Does the frame of an artwork matter? Cultural framing and aesthetic judgments for abstract and representational art.

Abstract

Art is often thought to reflect the culture from which it comes. We tested the hypotheses that viewers' aesthetic experiences of art are modulated by cultural labels as expressed by artist names and by sociocultural content depicted in the artwork. We predicted that people would prefer artworks from their own culture compared to another-an ingroup bias. Across three preregistered experiments, we explored Northern American and Indian participants' aesthetic judgments and preferences for abstract and representational artworks. Contrary to our predictions, no evidence was found for an ingroup bias in Experiment 1 when American abstract artworks were assigned with fictional American, Indian, Chinese, or Turkish artist names. Aesthetic ratings for artworks were similar across Indian and American participants, irrespective of the cultural label they were assigned. Similarly, no differences in preferences across Indian and American participants were found in Experiment 2 when participants had to make a forced choice between two artworks attributed to Indian and American artists. We found slightly higher shared preferences for Indian artworks among Indian participants compared to American artworks and participants. An ingroup preference for Indian and American/European representational artworks was found in Experiment 3-participants preferred artworks depicting content from their own culture compared to another. Effects across all experiments persisted when controlling for participants' age, education, art experience, and openness to experience. The modulation of art perception and appreciation by contextual information may be flexible and more influenced by cultural content depicted in artworks than simple cultural framing.

Engaging with art in-the-wild at the Barnes Foundation and Penn Museum

“…Research in the field has established that context plays an important role in the top-down modulation of aesthetic experiences, changing how we perceive and evaluate artworks (Leder et al, 2006;. Findings from our lab as well as others suggest that people's aesthetic experiences are shaped by physical context (e.g., whether they view artworks online or in a museum; Estrada Gonzalez et al, 2020), perceived cultural context (e.g., whether the artwork depicts content from one's own culture; Darda & Cross, 2022;Darda et al, 2023;Darda & Chatterjee, 2023b), and/or the semantic context associated with the artwork (e.g., text-based contextual information about the artwork; Darda & Chatterjee, 2023a). With increasing awareness of the role of context in aesthetic judgments, researchers now frame art appreciation as a complex interplay between the viewer, the art object, and the conditions under which it is experienced (Lauring et al, 2016;Pelowski et al, 2017).…”

“…For both participants in the lab and in the museum, a follow-up survey was conducted one week from the date on which they visited the museum or lab. In the follow-up survey, participants answered questions to measure their openness with experience, and did a memory task (for items used to measure openness to experience, see Darda & Chatterjee, 2023). First, they were asked to describe from memory the eight selected artworks they viewed in the museum or on the computer screen in the lab.…”

“…As exploratory analyses, we further explored different routes to liking (Mak, Faber & Willems, 2022;Darda & Chatterjee, 2023). When people 'like' an artwork, they might like it to the same extent, but their reasons for liking it may be different.…”

Cultural frame-dependent differences in artistic appraisals between White and Black Americans.

“…Across the African frame, Black participants reported higher scores of understanding, meaning, interest, and liking of abstract art, but there were no differences in the moving dimension compared to White participants. This is puzzling because previous research suggests that heuristics decisions based on identity may be more likely when viewing ambiguous abstract art (Darda & Cross, 2022; Darda et al, 2023; Mastandrea et al, 2021). While the results of the present study are in line with these studies for all other variables, there was no significant difference in how emotionally impactful the experience was for Black participants viewing the artworks within the African frame.…”

“…In a recent study, Darda et al (2023) used names as proxies of cultural identities and presented American abstract and representational paintings as works of American, Indian, Chinese, and Turkish artists to American and Indian participants. Contrary to the findings of Mastandrea et al (2021), the authors found no ingroup biases in viewing abstract or representational paintings.…”