Abstracting the Set: Monet’s Cathedrals and Stable Mental Concepts from Serial Pictorial Artworks

Kass, Jason; Harland, Beth; Donnelly, Nick

doi:10.1163/22134913-00002030

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The present study is part of a broader enterprise to show how basic concepts from cognitive psychology can contribute to the understanding of art spectatorship. Elsewhere, we have shown how perceptual transformations and exemplar models of memory provide a context for understanding serial artworks using Monet’s series of Rouen cathedral and Warhol’s death and disaster series as case studies (Kass, Harland, & Donnelly, 2015a, 2015b). We have also shown how expertise influences information sampling to resolve structural and narrative ambiguity using Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (Harland et al, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of pupil alignment on spectator address in Manet’s portraiture.

Donnelly¹,

Harland²,

Mestry³

et al. 2017

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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Participants judged 94 portraits painted by Édouard Manet (70), Gustave Courbet (12) and Henri Fantin--Latour (12) for horizontal and vertical pupil misalignment and gaze ambiguity (Experiment 1) and focal point of gaze (Experiment 2). Eye movements were also measured as participants considered the extent to which sitters in the same portraits acknowledged viewers (spectators; Experiment 3). The results showed Manet portraits to be frequently painted with misaligned pupils that are associated with gaze ambiguity, especially when misaligned on the vertical axis. This ambiguity of gaze was associated with the average focal point of gaze as being judged further up and to the left of the centre for ambiguous relative to non--ambiguous portraits. These decisions in relation to portraits displaying ambiguous gaze were associated with increased eye--movements to the eye region relative to those portraits not displaying ambiguity. Finally, ratings of acknowledgement taken in Experiment 3 correlated with those of gaze ambiguity taken in Experiment 1. The results are interpreted in terms of the role of eye gaze in influencing spectatorship of portraits and, specifically, Fried's theory of the 'double relation' (Fried 1980; Fried 1996) between painting and spectator in the paintings of Manet.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of pupil alignment on spectator address in Manet’s portraiture.

Donnelly¹,

Harland²,

Mestry³

et al. 2017

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

Self Cite

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“…For Gestaltists, concepts are neither sets of attributes defining classes of objects (such as cat, bicycle, cathedral; Kass et al., 2015) nor disjunctive concepts, but perceptual (visual) concepts or perceived global structural configurations (see Arnheim, 1954, Chap. 2, §§ 2–5, or pp.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-Modal Perceptual Organization in Works of Art

et al. 2020

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This study investigates the existence of cross-modal correspondences between a series of paintings by Kandinsky and a series of selections from Schönberg music. The experiment was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, by means of the Osgood semantic differential, the participants evaluated the perceptual characteristics first of visual stimuli (some pictures of Kandinsky’s paintings, with varying perceptual characteristics and contents) and then of auditory stimuli (musical excerpts taken from the repertoire of Schönberg’s piano works) relative to 11 pairs of adjectives tested on a continuous bipolar scale. In the second phase, participants were required to associate pictures and musical excerpts. The results of the semantic differential test show that certain paintings and musical excerpts were evaluated as semantically more similar, while others were evaluated as semantically more different. The results of the direct association between musical excerpts and paintings showed both attractions and repulsions among the stimuli. The overall results provide significant insights into the relationship between concrete and abstract concepts and into the process of perceptual grouping in cross-modal phenomena.

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“…The authors suggest that artworks that work as series will have a different impact or experience than what can be explained by the responses to single pictures and define two types of series: a series of artworks (e.g., paintings with a temporal narrative structure) versus serial artworks, where there is a common pictorial basis and there are repetitions and deviations over multiple discrete instances in a set, with the full set considered as the artwork. The article focuses on the latter, such as Monet's series of nearly thirty paintings of the Rouen Cathedral, and suggest that this type of artwork is experienced indirectly, by forming an abstract mental concept of the artwork, similar to how our perceptual and cognitive system forms stable concepts (Kass et al, 2015).…”

Section: Vissers and Wagemansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the single picture: Aesthetic experiences with photography series in an exhibition context.

Vissers¹,

Wagemans²

2023

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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Photography is everywhere in our current society, yet we still do not have a good scientific grasp on our aesthetic responses to photography. High quality contemporary artistic photographs have been underrepresented in the scientific literature of empirical aesthetics, despite their obvious relevance to the topic. Furthermore, photography is a medium that often works in coherent series of photographs with a specific visual, documentary, or artistic message, whereas previous studies mainly focused on single photographs. We examined visitors' aesthetic experiences with artistic photography series in an exhibition context. In general, visitors responded positively to the photography series in the exhibition and felt moved by them. There were differences between series in whether visitors felt the need to read additional context information and to which photograph(s) the majority of visitors' attention went. Visual inspection of the differences in average beauty and interest ratings between different series showed that aesthetic experiences could not be explained by straightforward photographic visual features but rather depended on other aesthetic qualities. Both beauty and interest related to feeling moved by the series, but for beauty the quality of the photographs seemed to matter, whereas for interest originality, meaningfulness, and coherence played a larger role. Experts and novices differed slightly in the specific evaluations that led to beauty versus interest ratings. Overall, the study highlights that our aesthetic experiences with photographs can be much more interesting, beautiful, moving, and meaningful than how it is currently reflected in the empirical aesthetics literature.

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Abstracting the Set: Monet’s Cathedrals and Stable Mental Concepts from Serial Pictorial Artworks

Cited by 6 publications

References 27 publications

The influence of pupil alignment on spectator address in Manet’s portraiture.

The influence of pupil alignment on spectator address in Manet’s portraiture.

Cross-Modal Perceptual Organization in Works of Art

Beyond the single picture: Aesthetic experiences with photography series in an exhibition context.

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