An Oblique Effect in Aesthetics: Homage to Mondrian (1872–1944)

Latto, Richard; Brain, Douglas; Kelly, Brian

doi:10.1068/p2352

Cited by 66 publications

(96 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…So artists tend to use more horizontal and vertical lines than oblique in their compositions. The extreme example of this is Mondrian, and we have shown that, independently of frame orientation, Mondrian's paintings are preferred when their component lines are horizontal and vertical (Latto, Brain, & Kelly, 2000).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed he felt so strongly about this that when in 1932 van Doesburg, another founding member of the De Stijl group of painters, insisted on using diagonals, he broke off his connection with the group (Jaffé, 1970). We have shown that Mondrian was correct in his judgment: paintings composed of horizontal and vertical lines are preferred to those composed of oblique lines, even if frame orientation is controlled for (Latto, Brain, & Kelly, 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

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An Oblique Effect in the Selection of Line Orientation by Twentieth Century Painters

Latto

Russell-Duff

2002

Empirical Studies of the Arts

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In 88 paintings from the Israel Museum, Jerusalem the proportions of horizontal, vertical, and oblique lines were determined in order to ascertain whether artists preferentially use lines orientated in the horizontal and vertical directions rather than the oblique. Frame orientations were also examined to determine their effect on these line orientations. The results showed a preference for the vertical and the horizontal over the oblique. This effect was very robust, occurring with both landscape and portrait formats and over a variety of different styles and categories of paintings. There was also an interaction between line orientation and frame orientation with an increased use of vertical lines with portrait format paintings and an increased use of horizontal lines with landscape format. It is suggested that the basic finding of an orientation anisotropy in line selection is related to the oblique effect in line perception, the finding that horizontal and vertical lines are more readily perceived than oblique lines in a wide variety of situations. This supports the idea that stimuli like horizontal and vertical lines, which are preferentially processed by the visual system, are also aesthetically more powerful.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

An Oblique Effect in the Selection of Line Orientation by Twentieth Century Painters

Latto

Russell-Duff

2002

Empirical Studies of the Arts

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“…Extensive work on human visual preferences shows that humans prefer cardinal to oblique lines (Latto, Brain, & Kelly, 2000), and curved to sharp forms (Bar & Neta, 2006). Miura and colleagues (2010) showed how smooth and fluent dance movements were preferred over awkward ones (Miura, Sugiura, Takahashi, Sassa, Miyamoto, Sato, et al, 2010).…”

Section: Symmetry Synchronization Lines and Astonishing Solosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dance as a subject for empirical aesthetics.

Christensen¹,

Calvo-Merino²

2013

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. There may be minor differences in this draft with respect to the published version of the paper. Both authors contributed to the paper equally. Permanent repository link Dance as a subject for empirical aestheticsWe are grateful to Marcos Nadal for very useful comments and discussions on previous drafts of the paper and to dancers and choreographers (Tom Sapsford and MavinKhoo) for their help and assistance during some of the projects described throughout this paper. AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to highlight the possibilities that research on dance appreciation offers empirical aesthetics, as well as the challenges it poses. Behavioral and neuroimaging approaches have, to date, mainly focused on the perception and recognition of human body movement and structure. A small number of studies, nonetheless, have explicitly taken the basic research on the perceptual, emotional and cognitive processes engaged during movement observation, together with their neural concomitants, as a starting point to understand the aesthetic experience triggered by the observation of a dance. We provide an overview of these studies and, thereafter, point out avenues for future research on dance appreciation within the scope of empirical aesthetics. We also note some methodological and conceptual issues that should be taken into account in the design of empirical studies of the aesthetic appreciation of dance, including dance theory scholarship and humanistic approaches to dance practice.Finally, we describe how common movement features of dance styles around the world suggest that humans may be endowed with an evolved cognitive ability to appreciate and to be aesthetically moved by dance.

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“…The psychophysical 'oblique effect', first named by Stuart Appelle (1972), is the principle that "our perception of oblique or diagonal lines is slightly inferior to our perception of horizontal and vertical lines" (Latto et al, 2000). Perhaps the earliest mention of the oblique effect in the vision literature was cited by Mach (1861) who found that observers were more accurate at matching a line parallel to a horizontal or vertical comparison line than to an oblique line (Mach 1861, cited in Westheimer 2003.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…

AbstractObservers prefer paintings by Piet Mondrian in their original orientation compared to when rotated -"The Oblique Effect" (Latto et al, 2000). We tested whether eye movements could provide any insight into this aesthetic bias.

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confidence: 99%

Mondrian, Eye Movements, and the Oblique Effect

Plumhoff

Schirillo

2009

Perception

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Observers prefer paintings by Piet Mondrian in their original orientation compared to when rotated -"The Oblique Effect" (Latto et al., 2000). We tested whether eye movements could provide any insight into this aesthetic bias. We presented 8 Mondrian paintings on a computer monitor in their original and seven rotated positions to 10 observers. These 64 images were randomly presented for 20 sec each while recording eye movement duration and saccade length. During a 5 sec ISI observers used a 1-7 Likert-scale to report how (dis)pleasing they found each image. In 6 cases an original orientation was judged as significantly more pleasing than a rotated image, while a rotated image was preferred in 3 cases. Overall, over the 20 sec trial interval, fixation durations increased linearly, while fixation duration increased more for pleasing than for non-pleasing images. Moreover, saccade distances oscillated over the viewing interval; with the pleasing image fit being more variable (i.e., saccade distance oscillations were larger) than the non-pleasing image fit. Both these findings agree with earlier work by Nodine, Lochear and colleague; and suggest that the more pleasing an abstract painting is, the greater the diversive/specific types of image exploration become (Berlyne, 1971).

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An Oblique Effect in Aesthetics: Homage to Mondrian (1872–1944)

Cited by 66 publications

References 20 publications

An Oblique Effect in the Selection of Line Orientation by Twentieth Century Painters

An Oblique Effect in the Selection of Line Orientation by Twentieth Century Painters

Dance as a subject for empirical aesthetics.

Mondrian, Eye Movements, and the Oblique Effect

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