Representational Paintings Research Articles

The art of observation: bridging science and art to see the unexpected.

Observation is the heart of research, but it can be challenging to observe deeply and go beyond expected observations. Here, we describe activities designed for scientists to enhance their observational skills by engaging with art. In collaboration with an art gallery at our university, our lab practiced observing representational paintings in a systematic way, separating the act of observation from interpretation. Applying this skill to our microscopy images allowed us to access information in the data that may otherwise have been overlooked. In addition, these activities highlighted the power of collecting observations from multiple observers before generating interpretations, as well as the value of discussing the creative and emotional aspects of data collection and interpretation. We provide concrete examples of how we will incorporate these skills into our research processes, as well as details that other groups can use to engage in similar art-based training activities to enhance their own observational skills.

Some Biographical Notes on Artists of Sacred Sufi Painting in Kano, Nigeria

Abstract The Sufi Islamic leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Niass first came to Kano in 1937. His repeated visits paved the way for the development of Sufi artists in Kano. Through their representational art, they celebrate the various Sufi saints, particularly those of the Qādiriyyah and Tijjāniyyah Sufi orders. This article puts the growth of Sufi representational art in the context of the history of Tijjāniyyah Islam in Kano by examining the biographies and works of six Kano artists and their sacred Sufi painting, from the 1980s to the present day. This article concludes that paintings of Sufi saints by these artists, which countered alternative aniconic views associated with some branches of Islam, contributed not only to the development of representational paintings in Kano, but also to the acceptance of Western media, styles, and techniques in their visual representations of such paintings.

The time-course of fixations in representational paintings: A cross-cultural study.

The time-course of fixations in representational paintings: A cross-cultural study.

Efficient quantization of painting images by relevant colors

Realistic images often contain complex variations in color, which can make economical descriptions difficult. Yet human observers can readily reduce the number of colors in paintings to a small proportion they judge as relevant. These relevant colors provide a way to simplify images by effectively quantizing them. The aim here was to estimate the information captured by this process and to compare it with algorithmic estimates of the maximum information possible by colorimetric and general optimization methods. The images tested were of 20 conventionally representational paintings. Information was quantified by Shannon’s mutual information. It was found that the estimated mutual information in observers’ choices reached about 90% of the algorithmic maxima. For comparison, JPEG compression delivered somewhat less. Observers seem to be efficient at effectively quantizing colored images, an ability that may have applications in the real world.

Gaze patterns reveal aesthetic distance while viewing art.

For centuries, Western philosophers have argued that aesthetic experiences differ from common, everyday pleasing sensations, and further, that mental states, such as disinterested contemplation and aesthetic distance, underlie these complex experiences. We empirically tested whether basic perceptual processes of information intake reveal evidence for aesthetic distance, specifically toward visual art. We conducted two eye tracking experiments using appropriately matched visual stimuli (environmental scenes and representational paintings) with 59 participants using two different presentation durations (25 and 6 s). Linear mixed-effects models considering individual differences showed that affective content (pleasantness and arousal), but not stimulus composition (complexity), leads to differential effects when viewing representational paintings in comparison to environmental scenes. We demonstrate that an increase in aesthetic pleasantness induced by representational paintings during a free-viewing task leads to a slower and deeper processing mode than when viewing environmental scenes of motivational relevance, for which we observed the opposite effect. In addition, long presentation durations led to an increase in scanning behavior during visual art perception. These empirical findings inform the debate about how aesthetic experiences differ from everyday perceptual processes by showing that the notion of aesthetic distance may be better understood by examining different modes of viewing.

Neuromarketing Research on Individual Responses to Artwork: Implications for Galleries

This paper reports the results of neuromarketing research for artworks. It was conducted among young people, students of non-art specialties, for nine different widely known art pieces with the help of eyetracking and emotional scanning equipment.The aim of the experiment is to determine (1) whether viewers concentrate more on the representational art compared to abstracts art, (2) whether any correlation between the viewing time and the evoked emotions exists, and (3) whether there is any difference between the monitored emotions and those people articulate (in other words, to what extend artwork viewers tell the truth).The result demonstrates a slightly higher preference in looking at the representational paintings. But we do not notice any correlation between the subjective liking of the painting and the time spent looking at it. An essential difference is recorded for the emotions fixed technically and those reported by the viewers.The paper also suggests several implications for gallery marketing. JEL сlassification: M31, Z11

Greater art classification does not necessarily predict better liking: Evidence from graffiti and other visual arts.

We tested the relationship between art classification and liking of the graffiti murals among naive viewers (N= 60 college students). Graffiti murals were classified as art to a lesser extent than both abstract and representational paintings. Surprisingly, graffiti murals were only liked less than representational but not abstract paintings. Thus, art classification might not necessarily predict liking.

An objective evaluation of the beholder’s response to abstract and figurative art based on construal level theory

Does abstract art evoke a different cognitive state than figurative art? To address this question empirically, we bridged art theory and cognitive research and designed an experiment leveraging construal level theory (CLT). CLT is based on experimental data showing that psychologically distant events (i.e., occurring farther away in space or time) are represented more abstractly than closer events. We measured construal level elicited by abstract vs. representational art and asked subjects to assign abstract/representational paintings by the same artist to a situation that was temporally/spatially near or distant. Across three experiments, we found that abstract paintings were assigned to the distant situation significantly more often than representational paintings, indicating that abstract art was evocative of greater psychological distance. Our data demonstrate that different levels of artistic abstraction evoke different levels of mental abstraction and suggest that CLT provides an empirical approach to the analysis of cognitive states evoked by different levels of artistic abstraction.

How can Artistic Paintings Broaden Medical Students’ Understanding of the Radiology Profession?

The purpose of this study is to explore how representational paintings of radiology encounters with patients may impact medical students' understanding and impression of both radiologists and the radiology profession. Participants included third year medical students at a single institution rotating through a one-week radiology elective. Three works of art were analyzed using the validated Visual Thinking Strategies technique. Data collected included a postsession questionnaire and transcriptions of audio-recorded sessions. Data analysis involved both qualitative and quantitative methodology. Fifty students participated; all participants completed the postsession questionnaire and 10 participated in the audio recorded sessions. Total 82% found the experience "very enjoyable" and 86% agreed that the paintings positively affected their understanding of how radiologists provide care to patients; 96% would recommend this session to others. Exploring representational paintings of radiology encounters seemed to influence perception and understanding of radiology with students reporting "light bulb moments;" create a dissonance between the student experience and the experience depicted in the paintings; and address gaps in content specific knowledge. The findings of this study suggest that analyzing paintings depicting radiology encounters with patients can challenge negative stereotypes that medical students have of the radiology profession and radiologists. This arts-based learning module employing a learning strategy such as Visual Thinking Strategies, should be considered by the radiology profession as a strategy to positively inform and educate trainees about the specialty.

Art expertise in construing meaning of representational and abstract artworks

Aesthetic appraisal of artwork can present the observer with visual problems to solve in the process of grasping its meaning and ‘visual rightness’ (i.e. “good” structure; Locher, 2003), with an elaboration on perceptual, semantic and affective dimensions (e.g. Marković, 2011). Thus observer's expertise is a factor in aesthetic appraisal. To examine the influence of art training on the aesthetic response, and to clarify the nature of the Representational/Abstract distinction, 30 Experts and 33 Non-experts (Art and Psychology students, respectively) were asked to rate 24 paintings on six affective and affective-evaluative semantic differential scales. Stimuli were images of paintings from the period 1900–1935, 12 broadly Representational and 12 broadly Abstract. Relative to Non-experts, Experts rated Abstract artworks as more Interesting, Beautiful, Informative and Sophisticated, distinguishing them less markedly from Representational artworks. Aggregate Expert and Non-expert ratings, processed by factor analysis, resulted in a two-factor solution. The first factor, contrasting Abstract and Representational artworks, appeared more salient for Non-experts. The second factor, Cool–Warm, separating vibrantly-colored paintings from those with a blue-dominated/dull palette, was more salient for Experts. While Non-experts exaggerated differences between Abstract and Representational paintings, Experts appraised these two types of art similarly, attending more to artwork collative properties. We conclude that appreciation of art by Experts involves ‘cognitive mastery’ (Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augustin, 2004), i.e. more complex, cues-based visual schemata which equip them with more sophisticated strategies for analysing collative properties and semantics of an artwork while parsing ‘visual rightness’ to unfold its visual meaning.

Prediction of beauty and liking ratings for abstract and representational paintings using subjective and objective measures.

Recent research on aesthetics has challenged the adage that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” by identifying several factors that predict ratings of beauty. However, this research has emerged in a piecemeal fashion. Most studies have examined only a few predictors of beauty, and measured either subjective or objective predictors, but not both. Whether the predictors of ratings of beauty versus liking differ has not been tested, nor has whether predictors differ for major distinctions in art, such as abstract vs. representational paintings. Finally, past studies have either relied on experimenter-generated stimuli—which likely yield pallid aesthetic experiences—or on a curation of high-quality art—thereby restricting the range of predictor scores. We report a study (N = 598) that measured 4 subjective and 11 objective predictors of both beauty ratings and liking ratings, for 240 abstract and 240 representational paintings that varied widely in beauty. A crossover pattern occurred in the ratings, such that for abstract paintings liking ratings were higher than beauty ratings, whereas for representational paintings beauty ratings were higher than liking ratings. Prediction was much better for our subjective than objective predictors, and much better for our representational than abstract paintings. For abstract paintings, liking ratings were much more predictable than beauty ratings. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

The role of psychological distancing in appreciation of art: Can native versus foreign language context affect responses to abstract and representational paintings?

Our work examines the role of psychological distancing in responses to art. We argued that the context of a foreign (vs native) language may distance the individual away from the pragmatic everyday perception style and enhance appreciation of paintings. We established the distinction between the sets of abstract and representational paintings in terms of perceptual-cognitive features and affective responses (Study 1). Then, we examined the influence of language context on appreciation of paintings. When examined separately, abstract paintings were better appreciated within a foreign (than native) language context (Study 2a), whereas appreciation of representational paintings was not significantly enhanced by a foreign language (Study 2b). The combined analysis of Studies 2a and 2b suggests, however, that distance induced by the foreign language similarly enhances appreciation of abstract and representational art.

Exploring aesthetic experiences of females: Affect-related traits predict complexity and arousal responses to music and affective pictures

Empirical studies testing Berlyne's (1971) psychobiological model have led to conflicting results, and individual differences have been proposed as a possible explanation. We explored whether top-down influences related to personality may play a role and studied how affect-related personality traits are related to complexity and arousal responses. Two hundred and six females rated either affective environmental scenes, environmental scenes converted into cartoons, or representational paintings (Study 1). Another group of 77 females rated excerpts of piano music (Study 2). We assessed trait emotional intelligence (EI), stress reactivity (SR), empathy (Study 1), emotional self-efficacy (Study 2) as well as engagement with art and music. Linear mixed-effects modelling revealed that affect-related traits emerged as significant predictors in all visual complexity and arousal models, except for the complexity model of environmental scenes. SR predicted arousal induced by environmental scenes, but not by cartoons and paintings, for which an interaction between trait EI and empathy was found. Musical sophistication predicted musical complexity, and the complexity and arousal models comprised interactions between trait EI, SR and emotional self-efficacy. Affect-related traits should be integrated into arousal-based theories of aesthetic experiences, and their impact on perceived complexity and felt arousal varies across stimulus categories.

What Do Art Novices See in Paintings? — An Exploratory Study on Conversation in Appreciation of Representational Paintings

What Do Art Novices See in Paintings? — An Exploratory Study on Conversation in Appreciation of Representational Paintings

Multiple Temporalities, Layered Histories

In Quotational Practices: Repeating the Future in Contemporary Art, Patrick Greaney asserts, “the past matters not only because of what actually happened but also because of the possibilities that were not realized and that still could be. Quotation evokes those possibilities. By repeating the past, artists and writers may be attempting to repeat that past’s unrealized futures.”[1] In the information age, the Internet, for instance, provides us an expanded collection of visual information—quite literally available at our fingertips—summoning together aspects of the past and possibilities of the future into a boundless present. Sketchbook Revisions (2014–2015), a series of mixed-media paintings, represents my attempt to communicate the ways in which I experience my contemporary moment constructed from multiple temporalities excavated from my past. This body of work combines fragments of representational paintings created between 1995 and 2003 and nonrepresentational renderings produced between 2003 and 2014. Using traditional tracing paper and graphic color, I randomly select moments of my previous work to transfer and layer over selected areas of already-filled pages of a sketchbook I used from 2003 to 2004. These sketches depict objects I encountered in studio art classrooms and iconic architecture on the campus of McDaniel College, and often incorporate teaching notes. The final renditions of fragmented and layered histories enact the ways that we collectively experience multiple temporalities in the present. Quoting my various bodies of work, Sketchbook Revisions challenges both material and conceptual boundaries that determine fixed notions of artistic identity.

Hemispheric asymmetry of liking for representational and abstract paintings

Although the neural correlates of the appreciation of aesthetic qualities have been the target of much research in the past decade, few experiments have explored the hemispheric asymmetries in underlying processes. In this study, we used a divided visual field paradigm to test for hemispheric asymmetries in men and women's preference for abstract and representational artworks. Both male and female participants liked representational paintings more when presented in the right visual field, whereas preference for abstract paintings was unaffected by presentation hemifield. We hypothesize that this result reflects a facilitation of the sort of visual processes relevant to laypeople's liking for art-specifically, local processing of highly informative object features-when artworks are presented in the right visual field, given the left hemisphere's advantage in processing such features.

Disclosing Worldhood or Expressing Life? Heidegger and Henry on the Origin of the Work of Art

What and how is the work of art? This paper considers Heidegger’s venerable question by way of a related one: what exactly is the essence of the painting? En route to critiquing the Heideggerian conception of the work of art as that which discloses a world, I present Michel Henry’s competing aesthetic theory. According to Henry, the artwork’s task is not to disclose the exteriority of the world, but rather to express the interiority of life’s pathos—what he calls transcendental self-affectivity. To clarify Henry’s view, I examine his analysis of the abstract painting of Kandinsky, after which I illustrate the significance of Kandinsky’s abstractionism by showing how the representational paintings of Paul Signac, Andrew Harrison, Alphonse Osbert, and Henry Ossawa Tanner attempt to express the invisibility of subjectivity. I then reveal how Heidegger’s account of the work of art in terms of world disclosure overlooks the work’s task of exalting life. In closing, I accordingly suggest that Henry’s view of painting—which locates its essence in Life rather than the world—not only presents a competing position to the Heideggerian view of the origin of the work of art worthy of our attention, but one that explains how art can contribute to overcoming our age’s nihilism.

In the magna classroom, where the vision of the teaching of art became scientific

Observational skills that define the astute clinician are usually only acquired after years of clinical experience. Recognizing both the subtle and obvious visual details is a critical aspect of visual diagnosis or "seeing." Nonetheless, the formal teaching of observational skills is rarely included in the medical curriculum. I describe how in 1982 at the Military Medical School, 19 years before the mansion of Dr. Braverman and 26 years before the mansion of Dr. Katz, that experiential process of seeing such visual details was integrated to condition and improve the cadets of 1st. year, medical students through systematic visual training using representational paintings. Observational skills have always been the physician’s most important weapon in the diagnosis, care, and treatment of the patient. In the early 20th century, the physician was equipped primarily with a keen sense of observation and a compassionate heart; effective medications, and diagnostic laboratory tests; reliable imaging techniques were still to come. During house calls, the physician used his observational skills to evaluate both the surroundings and family members with respect to their limitations and benefits in regard to the patient. The observational skills of vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste were well developed in most doctors. These skills were honed to razor-sharpness in the “diagnostician,” a term of honor applied to any physician, specialist, or nonspecialist, who was able to decipher complex clinical problems.

Berlyne Revisited: Evidence for the Multifaceted Nature of Hedonic Tone in the Appreciation of Paintings and Music.

In his seminal book on esthetics, Berlyne (1971) posited an inverted-U relationship between complexity and hedonic tone in arts appreciation, however, converging evidence for his theory is still missing. The disregard of the multidimensionality of complexity may explain some of the divergent results. Here, we argue that definitions of hedonic tone are manifold and systematically examined whether the nature of the relationship between complexity and hedonic tone is determined by the specific measure of hedonic tone. In Experiment 1, we studied three picture categories with similar affective and semantic contents: 96 affective environmental scenes, which were also converted into 96 cartoons, and 96 representational paintings. Complexity varied along the dimension of elements. In a between-subjects design, each stimulus was presented for 5 s to 206 female participants. Subjective ratings of hedonic tone (either beauty, pleasantness or liking), arousal, complexity and familiarity were collected in three conditions per stimulus set. Complexity and arousal were positively associated in all conditions, with the strongest association observed for paintings. For environmental scenes and cartoons, there was no significant association between complexity and hedonic tone, and the three measures of hedonic tone were highly correlated (all rs > 0.85). As predicted, in paintings the measures of hedonic tone were less strongly correlated (all rs > 0.73), and when controlling for familiarity, the association with complexity was significantly positive for beauty (rs = 0.26), weakly negative for pleasantness (rs = -0.16) and not present for liking. Experiment 2 followed a similar approach and 77 female participants, all non-musicians, rated 92 musical excerpts (15 s) in three conditions of hedonic tone (either beauty, pleasantness or liking). Results indicated a strong relationship between complexity and arousal (all rs > 0.85). When controlling for familiarity effects, the relationship between complexity and beauty followed an inverted-U curve, whereas the relationship between complexity and pleasantness was negative (rs = -0.26) and the one between complexity and liking positive (rs = 0.29). We relate our results to Berlyne’s theory and the latest findings in neuroaesthetics, proposing that future studies need to acknowledge the multifaceted nature of hedonic tone in esthetic experiences of artforms.

Human, Nature, Dynamism: The Effects of Content and Movement Perception on Brain Activations during the Aesthetic Judgment of Representational Paintings.

Movement perception and its role in aesthetic experience have been often studied, within empirical aesthetics, in relation to the human body. No such specificity has been defined in neuroimaging studies with respect to contents lacking a human form. The aim of this work was to explore, through functional magnetic imaging (f MRI), how perceived movement is processed during the aesthetic judgment of paintings using two types of content: human subjects and scenes of nature. Participants, untutored in the arts, were shown the stimuli and asked to make aesthetic judgments. Additionally, they were instructed to observe the paintings and to rate their perceived movement in separate blocks. Observation highlighted spontaneous processes associated with aesthetic experience, whereas movement judgment outlined activations specifically related to movement processing. The ratings recorded during aesthetic judgment revealed that nature scenes received higher scored than human content paintings. The imaging data showed similar activation, relative to baseline, for all stimuli in the three tasks, including activation of occipito-temporal areas, posterior parietal, and premotor cortices. Contrast analyses within aesthetic judgment task showed that human content activated, relative to nature, precuneus, fusiform gyrus, and posterior temporal areas, whose activation was prominent for dynamic human paintings. In contrast, nature scenes activated, relative to human stimuli, occipital and posterior parietal cortex/precuneus, involved in visuospatial exploration and pragmatic coding of movement, as well as central insula. Static nature paintings further activated, relative to dynamic nature stimuli, central and posterior insula. Besides insular activation, which was specific for aesthetic judgment, we found a large overlap in the activation pattern characterizing each stimulus dimension (content and dynamism) across observation, aesthetic judgment, and movement judgment tasks. These findings support the idea that the aesthetic evaluation of artworks depicting both human subjects and nature scenes involves a motor component, and that the associated neural processes occur quite spontaneously in the viewer. Furthermore, considering the functional roles of posterior and central insula, we suggest that nature paintings may evoke aesthetic processes requiring an additional proprioceptive and sensori-motor component implemented by “motor accessibility” to the represented scenario, which is needed to judge the aesthetic value of the observed painting.