Abstract
Exposure to art increases the appreciation of artworks. Here, we showed that this effect is domain independent. After viewing images of histological stains in a lecture, ratings increased for restricted subsets of abstract art images. In contrast, a lecture on art history generally enhanced ratings for all art images presented, while a lecture on town history without any visual stimuli did not increase the ratings. Therefore, we found a domain-independent exposure effect of images of histological stains to particular abstract paintings. This finding suggests that the ‘taste’ for abstract art is altered by visual impressions that are presented outside of an artistic context.
Highlights
Exposure to art increases the appreciation of artworks
We hypothesised that images of stained histological sections, such as used in medical training and diagnostic procedures (Figure 2(a) to (c)), might influence taste in abstract art because, they are not intentionally designed to be aesthetic, they appear to be aesthetically pleasing and are similar to certain abstract paintings with regard to subjective appearance and statistical image properties (SIPs)
I-Perception and exposure to histological images have an impact on the preference for specific artworks, we asked participants to rate the same set of heterogeneous abstract art paintings before and after lectures on three different topics and compared the ratings
Summary
Exposure to art increases the appreciation of artworks. Here, we showed that this effect is domain independent. We asked whether confrontation with certain nonart stimuli leads to an increase in liking of abstract artworks as well. I-Perception and exposure to histological images have an impact on the preference for specific artworks (stimulus-specific effect), we asked participants to rate the same set of heterogeneous abstract art paintings before and after lectures on three different topics (abstract art, histology and town history) and compared the ratings (see Figure 1 for experimental design).
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