Art in Its Experience: Can Empirical Psychology Help Assess Artistic Value?

Leonardo ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 367-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolf Reber
Keyword(s):  
Implicit Measures ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Demand Characteristics ◽  
Empirical Psychology ◽  
Artistic Value

This article outlines the roles of art theory and empirical psychology in understanding a work of art in its experience. Art theory sets the criteria of what the experience should be, and psychologists examine whether the predicted experience matches the observed experience of the recipient. An important issue is the role of knowledge in artistic evaluation, with resulting demand characteristics and concerns for self-presentation. With the help of recently developed implicit measures, both behavioral and biological, researchers are able to distinguish between explicitly reported knowledge and genuinely felt experience. The author presents examples of how art theory and empirical psychology might interact and how psychology can be used to examine a work's artistic value.

Art, value of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Budd
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
Measurable Quantity ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
Artistic Value ◽  
Decent Society

Art has as many kinds of value as there are points of view from which it can be evaluated. Moreover, the benefits of art vary with the role of the participant, for there are benefits that are specific to the creation, the performance and the mere appreciation of art. But in the philosophy of art one value is basic, namely the distinctive value of a work of art, its value as a work of art, which can be called its ‘artistic value’. This value is intrinsic to a work in that it is determined by the intrinsic, rather than the instrumental, value of an informed experience of it, an experience of it in which it is understood. Artistic value is a matter of degree, but it is not a measurable quantity, and whether one work is better than another may be an indeterminate issue. A judgment about a work’s artistic value claims validity, rightly or wrongly, not merely for the person who makes the judgment but for everyone. Both David Hume and Immanuel Kant tried to show how such a claim could be well-founded, but their attempts are usually considered failures, and there is no accepted solution to the problem they addressed. Many philosophers have been concerned with the relation between artistic value and other values. The most famous attack on art, founded on its supposed relation to other values, was made by Plato, who claimed that nearly all art has undesirable social consequences and so should be excluded from a decent society. Plato overlooked many possibilities, however, and the question of art’s beneficial or harmful influence is a much more complex issue than he recognized.

Response Interference as a Mechanism Underlying Implicit Measures

2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 218-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertram Gawronski ◽  
Roland Deutsch ◽  
Etienne P. LeBel ◽  
Kurt R. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Implicit Measures ◽  
Mediation Model ◽  
Response Interference ◽  
Relevant Evidence ◽  
Moderated Mediation Model ◽  
Stimulus Features ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms

Over the last decade, implicit measures of mental associations (e.g., Implicit Association Test, sequential priming) have become increasingly popular in many areas of psychological research. Even though successful applications provide preliminary support for the validity of these measures, their underlying mechanisms are still controversial. The present article addresses the role of a particular mechanism that is hypothesized to mediate the influence of activated associations on task performance in many implicit measures: response interference (RI). Based on a review of relevant evidence, we argue that RI effects in implicit measures depend on participants’ attention to association-relevant stimulus features, which in turn can influence the reliability and the construct validity of these measures. Drawing on a moderated-mediation model (MMM) of task performance in RI paradigms, we provide several suggestions on how to address these problems in research using implicit measures.

Gender differences in distributive justice: The role of self-presentation revisited

Sex Roles ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 30 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 303-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy L. Asdigian ◽  
Ellen S. Cohn ◽  
Mary Hennessey Blum
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Self Presentation

Contemporary Art: The Generative Role of Play

1959 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-401
Author(s):  
James Johnson Sweeney
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Looking Glass

AllOfUs who have considered the problem of enjoying contemporary art are aware that the most serious barriers to it are the reluctance on the part of many painters and sculptors to put aside the notion that a work of art must mirror the physical world about us and their unwillingness to accept the fact that all true art must go “through the looking glass” — that is beyond the mirror.

From Cannes to Cardboard: The Circulation and Promotion of Visages Villages and the Auteur on Instagram

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-185
Author(s):  
Matt St. John
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Academy Awards ◽  
Special Events ◽  
Online Presence ◽  
Academy Award ◽  
Award Nomination

Abstract This article explores the Instagram activities of Agnès Varda and her Visages Villages (Faces Places, France, 2017) codirector JR to consider the role of social media in the film's theatrical release and awards campaign, which led to the film's nomination for Best Documentary Feature—Varda's first and only Academy Award nomination. Through analysis of Varda's posts and her appearances on JR's Instagram, the author argues that social media complemented the film's conventional promotion while extending Varda's aesthetic practices and interests, offering one of the final examples of her consistent, enthusiastic experiments with new forms of media. On Instagram, Varda recycled and recontextualized the strategies of self-presentation and formal play seen in her documentaries for a different format, as she posted images and videos involving premieres, special events, and press coverage from her perspective. Throughout the film's release and awards campaign, social media began to function as an atypical way to draw attention to the film and its directors, especially for a low-budget documentary. The Visages Villages team merged traditional methods of achieving visibility with an unusual and intentional online presence, culminating in substantial coverage from new types of outlets when JR traveled to the Academy Awards luncheon with cardboard cutouts of Varda.

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