Lichtgedanken 03

Rubrik 68 During last year’s Jena University Summer Party, anyone who took a look at the small art exhibition in the canteen on Philosophenweg was bound to be attracted by the abstract compositions framed in heavy, valuable wood. Their crea- tor, Prof. Christoph Redies of Jena University Hospital, was always to be seen nearby. The professor of Anatomy was very happy to answer the call for University staff to exhibit their photographs and paintings in the Summer Party’s ar- tists’ studio. Redies not only showed watercolours, oil pain- tings, pastels and etchings, but also set up a video installa- tion and displayed a collection of his scientific publications. The topic was Experimental Aesthetics. With great enthusi- asm, he explained his research to a large number of visitors. »I would like to find out what constitutes the structure of a beautiful piece of art,« explains Christoph Redies. »What does a picture have to be like in order to be considered aesthetically pleasing?« This question has always preoccu- pied the 59-year-old professor, just as art has always been an integral part of his life. The son of international art dealers, who ran a gallery for modern art in Düsseldorf, Redies be- gan painting at the age of 16. The self-taught artist spent the summer of 1977 in a studio in Paris, but subsequently deci- ded to study medicine in Essen. »I was not ready to cope with the uncertainties of an artist’s existence,« he recalls. However, he does not want to describe his academic choice as simply being a rational one: »I have always been interes- ted in the natural sciences.« He did not necessarily wish to become a doctor, but wanted to keep other options open. After the first years of medical studies in Essen, he consi- dered studying the biological foundations of art. However, in the 1980s the time was not yet ripe for such research. Re- dies specialized in vision research and the molecular basis of brain development. The last year of his medical studies resembled a clinical world tour, taking him to Adelaide in Australia, Boston in the USA and Montreal in Canada. However, practical work in hospitals failed to stimulate his interest in working as a doctor. »After obtaining my licence to practise medicine, I hung up my white coat and never saw patients again,« notes Redies. And so, after finishing his medical dissertation at the Max Planck Institute in Göt- tingen, he wrote a doctoral thesis in neurosciences in Mon- treal, thus obtaining a PhD. After postdocs at the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and Japan’s Kyoto University, he returned to Germany. In 1997 he was appointed Professor of Anatomy at the University of Essen and in 2003 at the FSU. He attributes his success- ful academic career to his research in molecular biology and brain research, as his other research ideas relating to aesthetics were initially seen as fanciful. However, Christoph Redies’s research interests became acceptable at last when the state of Thuringia competed— The art of science and science of art Unlike most medical students, Prof. Christoph Redies never wanted to practise medicine. Instead, from early on in his research career, he wanted to pursue, in a scientific way, his second great passion: art. BY JULIANE DÖLITZSCH Port ait Christoph Redies with one of his abstract works from 2001.