Gist Perception of Image Composition in Abstract Artworks

Abstract

Most recent studies in experimental aesthetics have focused on the cognitive processing of visual artworks. In contrast, the perception of formal compositional features of artworks has been studied less extensively. Here, we investigated whether fast and automatic processing of artistic image composition can lead to a stable and consistent aesthetic evaluation when cognitive processing is minimized or absent. To this aim, we compared aesthetic ratings on abstract artworks and their shuffled counterparts in a gist experiment. Results show that exposure times as short as 50 ms suffice for the participants to reach a stable and consistent rating on how ordered and harmonious the abstract stimuli were. Moreover, the rating scores for the 50 ms exposure time exhibited similar dependencies on image type and self-similarity and a similar pattern of correlations between different rating terms, as the rating scores for the long exposure time (3,000 ms). Ratings were less consistent for the term interesting and inconsistent for the term pleasing. Our results are compatible with a model of aesthetic experience, in which the early perceptual processing of the formal aspects of visual artworks can lead to a consistent aesthetic judgment, even if there is no cognitive contribution to this judgment.

Keywords: abstract art; aesthetic rating; aesthetics; gist perception; statistical image properties.

Figure 1.

Examples of the stimuli used in the experiment. The pictorial elements of the original images (a–c) were shuffled to create images that lack an artistic composition (d–f). Reproduced with permission. © Christoph Redies, 2017.

Figure 2.

Schematic diagram of the experimental procedure. For unlimited exposure, there was no mask.

Figure 3.

Scatter plots of average rating scores (a, harmonious; b, interesting; c, ordered; and d, pleasing) for the exposure times of 50 ms and 3,000 ms (red dots, original images; blue triangles, shuffled versions). The lines represent significant results from a linear regression analysis (black lines, both image types together; red line, original images; and blue lines, shuffled versions).

Figure 4.

Scatter plots of scores for the different rating scales for exposure times of 3,000 ms (a–c), 50 ms (d–f) and 17 ms (g). Red dots indicate original images and blue triangles indicate the shuffled versions. The lines represent significant results from a linear regression analysis (black lines, both image types together; red line, original images; and blue lines, shuffled versions).