The white cube of the museum versus the gray cube of the street: The role of context in aesthetic evaluations.

Abstract

The cognitive and emotional processes involved in experiencing an artwork are influenced by charac teristics of the artwork and the viewer, but also by contextual factors. We studied how the 2 contexts of street and museum, as well as personal interest in modern art and graffiti art, affect aesthetic judgments and aesthetic emotions. For this purpose, we embedded modern artworks and graffiti art in street and museum scenes. Participants with different style preferences were asked to evaluate them for liking, interest, and valence. We found that being interested in modern art led to higher liking and interest ratings for modem artworks, but not for graffiti art. Conversely, being interested in graffiti increased ratings on all scales for graffiti art, but not for modem art. Also, interest in graffiti art had a stronger effect on valence ratings in a street context ("gray cube") than in a museum context ("white cube"). Therefore, we conclude that the context in combination with individual attitudes, such as specific art interests, has a relevant influence on our aesthetic experiences, with museums not always eliciting most positive effects.

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

“…However, modern graffiti originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Austin, 2001(Austin, , 2010. To be consistent with Gartus and Leder (2014), we want to keep the somewhat broader meaning of the term graffiti, but focus mainly on the artistic aspects rather than on vandalism. Hence, we will use the term graffiti art to refer to either graffiti or street 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.…”

“…But none of these studies compared different styles of art for which specific appropriate contexts exist. However, this is what was done in a recent study by Gartus and Leder (2014). While context is often manipulated by verbal instructions, we chose to change the visual appearance of art presentations in a laboratory setting by embedding graffiti art and modern art into dynamic museum and street images.…”

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

“…First, it is well established that the perception of any object whatsoever is not context-free, and that contextual information is stored in memory together with object-related information, facilitating subsequent object recognition (Bar, 2004;Engel, Maye, Kurthen, & König, 2013;Oliva & Torralba, 2007). Second, it has been shown that verbal and visual semantic contextual framing have a profound influence on art appreciation, as well as the underlying neural processes (Gartus & Leder, 2014;Kirk, Skov, Hulme, Christensen, & Zeki, 2009;Noguchi & Murota, 2013). Third, the few studies comparing art appreciation of original works exhibited at museums and their reproductions in the laboratory found differences regarding the appreciation of art.…”

Position Papers of the 2015 Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems

“…The viewer's characteristics which may have an impact of the viewer's art experience are, for example aesthetic fluency (Swami 2013), current affective state and specific art interest (Gartus, Leder 2014), and expertise in art . In the case of online galleries the spectrum of factors should be widened to incorporate aspects related with Internet and computer usage.…”