Aesthetics in Art: a Neuroscientific View

It has often been claimed that beauty, objectively determined, does not exist because of profound subjective differences in the evaluation of what is beautiful and what is not. Although individual biases are undeniable, it is also rather implausible to maintain that beauty is merely a conventional, experientially determined concept. As Gombrich (1984) wrote, elements in a picture which determine aesthetical experience are ?deeply involved in our biological heritage?, although we are unable to give a conscious explanation to them.