So, we must not only look at things that we don’t normally look at, we should also consciously train ourselves to overcome our fear of the new. The visual arts with its mix of objects from the past and the new, with its obnoxious challenges to our preconceptions and conventional morality, is ideally suited as such a training ground to think differently.
Philosophy
The most expensive art ever sold at auction (February 2010). Click here to read more on the sale of the Giacometti sculpture.
Who is your favourite beauty and why?
Another quiz! Pair the great thinkers past and present
1. Aristotle
2. Freud
3. Heissenberg
4. Euclid
5. Pythagoras
2. Freud
3. Heissenberg
4. Euclid
5. Pythagoras
A. Einstein
B. Socrates
C. Darwin
D. Plato
E. Gödel
B. Socrates
C. Darwin
D. Plato
E. Gödel