Abstract
The role of titles in perception of visual art is a topic of interesting discussions that brings together artists, curators, and researchers. Titles provide contextual cues and guide perception. They can be particularly useful when paintings include semantic violations that make them challenging for viewers, especially viewers lacking expert knowledge. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of titles and semantic violations on eye movements. A total of 127 participants without expertise in visual art viewed 40 paintings with and without semantic violations (20 each) in one of three conditions: untitled, consistent titles and inconsistent titles. After each painting was viewed participants also rated liking and understanding. Our results suggest that titles affect the way paintings are viewed: both titled conditions were associated with shorter first fixation duration, longer saccade durations, and amplitudes and higher dynamic entropy than the untitled conditions. Titles were fixated on more frequently (but only in the time window between 1,200 and 2,800 ms) when presented alongside paintings with semantic violations than paintings without violations, and the percentage of fixations to titles was particularly high in the case of paintings with double inconsistencies (inconsistent titles and semantic violations). Also, we found that semantic violations attracted attention early on (300–900 ms), whereas titles received attention later (average first fixation on title was at 936.28 ms) and inconsistencies in titles were processed even later (after 4,000 ms). Finally, semantic violations were associated with higher dynamic entropy than paintings without violations. Our results demonstrate the importance of titles for processing of artworks, especially artworks that present a challenge for the viewers.
Highlights
Titles are an important part of artworks and artists pay great attention to titles that their works are presented under (Gombrich, 1985; Welchman, 1997)
We found that the presence of titles, affects how paintings are viewed (H1) and where people look, which was already explored by other authors (Hristova et al, 2011; Bubicet al., 2017)
The differences between titled and untitled conditions appear in the first fixation duration, average fixation duration saccade durations and amplitudes
Summary
Titles are an important part of artworks and artists pay great attention to titles that their works are presented under (Gombrich, 1985; Welchman, 1997). Titles allow artists to communicate beyond the visual layer, help collectors and owners to catalog works, and guide audience experience. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries titles were often explicative and explanatory when a painting’s subject was little known. They were descriptive and narrative describing a painting’s content as precisely as possible (Loibl, 2018). According to Welchman the turning point in titling was the Modernism (1870–1920) when other strategies of titling had been consolidated.
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