Bridging two worlds that care about art: Psychological and historical approaches to art appreciation

Abstract

Art appreciation often involves contemplation beyond immediate perceptual experience. However, there are challenges to incorporating such processes into a comprehensive theory of art appreciation. Can appreciation be captured in the responses to individual artworks? Can all forms of contemplation be defined? What properties of artworks trigger contemplation? We argue that such questions are fundamental to a psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation, and we suggest research that may assist in refining this framework.

Development and validation of the Aesthetic Processing Preference Scale (APPS).

“…However, no measure has yet been developed to assess individual differences in art viewers’ controlled processing preferences. This is an important shortcoming of the current literature, as several models of aesthetic experience assume that differences in controlled processing can drive appreciation and interest of artwork (Bullot & Reber, 2013; Pelowski, Markey, et al, 2017; Redies, 2015; Thompson & Antliff, 2013), but measures of general controlled processing have failed to find these relationships (e.g., Steciuch et al, 2021). Thus, the current study sought to develop a measure of controlled processing preferences that was grounded in aesthetic experiences, the APPS.…”

“…As such, an aesthetically grounded measure is necessary to understand controlled processing preferences for artworks. Finally, recent models of aesthetic experience have suggested that placing an artwork within its cultural and historical context can help facilitate appreciation (Bullot & Reber, 2013; Pelowski, Markey, et al, 2017; Redies, 2015; Thompson & Antliff, 2013), but research has primarily manipulated the context of the artwork (e.g., Krauss et al, 2021; Swami, 2013) rather than examining individual differences.…”

“…It has been proposed that a crucial element of art appreciation is a viewer’s desire to connect knowledge of an artwork to the style, culture, or artist of the work itself (e.g., Bullot & Reber, 2013; Swaboda, 2019; Thompson & Antliff, 2013). Context can be used to understand, explain, and experience art.…”

“…For example, simply telling an art viewer that something is an art object as opposed to a journalistic image has been shown to affect how the viewer perceives the object (Gerger et al, 2014) and the context of an art object being in a museum has been shown to enhance appreciation (Brieber et al, 2015, 2014; Swaboda, 2019). Additionally, recent models have proposed that connecting art to its historical concept is an important aspect of art appreciation (Bullot & Reber, 2013; Pelowski, Markey, et al, 2017; Redies, 2015; Thompson & Antliff, 2013), implying that differences in one’s ability and willingness to contextualize art results in differing levels of art appreciation.…”