Color and visual complexity in abstract images

Abstract

One of the more important aspects of vision is color perception, which involves aesthetic and psychological responses. The aim of this study is to understand the association between color and visual complexity in abstract images. It is hypothesized that, as the intelligibility of colors in an abstract image decreases, visual complexity and visual interest will increase until there is over unintelligibility where complexity and interest will decrease. In addition, as the difficulty in distinguishing the rules and the variety of colors used in images increases, visual complexity and visual interest will also increase. Abstract images are selected since they are independent from the visual references of the actual world, and are basics of art and architecture. The results revealed that images that were evaluated as visually complex and interesting were the ones that they had difficulty in finding a color harmony and indicate a huge variety of colors to the extent that differentiation between hues becomes very difficult.

Color and visual complexity in abstract images: Part II

“…According to the results of the experiment of Part I, the second experiment was designed to understand the role of color in visual complexity. As the results of the first experiment demonstrate, participants rated Vasily Kandinsky's Composition 8 as the most visually complex, visually interesting, and most intelligible . Participants also rated Piet Mondrian's Ocean 5 as the least visually complex, least visually interesting, and the least intelligible.…”

“…Most of the well‐known color studies researching the effects of color on psychology, physiology, emotion, mood, attention, and well‐being used isolated color patches, which might not reflect the dominating factors. There are a limited number of studies examining color, visual complexity, and visual interest together, and one of the recent studies that attempted to bring a new understanding to the association between color, visual complexity, and visual interest was the first part of this current study . Most of the results of complexity studies vary since they manipulated all the complexity dimensions without considering the dimensions' appropriateness to the related factors .…”

“…In the first part of this study, Piet Mondrian's two abstract paintings, Ocean 5 and Composition No. VII, and Vasily Kandinsky's two abstract paintings, Composition 8 and Decisive Rose, were selected . According to the results of the first part, abstract images that were evaluated as visually complex and interesting were the ones that had less difficulty in differentiating hues (intelligible).…”

“…There are a limited number of studies examining color, visual complexity, and visual interest together, and one of the recent studies that attempted to bring a new understanding to the association between color, visual complexity, and visual interest was the first part of this current study. 2 Most of the results of complexity studies vary since they manipulated all the complexity dimensions without considering the dimensions' appropriateness to the related factors. 3 The first part of this study framed the dimensions of visual complexity by focusing only on unintelligibility, disorganization, and the variety of colors in abstract images.…”

“…VII, and Vasily Kandinsky's two abstract paintings, Composition 8 and Decisive Rose, were selected. 2 According to the results of the first part, abstract images that were evaluated as visually complex and interesting were the ones that had less difficulty in differentiating hues (intelligible). As the selected images are complex in nature, their degrees of complexity demonstrated that they became unintelligible, that is, when viewers have difficulty in distinguishing hues, they start losing their visual interest.…”