scholarly journals Fostering the Aesthetic Pleasure: The Effect of Verbal Description on Aesthetic Appreciation of Ambiguous and Unambiguous Artworks

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 144
Author(s):  
Emanuela Mari ◽  
Alessandro Quaglieri ◽  
Giulia Lausi ◽  
Maddalena Boccia ◽  
Alessandra Pizzo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Total Sample ◽  
Verbal Description ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Audio Description ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Retest Session

Background: Aesthetic experience begins through an intentional shift from automatic visual perceptual processing to an aesthetic state of mind that is evidently directed towards sensory experience. In the present study, we investigated whether portrait descriptions affect the aesthetic pleasure of both ambiguous (i.e., Arcimboldo’s portraits) and unambiguous portraits (i.e., Renaissance portraits). Method: A total sample of 86 participants were recruited and completed both a baseline and a retest session. In the retest session, we implemented a sample audio description for each portrait. The portraits were described by three types of treatment, namely global, local, and historical descriptions. Results: During the retest session, aesthetic pleasure was higher than the baseline. Both the local and the historical treatments improved the aesthetic appreciation of ambiguous portraits; instead, the global and the historical treatment improved aesthetic appreciation of Renaissance portraits during the retest session. Additionally, we found that the response times were slower in the retest session. Conclusion: taken together, these findings suggest that aesthetic preference was affected by the description of an artwork, likely due to a better knowledge of the painting, which prompts a more accurate (and slower) reading of the artwork.

Embodied Aesthetics

2018 ◽  
pp. 890-910
Author(s):  
Barbara Gail Montero
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
The Body ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Bodily Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
Embodied Aesthetics ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Bodily Movements

Although great art frequently revers the body, bodily experience itself is traditionally excluded from the aesthetic realm. This tradition, however, is in tension with the experience of expert dancers who find intense aesthetic pleasure in the experience of their own bodily movements. How to resolve this tension is the goal of this chapter. More specifically, in contrast to the traditional view that denigrates the bodily even while elevating the body, I aim to make sense of dancers’ embodied aesthetic experience of their own movements, as well as observers’ embodied aesthetic experience of seeing bodies move.

A Farewell to Art: Aesthetics as a Topic in Psychology and Neuroscience

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 630-642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Skov ◽  
Marcos Nadal
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Behavioral Control ◽  
Sensory Stimuli ◽  
Hedonic Value ◽  
Hedonic Valuation ◽  
Emotional Processes ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
Substantial Progress ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Definition Of

Empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics study two main issues: the valuation of sensory objects and art experience. These two issues are often treated as if they were intrinsically interrelated: Research on art experience focuses on how art elicits aesthetic pleasure, and research on valuation focuses on special categories of objects or emotional processes that determine the aesthetic experience. This entanglement hampers progress in empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics and limits their relevance to other domains of psychology and neuroscience. Substantial progress in these fields is possible only if research on aesthetics is disentangled from research on art. We define aesthetics as the study of how and why sensory stimuli acquire hedonic value. Under this definition, aesthetics becomes a fundamental topic for psychology and neuroscience because it links hedonics (the study of what hedonic valuation is in itself) and neuroeconomics (the study of how hedonic values are integrated into decision making and behavioral control). We also propose that this definition of aesthetics leads to concrete empirical questions, such as how perceptual information comes to engage value signals in the reward circuit or why different psychological and neurobiological factors elicit different appreciation events for identical sensory objects.

scholarly journals Is There Really A Puzzle Over Negative Emotions And Aesthetic Pleasure?

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (52) ◽  
Author(s):  
María José Alcaraz León
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Negative Aspect ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
Unpleasant Experience

Two seemingly contradictory aspects have marked art’s appreciation – and aesthetic appreciation in general. While an experience of pleasure seems to ground judgments of aesthetic value, some artworks seem to gain our praise by the very negative – unpleasant – experience they provoke. Known as the paradox of negative emotions, aestheticians have, at least since Aristotle, tried to deal with these cases and offer different explanations of the phenomenon. In this article, María José Alcaraz León does not directly offer an alternative explanation; rather she focuses on the apparent tension between an understanding of aesthetic experience in terms of a certain kind of pleasure and the negative aspect that is necessarily involved in our appreciation of painful art. The purpose of her article is to show that cases of artistic appreciation that involve negative emotions do not need to give up on the idea that aesthetic value is ultimately grounded upon an experience of pleasure.

The Aesthetics of Emptiness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuriko Saito
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Chinese Character ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Ubiquitous Presence

Art is the most effective vehicle for unearthing and highlighting the aesthetic potentials of the everyday life that generally do not garner attention because of their ubiquitous presence and ordinary familiarity. Recent art projects, termed ‘sky art’ for the purpose of discussion in this chapter, illuminate the aesthetics of the sky and celestial phenomena. This chapter analyzes several examples of ‘sky art’ by utilizing the notion of ‘emptiness,’ deriving an inspiration from the identical Chinese character used for both ‘sky’ and ‘emptiness,’ as well as the Buddhist notion of ‘emptiness.’ Despite the connotation of ‘emptiness’ that is devoid of any content or substance, different ways in which sky art facilitates the act of ‘emptying’ enrich the aesthetic experience of the sky and sky art. Sky art thus illustrates how art helps turn the otherwise ordinary into the extraordinary and facilitates its aesthetic appreciation.

Implicit Measures in the Aesthetic Domain

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Letizia Palumbo
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Implicit Measures ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Implicit Processes ◽  
The Aesthetic

The current chapter is concerned with implicit levels of information processing underlying hedonic responses. Commencing with an overview of the processes involved in the formation of the aesthetic experience, the discourse will focus on models that ascribe a role to the implicit dimension, a role that is marginal but necessary. We will see how a range of experimental procedures have contributed to measure automatic components of the aesthetic appreciation. The aim is to assign a specific place to the study of implicit processes within the broader debate on aesthetic experience. Ultimately, this will lead to some general remarks for the discipline of empirical aesthetics.

Environmental aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Environmental Aesthetics ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic

Environmental aesthetics is one of the major new areas of aesthetics to have emerged in the last part of the twentieth century. It focuses on philosophical issues concerning appreciation of the world at large as it is constituted not simply by particular objects but also by environments themselves. In this way environmental aesthetics goes beyond the appreciation of art to the aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments. Its development has been influenced by eighteenth-century landscape aesthetics as well as by two recent factors: the exclusive focus of twentieth-century philosophical aesthetics on art, and the public concern for the aesthetic condition of environments that developed in the second half of that century. Both factors broadened the scope of environmental aesthetics beyond that of traditional aesthetics, and both helped to set the central philosophical issue of the field, which is due in large measure to the differences between the nature of the object of appreciation of environmental aesthetics, the world at large and the nature of art. These differences are so marked that environmental aesthetics must begin with basic questions, such as ‘what’ and ‘how’ to appreciate. These questions have generated a number of different philosophical positions, two of which are the engagement and the cognitive approaches. The first holds that appreciators must transcend traditional dichotomies, such as subject/object, and diminish the distance between themselves and objects of appreciation, aiming at multi-sensory immersion of the former within the latter. By contrast, the second contends that appreciation must be guided by the nature of objects of appreciation and that knowledge about their origins, types and properties is necessary for serious, appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Each approach has certain strengths and weaknesses. However, although different in emphasis, they are not in direct conflict. When conjoined, they advocate bringing together feeling and knowing, which is the core of serious aesthetic experience and which, when achieved in aesthetic appreciation of different environments of the world at large, shows just how rewarding such appreciation can be.

Nature, aesthetic appreciation of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western World ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Ideal Object ◽  
The Third ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Aesthetic

In the Western world, aesthetic appreciation of nature and its philosophical investigation came to fruition in the eighteenth century. During that time, aestheticians made nature the ideal object of aesthetic experience and analysed that experience in terms of disinterestedness, thereby laying the groundwork for understanding the appreciation of nature in terms of the sublime and the picturesque. This philosophical tradition reached its zenith with Kant, while popular aesthetic appreciation of nature continued primarily in terms of the picturesque. In the late twentieth century, renewed interest in the aesthetics of nature has produced various positions designed to avoid assimilating appreciation of nature with traditional models for aesthetic appreciation of art. Three are especially noteworthy. The first holds that the appreciation of nature is not in fact aesthetic; the second rejects the traditional analysis of aesthetic experience as disinterested, arguing instead that the aesthetic appreciation of nature involves engagement with nature; the third attempts to maintain the traditional analysis, while distinguishing aesthetic appreciation of nature by dependence on scientific knowledge. These positions have a number of ramifications. In freeing aesthetic appreciation of nature from artistic models, they pave the way for a general environmental aesthetics comparable to other areas of philosophy, such as environmental ethics. Moreover, the significance given to scientific knowledge in the third position both explains the aesthetic appreciation associated with environmentalism and provides aesthetic appreciation of nature with a degree of objectivity that may make aesthetic considerations more effectual in environmental assessment.

scholarly journals The nature of perception and emotion in aesthetic appreciation: A response to Makin’s challenge to Empirical Aesthetics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Skov ◽  
Marcos Nadal
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Aesthetic Experiences ◽  
Emotional Processes ◽  
Distinct Kind ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Mainstream Psychology

Alexis Makin argued in a recent paper that Empirical Aesthetics is unable to properly advance our understanding of the mechanisms involved in aesthetic experience. The reason for this predicament, he claims, is an inability of current research methods to capture the psychological properties that truly characterize aesthetic experience, especially the unique perceptual and emotional processes involved in the aesthetic experience. We show that Makin’s argument rests on assumptions that are at odds with scientific knowledge of the neurobiological mechanisms involved in the appreciation of sensory objects. We thereafter show that such mechanisms are rooted in shared neurobiological systems, and operate according to computational principles that are common to many domains of experience. This casts doubt on the notion that aesthetic experiences constitute a distinct kind of experiences that can be defined according to a set of special and unique qualities. Finally, we discuss how attributing this specialness to “aesthetic” experiences leads Empirical Aesthetics astray from mainstream psychology and neuroscience.

Environmental aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Environmental Aesthetics ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic

Environmental aesthetics is one of the major new areas of aesthetics to have emerged in the last part of the twentieth century. It focuses on philosophical issues concerning appreciation of the world at large as it is constituted not simply by particular objects but also by environments themselves. In this way environmental aesthetics goes beyond the appreciation of art to the aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments. The development of environmental aesthetics has been influenced by eighteenth-century landscape aesthetics as well as by two recent factors: the exclusive focus of twentieth-century philosophical aesthetics on art and the public concern for the aesthetic condition of environments that developed in the second half of that century. Both factors have broadened the scope of environmental aesthetics beyond that of traditional aesthetics, and both have helped to set the central philosophical issues of the field, which are due in large measure to the differences between the nature of the object of appreciation of environmental aesthetics, the world at large, and the nature of art. These differences are so marked that environmental aesthetics must begin with most basic questions, such as ‘what’ and ‘how’ to appreciate. These questions have generated a number of different philosophical positions, which are typically classified as either noncognitive or cognitive approaches. Positions of the first type stress various kinds of emotional and feeling-related states and responses, which are taken to be the more noncognitive dimensions of aesthetic experience. By contrast, positions of the second type contend that appreciation must be guided by the nature of objects of appreciation and thus that knowledge about their origins, types and properties is necessary for serious, appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Each of these two kinds of approach has certain strengths and weaknesses. However, recent work in environmental aesthetics, especially in the aesthetics of human environments and everyday life, demonstrates that although different in emphasis, they are not in direct conflict. When conjoined, they advocate bringing together feeling and knowing, which is the core of serious aesthetic experience and which, when achieved in aesthetic appreciation of different environments of the world at large, demonstrates just how rewarding such appreciation can be.

Modern Parody

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-89
Author(s):  
Leonard Diepeveen
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
The Aesthetic

Beginning with an account of a parody of Spectra (itself a hoax movement intended to expose the fraudulence of imagism), this chapter examines how actual frauds, hoaxes, and parodies—as attempts to unmask modernism’s fraudulent ambitions—performed something essential to a successful fraud: a mimicry of sincerity. Along with this mimicry, parodies and hoaxes interpreted what modernism’s features were, arguing as well that modernism was easy to replicate, and therefore insincere. As part of this analysis, the chapter questions whether truly new or avant-garde works are capable of being parodied when their features are not understood. The goal of these frauds, hoaxes, and parodies was not to articulate an affect of aesthetic pleasure, but to make the aesthetic experience of modernism one of recognition, credulity, common sense—a silent appeal to ideology, and a moment of unmasking.

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