The Psychology of Visual Art Eye, Brain and Art

Introduction

During the two millennia before the advent of modern conceptual art, with its emphasis on ideas and intellectual qualities, visual aesthetic pleasure was considered to be a core element of one’s experience when viewing visual art. Indeed, beauty was at the very core of the British Aesthetic Movement in art during the late 1800s. Aesthetic judgements are not, of course, restricted to visual art but are also made about natural visual forms such as faces, landscapes and flowers, and about manufactured forms such as buildings and machines. All of these judgements are closely tied to the sensory qualities of the object: its visual attributes such as shape, texture, colour, movement and so on, as well as other attributes such as smell and touch. Moreover, aesthetic judgements are also central in other art forms such as music, literature, opera and dance. Aesthetic judgement is such a fundamental aspect of human experience that it has been considered from the perspective of many different disciplines including philosophy, cultural studies, history and anthropology. This chapter will focus on the insights that can be gained from the scientific perspectives of modern psychology. It will ask how scientific principles can deepen our understanding of aesthetic appreciation in visual art.