Mondrian, eye movements, and the oblique effect

Abstract

Observers prefer paintings by Piet Mondrian in their original orientation compared to when rotated – “The Oblique Effect” (Latto et al., 2000). We tested whether eye movements could provide any insight into this aesthetic bias. We presented 8 Mondrian paintings (1921-1944) on a computer monitor in their original and seven rotated positions to 10 observers. These 64 images were randomly presented for 20 sec each while recording eye movement duration and saccade length. During a 5 sec ISI observers used a 1-7 Likert-scale to report how (dis)pleasing they found each image. In 6 cases an original orientation was judged as significantly more pleasing than a rotated image, while a rotated image was preferred in 3 cases. Overall, over the 20 sec trial interval, fixation durations increased linearly, while fixation duration increased more for pleasing than for non-pleasing images. Moreover, saccade distances oscillated over the viewing interval; with the pleasing image fit being more variable (i.e., saccade distance oscillations were larger) than the non-pleasing image fit. Both these findings agree with earlier work by Nodine, Lochear and colleague; and suggest that the more pleasing an abstract painting is, the greater the diversive/specific types of image exploration become (Berlyne, 1971).