"Museum of the Mind": An Inquiry Into the Titling of Artworks

Cognitive approaches have recently been proposed for understanding art appreciation, emphasizing the role of perceived artist's intentions and messages in how lay people define what is "art" and what is "good" art. In particular, it is argued that a work of art automatically triggers speculation about the artist's intention, and that it is intuitively assessed as an act of symbolic communication. The current experimental study tested these claims by presenting participants with various artifacts and works of art, alongside differing levels of information regarding the artist's intentions, and asking them to rate the artifacts on artistic merit. In total, 505 adults participated in four experiments. In experiment 1, participants used the artists' putative intentions to decide whether certain artifacts were instances of "art." In experiments 2a and 2b, titles that ostensibly clarified the artists' messages were found to increase participants' understanding and, importantly, liking of a series of works of art. In experiment 3, high levels of perceived investment from artists were found to increase how much participants liked a series of paintings. Overall, the results suggest that perceived artists' intentions and messages affect what people consider to be art and good art. The art experience is not only about beauty or hedonistic pleasure, but involves assessment of the artist's intention and of the history behind the work of art.

Section: Experiments 2amentioning

confidence: 91%

“I Just Don'T Get it”: Perceived Artists' Intentions Affect Art Evaluations

Jucker

Barrett

Wlodarski

2014

“…As such, providing factual and contextual information about the art can help visitors to understand the piece, and it can also enhance their viewing experience. Textual information accompanying an artwork—such as a title, a description, or information about the artist—serves the function of identification, but it also provides sources of meaning and assists meaning formation (Franklin, 1988; Franklin, Becklen, & Doyle, 1993; Gombrich, 1985).…”

Section: Information In Viewing Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Accompanying Text on Visual Processing and Hedonic Evaluation of Art

Lin

Yao²

2017

This study explores how accompanying text affects the way an individual views and interprets a painting. We randomly assigned participants to view 20 paintings from the classical era with factual information, contextualized background information, or no information displayed next to them. We then recorded their visual gaze using an eye-tracking device and asked them to evaluate the paintings. The results show that how people view a painting and how they evaluate a painting are two distinct cognitive processes. The contextual information serves to orient the viewing process. The accompanying text influences the visual attention and gaze pattern but has limited impact on the hedonic evaluation of paintings. Instead, hedonic evaluation is more of a taste acquired through education and socialization. This study offers an empirical footnote to discussions on the cognitive assumptions in sociological studies of art and cultural phenomena.

“…As indicated by previous studies, these types of information may significantly influence individuals’ understanding and appreciation of the viewed artworks (Cupchik et al., 1994; Millis, 2001; Russell, 2003; Swami, 2013). In addition to such elaborative information, it is also possible to provide viewers with shorter forms of verbal information, for example, titles that may be used for identifying the artwork and aid its interpretation (Franklin, 1988). While such short information may have a less pronounced effect on the overall esthetic experiences (Millis, 2001; Swami, 2013), it nevertheless influences the semantic processing of the presented artworks (Franklin, Becklen, & Doyle, 1993; Russell & Milne, 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observing Individuals Viewing Art

Bubić

Sušac

Palmović

2016

Understanding the mechanisms underlying the perception of artworks is of significant interest in experimental esthetics. Therefore, in this study, we utilized eye-tracking for investigating how participants familiar and unfamiliar with paintings' titles viewed Kandinsky's abstract and figural artworks. The analysis of behavioral data indicated that knowledge of the title increased participants' liking of the presented paintings and demonstrated a general preference for figural over abstract paintings. Next, we focused the analysis of eye-movement data on areas of the paintings that depict themes associated with their titles. The results demonstrated that participants familiar with the titles viewed these longer and visited them earlier compared with those unfamiliar with paintings' titles. Furthermore, all participants viewed these areas within figural paintings longer and returned to them more often than within abstract paintings. These findings extend previous results by indicating how presenting short titles influences participants' viewing of abstract and figural artworks.