Warm, lively, rough?: Assessing agreement on aesthetic effects of artworks

Eva Specker; Michael Forster; Hanna Brinkmann; Jane Boddy; Beatrice Immelmann; Jürgen Goller; Matthew Pelowski; Raphael Rosenberg; Helmut Leder

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0232083

Warm, lively, rough? Assessing agreement on aesthetic effects of artworks

Eva Specker^*
, Michael Forster
, Hanna Brinkmann
, Jane Boddy
, Beatrice Immelmann
, Jürgen Goller
, Matthew Pelowski
, Raphael Rosenberg
, Helmut Leder

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

30 Citations (Scopus)

102 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The idea that simple visual elements such as colors and lines have specific, universal associations—for example red being warm—appears rather intuitive. Such associations have formed a basis for the description of artworks since the 18^th century and are still fundamental to discourses on art today. Art historians might describe a painting where red is dominant as “warm,” “aggressive,” or “lively,” with the tacit assumption that beholders would universally associate the works’ certain key forms with specific qualities, or “aesthetic effects”. However, is this actually the case? Do we actually share similar responses to the same line or color? In this paper, we tested whether and to what extent this assumption of universality (sharing of perceived qualities) is justified. We employed—for the first time—abstract artworks as well as single elements (lines and colors) extracted from these artworks in an experiment in which participants rated the stimuli on 14 “aesthetic effect” scales derived from art literature and empirical aesthetics. To test the validity of the assumption of universality, we examined on which of the dimensions there was agreement, and investigated the influence of art expertise, comparing art historians with lay people. In one study and its replication, we found significantly lower agreement than expected. For the whole artworks, participants agreed on the effects of warm-cold, heavy-light, and happy-sad, but not on 11 other dimensions. Further, we found that the image type (artwork or its constituting elements) was a major factor influencing agreement; people agreed more on the whole artwork than on single elements. Art expertise did not play a significant role and agreement was especially low on dimensions usually of interest in empirical aesthetics (e.g., like-dislike). Our results challenge the practice of interpreting artworks based on their aesthetic effects, as these effects may not be as universal as previously thought.

Original language	English
Article number	e0232083
Journal	PLoS ONE
Volume	15
Issue number	5
Number of pages	16
ISSN	1932-6203
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232083
Publication status	Published - 13.05.2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The writing of this paper was supported by a grant (“Universal aesthetics of lines and colors? Effects of culture, expertise, and habituation”) to Raphael Rosenberg and Helmut Leder by the Wiener Wissenschafts-, Forschungsund Technologiefonds (WWTF, https://www.wwtf. at/, Project number: CS15-036). The funders did not play any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. We would like to thank Lisa Hegelmaier and Maximilian Douda for their help with data collection and the preparation of tables and Karl Pani, Armin Plankensteiner, and René Steyer for editing the stimulus material.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Specker et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Research areas and keywords

Media and communication studies
Digital media

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

General

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Cite this

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title = "Warm, lively, rough?: Assessing agreement on aesthetic effects of artworks",

abstract = "The idea that simple visual elements such as colors and lines have specific, universal associations—for example red being warm—appears rather intuitive. Such associations have formed a basis for the description of artworks since the 18th century and are still fundamental to discourses on art today. Art historians might describe a painting where red is dominant as “warm,” “aggressive,” or “lively,” with the tacit assumption that beholders would universally associate the works{\textquoteright} certain key forms with specific qualities, or “aesthetic effects”. However, is this actually the case? Do we actually share similar responses to the same line or color? In this paper, we tested whether and to what extent this assumption of universality (sharing of perceived qualities) is justified. We employed—for the first time—abstract artworks as well as single elements (lines and colors) extracted from these artworks in an experiment in which participants rated the stimuli on 14 “aesthetic effect” scales derived from art literature and empirical aesthetics. To test the validity of the assumption of universality, we examined on which of the dimensions there was agreement, and investigated the influence of art expertise, comparing art historians with lay people. In one study and its replication, we found significantly lower agreement than expected. For the whole artworks, participants agreed on the effects of warm-cold, heavy-light, and happy-sad, but not on 11 other dimensions. Further, we found that the image type (artwork or its constituting elements) was a major factor influencing agreement; people agreed more on the whole artwork than on single elements. Art expertise did not play a significant role and agreement was especially low on dimensions usually of interest in empirical aesthetics (e.g., like-dislike). Our results challenge the practice of interpreting artworks based on their aesthetic effects, as these effects may not be as universal as previously thought.",

keywords = "Media and communication studies, Digital media",

author = "Eva Specker and Michael Forster and Hanna Brinkmann and Jane Boddy and Beatrice Immelmann and J{\"u}rgen Goller and Matthew Pelowski and Raphael Rosenberg and Helmut Leder",

note = "Funding Information: The writing of this paper was supported by a grant (“Universal aesthetics of lines and colors? Effects of culture, expertise, and habituation”) to Raphael Rosenberg and Helmut Leder by the Wiener Wissenschafts-, Forschungsund Technologiefonds (WWTF, https://www.wwtf. at/, Project number: CS15-036). The funders did not play any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. We would like to thank Lisa Hegelmaier and Maximilian Douda for their help with data collection and the preparation of tables and Karl Pani, Armin Plankensteiner, and Ren{\'e} Steyer for editing the stimulus material. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 Specker et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.",

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AU - Boddy, Jane

AU - Immelmann, Beatrice

AU - Goller, Jürgen

AU - Pelowski, Matthew

AU - Rosenberg, Raphael

AU - Leder, Helmut

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N2 - The idea that simple visual elements such as colors and lines have specific, universal associations—for example red being warm—appears rather intuitive. Such associations have formed a basis for the description of artworks since the 18th century and are still fundamental to discourses on art today. Art historians might describe a painting where red is dominant as “warm,” “aggressive,” or “lively,” with the tacit assumption that beholders would universally associate the works’ certain key forms with specific qualities, or “aesthetic effects”. However, is this actually the case? Do we actually share similar responses to the same line or color? In this paper, we tested whether and to what extent this assumption of universality (sharing of perceived qualities) is justified. We employed—for the first time—abstract artworks as well as single elements (lines and colors) extracted from these artworks in an experiment in which participants rated the stimuli on 14 “aesthetic effect” scales derived from art literature and empirical aesthetics. To test the validity of the assumption of universality, we examined on which of the dimensions there was agreement, and investigated the influence of art expertise, comparing art historians with lay people. In one study and its replication, we found significantly lower agreement than expected. For the whole artworks, participants agreed on the effects of warm-cold, heavy-light, and happy-sad, but not on 11 other dimensions. Further, we found that the image type (artwork or its constituting elements) was a major factor influencing agreement; people agreed more on the whole artwork than on single elements. Art expertise did not play a significant role and agreement was especially low on dimensions usually of interest in empirical aesthetics (e.g., like-dislike). Our results challenge the practice of interpreting artworks based on their aesthetic effects, as these effects may not be as universal as previously thought.

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