Context matters: Investigating the impact of contextual information on aesthetic appreciation of paintings by Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso.

Abstract

A small body of work has suggested that understanding and appreciation of artworks are affected by the presentation of concurrent contextualizing information, such as titular and descriptive information. The present studies examined the effects of different types of information and different art styles on understanding and aesthetic appreciation. Study 1 showed that elaborate, content-specific information had the greatest impact on both understanding and aesthetic appreciation of abstract paintings by Max Emst, relative to broad genre infomiation, titular information, or no contextualizing infomiation. Study 2 showed that the provision of content-speciflc information resulted in greater understanding and appreciation of abstract artworks by Pablo Picasso, but not representational paintings by the same artist. Study 3 showed that, compared with relevant information, the presentation of nonrelevant, contentrelated information about artworks did not result in improved understanding and appreciation. In each of the three studies, appraised ability to understand artworks fully mediated the relationship between information presentation and aesthetic appreciation. These results are consistent with a psycho-historical framework, which proposes that studies of aesthetic appreciation must take into account the impact of the art-historical context.

In the white cube: Museum context enhances the valuation and memory of art

“…Whereas Liking, Interest, and Understanding scales have often been used in empirical aesthetic research (e.g. Leder, Carbon, & Ripsas, 2006;Silvia, 2005;Swami, 2013), we also included Arousal and Valence scales to examine the affective experience in more detail than other similar studies have done before (Brieber et al, 2014;Locher et al, 1999Locher et al, , 2001. All were 6-point Likert scales, were 1 stood for "very little" and 6 for "a lot", except for valence, where 1 stood for "very negative" and 6 for "very positive".…”

The effects of visual context and individual differences on perception and evaluation of modern art and graffiti art

“…While some effects of context on art appreciation have been discussed and demonstrated (Brieber, Nadal, & Leder, 2015;Brieber, Nadal, Leder, & Rosenberg, 2014;Gartus & Leder, 2014;Gerger, Leder, & Kremer, 2014;Hagtvedt & Patrick, 2011;Kirk, 2008;Kirk, Skov, Hulme, Christensen, & Zeki, 2009;Marković, 2012;Noguchi & Murota, 2013;Swami, 2013), the actual processes that cause contextual differences are yet unclear. Therefore, in addition to traditional rating scales, in the present study we employed the measurement of eyemovements to study whether the perception of artworks differs with context, or even interacts with different kinds of contexts.…”

“…Similarly, Gerger et al (2014) found that artworks with a negative semantic content were rated higher when being presented as art as opposed to a reality context. Swami (2013) showed that elaborate, content-specific information can increase the understanding and appreciation of abstract artworks. Hagtvedt and Patrick (2011) presented the same images either as art or as illustrations, which resulted in different evaluations.…”

Big C Research – The Big Challenge? Reflections from Research into Eminent Creativity in the Light of the Investment Theory of Creativity

“…I based classification of the texts mainly on the content of the abstract, keywords, and in the case of empirical texts on the research methodology. Among the 135 articles from all four journals, only two (1.5%) (Boerner & Jobst, 2013;Swami, 2013) dealt with eminent creativity, and 22 (16.0%) with professional creativity (12 PACA; 7 CRJ; 2 TSC; 1 JCB), for example: Chan, Hui, Cheng and Ng, (2013); Karpova, Marcketti and Kamm, (2013); Nęcka and Hlawacz, (2013); Simoens and Tervaniemi, (2013). Among articles devoted to professional creativity: 16 (72.8%) were based on quantitative analyses, three (13.6%) on qualitative analyses and three (13.6%) represented theoretical considerations; both articles on eminent creativity were supported with results from quantitative analyses (see also Feist & Runco, 1993).…”