Enhancing aesthetic appreciation by priming canvases with actions that match the artist's painting style

Abstract

The creation of an artwork requires motor activity. To what extent is art appreciation divorced from that activity and to what extent is it linked to it? That is the question which we set out to answer. We presented participants with pointillist-style paintings featuring discernible brushstrokes and asked them to rate their liking of each canvas when it was preceded by images priming a motor act either compatible or incompatible with the simulation of the artist's movements. We show that action priming, when congruent with the artist's painting style, enhanced aesthetic preference. These results support the hypothesis that involuntary covert painting simulation contributes to aesthetic appreciation during passive observation of artwork.

The role of similarity, sound and awareness in the appreciation of visual artwork via motor simulation

“…This may have resulted in both sets of images being (dis)liked to the same degree, such that the absence of a main effect of image allowed the more subtle interaction to express itself. This idea appears contrary to recent data to suggest that art familiarity does not correlate with liking ratings for pointillist-style paintings in the context of preceding congruent and incongruent motor action (n = 18; Ticini et al, 2014). Nevertheless, the contribution of familiarity to the relationship between action-image congruency and liking was tested by asking participants at the end of the study to also rate their familiarity with both pointillist-style and stroke-style paintings.…”

“…In the case of Leder et al (2012), the average magnitude of the difference between artwork liking when congruent and incongruent actions were undertaken while viewing the artwork was 0.55 on a 1-7 scale. This appeared equivalent to an effect observed in the opposite direction, favoring incongruent action when viewing pointillist paintings, for a control group (À0.46) where action and viewing were temporally distinct (although see Ticini, Rachman, Pelletier, & Dubal, 2014, for the apparent success of a temporally distinct action-viewing effect using pointillist-style paintings). Therefore, to investigate the specificity and robustness of motor simulation effects on art appreciation, we began with a direct replication of Leder et al (2012) with higher statistical power.…”

“…2b for the resultant scatterplots). Therefore, familiarity does not appear to modulate any image-action congruency effect (see also Ticini et al, 2014).…”

Putting the art in artificial: Aesthetic responses to computer-generated art.

“…Increased empathy is said to enhance the spectator's emotional response to the piece by allowing for a direct understanding of the inner world of the artist. In support of this, participants who were primed for particular brushstrokes or who covertly generated particular brushstrokes while viewing works of art preferred artworks made using similar brushstrokes, suggesting an aesthetic perception-action congruency effect (Leder et al, 2012;Ticini et al, 2014). As the mirror neuron system is equally activated when watching humans and robots perform actions (Gazzola et al, 2007), it is likely that seeing a robot produce a work of art may elicit a similar empathic aesthetic response to that elicited by the simulation of human artistic actions.…”

Une approche cognitive de la narrativité musicale

“…Ce caractère nécessairement performé de la musique est central, car il explique aussi, nous y reviendrons, pourquoi l'exécutant-narrateur en musique est le lieu du sens pour toute musique entendue (cf. Hauer 2014 Taylor et al 2012, Leder et al 2012, Ticini et al 2014. Ou celle de photographies montrant des personnages en action (cf.…”