For Want of Ambiguity ― Order and Chaos in Art, Psychoanalysis, and Neuroscience

For Want of Ambiguity investigates how the dialogue between psychoanalysis and neuroscience can shed light on the transformational capacity of contemporary art.

Through neuroscienfitic and psychoanalytic exploration of the work of Diamante Faraldo, Ai Weiwei, Ida Barbarigo, Xavier Le Roy, Bill T. Jones, Cindy Sherman, Francis Bacon, Agnes Martin, and others, For Want of Ambiguity offers a new perspective on how insight is achieved and on how art opens us up to new ways of being.

Ludovica Lumer is a psychoanalyst with a private practice in New York City, USA. She earned her PhD from University College London, UK, where she worked in the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology conducting research in the field of neuroaesthetics on the relationship between visual perception and artistic representation. She is the co-author (with Marta Dell'Angelo) of C'e da perderci la testa: scoprire il cervello giocando con l'arte (2010), and (with Semir Zeki) La bella e la Bestia (2011).

Lois Oppenheim is University Distinguished Scholar, Professor of French, and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Montclair State University, USA. Dr. Oppenheim is the author of over ninety papers and the author or editor of thirteen books, including Psychoanalysis and the Artistic Endeavor: Conversations with Literary and Visual Artists (2015), Imagination from Fantasy to Delusion - awarded the 2013 Courage to Dream Prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association - and A Curious Intimacy: Art and Neuro-psychoanalysis (2005).