Abstract
Background: Aesthetic experience begins through an intentional shift from automatic visual perceptual processing to an aesthetic state of mind that is evidently directed towards sensory experience. In the present study, we investigated whether portrait descriptions affect the aesthetic pleasure of both ambiguous (i.e., Arcimboldo’s portraits) and unambiguous portraits (i.e., Renaissance portraits). Method: A total sample of 86 participants were recruited and completed both a baseline and a retest session. In the retest session, we implemented a sample audio description for each portrait. The portraits were described by three types of treatment, namely global, local, and historical descriptions. Results: During the retest session, aesthetic pleasure was higher than the baseline. Both the local and the historical treatments improved the aesthetic appreciation of ambiguous portraits; instead, the global and the historical treatment improved aesthetic appreciation of Renaissance portraits during the retest session. Additionally, we found that the response times were slower in the retest session. Conclusion: taken together, these findings suggest that aesthetic preference was affected by the description of an artwork, likely due to a better knowledge of the painting, which prompts a more accurate (and slower) reading of the artwork.
Highlights
The definition of aesthetic experience is still a highly controversial issue
He proposed that a series of information processing steps follow one another during visual aesthetic experience: first, all the elementary visual characteristics of the artworks are processed in the same way as other visual objects; second, the attentional processes redirect the elaboration towards the salient visual properties, such as composition, color, and shape; third, the attentional network modulates the processing by allowing the content of the artwork; fourth, some feedback and feedforward processes, which link the attentional and attributional circuits, further improve the experience of visual stimuli; emotional systems are involved
Concerning the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) score there was a significant effect of Session (F(1,85) = 11.775, p = < 0.05; effect size: ηp 2 = 0.122): participants showed higher VAS scores in the retest session (M = 541.00; SE =11.53) compared with the Baseline (M = 512.90; SE = 11.20; Figure 3)
Summary
The definition of aesthetic experience is still a highly controversial issue. Several authors describe aesthetic experience as intentional and non-spontaneous [1]; others discuss the interplay between cultural and biological evolution in the formation of aesthetic preference [2] and the modulation of the aesthetic value of an object by the context [3,4], so that the same subject defined as art/non-art or placed in a gallery/computer-processed results in a different aesthetic experience. Several studies [5,6] introduce the idea of an aesthetic mindset (i.e., a top-down orientation during the aesthetic evaluation of an object), while others state that aesthetic experience is a combination of both top-down and bottom-up processes, as per information processing [7,8,9] In this regard, aesthetic experience can be described as a unique, affectively colored, self-transcending subject–object relation in which cognitive processing is felt to flow differently than during everyday experiences [10,11]. Conclusion: taken together, these findings suggest that aesthetic preference was affected by the description of an artwork, likely due to a better knowledge of the painting, which prompts a more accurate (and slower) reading of the artwork
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