Components of Aesthetic Experience: Aesthetic Fascination, Aesthetic Appraisal, and Aesthetic Emotion

Slobodan Marković

doi:10.1068/i0450aap

Abstract

In this paper aesthetic experience is defined as an experience qualitatively different from everyday experience and similar to other exceptional states of mind. Three crucial characteristics of aesthetic experience are discussed: fascination with an aesthetic object (high arousal and attention), appraisal of the symbolic reality of an object (high cognitive engagement), and a strong feeling of unity with the object of aesthetic fascination and aesthetic appraisal. In a proposed model, two parallel levels of aesthetic information processing are proposed. On the first level two sub-levels of narrative are processed, story (theme) and symbolism (deeper meanings). The second level includes two sub-levels, perceptual associations (implicit meanings of object's physical features) and detection of compositional regularities. Two sub-levels are defined as crucial for aesthetic experience, appraisal of symbolism and compositional regularities. These sub-levels require some specific cognitive and personality dispositions, such as expertise, creative thinking, and openness to experience. Finally, feedback of emotional processing is included in our model: appraisals of everyday emotions are specified as a matter of narrative content (eg, empathy with characters), whereas the aesthetic emotion is defined as an affective evaluation in the process of symbolism appraisal or the detection of compositional regularities.

Highlights

Aesthetic experience is one of the most important and one of the vaguest and most poorly specified concepts in the psychology of art and experimental aesthetics
We found the following elements important: (a) feedback relationship between perceptual-cognitive and emotional processes (Chatterjee 2003; Leder et al 2004; Nadal et al 2008), (b) the role of attentional mechanisms in aesthetic information processing (Chatterjee 2003; Nadal et al 2008), and (c) the distinction between earlier stages, focused to physical features of an object, and later stages, which are responsible for the appraisal of the semantic aspects of artworks (Chatterjee 2003; Leder et al 2004; Nadal et al 2008; Ognjenovic 1991; Parsons 1987)
In the present paper the aesthetic experience was specified as an exceptional state of mind which is qualitatively different from ‘normal’ everyday mental states

Summary

Introduction

Aesthetic experience is one of the most important and one of the vaguest and most poorly specified concepts in the psychology of art and experimental aesthetics. During the aesthetic experience persons are in the state of intense attention engagement and high vigilance; they are strongly focused on and fascinated with a particular object They lose their self-consciousness, the awareness of the surrounding environment, and the sense of time. (2) The second characteristic refers to the cognitive, that is, semantic, symbolic, and imaginative aspect of aesthetic experience: a person appraises the aesthetic objects and events as parts of a symbolic or ‘virtual’ reality and transcends their everyday uses and meanings (eg, we ‘see’ the bull’s head, not the bicycle parts; in theatre we are worried about the characters, not the actors, etc). It refers to the exceptional emotional experience: a person has a strong and clear feeling of unity with the object of aesthetic fascination and aesthetic appraisal

The structure of aesthetic experience

The functional model of aesthetic experience

Conclusion