Abstract
Installation art is one of the most important and provocative developments in the visual arts during the last half century and has become a key focus of artists and of contemporary museums. It is also seen as particularly challenging or even disliked by many viewers, and—due to its unique in situ, immersive setting—is equally regarded as difficult or even beyond the grasp of present methods in empirical aesthetic psychology. In this paper, we introduce an exploratory study with installation art, utilizing a collection of techniques to capture the eclectic, the embodied, and often the emotionally-charged viewing experience. We present results from an investigation of two pieces, both part of Olafur Eliasson’s exhibition “Baroque, Baroque” held at the Belvedere museum in Vienna. These were assessed by pre- and post-viewing questionnaires focusing on emotion, meaning-making, and appraisals, in tandem with mobile eye tracking to consider viewers’ attention to both installed artworks and/or to the museum environment. The data showed differences in participants’ emotional states, appraisals, and visual exploration, which together paint a picture of the aesthetic reactions to the works. These differences also showed how viewers’ appraisal strategies, meaning making, and physical actions facilitated relatively more or less deep engagement with, and enjoyment of, the art. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for museum studies, art education, and theory in empirical aesthetics.
Highlights
Installation art represents one of the most important, and one of the more empirically vexing, developments in the last 50 years of art’s production and scholarship (Osborne, 2002; Bishop, 2005)
Capturing Esthetic Experiences With Installation Art bounded sculptures or two-dimensional images placed before a viewer, installation artworks are instead comprised of site-specific pieces that envelop an individual, often incorporating aspects of the existing environment and designed to bring about complex sensory and emotional experiences (MOCA, 2002)
We assessed the following research questions: (1) Do installation artworks produce distinct emotional, evaluative, perceptual, and meaning responses that may be captured and that may differ within-subjects? In addition, (2) How do viewers generally respond to the art, and are specific factors linked to more understanding and enjoyment? in reference to this second question, we considered if certain emotional responses, or general magnitude of emotion, might lead to more positive appraisals
Summary
Installation art represents one of the most important, and one of the more empirically vexing, developments in the last 50 years of art’s production and scholarship (Osborne, 2002; Bishop, 2005). For the empirical researcher or art-interested psychologist, installation artworks are intriguing. They possess features aligning with recent interest in art’s ability to emotionally move and to conceptually challenge the viewer (Pelowski et al, 2017b), as well as raising importance of context (e.g., laboratory vs gallery) or in situ ecologically valid conditions as a major component in the art experience (Pelowski et al, 2017a)
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