In the late 19th century, modern psychology emerged as a discipline, shaking off metaphysical notions of the soul in favor of a more scientific, neurophysiological concept of the mind. Laboratories began to introduce instruments and procedures which examined bodily markers of psychological experiences, like muscle contractions and changes in vital signs. Along with these changes in the scientific realm came a newfound interest in physiological psychology within the arts - particularly with the new perception of artwork as stimuli, able to induce specific affective experiences. In Psychomotor Aesthetics, author Ana Hedberg Olenina explores the effects of physiological psychology on art at the turn of the 20th century. The book explores its influence on not only art scholars and theorists, wishing to understand the relationship between artistic experience and the internal processes of the mind, but also cultural producers more widely. Actors incorporated psychology into their film acting techniques, the Russian and American film industries started to evaluate audience members' physical reactions, and literary scholars began investigations into poets' and performers' articulation. Yet also looming over this newly emergent field were commercial advertisers and politicians, eager to use psychology to further their own mass appeal and assert control over audiences. Drawing from archival documents and a variety of cross-disciplinary sources, Psychomotor Aesthetics calls attention to the cultural resonance of theories behind emotional and cognitive experience - theories with implications for today's neuroaesthetics and neuromarketing.

About the Author
Ana Hedberg Olenina is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Media Studies at Arizona State University.

Reviews
This book is a fabulous addition to a growing literature on the crucial early twentieth-century exchanges between physiological psychology, aesthetics, and early modernism in the arts, here focused especially on Russia and the early Soviet Union. * Robert Michael Brain, Critical Inquiry *
The book comprises interesting stories from film history and curious examples of transgressions of disciplinary divides. I highly recommend Olenina's stimulating and compelling book as a good and useful read for scholars across disciplines. * Lyubov Bugaeva, Professor in the Faculty of Philology at St. PetersburgState University, Russia. , Projections *
Olenina's groundbreaking book introduces new material that allows for a radical rethinking of Russian modernism. It is a well-researched interdisciplinary history with far-reaching consequences for contemporary aesthetics at large. Very different fields of artistic activity and very different names (both well-known and forgotten ones) suddenly join to form a new and illuminating constellation of facts, works, and ideas, permitting to read the apparently well-known story of Russian avant-garde in a surprising way. In the study, historical material converges with recent attempts in post-Kantian aesthetics to overcome the role of the subject. The author's focus on kinesthetics and depersonalization opens up a possibility of thinking art beyond the limits of representation. Highly recommended for anybody interested in the history of modernism and posthuman (post-subjective) culture. * Mikhail Iampolski, author of The Memory of Tiresias: Intertextuality and Film *
A fascinating study about the expansion of modern psychology into the field of artistic practice and the countermovement of poets and film directors into the explorations of arts' effects and affects, stretching from the experiments of Russian physiologists and theories of Soviet Futurists and Constructivists to the post humanist condition. * Oksana Bulgakowa, , author of Sergei Eisenstein: A Biography *
Psychomotor Aesthetics offers a fantastic addition to the growing collection of scholarly work on modernism in its relation to contemporaneous sciences of the body. Impressive in its geographical reach, the book makes a compelling case for placing corporeal movement (and specifically the bi-directional relation between bodily motion and mental states) at the center of intersecting and competing modernist aesthetic projects, from futurist poetry to Eisensteinian filmmaking. * Michael Cowan, Professor of Film and Media History, University of St Andrews *


Awards
Winner of Winner, Best First Book, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages Winner of the 2021 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, Association for Slavic Studies, East European, and Eurasian Studies.



Book Information
ISBN 9780190051266
Author Ana Hedberg Olenina
Format Paperback
Page Count 408
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 588g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 155mm * 22mm