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Context 1
... closer look at the ratings of an untitled watercolor by Kandinsky ( fig. 8) and Klee's Be aware of red ( fig. 9) will clarify this point. On average, participants rated Kandinsky's work as positive, warm and feminine. Klee's painting was also rated warm and positive, but on average at the midpoint between feminine and masculine. Did participants find Be aware of red both feminine and masculine, or neither ...
Context 2
... the future, we will use these images to test to what extent the overall effect of paintings is a result of the sum of the effect of separable elements (lines and colors) and to what extent the claim of universality applies. In order to tackle these questions empirically, we disentangled three abstract pictures (by Kandinsky, fig. 8, Klee, fig. 9, and Miró) and isolated "their" single and color patches ( fig. 10). Kandinsky's watercolor shows a combination of lines with different qualities -there is a bundle of three diagonal lines and a curvy one. Is the horizontal line perceived as calm and still and the line bundle as dynamic? And what about the curvy line? ...
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Citations
... Such attributes such as "warmth", as typically discussed in the art historical or critical literature, are known as aesthetic effects, and are seen as specific responses in viewers to art, with theorists often assuming that they are caused by the specific nature of single elements in artworks, especially lines and colors [2]. This idea that simple visual elements such as colors (but also lines) elicit specific effects in humans, has been one of the foundations of modern discourses on art since the 18 th century and is still crucial for art critics and art historians today [2]: artworks with red tones, that is, "warm" colors, are described as "warm". ...
... Such attributes such as "warmth", as typically discussed in the art historical or critical literature, are known as aesthetic effects, and are seen as specific responses in viewers to art, with theorists often assuming that they are caused by the specific nature of single elements in artworks, especially lines and colors [2]. This idea that simple visual elements such as colors (but also lines) elicit specific effects in humans, has been one of the foundations of modern discourses on art since the 18 th century and is still crucial for art critics and art historians today [2]: artworks with red tones, that is, "warm" colors, are described as "warm". It is unclear, however, how much viewers indeed do share these effects of visual elements-how universal aesthetic effects in fact are. ...
... However, although there have been some attempts for empirical measurements of aesthetic effects (for an overview see [2]), the above issues are very much unresolved. We still lack a systematic test of the assumption of universality: it remains unclear, whether and to what extent aesthetic effects are individual or universally shared. ...
The idea that simple visual elements such as colors and lines have specific, universal associations—for example red being warm—appears rather intuitive. Such associations have formed a basis for the description of artworks since the 18th century and are still fundamental to discourses on art today. Art historians might describe a painting where red is dominant as “warm,” “aggressive,” or “lively,” with the tacit assumption that beholders would universally associate the works’ certain key forms with specific qualities, or “aesthetic effects”. However, is this actually the case? Do we actually share similar responses to the same line or color? In this paper, we tested whether and to what extent this assumption of universality (sharing of perceived qualities) is justified. We employed—for the first time—abstract artworks as well as single elements (lines and colors) extracted from these artworks in an experiment in which participants rated the stimuli on 14 “aesthetic effect” scales derived from art literature and empirical aesthetics. To test the validity of the assumption of universality, we examined on which of the dimensions there was agreement, and investigated the influence of art expertise, comparing art historians with lay people. In one study and its replication, we found significantly lower agreement than expected. For the whole artworks, participants agreed on the effects of warm-cold, heavy-light, and happy-sad, but not on 11 other dimensions. Further, we found that the image type (artwork or its constituting elements) was a major factor influencing agreement; people agreed more on the whole artwork than on single elements. Art expertise did not play a significant role and agreement was especially low on dimensions usually of interest in empirical aesthetics (e.g., like-dislike). Our results challenge the practice of interpreting artworks based on their aesthetic effects, as these effects may not be as universal as previously thought.
... 17-53). In this discourse, art critics and historians usually assume that the use of differing lines, forms, and colours in abstract artworks also leads to varying effects on the viewer (Brinkmann et al., 2018a) and, depending on these effects, different ways of seeing. If, for example, a colour in a painting evokes a calming effect, this effect is assumed to be reflected in the way we look at this painting. ...
Throughout the 20th century, there have been many different forms of abstract painting. While works by some artists, e.g., Piet Mondrian, are usually described as static, others are described as dynamic, such as Jackson Pollock’s ‘action paintings’. Art historians have assumed that beholders not only conceptualise such differences in depicted dynamics but also mirror these in their viewing behaviour. In an interdisciplinary eye-tracking study, we tested this concept through investigating both the localisation of fixations (polyfocal viewing) and the average duration of fixations as well as saccade velocity, duration and path curvature. We showed 30 different abstract paintings to 40 participants — 20 laypeople and 20 experts (art students) — and used self-reporting to investigate the perceived dynamism of each painting and its relationship with (a) the average number and duration of fixations, (b) the average number, duration and velocity of saccades as well as the amplitude and curvature area of saccade paths, and (c) pleasantness and familiarity ratings. We found that the average number of fixations and saccades, saccade velocity, and pleasantness ratings increase with an increase in perceived dynamism ratings. Meanwhile the saccade duration decreased with an increase in perceived dynamism. Additionally, the analysis showed that experts gave higher dynamic ratings compared to laypeople and were more familiar with the artworks. These results indicate that there is a correlation between perceived dynamism in abstract painting and viewing behaviour — something that has long been assumed by art historians but had never been empirically supported.
... Such attributes such as "warmth", as typically discussed in the art historical or critical literature, are known as aesthetic effects, and are seen as specific responses in viewers to art, with theorists often assuming that they are caused by the specific nature of single elements in artworks, especially lines and colors [2]. This idea that simple visual elements such as colors (but also lines) elicit specific effects in humans, has been one of the foundations of modern discourses on art since the 18 th century and is still crucial for art critics and art historians today [2]: artworks with red tones, that is, "warm" colors, are described as "warm". ...
... Such attributes such as "warmth", as typically discussed in the art historical or critical literature, are known as aesthetic effects, and are seen as specific responses in viewers to art, with theorists often assuming that they are caused by the specific nature of single elements in artworks, especially lines and colors [2]. This idea that simple visual elements such as colors (but also lines) elicit specific effects in humans, has been one of the foundations of modern discourses on art since the 18 th century and is still crucial for art critics and art historians today [2]: artworks with red tones, that is, "warm" colors, are described as "warm". It is unclear, however, how much viewers indeed do share these effects of visual elements-how universal aesthetic effects in fact are. ...
... However, although there have been some attempts for empirical measurements of aesthetic effects (for an overview see [2]), the above issues are very much unresolved. We still lack a systematic test of the assumption of universality: it remains unclear, whether and to what extent aesthetic effects are individual or universally shared. ...
This is a bilingual collection of articles in English and in French by a group of international scholars who discuss the phenomenon of color in many different disciplines—which makes it possible to reflect on what the color experience means in various domains of human (and animal) life. Our contributions offer intercultural explorations from many corners of the color community. They deal with color as symbolism, in comparative linguistics, as a matter of feeling, cognition and epistemology, in Native American painting, about meanings of color in exemplary literary texts, in pop culture and fashion, in feminist argumentations, as an issue of the visual regimes of race in different art forms, of spirituality in Judeo-Christian culture and Islam as well as Modernist aesthetics, as a matter of color taxonomy at the Vatican and among traditional Zuni artists, in the business of dyeing textiles and its history, and in terms of technical issues such as the use of color to signal authenticity (stamps, paper money!), “unnatural” colors (fluorescence), or the role of color in new urban architecture.
