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. 2014 Jun 3:8:391.
doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00391. eCollection 2014.

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

Luca F Ticini  1 , Laura Rachman  2 , Jerome Pelletier  3 , Stephanie Dubal  2
Affiliations

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

Luca F Ticini et al. Front Hum Neurosci. .

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.

Keywords: action; aesthetic appreciation; art; mirror neurons; priming; simulation.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Visuomotor training. During the associative training, three images (A) depicting a right gloved-hand holding a paintbrush with a precision or a power grip (or rested palm down as control) instructed the participants to produce pointillist-style (B), and stroke-style (C), respectively.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Images of a gloved-hand holding a paintbrush were used as supraliminal priming before the display of each pointillist-style painting. The images consisted of either a precision or a power grip, or of a rested palm down hand and they created three conditions. Compatible (precision grip) or Incompatible (power grip) with the drawing of pointillist-style paintings. The palm down image served as Control. (B) The preference expressed when the paintings were preceded by priming images activating motor programs Compatible with the production of pointillist-style brushstrokes was higher than that expressed for the Incompatible (*p < 0.05) and the Control (marginally significant §p = 0.067) conditions. The liking ratings in the Incompatible and Control conditions did not differ from each other (p = 0.567). Mean liking ratings in the three conditions are depicted (error bars represent s.e.m.).
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