Style follows content: On the microgenesis of art perception

Despite fruitful research in experimental aesthetics, the dynamics of aesthetics, i.e., the processes involved in art perception, have received little attention. Concerning representational art, two aspects seem most important in this respect: style and content. In two experiments, we examined the d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Acta psychologica 2008-05, Vol.128 (1), p.127-138
Main Authors: Augustin, M. Dorothee, Leder, Helmut, Hutzler, Florian, Carbon, Claus-Christian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Analysis of Variance
Applied psychology
Art perception
Arts. Literature
Biological and medical sciences
Content
Esthetics
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Male
Matched-Pair Analysis
Microgenesis
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Style
Style-related processing
Visual Perception
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Summary:Despite fruitful research in experimental aesthetics, the dynamics of aesthetics, i.e., the processes involved in art perception, have received little attention. Concerning representational art, two aspects seem most important in this respect: style and content. In two experiments, we examined the dynamics of processing of style and content by means of the microgenetic approach. This approach systematically varies perceptual conditions to find out about the stages involved in the formation of percepts – their microgenesis. Participants gave similarity ratings for pairs of pictures that were fully crossed in style (artist) and content (motif). Presentation times were systematically varied between 10, 50, 202 and 3000ms (Experiment 1) plus unlimited presentation time (Experiment 2). While effects of content were present at all presentation times, effects of style were traceable from 50ms onwards. The results show clear differences in the microgenesis of style and content, suggesting that in art perception style follows content.
ISSN:0001-6918
1873-6297
DOI:10.1016/j.actpsy.2007.11.006