Abstract
perception can be affected by real emotional pictures of people that evoke different levels of arousal. Figurative artwork images of body postures that imply movement with different intensities and evoke different levels of arousal can modulate the perception of time. The present study investigated whether abstract paintings that represent motion in different ways affect the perception of time when subjects are exposed to the paintings for different durations. Undergraduate students observed 20 abstract paintings from different artistic schools (i.e., cubism, constructivism, expressionism, and futurism). They observed for 3 s each painting and estimated the time of exposure (reproduction method). After the time estimations, the subjects completed different semantic Movement, Arousal, Complexity, and Recognition scales to obtain information about how the painting compositions were perceived. Time distortions were observed for only two cubist paintings that represented human forms, which were related to both evoked arousal and implied movement (Experiment 1). Experiment 2 further verified whether these time distortions were related to implied movement perception or arousal. Different groups of participants were exposed for 3 and 9 s to only four cubist paintings that represented human forms. These time exposures (3 and 9 s) were used because the arousal-evoking effects may be transient for exposure times that are longer than 2-3 s. The data analysis revealed overestimation of time for the cubist painting that had greater arousal and movement scores only when the subjects were exposed for 9 s, showing that implied movement in abstract human figures is more effective than images with emotional content. We discuss the effect of durations of exposure to pictorial characteristics of artwork on time perception, emphasizing aspects of the visual perception of human forms in cubist paintings and arousal effects in an aesthetic episode. Keywords: time perception, static images, implied movement, cubism, arousal.
Highlights
Impressionist artwork by Edgar Degas that represents ballerina movements modulates subjective time perception
The results for the 20 paintings used in Experiment 1 should be discussed by considering the guidelines of the new experimental aesthetics (Berlyne, 1974) taking into account the visual exploration involved in artistic appreciation
Time perception in artwork episodes depends on several factors that are implicitly related to the combination of image observation, duration of exposure, and processing
Summary
Impressionist artwork by Edgar Degas that represents ballerina movements modulates subjective time perception. Ballet steps with lower movement scores were judged to have a shorter duration than those with intermediate scores, and ballet postures with intermediate scores were judged to have a shorter duration than postures with the highest scores, such as arabesque and attitude postures (Nather & Bueno, 2012). According to these authors, arabesque and attitude postures are more asymmetric than other ballet. The futurist painting Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash by Giacomo Balla shows the movements made by a dog using stroboscopic images and blurs the scene background
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