Eye Candy

Does it look good with this?

That’s a common question when getting dressed, or hanging art.

This is at the core of “retinal art” or art to please the eye.

Part of what is pleasing to the eye is evolutionary.

The world is beautiful because of evolution.

The plants that survived are colorful and vibrant because they attract insects and birds that pollinate them.

Many unattractive plants didn’t survive or must have found a different way to reproduce.

Botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer described in her book, "Braiding Sweetgrass" why two plants, asters and goldenrods grow together. "Those complimentary colors of purple and gold together, being opposites on the color wheel, they’re so vivid, they actually attract far more pollinators than if those two grew apart from one another.”

What we select to hang on the wall or wear is no different.

However, artist Marcel Duchamp shunned “retinal art”. He once stated, “I was interested in ideas – not merely in visual products, I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind.”

Duchamp was an advocate of “Conceptual art” or “art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art object.”

Henri Matisse can make you want to dance.

Rene Magritte can make you question reality.

Pablo Picasso can help start an anti-war movement.

The retina is merely a mirror of evolution, but the mind can think on its own. That’s what these artists captured.

We are not pollinators, but beings with a unique ability to think, explain, and learn.