Representational Paintings Research Articles

The "style scheme" grounds perception of paintings.

We studied the formation of style scheme (identification of the style that characterizes an artist) presenting 100 participants aesthetic visual stimuli. Participants were Spanish university students who volunteered: 72 women, 28 men of mean age 22.8 yr. Among those 50 were enrolled in History of Art and 50 students in Psychology. Stimuli belonged to different categories--High Art (pictures of well-known artists, like Van Gogh)/Popular Art (decorative pictures like Christmas postcards) and Representational (pictures with explicit meaning content, like a landscape)/Abstract (pictures without explicit meaning content, like Pollock's colored stains). Analysis using Signal Detection Theory techniques focused on how participants discriminate representational and abstract pictures. With High Art stimuli, participants can better discriminate representational paintings than abstract ones. However, the difference in discrimination between representational and abstract pictures diminishes among participants studying History of Art. It seems that prior education in art favors forming style schemes and to some extent enables the participant to detect the "meaning" in High Art abstract paintings.

Personality correlates of liking for ‘unpleasant’ paintings and photographs

Previous studies have associated liking for violent, morbid and unpleasant paintings with a range of personality variables. The present study developed sets of ‘pleasant’ and ‘unpleasant’ representational paintings, abstract paintings and photographs, and administered these with a range of personality questionnaires to 188 undergraduate students. Compared to females, males liked unpleasant exemplars of all three stimulus-types. High-scorers on the personality dimensions Sensation Seeking, Unusual Experiences (schizotypy) and Psychoticism preferred unpleasant paintings when compared to low-scorers. Openness and Experience Seeking were associated with liking for abstract, in comparison to traditional, representational paintings. Neuroticism was negatively correlated with liking for both types of photographic stimulus and for pleasant abstract paintings. Separate principal components analyses of the paintings and photographs implicated the unpleasant content of visual stimuli as a major determinant of preference in non-expert viewers. Regression analyses supported the conclusion that sex-differences, Sensation Seeking and Unusual Experiences independently contribute to liking for unpleasant paintings.

Personality and judgements of abstract, pop art, and representational paintings

This study was concerned with the question of which personality variables are most predictive of judgements of particular types of painting. One hundred and twenty‐one participants rated 24 slides of abstract, pop art, and representational paintings. They then completed two questionnaires which measured sensation seeking (SS) and the ‘Big Five’ personality dimensions. Thrill and Adventure Seeking was positively correlated with a liking of representational art while Disinhibition was associated with positive ratings of abstract art and pop art. Neuroticism was positively correlated with positive ratings of abstract and pop art, while conscientiousness was linked to liking of representational art. Openness to Experience was linked to positive ratings of all three art types. Agreeableness was negatively linked to liking of pop art. It was also found that art education and frequency of visits to art galleries were linked to positive ratings of abstract paintings. Regressional analyses showed about a fifth of the variance could be accounted for by personality and demographic variables. Personality variables were most strongly linked to positive judgements of representational art and least related to ratings of pop art. Overall the sensation seeking variables accounted for more of the variance than the big five dimensions. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Personality and preference for surreal paintings

Sixty-two subjects rated 20 slides of surreal and representational paintings. They then completed questionnaires assessing tolerance of ambiguity, sensation seeking, and the ‘Big Five’ personality dimensions. Ambiguity tolerance was not found to be as strongly associated with preference for surreal art as had been predicted. The hypothesis that sensation seeking scores would be related positively to preference for surreal art and negatively related to preference for representation art was confirmed. Experience Seeking and Boredom Susceptibility were shown to be most significant subscale predictors of variance in preference. The associations found between the Big Five personality dimensions and preference for surreal art were not strong, suggesting that narrower measures of personality may be better predictors of preference for specific types of art. The findings support previous research demonstrating a link between personality and art preference, and indicate that certain traits may be particularly relevant to preferences for surreal art.

Aesthetic Responses to Traditional and Modern Paintings by Art Experts and Nonexperts

16 art experts and 18 nonexperts assessed six paintings of different styles. It was predicted that nonexperts would like traditional paintings, whereas art experts would prefer modern styles, but this was not found. Instead, both groups produced their highest ratings for one of the modern abstracts (Klee), while the nonexperts rated the two modern representational paintings (German Expressionist) more highly than the experts.

Artist's Intentions and Art Historian's Interpretation of the Artwork

Interpreting representational paintings often involves attempts to reconstruct the artist’s intentions. Two recent books about cubism debate the relevance of that method of interpretation with regard to cubism. A book about the contemporary American painter Jasper Johns points to some ways in which knowing his intentions is relevant to the interpretation of his art.

The Aesthetic Relevance of Authors' and Painters' Intentions

interest provides a paradigm an interest in an object for itself' and any consideration which leads one away from the contemplation of the work of art might be deemed nonaesthetic. Any concern with the author's intentions, rather than with that which was achieved in the work, would lead one away from the work of art. Yet how can we regard an author's intentions as irrelevant to our appreciation and understanding of his work? Notwithstanding this debate, the relevance of a painter's intentions with regard to his representational paintings has received comparatively little attention. In this paper I will consider the importance to be attached to the painter's intentions with regard to the aesthetic appreciation and understanding of representational art. I will approach this topic by first suggesting a view on the aesthetic relevance of an author's intentions and will then consider

Preference for Paintings and Personality Traits

College students (49 males and 40 females) completed the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire and performed 5-point preference ratings on 25 slides of paintings. Factor analysis of preference ratings gave seven dimensions of preference that underlay judgments. Eight significant relationships were found between source traits, measured by the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, and dimensions of painting preferences. Support was obtained for the notion that preference for paintings is congruent with or expresses the personality traits of the rater. Further students reported greater preference for representational paintings than for abstract paintings.

Pictures and Make-Believe

P EOPLE, objects, and events are pictured, or depicted, in representational paintings. In novels, by contrast, such things are described. Novels employ verbal symbols, whereas (we might say) paintings and other pictures use ones. This difference is both obvious and elusive. That there is a distinction of a fundamental sort between depicting and describing seems beyond question. But the difference threatens to vanish when we reach for it. In reading a novel to ourselves we look at the print on the pages. We examine a copy of Brothers Karamazov with our eyes in order to find out about Alyosha, as we visually investigate the canvas in order to learn about the peasants in Breughel's painting Haymaking. Why then don't the marks on the pages of the novel count as symbols, and the novel as a art? Of course novels, unlike pictures, can be heard as well as seen, when they are read aloud. Does that mean that the novel is, indifferently, an aural or a visual art? The trouble is that novels seem not to be perceptual at all, in some sense in which paintings (and sculptures) are perceptual, despite the fact that novels, or copies or readings of them, are to be perceived. A too easy explanation is that paintings, or parts of them, look like or resemble what they picture-Haymaking looks like fields, peasants at work, haystacks, and so forth. But a copy of Brothers Karamazov does not look like the people and events it describes, nor does any of the print it contains. And neither do the sounds of an oral reading of the novel sound like what is described. There are serious difficulties in this proposal, some