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Tate Papers ISSN 1753-9854

On Painting Art & Language

Michael Baldwin, Charles Harrison and Mel Ramsden

This paper was presented by members of Art & Language (Michael Baldwin, Charles Harrison and Mel Ramsden) at Tate Modern in March 2003 as part of the talks series Painting Present. It argues that painting resists the Institutional Theory of art in as much as it does not depend on institutions for its status as art. In this respect, painting after conceptual art may be seen as just as critical of art institutions as conceptual art used to be.

Michael Baldwin We propose to talk about the possibility of painting with a certain background in view. We should make clear from the outset that by painting we do not just mean hand-made pictures. What we do and can mean may become clearer as we proceed. The background we have in mind is both theoretical and practical. The theoretical background takes the form of the so-called Institutional Theory, which has been virtually hegemonic within the art world for some forty years, determining upon people who in the majority have probably never heard of it.

Charles Harrison An informal version of the Institutional Theory was in circulation among certain artists, dealers and curators in the late 1950s, but it was given its first persuasive articulation by the philosopher Arthur Danto in 1964. Danto wrote of the end of art, meaning the end of an art governed by specific criteria and by specific notions of historical progress. It is now conventional wisdom that painting reached a terminus of sorts with the blank canvas. Danto and others following him marked the end of the developmental narrative of modernism with the problem of indiscernibles: objects, one of which is art and the other of which is not, and which cannot therefore be told apart except by reference to the different parts they play in the discourse of an art world. Danto mistakenly based his original argument on Warhol ’s all-too distinguishable Brillo Boxes. It fits Duchamp ’s snow shovel [ In Advance of the Broken Arm 1915] rather better. In fact we might say that at first sight the Institutional Theory is practically required by Duchamp’s first unassisted readymade.

Mel Ramsden The practical part of our background consists in real institutions, their concrete acts and occasions – this occasion among them. In talking of this as background, we do not wish to conflate the Institutional Theory with the practical artworld and its institutions. However, there is a connection in so far as the theory has been useful – indeed necessary in excess of its actual explanatory power – in supplying the institutions in question with their practical self-description. They need it to account to themselves for the power that they have come to wield over the status of objects as art.

Charles Harrison These are the conditions under which painting has to be conceived. We assert that painting also has to be conceived under the conditions that are mediated by Conceptual Art. Why is this the case? For two different reasons, each sustained by a different sense of what Conceptual Art is and means.

Michael Baldwin According to one view, Conceptual Art is associated with the turn from modernism, conceived as an ideology of painting and sculpture, and with the advent of generic art with its accompanying and constituting institutional and managerial apparatuses. An alternative narrative is put in place which traces a ‘postmodernist’ diversification to the agendas ascribed to Marcel Duchamp : the hoc, the post hoc, and the propter hoc. It is this narrative that produces the current sense of Conceptual Art as a journalistic category born some time in the 1980s that designates promiscuously any art practice or form that is not painting or sculpture. Some of this stuff might be included in what we could call ‘good art’, but it shares in a globalised mélange of late Surrealism, pop art, process art, body art and so on, that has seen not only the empowerment of the curator but the reduction of the artist to the status of client – supplier of fuel to an ideological machine. Charles Harrison We would argue that while this hoc, post hoc and propter hoc casts a real shadow and has real effects on the possibilities of painting, it entails a catastrophic misreading of the imaginative and critical possibilities that Conceptual Art promised. There is another hoc, post hoc and propter hoc. We should come clean and acknowledge that the hoc in question is in large measure our Conceptual Art – that is to say Art & Language’s. The particular post hoc we are trying to examine is painting. It remains to be seen whether this is our painting alone. It should be noted that the narrative in which painting designates a set of possibilities has to be discussed against a background of events that more or less excludes it. The second hoc is narrated against or rather in the midst of the first and better established one. What follows is that if we are to let our own work in somewhere, and if we are practically to envisage some continuation of painting, then we have first to dislodge the sense of Conceptual Art that would reduce it to epigones and descendants of the snow shovel.

Mel Ramsden It might be objected that if Conceptual Art was about anything, then it was about not painting; that what we can admire about it is the intellectual challenge it represents. And the intellectual challenge exists in the form of texts and other banalities that eschew the aesthetic virtues that painting can avoid neither technically nor historically. With Conceptual Art, a way of thinking about art is invoked and is indexed and then migrates to the walls, where it murmurs away in Hegelian reflexivity.

Charles Harrison It is indeed true that Conceptual Art sought to put texts where paintings had been, and thus in a sense to displace them. It served to make the case that late modernism marked a real terminus for ‘authentic painting’ and that further modernist development was simply implausible. It did this in part by reminding painting of an intellectual substance and depth it might have owned in its pre-modernist past. It thus stood in the way both of a sentimental return to painting’s past and of any progress to a painterly postmodernism.

Michael Baldwin It is also clear that the kind of Conceptual Art celebrated under the 1960s and 1970s rubric of ‘Demateralisation’ tended to reduce to the status of speciously transparent art world gesture. The complexity its admirers celebrated was usually generated in their own attempts to make sense of its opacities. Not that anyone cared much about this at the time. If it was post-Minimalism it was fine. This was part of what the background was made of then, and we all spent some time trying to see ourselves against it.

Mel Ramsden But playing with language is playing with a big machine. And playing with language in the context of a tradition of painting is taking on a legacy of powerful descriptions – or it is unless you think that stringing a few words together is the next thing in art, while using a lot is falling out of art and into literature. For us, as Conceptual Art developed into an art of describing, what grew around it was a constituency of interlocutors – listeners and learners as much as speakers and producers. As it turned out, this was a threat to professional securities – for instance to the crucial distinction between artist and critic. But it was also here that the substantial connection was established between Conceptual Art and its syndicalised antecedents in painting. The text may have colonised the physical location of painting, but this text had to mean something – as painting had had to once. It had to be made, and not just be artily found – and the making at issue was a social and conversational pursuit.

Michael Baldwin So we have an implied absence of painting. This absence was represented by the text in at least two possible ways. Firstly, the text was on the wall in some sense in place of the painting. Secondly, it stood in for or was an analogue for the modernist critical text that had come to dominate late – modernist painting – the writing that, as we have said, ‘might as well be put up on the wall’, since it had already come to function prescriptively in respect of that to which it was supposed to be subordinate. In a normal ‘ekphrasis’ we have ut pictura poesis. Here we have ut poesis pictura. It is as if the painting left the text with the remainder, and not vice versa. This is why Stella ’s early paintings are so good. They threw the prescriptive text back at itself, reflecting upon their own status as insolent readings of the rules.

Charles Harrison Now once this was noticed – as it was in proto Art & Language around 1967 – painting tended to get subsumed under the describing that went on in Conceptual Art; and once that had happened it mattered rather less whether or not things got stuck up on the wall. The wall could be abandoned for the time being, as it were. It was not the presence of the inscriptions on the wall that now secured the dialectical relation to painting; it was an activity internal to the descriptive text in so far as that text was complex, discursive, recursive and representational. While it did not follow that Conceptual Art and paintings could therefore be established on categorically equivalent terms, there were minimum requirements of complexity and discursiveness in any text that aspired to the dialectic relation in question.

Mel Ramsden ‘A square removal from a rug in use’ was not quite up to the job. Nor was ‘Something very near in place and time but not yet known to me’.

Michael Baldwin We have argued against the characterisation of Conceptual Art as essentially and irrevocably Duchampian, and gestural and appropriative – or as slavishly post-Minimal. It should be noted, though that it is through just such a characterisation that the Institutional Theory finds its most obvious justification. Here there are objects a-plenty – it doesn’t much matter what – and it does indeed seem to be through the agency of the art world that they are accorded the status of artworks.

Mel Ramsden But painting tends to be problematic for the Institutional theory. This is not because the art world doesn’t or can’t ratify them. But one of the capacities paintings seem to possess is to generate anomalies with respect to an exemplary case that the theory addresses; namely the problem of indiscernibility. There are in fact very few practical cases in which indiscernibility is a problem – and Danto notwithstanding, Warhol’s Brillo Boxes was not among them. We might conceive of blank paintings as things that need to have art status conferred upon them by the art world. But which blank paintings would we have in mind? Rauschenberg ’s? Klein ’s? Ryman ’s? Richter ’s? Do we actually have any difficulty in telling these apart from each other or from other things that are not paintings? It turns out that paintings have the cheek to look a bit like art whether the art world thinks they do or not.

Charles Harrison If this or some refined form thereof is not accepted we are left with an entirely uniform field of artworks – one in which there can be nothing intrinsic about x to tell us why we are paying attention to it. But the field of art works, as we know, is not yet uniform; the cases we confront are not all neat philosophers’ examples, and we don’t go about asking the same question of everything. We would even go so far as to say that the art world itself is not completely uniform. Not yet.

Mel Ramsden In fact the more uniform the art world gets, the more terrifying it is. We might say that it is, trying these days to become more uniform – to establish curatorial power plus. If every other thing Tate Modern shows is stretching the boundaries of art, what is the nature of the boundary that is being stretched, and what properties are ascribed to the things doing the stretching? The point is that if there were really infinite numbers of items waiting at the disputed edge of art for the art world to confer status on them, few or none of them could be paintings.

Michael Baldwin Painting seems to be of interest because it may act As an irritant to a central doctrine of institutional theory. The Institutional Theory is, we argue, founded on a Gedanken experiment that bases itself on the example of Duchamp’s snow shovel, while painting conceived in a certain way refuses to be exemplified by the artefact of which that is a type. This example is supposed to cover all art. If it did, the idea of a generic art would indeed follow naturally. In Joseph Kosuth ’s formulation, generic art develops through critical operations on the concept of art; you cannot if you are making painting or sculpture be questioning the concept of art since they are merely fixed kinds of art, i.e., mere subsets of the generic class. In this world, painting is either an authenticist anachronism or it is one postmodern option among many.

Charles Harrison The Conceptual Art careers that were built on Duchampian foundations were like their postmodernist reflections, somehow bound tightly or loosely to the various legends of the end of art. What these notions tell us is that we can break with the formal traditions of history – or, rather, that we can break with the idea that forms are connected with and borne forth in traditions that have some historical meaning or saturatedness. History and historicism are abandoned in favour of a certain simultaneity. The various senses of order, sequentiality and periodicity can thus be abandoned. We are now, it seems, sure that artistic forms are not at all bound to the context of their emergence – and that they do not need to overcome them, for example. We can divorce things from their historical context and put them in any arbitrary combination.

Michael Baldwin It is a surprise to no one that this supposed, freeing of art from the need to find its historicity in a dialogue with the self-image of the age was in fact no such thing. The cancellation of the distinction between map and territory has itself acquired a Spenglerian and an epochal character. This is the self-image of the age and it has seen not the end of art and of art history, but the inscription of these both in and as a narrative of institutional powers.

Mel Ramsden You can do anything: take a photograph, stick some stuff in a box, do a painting, anything, because everything is art in the same way. This is seen as anti-elitist and the democratisation of art. What it effectively does, however, is to empower the institution to make the selections that get to count while it masks its own non-cognitive operations with circularity. We will come to this in more detail later. It seems to us an odd democratisation that as more and more is distributed across the net of art and doesn’t have to answer for itself, the success or failure of work gets harder directly to determine. The development of criteria in this connection becomes very uncertain, and falls easily into the hands of the manager and the therapist.

Michael Baldwin If all things are possible, then it will be necessary to tighten the criteria for selecting what is admissible or good or relevant or edifying or whatever. The question we face is how do we select? As Niklas Luhmann says, only the overcoming of difficulties makes a work significant. As he goes on to say, Hoc opus hic labor est. It’s that bit of Virgil that we have tried to keep in our minds. Expansion without discomfort, without scepticism and without some source of paradox and anomaly does not increase the realm of meaning; what it has tended to increase is the power the institution wields to make of its self-description the demand of the epoch.

Charles Harrison What’s confusing is that submission to that power can seem commensurate with liberation from posh talk about inherent quality, and from the idea that art status is decided by empirically verifiable visual properties. In the late 1960s this sense of liberation released a certain appropriative gesture into the world. But this appropriative gesture faced the critique that it was still Cartesian in its artwork ontology. If perception and description were often the same thing as the later Wittgenstein suggested, then a conversation had to take over. Conversation tends to generate projects for itself. It imagines its ‘objects’ as always problematic, (always) deflated and deflating. (This is perhaps the beginning of a sense of resistance also to another programme that we have described as bureaucratic, managerial and spectacular.)

Michael Baldwin In the form of the doctrine of indiscernibles, the Institutional Theory argues that the status of art is conferred upon objects by the art world. There are thus still objects that somehow lie ‘behind’ the artwork, however installed, evasive and dematerialised they may be. Here is an instance of Cartesian theatre, the machine behind the artwork’s ghost. Perception and description are pulled apart. In the case of the snow shovel we are supposed to perceive a snow shovel and describe it as a work of art. But in the case of a painting of even minimal internal complexity, our address to it will tend to obliterate a Cartesian object in the background, even if we allow the implicit ontology to linger. If an object is an artwork under description as such, then certain worrying if consequences easily follow. It is as if David Beckham’s free-kick against Greece [for England in a World Cup qualification match] had to be thought of as a perceived bodily movement, a knee jerk, that has been placed under the description of the scoring of a goal. Our argument is, of course, that the scoring of the goal and David Beckham’s action are not intelligibly separated. We would say that even painting of a traditional authenticist type has the power to point to the Cartesian pitfalls of the Institutional Theory of art objects.

Charles Harrison It should be allowed, though, that the Institutional theory does often have its uses. It frees us from looking for empirical features or family resemblances that are somehow shared by works of art – the art-historian’s tedious compare-and-contrast exercises as the key to all significance – and suggests that in the matter of art status we had better be engaged in some form or other of conceptual analysis.

Mel Ramsden If a possibly and increasingly rare and hard-to-think-of controversial object has had art status conferred upon it, then we might say that the contextually needed conferral is parasitic upon, if it is not grounded in, relatively non-problematic cases. But this does not mean that these ‘grounds’ are justified or defended in the same way. ‘If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true nor yet false.’ Someone might ask, ‘Are you telling me that this scruffy and unskilled bit of scrawling is art in the same way as Ingres’ drawings are art?’ You say, ‘Yes.’ He says, ‘On what grounds?’ You say, ‘I can’t give you grounds, but if we keep talking you might agree.’ If this didn’t happen, you might say that the questioner couldn’t or wouldn’t learn about art and art history in the twentieth century – or something.

Charles Harrison Similarly, if we find out that for all its faults Art & Language’s Documenta Index is a rather serious business, we do not have to know that there is something that exists that is called ‘the art world’. The existence of art – that is to say art works, Conceptual Art and its place in the world and so on – is what will tell us that the Documenta Index might be a work of art, even if we care little for the information.

Michael Baldwin Neither of these instances draws on the need for an institutional conferral of status. Now if the Institutional theory can penetrate only so far into the Documenta Index, then this will have something to do with an internality that it shares with painting – even as analogue or ghost. While the Index does not have the impertinence to look like art, it partakes at a distance of painting’s capacity to generate anomaly for the Institutional Theory, of its pre-eflective capacity to create its own context, to be ‘seen’ to act autopoetically, to resist contextualisation and yet to know a little about it.

Mel Ramsden Painting is not only a problem for Institutional Theory, it holds within it a possible critique of those real institutions that use the theory and that constitute the world into which paintings are uttered. There is a non-professional tradition both in the production and the consumption and display of paintings. We may well dismiss (some) of these objects as bibelots, but there is little doubt that the non-professional tradition exists and that we might as well call its constituents ‘art’, just in case. Yet one of the more telling things about painting, with regard to the matter of conferred status as art, is that we are often either quite unconscious or unselfconscious as to its status as art at all. We might say that we go straight to the painting in a cognitive style that is more or less unable in its language game to think of the object behind it. We are freed from reflections upon the art world and its conferring power by the very boundedness of many paintings – by our tendency to assign them an autonomy that is the analogue of moral personality.

Charles Harrison Imagine showing somebody a painting by, Jackson Pollock . You would be acting unintelligibly if you tried to get them to perceive the object that the Pollock is and then to think of its unexhibited character as a work of art. You would also be acting oddly if you tried to explain that it was a work of art because the art world deemed it so. You would be more likely to say that it was a painting and that it possessed certain properties and that these had some connection with criteria for calling it a work of art – this because a certain agreement existed in the matter. This would then, in the end, involve an ‘institutional’ pragmatics. Works of art can only be works of art as perceived and described things whose classification is somehow ‘agreed’.

Michael Baldwin br />What we are saying, perhaps, is that the pragmatic route that invokes agreement as to the art status of most paintings is such that the status is in fact invoked in the perception-description inter alia and not as a description sundered from the description of the object. Of course we don’t say that all (or any) painting is entirely immune to contextualisation. This can and indeed does confer status, but the status conferred is not necessarily art status – not at least in any way in which we can seriously imagine conferral.

Mel Ramsden It is hard, for instance, to imagine someone nowadays asserting to any serious purpose, that Velasquez’s Las Meninas is a work of art. We might say that from its lofty vantage point Las Meninas is sceptical about the power of an institution to confer status on it as art. It outranks the institution, as it were – and we don’t just mean the Prado or its other contents. By analogy, we might argue that there are things or activities, sceptical and existing at a different ‘social altitude’, that can never be explicitly ratified, but which might be of interest in ways that are at least analogous to the ways that Las Meninas is. The institution may merely ‘outrank’ them. They operate on the institution in ways that it can’t account for –ways that it can’t assimilate.

Charles Harrison Las Meninas refuses to be institutionally aufgehebt. From its lofty position, it is subversive of the institution’s conferring power. There is a sense, however, in which it is not mere loftiness that makes it do the subverting work. So far as the institution is concerned, it is perhaps at too vulgarly aesthetic a level to be of critical interest. But this very vulgarity may be productive of some scepticism vis-à-vis the prospect of institutional assimilation. If we try to think of things that evince an analogously subversive or sceptical property but from a position that does not outrank the institution but is outranked by it, then we may run into trouble. The history of the avant-garde is stuffed with assimilated provocations. Indeed, it is a mere commonplace to say that it would be hard to find an act or item dirty enough or low enough as to be finally inadmissible to the institutional picturesque and thence to be an object of conferred status. Low is not exactly where we should look for scepticism.

Michael Baldwin One possible place to look might be into a world with an unassailable, and from the institutional perspective, banal aesthetic. Take engineering artefacts. Let’s say that the old six-cylinder in-line BMW engine is a rather satisfying thing to look at; even beautiful. It was very durable and looks it, and so on. Here is a sort of ‘aesthetic’ that connected to purpose – is unKantian in its origins, but in its nerdy way nevertheless aesthetic. We might say that this nerdy aesthetic protects the object from a certain institutional ratification. There is, certainly, no way that it can be assimilated in accordance with institutional theory as mad-artist’s-cum-self-publicist’s-cum-avant-gardist’s charter. The aesthetic operation in relation to the car engine stays just below the condition – or is it very slightly above it? It can’t be rescued by the institution in ways that would allow its aesthetic to be mapped onto that of the institution. And this has something to do with the car engine’s internal complexity. Its informal aesthetic has, as it were, a life of its own that makes it resistant to and sceptical of assimilation. It is possible, perhaps, to think of certain painting as rooted in its domestic occasions and as similarly resistant.

Charles Harrison Another engineering example comes to mind concerning Anish Kapoor ’s Marsyas . We might say of this enterprise that the work of the engineers and riggers is admirable, and might mean this in a sense that could be understood as aesthetic. This would be to configure the work in an implicitly sceptical description. The institution presumably had something more in mind. That something more provides conditions of assimilation as the vulgar something less does not.

Mel Ramsden We might ask if such cases have any possible analogues in the realm of painting or possible painting? We have said that paintings are, in some regards, institutionally unsightly in theoretical terms. We are now concerned with their practical resistance. It is not an unfamiliar objection to a mixed show of paintings and installations that the show was bad but the paintings taken individually were OK, were good, and so forth. In this case, the paintings’ standing out has nothing in principle to do with their being mediated by Conceptual Art or not. They may be ‘authentic’ in a way that Conceptual Art forecloses. The example, in other words, is not quite good enough. If we are to imagine painting subversive of institutional power, then it will have to take examples like that into its self-description – into its aboutness. They will have to be paintings that know about the infra-institutional or extra-institutional life of the paintings in the example but are unable directly to claim such status. This may mean, for example, that they hide their infra-institutional autonomy and internality in apparent forms – installations – that are client to institutional power. Another way to hide is as text – but text configured so that it is recovered as pictorial detail as much as read, paintings that malinger, hide their faces and lose their looks, and know that they are at best the asymptotes of a scandalous circle.

Charles Harrison It turns out that in the form in which we have been discussing it, the institutional theory cannot avoid an obsession with art-status. But what if we were not so bothered with the issue? An apparently plausible defence of the Institutional theory does indeed agree that the question of whether or not a thing is a work of art is trivial. The significant question to ask is of the form, ‘Is it a good work of art?’ The question, ‘What is a good work of art?’ is thus detached from the question, ‘What is a work of art?’ This might sound like a kind of relaxed pragmatism. But if it turns out that we’re dependent on some authority within the art world for our understanding of what is a good or bad work of art, then we’re just back where we were within the Institutional Theory’s particular kind of circularity.

Michael Baldwin It seems likely that that’s exactly where we are, since if we consider what kind of examples a real pragmatism would produce, the answer is that they would unquestionably be of a kind that the artworld would find intolerable: David Shepherd’s elephants, perhaps, for the internalists’ reason that the eyes follow you round the room.

Mel Ramsden We are now at the parting of the ways. Our argument thus far is that a painting is something typically possessed of internal complexity, such that it does not reduce to a contextual object. Thus conceived, painting may be resistant to certain central doctrines of Institutional theory, and may show them to be counter-intuitive and Cartesian. We also argue that painting of any kind must labour under the shadow or perhaps in the light of Conceptual Art. If the Institutional Theory is true regarding the centrality of the case of the Duchampian readymade, and, if indeed the blank canvas is an instance of that case, and, further, if the theory of indiscernibles is applicable to art tout court, then painting doesn’t have much of a problem. It can either be an absurd craft anachronism or be post-modern. Either way, it’s harmless.

Michael Baldwin Our argument regarding Conceptual Art is that it developed into an art of describing, and that at the margin of that describing was a practice of painting that Conceptual Art had not at all rendered generic. We suggest that it is its possible resistance to the genericist’s reduction that makes painting worth bothering with. We do not take this apparent resistance for granted, though. It is rather that there is a constructive pleasure in painting conceived as the anomaly that besets institutional theory. Of course painting is also itself beset – or aufgehebt – by Institutional theory. Painting must always live with the possibility of reduction to the status of ordinary object among others. Our point is rather that one possible mode for trying to think about painting lies in such apparently broken-down – even philistine – statements as, ‘Well, you can tell a painting is art by looking at it.’ This goes even for most real blank canvases. That’s because of something that’s internal to them, and that is not reducible to their relations to a given context.

Charles Harrison We might even say that Danto himself is not entirely dazzled by the transfiguration of the ordinary, nor wholly immune to the recalcitrance of, painting. He may admire the snow shovel and the misperceived Brillo Boxes but in life as opposed to theory he’d take a Chardin or a Morandi if he were given the choice. Isn’t that one way or another because of their internal complexity – because, rather than raising questions of status conferral that are marooned in Cartesian theatre, they remind us of the advantages of keeping perception and description together?

Mel Ramsden Perhaps it is easier to do this with regard to those things we might conceive of living with, rather than those we can only visit in museums. We don’t say that painting belongs only in the first category and generic art only in the second, but we do say that the antagonisms between them are disturbingly shadowed by considerations such as these. On the question of the relations between painting and generic art, there is no last word. The force of the question will in any event vary according to cultural, curatorial and economic circumstances.

Michael Baldwin While painting may put up a sceptical and vulgar fight against reduction to the generic condition, it may not follow that a form or forms of painting that labour in the shadow of Conceptual Art are capable of such untidy behaviour. It might be argued that in so far as Conceptual Art does indeed finally implement the Duchampian generic condition, then anything that plays in its shadow – or more dubiously in its light – must be ipso facto generic.

Charles Harrison Our response to this argument is that not all Conceptual Art was generic-type art tout court, and that its reflection in painting is thus similarly non-generic.

Mel Ramsden It might further be argued, however, that to say that texts began to occupy the place of painting is actually to say very little beyond the fact that (some of) these text-objects achieved the conferred status of art objects. After all, no one really believes coherently that works of Conceptual Art consisted of no more than ideas or ‘meanings’ reducible in some form to an artist’s intention. They have to be something , after all.

Michael Baldwin But matters were not as simple as this argument proposes. While it is true to say that it all began with a sort of declaring – a sort of appropriating – for us, as things went on, the declaring began to reflect upon itself. To be satisfied with the thought that the nominatings and declarings were in any way transparent seemed a disservice to realism. It seemed also to undermine the possibility that there might be ontological consequences for the art object in Conceptual art. There was something both arrogant and absurd in thinking of the mere gesture or fiat of nomination or appropriation as any more than an artsy Cartesian romance – a comfortable relation between artist and imagined object. Such problems arose systemically as the ontological range of possible objects expanded.

Mel Ramsden The illocutionary act of appropriation-cum-ostension – usually in the form of a brief description – had expanded into a more elaborate act of describing. And on it went, until the art object all but disappeared in favour of the description and the discursive development of that description. This was – as we have said – a necessarily sociable and conversational activity. Its forms were internally complex even if they were composed of philosophical fragments and bits of wreckage.

Charles Harrison Conceptual art insinuates text. Not necessarily as painting, but so as to make painting and text fight it out for the status of ‘origin’. In saying this we do not intend to suggest that the text and the picture by which it is mediated are in anything like the relation between a description and the instantiation that satisfies it. If we describe a possible painting and somebody then makes a painting treating the text as its ‘specification’, the result will not be the exhaustive satisfaction of the text by the painting or the exhaustion of the painting by the text.

Michael Baldwin In suggesting that the hoc of Conceptual Art was conceivable as an art of describing, we are not arguing that text then had to dominate – or even appear on – the surfaces of paintings, but rather that it could no longer be ‘naturally’ excluded, and further that, in any case, paintings were now in some shadowy way mediated by text (or some other descriptive form).

Charles Harrison So, we have the possibility of language-mediated non-authentic painting uttered into what has become a context-rich culture. For let us not forget that the other quite real and determining hoc of Conceptual Art has empowered the development of the installation, and with it a grasping of (or gadarene obsession with) the power of the institution to act as the switch or condition of certain interpretative themes and possibilities and what are quaintly called ‘modes of attention’. The little contexts that are paintings now have to seek a place in bullying curator-and-architect-and-sponsor-built contexts. These are often not contexts that serve as Gofmann suggests to ‘condense expectations’, but rather contexts that dominate production and effects.

Michael Baldwin It might well be thought that an appropriate function for an institutional theory would be to show the mechanism of this domination. How the theory actually performs, however, is to protect the illusion that the curatorial quantification of anything and everything that can fit on a Deleuzian matrix is an emancipatory extending of boundaries.

Mel Ramsden We might want to object that it’s all very well going on about this as if it’s a philosopher’s puzzle. Is it not likely that these problems now lie somewhere else: that it’s not the ‘art’ that’s important in ‘art status’ but the ‘status’? Prime management stuff, just stack it next to ‘celebrity’. The description has been removed from the object and people have run off with … with what? With the concept no doubt.

Michael Baldwin There are social and historical forces at work supporting, promoting and celebrating this work, and indeed in supporting the celebrity that sort-of produces it. Its history is among other things a narrative of the globalisation of meaning in the world media-scape. Here immediately are some problems for painting – or if they are not within its purview, it is simply harmless. Quite how painting might address them seems to rest on whether somehow they ought to be resisted – even modestly. If they are resisted, then the history of painting will eventually go to a history of dissenting forms of art, not just to the canonical history of painting.

Charles Harrison This is to suggest a relationship painting might have with Conceptual Art’s original sense of itself. We’re trying to get to this relationship by describing Conceptual Art as like painting in that it does not have to be in its nature to wait anxiously for the status of art to be conferred on it. It is necessary to try to explain this and, as you will have noticed, it’s not very straightforward. Paintings (or rather pictures – it’s often hard to see the difference) usually have some significant internal, technical, symbolic, iconographical detail which belongs to a tradition of other comparable things.

Michael Baldwin There is a history of production, of sorts. This history is bound up with such properties as family resemblances and discernibility. Had things stayed like this, the Institutional Theory would have been slow in coming – if it came at all. It came with the snow shovel and the Conceptual Art that followed it, however unwillingly. It shed light on painting. One question that we can ask in our current sense of crisis is whether painting can now shed light on the institution – and do this without reversion to the old habits of looking for family resemblances.

Mel Ramsden Suppose we look back to painting’s moment of high insecurity in the mid-1960s. Minimal art actually took its cues from painting, but it established a kind of literalism in defiance of what Donald Judd derogated as ‘European relational painting’. To do this it had to be installed in institutions that protected its place with a kind of social decorum. If it was in an art gallery it was art and if it wasn’t other ways of drawing attention to it had to be devised – magazines, publicity and texts. Arthur Danto was not alone in operating an institutional theory. He was simply its more persuasive and elegant exponent. Don Judd, for example, gave it an individualistic – almost solipsistic cast in the form of the dictum: ‘If someone says it’s art it’s art’.

Michael Baldwin This was liberation of a sort for all of us. Quickly however it appeared as an empty yet simultaneously imperialistic assertion of the new professionalism of the artist. Next to the objects of minimalism, the minimalist paintings of Jo Baer , David Novros and others now forgotten just looked displaced and sad. For a while the blank canvas seemed like a goer. Everyone tried their hand at it, including us, though its admittedly marginal internality seemed to turn its back on the possibilities that minimal sculpture appeared to disclose. In the ensuing theatre, the conditions for an avant-garde arms race were created. The advent of Conceptual Art had the effect of stifling it, however. It took a few years for this professionalised psychosis to re-emerge, pumped-up by money and management.

Mel Ramsden One way to describe this phenomenon is as Wagnerian neurosis, another is to say that it is a trajectory built into the later twentieth-century logic of the avant-garde: an art seeking constantly to surpass itself. In the words of Niklas Luhmann, however, ‘If art’s condition is to constantly surpass itself, then eventually there has to be some reflection on art having constantly to surpass itself’. Conceptual Art, perhaps in our specific and admittedly limited understanding of it, can be understood as such a reflection. In the 1960s and early 1970s Conceptual artist were often called ‘word men’ by their traditionalist tormenters. Given the reification of Conceptual Art, through the Institutional theory and the legacy of minimalist theatre, we face the need not for a reflection of art’s self-surpassing – a forestalling of its imminence – but a reflection upon art’s practical self-image as such.

Charles Harrison As art appeared in the 1960s to emancipate itself from all apparent questions of medium-specificity, it faced the unacknowledged paradoxes and mystifications of its naive sense of dematerialisation. The work still had to be made and presented somehow. The practical circumstances of this ‘emancipation’ could not be sustained in the hypostasising jargon of meaning. The other hoc of Conceptual art developed a critical life of sorts and either sucked in or excluded professional critics. It faced redescription in an ‘internalistic’ conversation that tended to produce anomaly in respect of institutional closure.

Mel Ramsden We have an example in mind. It is a ‘work’, if it may be so called, named Frameworks. It is a lengthy, fragmented and difficult set of speculations, arguments and assertions as to how a column of air could be identified and defended as a work of art or not. But a column of air could be described in many ways. You couldn’t easily point to it. Immediately the problem of the ‘metaphysical’ location of the work of art was encountered. Was it a column of air or was it a sort of fictional entity? Was it the argument, the ‘theory’ and speculation or the text? The object was being made by the text. Its independence as an art object was being eroded. Many of the dematerialised clichés of post-minimalism are present but the art object risks the condition of mere ‘as if’ insofar as the object – turns into text and the conventional powers of the artist are transformed into those of a participant in discursive talk.

Michael Baldwin The journalistic use of the term Conceptual Art to designate any art that isn’t painting or sculpture or that otherwise lacks a material tradition is a largely British – that is to say provincial – perversion. In fact it is not quite true of such stuff that it lacks a tradition. Much of it amnesically repeats the form or look of some Conceptual Art of the 1960s and ‘70s. These concepts without percepts have, however, discovered their modus vivendi in an asocial matrix not of Deleuze but of public relations. Their mediate origin lies in the Britain of the 1980s – the Britain of the Thatcher junta. Indeed, to describe this stuff as a modus vivendi is perhaps to stumble on the reality. In their most celebrated form, works of high art like Conceptual Art have acquired the character of mere traces – one might say accidental or arbitrary indices. These are the arbitrary or idle traces of the lives of artistes sans oeuvre, artists without a body of work. Work is the manipulated material of public relations.

Charles Harrison The trouble is, the artists in question are not Arthur Cravans. Their function is social. They represent the revenge of the petty bourgeoisie upon the Marxian and highbrow modernity from which they felt excluded. The artists sans oeuvre have in fact been given the job of rendering the whole system middle-brow . The unreflective but lifestyle-sensitive consumer will absorb almost anything that’s been mediated by a journalistic agency. The non-oeuvres of provocative enfants terribles consumed as colourful culture. But it’s no good if it doesn’t do the Benetton job.

Michael Baldwin Of course there are many artists with ‘substantial’ – all too substantial – oeuvres. We are not suggesting that all post-conceptual artists – or artists with post-conceptual careers –are sans oeuvre. What we can say is that they share a certain practical Weltanschauung with the latter. They have seen that their post-conceptual future is, in the sceptics view, not only to make too much of too little, but to mask triviality in Albert Speer’s cathedral of ice. This helps both the police of one-idea purism, and – paradoxically – those creative souls who are assisting in the lowering of art’s improbability.

Mel Ramsden What we mean is this. If art is as the work of Niklas Luhmann suggests, an ostentatiously improbable occurrence, then this must be due to the fact that there are some undetermined spaces, beyond the reach of ordinary causal explanation, that require interpretative work. The purpose of the institution is largely to silence that work in favour of interpretation according to institutionally favourable protocol, and thereby to reduce improbability.

Michael Baldwin That’s the point about the spectacular mediascape: a high level of redundancy and consequently high probability. Given a Spenglerian characterisation of the demands of the epoch, how often does a calculated response have to be repeated before a sense of the age gets replaced by a sense of the epidemic – by a diagnosis of cultural pox?

Mel Ramsden An apparently – and no doubt appallingly – obvious solution to the danger of being thus overwhelmed by institutional power is actually to withdraw into authenticist painting; or at least to withdraw into the antique language of inner necessity and its cognates. But this possibility is foreclosed by Conceptual Art, which has reconfigured painting in the genetic character of the text, and has thus also prefigured it. Any authentic form is therefore already described in and as an attenuated fiction.

Charles Harrison But careful. This could nevertheless be to describe nothing more than a postmodern sequence – an account of how painting gains admission to the generic world of irony and anything goes. We are trying to say that while Conceptual Art may serve to deprive painting of its authenticity, it does not reduce such self-contextualising power as painting may retain without it. The puzzle is how that power might now actually be exercised – and exercised in a world where such powers are suspect if they are admitted at all. The answer seems to be that in so far as its self-contextualising power has been retained, painting survives through a kind of malingering. If the ordinary object is upraised, installed in the museum and transfigured by the art-world’s attention, then painting, already crippled by a mediating agency, but still bravely and quietly possessed of its memories and virtues, refuses the upraising effect or renders it in large measure otiose.

Michael Baldwin In the end the Duchampian moment may just mean that some internalist objects are a bit beleaguered. Perhaps it is through its very beleaguered state that the internalist object can defeat or undermine the power of the institution. Perhaps it is through its internal complexity that it can both reveal and resist the arbitrariness and ultimately the vacuity and coercive power of the institutional reality. Artworks are recursively self-describing and, insofar as they are interpreted, can mean almost anything that Humpty Dumpty wants. We have to work critically – that is to say transformatively – at the conditions in which that is so. What can art do to resist? Tighten the criteria; go ‘inward’ and make it hard for the Institutional theory to invoke Duchamp’s putative legacy without embarrassment. More to the point, make it hard for the reality that that theory contingently represents to set the conversational agenda. Make work that can fight for its moral and political rights. That means that art not only has internality, it means that it does have a reflexive description, a sense of its own project. This will be a question of what the work does and what the artist does.

Charles Harrison We are desperately in need of a degree of vulgarisation. We need either to expand ad infinitum our sense of the institution and the ways objects are manipulated in or as or by it – a solution that puts the power into the hands of an already discredited management – or we need to recognise that if there is a crisis it is a crisis of real institutions. The samizdat is often – but, of course, not always – in a frame. What we mean by this is that it is possible that under conditions of mediation and restraint, painting in some form may well be a medium of resistance. The basis of this resistance lies not only in the fact that painting supplies anomaly in respect of many attempts at an Institutional theory, but also in the fact that painting itself is capable of resisting the power of the institution. Its possible internality in every sense is the key to that.

Mel Ramsden If there is a crisis in the arts, it is a crisis produced by the institutional ordering and management of art. For this reason, painting is surely worth a try. Concentrate, throw away the commuter’s pass and go somewhere. On our analysis, painting perhaps stands in relation to the rest of art as singing a song stands to the rest of music.

Charles Harrison In the words of Samuel Beckett: ‘Quand on est dans la merde jusqu’au cou, il ne reste plus qu’à chanter.’

Mel Ramsden ‘If you’re in the shit up to your neck, the only thing you can do is sing.’

Michael Baldwin There’s certainly good reason not to dance.

The Unilever Series: Anish Kapoor: Marsyas

The Unilever Series: Anish Kapoor, Marsyas - past exhibition at Tate Modern

Gerhard Richter: Panorama

Gerhard Richter: Panorama major retrospective exhibition grouping together significant moments of the artist’s remarkable career. Tate Modern

Donald Judd

Donald Judd, Tate Modern

Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia

Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia 21 February – 26 May 2008 Exhibition of leading figures in the New York Dada movement at Tate Modern

An Unpublished Drawing by Duchamp: Hell in Philadelphia

Jennifer Mundy

This paper discusses a hitherto unpublished drawing by Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) that relates to his masterwork The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) , 1915–23. This drawing escaped the attention of Duchamp scholars because the artist gave it as a present to an American television producer in 1956. The significance of the note, together with the circumstances of the gift, is discussed here.

From the Green Box to Typo/Topography: Duchamp and Hamilton’s Dialogue in Print

Paul Thirkell

This paper examines Marcel Duchamp's use of the collotype printing process for publishing the contents of his Green Box and Boîte-en-valise in the 1930s. It subsequently traces the linguistic and graphic interpretations of this work by the British artist Richard Hamilton in his 1960 The Green Book and in his recent fusion of this work with the 'topography' of the Large Glass in the print Typo/Topography , published in 2003.

machine learning models aren’t autonomous.  ‘They aren’t going to create new artistic movements on their own – those are PR stories

Art for our sake: artists cannot be replaced by machines – study

There has been an explosion of interest in ‘creative AI’, but does this mean that artists will be replaced by machines? No, definitely not, says Anne Ploin , Oxford Internet Institute researcher and one of the team behind today’s report on the potential impact of machine learning (ML) on creative work. 

The report, ‘ AI and the Arts: How Machine Learning is Changing Artistic Work ’ , was co-authored with OII researchers Professor Rebecca Eynon and Dr Isis Hjorth as well as Professor Michael A. Osborne from Oxford’s Department of Engineering .

Their study took place in 2019, a high point for AI in art. It was also a time of high interest around the role of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the future of work, and particularly around the idea that automation could transform non-manual professions, with a previous study by Professor Michael A. Osborne and Dr Carl Benedict Frey predicting that some 30% of jobs could, technically, be replaced in an AI revolution by 2030.

Human agency in the creative process is never going away. Parts of the creative process can be automated in interesting ways using AI...but the creative decision-making which results in artworks cannot be replicated by current AI technology

Mx Ploin says it was clear from their research that machine learning was becoming a tool for artists – but will not replace artists. She maintains, ‘The main message is that human agency in the creative process is never going away. Parts of the creative process can be automated in interesting ways using AI (generating many versions of an image, for example), but the creative decision-making which results in artworks cannot be replicated by current AI technology.’

She adds, ‘Artistic creativity is about making choices [what material to use, what to draw/paint/create, what message to carry across to an audience] and develops in the context in which an artist works. Art can be a response to a political context, to an artist’s background, to the world we inhabit. This cannot be replicated using machine learning, which is just a data-driven tool. You cannot – for now – transfer life experience into data.’

She adds, ‘AI models can extrapolate in unexpected ways, draw attention to an entirely unrecognised factor in a certain style of painting [from having been trained on hundreds of artworks]. But machine learning models aren’t autonomous.

Artistic creativity is about making choices ...and develops in the context in which an artist works...the world we inhabit. This cannot be replicated using machine learning, which is just a data-driven tool

‘They aren’t going to create new artistic movements on their own – those are PR stories. The real changes that we’re seeing are around the new skills that artists develop to ‘hack’ technical tools, such as machine learning, to make art on their own terms, and around the importance of curation in an increasingly data-driven world.’

The research paper uses a case study of the use of current machine learning techniques in artistic work, and investigates the scope of AI-enhanced creativity and whether human/algorithm synergies may help unlock human creative potential. In doing so, the report breaks down the uncertainty surrounding the application of AI in the creative arts into three key questions.

  • How does using generative algorithms alter the creative processes and embodied experiences of artists?
  • How do artists sense and reflect upon the relationship between human and machine creative intelligence?
  • What is the nature of human/algorithmic creative complementarity?

According to Mx Ploin, ‘We interviewed 14 experts who work in the creative arts, including media and fine artists whose work centred around generative ML techniques. We also talked to curators and researchers in this field. This allowed us to develop fuller understanding of the implications of AI – ranging from automation to complementarity – in a domain at the heart of human experience: creativity.’

They found a range of responses to the use of machine learning and AI. New activities required by using ML models involved both continuity with previous creative processes and rupture from past practices. There were major changes around the generative process, the evolving ways ML outputs were conceptualised, and artists’ embodied experiences of their practice.

And, says the researcher, there were similarities between the use of machine learning and previous periods in art history, such as the code-based and computer arts of the 1960s and 1970s. But the use of ML models was a “step change” from past tools, according to many artists.

While the machine learning models could help produce ‘surprising variations of existing images’, practitioners felt the artist remained irreplaceable...in making artworks

But, she maintains, while the machine learning models could help produce ‘surprising variations of existing images’, practitioners felt the artist remained irreplaceable in terms of giving images artistic context and intention – that is, in making artworks.

Ultimately, most agreed that despite the increased affordances of ML technologies, the relationship between artists and their media remained essentially unchanged, as artists ultimately work to address human – rather than technical – questions.

Don’t let it put you off going to art school. We need more artists

The report concludes that human/ML complementarity in the arts is a rich and ongoing process, with contemporary artists continuously exploring and expanding technological capabilities to make artworks . Although ML-based processes raise challenges around skills, a common language, resources, and inclusion, what is clear is that the future of ML arts will belong to those with both technical and artistic skills. There is more to come.

But, says Mx Ploin, ‘Don’t let it put you off going to art school. We need more artists.’

Further information

AI and the Arts: How Machine Learning is Changing Artistic Work . Ploin, A., Eynon, R., Hjorth I. & Osborne, M.A. (2022). Report from the Creative Algorithmic Intelligence Research Project. Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK. Download the full report .

This report accounts for the findings of the 'Creative Algorithmic Intelligence: Capabilities and Complementarity' project, which ran between 2019 and 2021 as a collaboration between the University of Oxford's Department of Engineering and Oxford Internet Institute.

The report also showcases a range of artworks from contemporary artists who use AI as part of their practice and who participated in our study: Robbie Barrat , Nicolas Boillot , Sofia Crespo , Jake Elwes , Lauren Lee McCarthy , Sarah Meyohas , Anna Ridler , Helena Sarin , and David Young.

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The Ryerson & Burnham Libraries collection contains a wide variety of resources that can be used to locate information on artists and their works. Our open shelf collection in the reading room contains reference sources, such as dictionaries, directories, encyclopedias, and indexes. We have strong collections of artist files, auction catalogs, books, exhibition catalogs, journals, and newspapers in the library collection, and the Ryerson and Burnham Archives collections also contain papers for individual artists and arts organizations, as well as a collection of artists’ oral histories.

This research guide provides recommendations for research sources and strategies to locate information on both prominent and obscure artists and their works. Prior to beginning your research, we recommend that you compile as much information about the artist or artwork of interest to you as possible. Do you know the artist’s name, the artwork’s title, the approximate dates the artist worked or the piece was created, or the geographic area where the artist lived or the object was created? If you are working on an artwork in your collection, have you examined it to see whether it contains any signatures or marks, labels, or annotations (you may wish to remove the frame to fully examine the object)? Recording this information and bringing an outline of keywords or research objectives as well as clear, closeup images of any signatures or markings to the library with you will provide you with a strong starting point for your research.

Getting Started

The Ryerson and Burnham Libraries’ catalog will lead you to articles, artist files, books, and exhibition catalogues for an artist. For best results, use the Library Catalog search scope, and enter the artist’s name, last name, first name (example: Monet, Claude). The following resources will also be helpful in learning more about specific artists and their artworks.

Catalogues Raisonnés

Look for a piece in the most comprehensive catalogue of the artist’s known works. Please note these are not available for all artists. The International Foundation for Art Research maintains a free database of published and forthcoming catalogues raisonnés.

In the library catalog, search the Library Catalog scope for: [Artist’s name; Last Name, First Name] – Catalogues raisonnés (example: Hopper, Edward – Catalogues raisonnés).

Artist Files

The Ryerson & Burnham Libraries have over 35,000 artist files, which contain small exhibition catalogs, checklists, clippings, images, and fliers for artists, galleries, museums, and art schools. These are described in the catalog: the location and material type is Pamphlets. See also the New York Public Library’s artists file on microfiche (call number 1990 3).

Biographical Reference Resources

  • Who’s Who in American Art This subscription resource is also available digitally in the reading room.
  • Who Was Who in American Art, 1564-1975
  • Dictionary of Artists (Bénézit) This subscription resource is also available digitally in the reading room.
  • Allgemeines Kunstler-Lexikon This subscription resource is also available digitally in the reading room.
  • Contemporary Artists

Ryerson Index

Look for articles on an artist, particularly if the artist was in the Chicago area and was active in the early to mid-20th century. This includes references to the Art Institute of Chicago Scrapbooks .

Full Title :   I ndex to Art Periodicals (1962)

Signature Directories

If you do not have the name of the work you are researching, but it has a signature, try resources such as these.

  •      American Artists: Signatures & Monograms, 1800-1989
  •      Marks & Monograms: The Decorative Arts, 1880-1960
  •      The Visual Index of Artists’ Signatures & Monograms
  •      Artists’ Monograms & Indiscernible Signatures: An International Directory, 1800-1991

Reproduction Indices

Track down works that reproduce a painting, such as World Painting Index or Art Reproductions .

Art Dictionaries

Art dictionaries are useful for biographies, introductions to periods of art, and the bibliographies that accompany entries; the Grove Dictionary of Art and Oxford Art Online (this subscription resource is available in the reading room) are good examples. Works such as the Dictionary of Art Terms can also be useful for definitions and explanations of terms and periods of art, as well as illustrations and diagrams for entries.

Articles on Art, Artists, and Related Topics

These subscription resources provide citations and some full-text articles on art, artists, and related topics. Unless otherwise noted, they are available onsite at the Art Institute of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago campus. Faculty, students, and staff at the Art Institute of Chicago and School of the Art Institute of Chicago can also access most of these resources from other locations with an ARTIC username and password via the Art, Architecture, and Design Resources Page .

Newspaper Databases

The Libraries subscribe to online regional and national newspaper databases, which can be used to locate biographical or exhibition information.

These resources are accessible in the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries via the Newspapers Resources Page .

Auction Databases

The Libraries subscribe to a number of auction databases, most of which cover auctions from the last 20 years. 

These resources are accessible in the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries via the Auction Resources Page.

Researching Artworks in a Museum Collection

Objects currently on display in the Art Institute galleries can usually be found in Collections Online . The record may include an image, information from the wall label, and occasionally an exhibition history and bibliography of titles that mention the artwork. CITI is the museum’s internal collection database, which includes information on all artworks in the Art Institute’s collection. If an item is not on display in the galleries, this may be the best starting point. Please ask at the reference desk for CITI access.

For objects that are on display in other museums and institutions, the subscription ARTstor database, available in the reading room, contains a growing survey of major works of art, as well as specialized image collections.

Search by museum collection, artist, or keyword. ARTstor is available from the Image Databases page .

Catalog of Museum or Department

Consult the catalogs of a museum’s collection or a museum department’s collection. For example: American Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago . You can find these by searching the library catalog for the museum and department name and the term catalogs (for example, Art Institute of Chicago. Department of Textiles — Catalogs).

Beyond the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries

Area Libraries

Check libraries and/or historical societies in the area that the artist was from or was most active for information including newspaper articles and pamphlet files. Try “Find a library near you,” available here: https://www.worldcat.org/libraries .

Chicago Artists’ Archive at Chicago Public Library

This archival collection is available at the Harold Washington Branch of Chicago Public Library (8th floor). Files may contain: resumes, newspaper articles, artists’ books, gallery flyers, videos, press clippings, letters, photographs, some original artwork, and CDs. To find out if a particular artist is included in the collection you can call (312) 747-4300 or consult the list available here: http://www.chipublib.org/fa-chicago-artists-archive/ .

Collections that Have Works by the Artist

Once you discover which museum collections hold pieces by an artist, check with these institutions for information. 

Union Catalogs

The Chicago Collections Consortium contains digitized items from the archives and special collections of various Chicago-area institutions, including scrapbooks, photographs, and other printed material for local art-related topics. Access the free online portal here: http://explore.chicagocollections.org .

WorldCat is a catalog of library catalogs worldwide that contains records for libraries’ holdings of books, journals, manuscript collections, newspapers, and digital and audiovisual resources. It is available thorough subscription in the reading room, or in a free version .

Archival Collections

Look for collections of an artist’s papers in library collections around the world search WorldCat or ArchiveGrid .

For American artists, try the Archives of American Art: http://www.aaa.si.edu/ .

Art Information on the Internet

Conduct broad searches for anything on an artist’s name. Using quotation marks around the artist’s name can help limit, as can adding keywords outside the quotation marks.

“Claude Monet”

“Claude Monet” watercolor

“Claude Monet” artist

Searching Google Images, Google Books, and Google Scholar can also be very useful.

The entries in this free online encyclopedia often include bibliographies, references, and links to related entries.

Biographical Information

Consult sites created by museums, libraries, archives, galleries, and others that provide information on artists.

Art in Context

Artcyclopedia

 For artists about whom little professional literature is available, try genealogical resources such as census documents, city directories, county histories, and local newspaper collections. Many of these resources are freely accessible online.

ChicagoAncestors

Chronicling America

FamilySearch

Internet Archive

  Image Searching

If you have a digital image of the item you are trying to identify, run it through a reverse image search to locate images of similar items on the Internet.

Google Images

Art-Related Services

Appraisal and Conservation

Staff at the Art Institute of Chicago cannot provide authentication or appraisal services, and our conservation staff are not able to accept inquiries on works of art in personal collections. You can locate advice on these topics in our research guide on Appraisal and Conservation Resources for Art .

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  • Front Hum Neurosci

Visualizing the Impact of Art: An Update and Comparison of Current Psychological Models of Art Experience

Matthew pelowski.

1 Department of Basic Research and Research Methods, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Patrick S. Markey

Jon o. lauring.

2 BRAINlab, Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Helmut Leder

The last decade has witnessed a renaissance of empirical and psychological approaches to art study, especially regarding cognitive models of art processing experience. This new emphasis on modeling has often become the basis for our theoretical understanding of human interaction with art. Models also often define areas of focus and hypotheses for new empirical research, and are increasingly important for connecting psychological theory to discussions of the brain. However, models are often made by different researchers, with quite different emphases or visual styles. Inputs and psychological outcomes may be differently considered, or can be under-reported with regards to key functional components. Thus, we may lose the major theoretical improvements and ability for comparison that can be had with models. To begin addressing this, this paper presents a theoretical assessment, comparison, and new articulation of a selection of key contemporary cognitive or information-processing-based approaches detailing the mechanisms underlying the viewing of art. We review six major models in contemporary psychological aesthetics. We in turn present redesigns of these models using a unified visual form, in some cases making additions or creating new models where none had previously existed. We also frame these approaches in respect to their targeted outputs (e.g., emotion, appraisal, physiological reaction) and their strengths within a more general framework of early, intermediate, and later processing stages. This is used as a basis for general comparison and discussion of implications and future directions for modeling, and for theoretically understanding our engagement with visual art.

Introduction

Today, millions of individuals across the globe regularly encounter works of art. Whether, in the museum, the city-center, or on the web, art is an omnipresent part of human life. Underlying the fascination with art is a uniquely impactful experience. When individuals describe noteworthy art or explain why they go to museums, most often they refer to a complex mix of psychological events (Pelowski and Akiba, 2011 ). Art viewing engenders myriad emotions, evokes evaluations, physiological reactions, and in some cases can mark or alter lives. Reactions can also differ greatly between individuals and settings, or evolve within individual experiences themselves.

Understanding this multifaceted impact of art is key for numerous areas of scholarship—including all humanities, sociology, evolution, museum education, art history—and is especially key for psychology and empirical art research (Leder, 2013 ). The relevance of the topic has only grown in the past decade, which has seen a burgeoning of psychological aesthetics through the emergence of new empirical methods, growing interest in affect and emotion, and new integration between behavioral and neurophysiological analyses.

Perhaps most important, recent approaches have been accompanied by attempts to model the underlying processes of art engagement (Leder, 2013 ). These models build from recent trends in cognitive science, employing a visual approach for highlighting the interconnections and outcomes in our experience. They posit key inputs, and connect these via a flow of processing stages (often utilizing a box-and-arrow design) to outcomes or psychological implications. Thus, by offering a process-driven articulation of psychological elements, models have become the indispensable basis for shaping hypotheses. Even more, by stepping beyond written theory and articulating ideas within a visual frame, models can emphasize processes and important elements that previously might have been merely implicit. Thus, the visual models themselves often become the working theories for art study, and determine empirical research.

However, current modeling also suffers from several limitations, which hamper our ability to fully compare and understand approaches. Models are often made with different emphases and visual grammars. There are often also different arrangements of processing stages or focus on different portions of the processing sequence. Psychological inputs and outcomes are also often differently considered, or can be omitted from the processing sequence. Thus, we often lose the major theoretical benefit—a clear connection between inputs, processes, and outputs—that can be had from placing ideas into a visual form. It is also difficult to consider various models' overlaps or major differences when explaining specific reactions to art, and thus difficult to articulate how they might contribute to our understanding of art experience.

This is the goal of this paper, which represents our attempt to provide a comparison of current key modeling approaches, and involving their translation into a comparable visual format. We do this by reviewing six influential approaches to art experience, as well as supporting literature by the same authors, and place these into a model form. For existing models, we adapt the previous approaches to a unified layout, and also suggest additions or changes based on our literature review. When an author's idea does not yet have a visual form, we newly create models based on their arguments. Through our review, we also give specific consideration to outputs or psychological implications for art experience, as well as general organization around early, intermediate and late processing stages. We end with a synthesis and discussion of avenues for future research. In this review, we have chosen approaches, which, we feel, have come to be bases for the past decade of general empirical art-viewing research, and which employ a cognitive or information processing focus. Although this paper can, admittedly, only address a small selection of models, by providing this analysis, we hope to create one more useful tool for advancing understanding of art processing and modeling research.

Review: key model components and previous approaches to modeling art

Before beginning, it is instructive to briefly review what aspects should be considered in models of viewing art, and which will provide the material for this paper's comparison. Psychological models generally have three main components. These include: (1) inputs that feed into experience. These might include personality of the viewer, social or cultural setting, background affective state, other context (e.g., Jacobsen, 2006 ), as well as the specific artwork body and its history (Bullot and Reber, 2013 ); (2) processing mechanisms, which act on the inputs in specific stages (explained further below); and (3) mental and behavioral consequences (outputs) that arise from processing art. While it is the second stage of actual processing that makes up the bulk of models we will review, it is these outputs that constitute their implicit goal of addressing art interaction, and also the frame for this paper's review.

A literature review suggests multiple output examples. We have given these short labels, which will be used in the following discussions, and which can be divided into four main clusters: First, art has the capability to influence basic aspects of affect or the body. This can come from: (1) Affect , specific emotions/moods evoked by content or derived from the act of viewing; (2) Physiology , such as heart rate, skin conductivity, or other processes of the autonomic nervous system (e.g., Tschacher et al., 2012 ); and (3) Actions , for example gesture, eye movement, or physical movement during art reception.

Art also has been connected to numerous aspects of perception and understanding (e.g., see Leder et al., 2004 ), including: (4) Appraisals or particular judgments (beauty, liking); (5) Meaning-making as well as ability to strengthen conceptions, help us to learn, challenge our ideas, or even lead to insight. (6) Novelty: Art can impact what we see, induce changes in visual or perceptual experience involving new attention to physical aspects.

There are also elements which are more art-specific, or which are particularly salient in reports of art experience: (7) Transcendence : feelings of more sudden change, epiphany, or catharsis (Pelowski and Akiba, 2011 ); (8) Aesthetic mode: “aesthetic” emotions and responses, which might involve a state of being, whereby one detaches or uncouples from concerns or everyday life perceptions, often related to periods of contemplation or harmonious enjoyment, as well as potential positive reaction to negatively-valenced or troubling art (Cupchik et al., 2009 ). (9) Negative affect: Art can also evoke negative reactions such as disgust, queasiness or anger—outcomes that particularly require an explanation in models of experience (Silvia, 2009 ).

Art is also argued to create longitudinal impacts. These include: (10) Self-adjustment , changes in one's personality, worldview, cognitive ability (Lasher et al., 1983 ), or in the relation between art and viewer. This might also include a deepened ability to appreciate art or a more general improvement in visual-spatial ability (Funch et al., 2012 ). (11) Social : Art also may guide social behavior—e.g., in rituals or institutions—or lead to social ends such as indoctrination or social cohesion (Dissayanake, 2008 ). (12) Health : art may even have general impact on health and wellbeing, for example through reduced stress (Cuypers et al., 2012 ).

A brief note on previous art modeling research

The above aspects have been the main focus for attempts to explain interaction with art. Models—as a result of systematic, scientific endeavor—can be traced back to at least the work of Berlyne (e.g., Berlyne, 1960 , 1974 ; see also Funch, 2013 for review), who revived focus on art within empirical aesthetics, integrating a psychophysiological and cognitive perspective. Looking to physiological arousal, he posited opposing reward and aversion systems tied to “collative” art properties. He was followed by Kreitler and Kreitler ( 1972 ), who took a largely cognitive and Gestalt approach, arguing that artwork content and structure make it a carrier of multiple meanings that can stimulate understanding and emotion. Similarly, based on Gestalt perception, (e.g., Arnheim, 1966 ) considered the means whereby structural unity of artworks (balance, grouping) and individual features drive responses. This was followed by, for example, Martindale (Martindale, 1988 ; Martindale et al., 1988 ), who more fully emphasized cognition, focusing on matching of schema and stimulus, and proposing prototypicality as a key determinant for positive appraisal/affective response. These were followed by an even greater expansion of approaches. Notable examples include: Lasher et al. ( 1983 ), who proposed a cognition-based model of profound experience or insight; Ramachandran and Hirstein ( 1999 ), who gave one of the first attempts to posit universal rules for reactions and their underlying biological or neurological connections; and Jacobsen ( 2006 ) as well as Solso ( 1994 ), Vitz ( 1988 ), Zeki and Nash ( 1999 ), who presented an integrative neuro-cognitive theory. Other important approaches, many of which deal with specific aspects of viewing, also include: the fluency-based theory of aesthetic pleasure by Reber et al. ( 2004 ); Graf and Landwehr's ( 2015 ) updated consideration of fluency and visual interest; Van de Cruys and Wagemans ( 2011 ) account of rewarding reactions; Armstrong and Detweiler-Bedell's ( 2008 ) work with beauty; Funch's ( 2007 ) phenomenological model of art experience; Carbon ( 2011 ); Hekkert's ( 2012 ) design-based model; Bullot and Reber's ( 2013 ) integrated model of low-level processes and top-down integration regarding viewer knowledge of artwork history; and Tinio's ( 2013 ) consideration of creating/viewing art.

These approaches, among many others, give a basis for present modeling, notably pointing out the importance of individual elements such as beauty, pleasure. They also represent a research trend from emphasizing single, often simple visual elements to a more complex interplay of factors, which may drive emotion and physiological response. Especially cognitive approaches have also strongly contributed to the basic input-process-output form of the models we consider below.

Current models and cohesive theories of interacting with art

What follows is a review of six models, which we feel, offer a good overview of present approaches to general empirical exploration of art experience. These again are not the only important models, as witnessed from the review above, but were chosen because they offer psychological explanations which are explicit in respect to underlying cognitive processes, and which are presently used in empirical consideration of outputs/inputs when viewing art. The following paragraphs will follow a repeated pattern: First, the background and main elements of each model are presented and put into a unified visual form. When a visual example has been previously produced by the models' authors, we have attempted to reproduce in verbatim the original structure and wording, with only some shifting in the location of elements. At the same time, we have taken the liberty of creating new models or new processing elements when this was deemed to be necessary. To distinguish from our own additions, previously created model components are shown in black, while our contributions are shown in blue. All models will thus have a standardized format, employing five components. Inputs and contextual factors are shown with rounded edges and depicted on the far left, processing stages in the middle, and outputs on the far right (distinguished by a gray band).

The middle section also incorporates a timeline (bottom), showing general ordering and designating early, intermediate, and late processing stages. These were included because the specific placement of components within these stages may be key in hypothesis-making, and the relative emphasis also varies greatly between the reviewed models. Although there is as of yet no agreed-upon distinction, generally the early stage refers to immediate, automatic, bottom-up visual processing and attention, while intermediate refers to more specific processes involving object recognition, classification and memory contribution. The late stage refers to more overt cognitive components such as reflection, association, or changes in viewer approach (Leder and Nadal, 2014 ). Thus, this factor provided one more point for comparison and for the ordering of model presentation below. In the time line, we also include designation of automatic or more overtly conscious processing, as this is mentioned in many approaches. Finally, specific outputs, using the above labels (see also Table 2 ), are placed in red circles at their suggested model location. If an output could be posited, yet was not explicitly considered by the authors, it is shown in a lighter shade.

Chatterjee: neurological/cognitive model

We begin with the earliest model from the present group, and one which emphasizes early processing stages. This also makes a nice example of the present box and arrow design. This model was introduced by Chatterjee ( 2004 , 2009 , 2010 ; see Cela-Conde et al., 2011 for review), and has become a central tool for framing empirical assessments. It was designed to address cognitive and neuropsychological aspects, connecting processing stages to brain functioning. Chatterjee ( 2010 ) argues that visual interaction with art has multiple components and that experience emerges from a combination of responses to these elements. It draws its main theoretical emphasis from vision research (Chatterjee, 2004 , 2010 ). Thus, it focuses primarily on three stages which are argued to correspond to the rough functional division of “early,” “intermediate,” and “late” human visual recognition (e.g., Marr, 1982 ).

As shown in Figure ​ Figure1, 1 , where we have reproduced the original model, Chatterjee posits that visual attributes of art are first processed, like any other stimulus, by extracting simple components (location, color, shape, luminance, motion) from the visual environment, and processing these in different brain regions 1 . Early features are subsequently either segregated or, most often, grouped to form larger units in intermediate vision. Here, elements help to define the object and to “process and make sense of what would otherwise be a chaotic and overwhelming” array of information (Chatterjee, 2004 , p. 55). Late vision then involves selecting regions to scrutinize or to give attention, as well as evoking memories, attaching meaning, and assessing foci of specific evolutionary importance (e.g., faces, landscapes) 2 . Following recognition and assessment, evaluations are then evoked as well as emotions.

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Chatterjee model adapted from original visual model in Chatterjee ( 2004 ) . Original elements shown in black. Additions not originally included in model shown in blue. If possible, original wording has been retained or adapted from model author's publications.

This model also provides an important basis for empirically approaching the role of the brain, with imaging studies having identified regions tied to its posited stages (Nadal et al., 2008 ). It affords a basis for making observations about how we progress in viewing, and how particular aspects—in relation to the way they are processed by the brain—impact judgments. For example, it suggests that one first perceives formal elements due to their importance in early and intermediate vision, while content is typically assessed in later vision (Chatterjee, 2010 ). Further, the model affords nuanced understanding of how processes may integrate. For example, the process of taking initially diverse perceptions from the first stage and grouping them within the second may explain satisfaction or interest often generated by complex art (Chatterjee, 2004 ), suggesting a “unity in diversity,” which itself is a central idea in aesthetics.

The model also highlights the transition from automatic to self-aware assessment. It is argued that the initial perception of many formal features (e.g., attractiveness, beauty), as well as intermediate grouping, occurs automatically (Chatterjee, 2010 ). This is followed by memory-dependent processing, where the perceiver's knowledge and background experiences are activated, and consequently, objects are identified, leading to experience-defining outcomes that result from often effortful and focused cognition, such as meaning-making and aesthetic judgments (Tinio, 2013 ). Thus, a general progression from bottom-up to top-down processing, and from low-level features to more complex higher-order assessments of art, is illustrated. This approach does not imply a strictly linear “sequence” (Chatterjee, 2004 ). Rather, processes may often run in parallel, and the individual may revisit or jump between stages (Nadal et al., 2008 ).

Model outputs

This model affords opportunity for discussion of several impacts from art (Zaidel et al., 2013 for similar review). First, the model first focuses on reward value, which is connected to numerous brain regions and specifically associated with the generation of pleasant feelings in anticipation and response to art (“ Affect ” in Figure ​ Figure1 1 ) 3 . High-level top-down processes are also involved in forming evaluative judgments and thus represent another vital component of aesthetic experiences ( Appraisal ) 4 . The model proposes a fluency or mastery-based assessment, where success in processing leads to positive responses. Due to its tie to brain function in reward and pleasure areas, the model could potentially also account for Negative responses here, which would presumably be linked to failing to place and group visual aspects, although this had not been described (we have made this addition in the Figure). The processing of objects, extraction of prototypes, connection to memory and final decision would also presumably connect to meaning-making or understanding ( Meaning ). Zaidel et al. ( 2013 , p. 104) also note that “neuroimaging studies have identified an enhancement of cortical sensory processing” 5 during aesthetic experiences. This would involve attention and may be tied to physical Action (eye movements), Physiology (relating to enhanced brain activity in certain regions), and changes in perception (enabling perception of new aspects or Novelty ). This process may also include self-awareness, monitoring of one's affective state or conflict resolution, which may play a role in bringing about final aesthetic emotion and judgment.

The above three aspects are also connected to the possibility for profound/ Aesthetic experience. If intermediate processing involves perceptions of specifically compelling or pleasing qualities of an object (e.g., symmetry, balance, as well as content) these qualities are argued to engage frontal-parietal attention circuits. These networks may continue to modulate processing, as an individual continues looking, within the ventral visual stream. Thus, “a feed forward system,” as might be seen in the arrow connecting early vision to attention, is established “in which the attributes of an aesthetic object engage attention, and attention further enhances the processing of these attributes” (Chatterjee, 2004 , p. 55), leading to heightened engagement and pleasure. This outcome may also be particularly unique for defining aesthetic experiences (Nadal et al., 2008 ). We have suggested this connection in our update to the model.

Chatterjee ( 2011 ) also suggests that the evolutionary or biological basis for human fascination with art may be tied to the interplay of three factors: (1) beauty, potentially linked to the evolutionary aspect of mate selection; (2) aesthetic attitude, or mental processes involved when apprehending objects, and which may connect with the idea of “prototypes” (presumably in early vision) which are preferred and may influence environmental navigation. Finally, (3) he notes cultural or socially-derived concepts of “making special” (e.g., Dissayanake, 2008 ), where ordinary objects are transformed by the artist and whereby the institutional frameworks that promote and display art may tie to adaptive importance in enhancing cooperation and continuity within human groups. This latter might then connect to more longitudinal impacts ( Social ).

Regarding inputs (primarily the blue arrows from the model left side), Tinio ( 2013 ), in his review, notes that the intermediary stage of vision should involve processing that recruits access to memory and processing that involves higher-order cognitions such as the perceiver's knowledge and background experiences, which may also influence the final stage of meaning-making. Chatterjee ( 2004 ), referencing Ramachandran and Hirstein ( 1999 ), also notes the importance of several artwork qualities. He suggests that neural structures that evolved to respond to specific visual stimuli respond more vigorously to primitives. This may be both based on previous experience, while also explaining the specific power of abstract art. In later theoretical work, he explained how other design cues might further impact the viewer. For example, artists might play with certain art-processing elements—violating physics of shadows, reflections, colors, and contours—thereby engendering specific brain responses (Chatterjee, 2010 ). Artists' use of complex interactions between visual components within art may also create a specifically powerful response by causing interplay between the dorsal (“where”) and ventral (“what”) vision systems within the first and second stages. Because the dorsal stream is sensitive to luminance differences, motion, and spatial location, while the ventral stream is sensitive to simple form and color, their interaction may lead to a shimmering quality of water or the sun's glow on the horizon, as in impressionist paintings (see also Livingstone, 2002 ).

Suggested additions

Finally, in regards to possible additions, besides those discussed above, the model is heavily influenced by both beauty and visual research, as well as philosophical ideas of (e.g., Kantian) disinterest (Vartanian and Nadal, 2007 ). While the emphasis on detached reception and visual pleasure may adhere to classical (pre-modern) art examples, it does not touch many aspects of modern art experience. Notably this includes a more robust or differentiated explanation for emotions, and negative evaluations. While the integrated nature of the model does allow for discussion of what brain areas may be tied to changes in perception/emotion, there is no explanation of the driving force that may bring these about. This is especially clear in Chatterjee's ( 2011 ) discussion of the evolutionary role of art. As he explains, focusing on liking or other aesthetic judgment as our sole focus would be maladaptive. If “the most profound …experiences involve a refined liking, often described as awe or feeling the sublime, in which wanting has been tossed aside, […and where] individuals lose themselves in the experience,” the individual would be rendered “vulnerable”—“Entering an aesthetic attitude is dangerous.” However, this does not take into account adaptations in the viewer. Most notably, we would recommend adding longitude changes (see box on far right), relating to making special or Social/Health . We would also suggest adding an indication of the “feed forward loop,” noted in the theoretical writing, and which appears to be placed between decision and attention stages, as well as contextual aspects such as perceiver and art qualities.

Locher et al.: early and intermediate visual processing

Locher et al. ( 2007 , 2010 ) also introduced a model, which deals with early/intermediate processing, primarily driven by empirical approaches to vision research. This model was conceived to describe the relationship between eye movements and scan patterns when processing visual art, 6 and takes a somewhat different approach to the model layout, centering on three overlapping elements. The “person context” relates to both the personality inputs and the internal processes of the viewer. “Artifact context” refers to the physical aspects of the art. The “interaction space” details the physical meeting of viewer and art, mainly pertaining to eye movement and other outputs regarding actions. For the purpose of unification with the other approaches, we have moved these inputs to the model's left side and moved the processing stages to the middle (Figure ​ (Figure2 2 ).

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Locher model (adapted from Locher, 1996 ; Locher et al., 2010 ) .

The model involves two processing stages: First, similar to Chatterjee and following previous theory regarding vision (Marr, 1982 ; Rasche and Koch, 2002 ), Locher et al. argue that art viewing, like other perception, begins with a rapid survey of the global content of the pictorial field producing an initial “gist” impression (e.g., Locher, 2015 ) of global structural organization, composition and semantic meaning. This processing alone can activate memories, lead to emotion, and contribute to a first impression/evaluation. The detected gist information and resulting impression then drive the second stage, involving a more focused period of attention on form and functionality. This stage also involves focus on details or specific aspects of pictorial features in order to satisfy cognitive curiosity and to develop aesthetic appreciation. Information is gathered by moving the eyes over art in a sequence of rapid jumps, followed by fixations.

The authors posit that interaction in the second stage is also driven by the “Central Executive” (blue box inside “person context”)—consisting of “effortful control processes that direct voluntary attention” in a top-down, cognitively driven manner (Locher et al., 2010 , p. 71). This also forms the “crucial interface” between perception, memory, attention, and action (depicted in the model's box labeled “spatio-temporal aspects of encoding”), and performs four important executive processes (following Baddeley, 2007 ): focusing, dividing, or switching attention, and providing a link between working and long-term memory. Thus there is argued to be a continuous, dynamic bottom-up/top-down interaction inside the Central Executive, involving assessed properties (form) and functionality of the object, and “viewer sensory-motor-perceptual” (i.e., visual) processes, as well as viewer cognitive structure. “Thus, as an aesthetic experience progresses, the artifact presents continually changing, ‘action driven’ affordances” (Locher et al., 2010 , p. 71). These “influence the timing, rhythm, flow, and feel of the interaction.” Ultimately, “together the top-down and bottom-up component processes underlying thought and action create both meaning and aesthetic quality,” defining art experience. Like many of the other authors, Locher et al. note both automatic and more deliberate processing. Especially in the first phase, many aspects specific to a work—complexity, symmetry, organizational balance—are argued to be detected “automatically or pre-attentively by genetically determined, hard-wired” mechanisms (p. 73).

The model especially involves focus on eye movements ( Action ). The authors' research—using eye tracking, as well as museum based observations and participant descriptions—specifically shows evidence for the initial gist processing, relating to a movement of the eyes over a large visual area and showing attention to elements perceived as compositional units (Locher et al., 2007 ; see also Locher and Nodine, 1987 ; Locher, 1996 ; Nodine and Krupinski, 2003 ). They also showed a later switch to focus on details as well as expressiveness and style/form elements. This also gives new evidence for discussion of Appraisal and Meaning -making, which can result from this sequential looking. They note that the stage of early processing can itself play an important role in these outcomes. Further, within their most recent model discussion, the authors classify three channels of information that one might create. These are composed of functional or conceptual information, inherent information (via affordances communicated in the object), and augmented information, presumably that which is changed or developed through viewing ( Novelty ). These outcomes would most likely come through directed looking in the second stage. The authors also note that emotion ( Affect ) may be evoked throughout the viewing process, however, they do not address how.

The model notably argues for “two driving forces”: the “artifact itself” and a “person context that reflects the user's cognitive structures” (Locher et al., 2010 , p. 72). With respect to the artwork, the authors (2010, p. 73) cite research (e.g., Creusen and Schoormans, 2005 ), which suggests “at least six ways” in which appearance influences evaluation and choice, including conveying aesthetic and symbolic value, providing quality impression, functional characteristics and ease of use, drawing attention via novelty, and communicating “ease of categorization.”

Regarding the viewer, the authors note that this input “contains several types of [acquired] information (semantic, episodic, and strategic),” and is also the “repository of one's personality, motivations, and emotional state,” all of which influence, in a top-down fashion, how viewers “perceive,” and “evaluate” (Locher et al., 2010 , p. 73). They note that this might play a role in the second phase, where memory “spontaneously activates subsets of featural and semantic information in the user's knowledge base,” including the user's level of aesthetic sophistication, experience, tastes, education, culture, and personality. In addition, they note that “individuals are capable of rapidly detecting and categorizing learned properties of a stimulus,” for example characteristics of the artistic style and a composition's pleasantness and interestingness. “These responses occur by a rapid and direct match in activated memory between the structural features of an art object…and a viewer's knowledge” (p. 76). They also suggest that emotion itself may be an input. Locher ( 2015 ) also suggests that expertise of a viewer may play a particularly important role in the initial gist impression as well. For example, experts may give more importance to the initial impression and resulting affective reaction when appraising value or authenticity of artworks.

Locher et al. ( 2010 ) furthermore note importance of context. This includes social-cultural and socio-economic factors related to the object, its historical significance, symbolic associations and social value. These “contribute to a user's self-perception of his or her cultural taste” or aspirations (p. 78). These aspects are also argued to influence art interaction in a cognitively-driven, top-down fashion. However, the actual tie to outcomes is not discussed. Other mentioned factors include the environment, available time for viewing, and previous mood or exposures. For example, they cite studies in which individuals were primed by giving candy, resulting in better mood, which positively influenced evaluations, attention to details, and more balanced patterns of eye movement.

An integration of the discussion of action/eye-movement with emotion or evaluations would be useful. The authors also tend to place most aspects within the second stage and do not explain how possible sequences or patterns might lead to certain outputs within experience, nor how experience changes. This may also be a result of the lack of defined temporal flow in the model design. Interestingly, when Locher et al. ( 2007 ) gave individuals the opportunity to verbalize their initial gist reaction (roughly the first seven seconds), they did not find changes in the way individuals described artworks after this period, raising questions regarding the present delineation between stage one and two. They also do not consider longitudinal aspects. Better explanation of “augmented information”—one of the three channels of information argued to be created from looking in stage two—might give a point of entry for this. Further, in their empirical support for the model and its outputs, they note that their artworks were created by renowned artists “and are, therefore, presumably visually right” (Locher et al., 2007 , p. 74). However, this raises the question of what makes a work “right,” and how less visually-successful art might be processed.

Leder et al.: intermediate stages and aesthetic appreciation and judgments

A model that has its strengths in linking early and late processing, with focus on intermediate stages, is that of Leder and colleagues (Leder et al., 2004 ; updated in Leder, 2013 ; Leder and Nadal, 2014 ). This has also become perhaps the most prominent approach for empirical study (Vartanian and Nadal, 2007 ).

Based largely on the cognitive work of Kreitler, Kreitler, and Berlyne above (Leder et al., 2005 ), their model considers art experience as a series of information-processing stages, focusing largely on perceptual attunement to various formal factors in art. However, it also integrates this sensory information with “conceptual and abstracted” meaning (p. 12) as well as emotion and body responses. As shown in Figure ​ Figure3, 3 , after an initial pre-classification (most presumably regarding situational context), the model proposes five stages (Leder et al., 2004 ), occurring in sequence: (1) “perceptual analysis,” where an object is initially subjected to analysis of low-level visual features (e.g., shape, contrast); followed by (2) “implicit memory integration,” in which art is processed via previous experiences, expertise, and particular schema held by the viewer. This is followed by (3) an “explicit classification,” where one attunes to conceptual or formal/artistic factors, such as content and style, and (4) “cognitive mastering,” in which one creates and/or discovers meaning by making interpretations, associations, and links to existing knowledge. The process ends in (5) a stage of “evaluation,” where processing outcomes combine, culminating in both aesthetic judgment and the potential for “aesthetic emotions.” The model also makes a distinction between “explicit” and “implicit” processing (see timeline), with the first two (or possibly three) stages occurring automatically or with little conscious awareness (Tinio, 2013 ). In latter stages, there is then a component of self-aware or self-referential processing, where the perceiver “evaluates his affective state and uses this information to stop the processing once a satisfactory state is achieved” (Leder et al., 2004 , p. 502).

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Leder model (adapted from Leder et al., 2004 ; Leder and Nadal, 2014 ) .

This model offers a number of advancements from previous work. Because all stages feed into a continuously updated state (Leder et al., 2004 ), it affords a more holistic understanding of how one comes to evaluations or responses. In addition it incorporates a number of factors—emotion, viewer experience, and formal aspects of artworks—to these stages, which partially influence final results. Thus, the model can be used for both a top-down, mechanism-based evaluation of the general processing of art, or for bottom-up, experience-based testing of hypotheses for specific sequences that may inform particular varieties of response (Vartanian and Nadal, 2007 ). Because of its emphasis on fundamental cognitive mechanisms, the model has also been used in a number of areas outside art—e.g., design, dance, and music (Leder, 2013 for review).

Primarily, this model proposes two outputs—aesthetic Appraisal and Affect . These are mainly explained as a result of successful visual/cognitive processing. The authors claim that part of the pleasure derived from looking is the feeling of having grasped the meaning, thus understanding an artwork results in reward-related brain activation. Looking at Figure ​ Figure3, 3 , emotion or assessment come about by moving through each stage, especially “cognitive mastery,” to a successful end. This argument is in keeping with a number of approaches—most notably Berlyne's concept of curiosity/interest and Bartlett's ( 1932 ) ( 1932 ; see Belke et al., 2010 ) “effort after meaning”—which stress importance of intellectual engagement or understanding as core dimensions of positive response. The model also notes meaning-making (Meaning) , suggesting that this comes through classification and implicit memory integration in which one connects a specific work to an interpretation. Finally, the model accounts for profound or Aesthetic experience. This is argued to derive from the natural extrapolation of the cognitive mastery process, whereby the more completely one can master a work, the more harmonious and pleasurable the outcome, occasionally to the extent that one experiences a pleasurable, “flow”-type experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 ; Leder et al., 2004 ).

The model also mentions several inputs (left side, Figure ​ Figure1). 1 ). Primarily, the stages of implicit memory integration and explicit classification are argued to be influenced by previous art experience—determining whether one first sees, for example, a “post-impressionist work,” a “sunflower,” or a “Van Gogh” (Belke et al., 2010 ). Previous experience or expertise also impact assessments of prototypicality and fluency within the second stage—which influence positive/negative emotions and evaluations (Leder et al., 2004 , 2005 ). Explicit classification also involves processing of style and content, driven by personal viewer characteristics such as knowledge and taste (Leder et al., 2005 ; also Hager et al., 2012 ) and understanding of art historical context (e.g., see Bullot and Reber, 2013 ). More recently, an updated discussion of the model in regards to emotion (Leder et al., 2015 ) suggested that the switch between aesthetic or more pragmatic approaches in “explicit classification” may be driven by a check of one's desires for emotion or mood state. In cognitive mastering, where meaning is extracted, lay persons may also be more likely to draw on self-related interpretations like feelings, personal memories, or experience, while experts may rely more on art-specific style or concepts (Augustin and Leder, 2006 ; Hager et al., 2012 , p. 321). Leder ( 2013 ) extends this even to classifying objects as “Art.” He notes that top-down classification before the actual episode, may affect experience by engaging an aesthetic mode, regulating hedonic expectations, and thus modulating intensity of emotion or interest.

In regards to the actual outcome of viewing art, the exact relation of specific emotions or evaluations to certain given inputs largely remains unclear. As also noted by Leder ( 2013 ), there is need of a more integrated explanation of how emotion or other physiological responses might tie to processing experience. While the model notes the role of personality and experience as a driver of outcomes, and the specific stages where self components may have an impact, it does not consider how these aspects are actually integrated or acted upon within psychological experience (see also Silvia below) 7 . There is also need for more explanation of how art-viewing can alter perceptions or understanding within experience (Novelty, Transcendence, Self Adjustment). While acknowledging potential for such results, it remains unclear what must happen within specific encounters for a change of the next viewing moment or the next experience. Presumably, the process might follow our additions (far right: Figure ​ Figure3), 3 ), where specific mastery in one encounter (or even within one stage), mediated by positive feedback or emotion/evaluation, would allow one to add to memories/experiences, which would then modify the self. A related output might also be posited for art's longitudinal impacts (Social, Health).

Another issue involves disruptions. Recent work by Leder's group (Jakesch and Leder, 2009 ) has shown the importance of ambiguity or breakdowns in the mastery process. This is displayed in the “evaluation” stage, and may create a more intense experience by causing one to undergo another loop of the model. However, the specifics of how these arise and create intense vs., for example, negative reactions could be more fully addressed. As it stands, the model appears to afford only a one-way mechanism for improving mastery, which leads to pleasurable experience. This raises the question of how one overcomes difficulty or finds new interpretations (Leder, 2013 ). The model has also not been connected to specific negative outcomes or physical action. These could presumably be placed as one more component of affective state (bottom).

The late stages: Silvia et al.: appraisal theory and emotion with art

Several approaches also expand past the models above to consider in more detail later processing elements. First, the work of Silvia (e.g., Silvia, 2005a , b ) specifically builds on the ideas of Leder, emphasizing information processing and visual art. However, Silvia's approach focuses on the mechanisms for arriving at specific emotions and artwork assessments, while it simultaneously questions previous psychobiological, prototypicality, and processing fluency approaches.

Silvia (Silvia and Brown, 2007 ) argues that past processing theories had two major limitations: First, their use of fluency or typicality as a main determinate of positive or negative reactions leads to difficulties in explaining why specific emotions would arise beyond this basic affect. Specifically, previous theories could not discriminate between emotions. At best, they proposed an undifferentiated feeling of aversion or interest. Second, reactions to works could be both positive or negative, but this would depend on other contextual factors such as personality rather than just ability to fluently process. Further, it is especially “hard to derive” what feelings arise from not-fluent or non-prototypical interactions with art (Reber et al., 2004 ). In response, Silvia proposed an approach based in appraisal theory (e.g., Scherer et al., 2006 ) that connects reactions with the personal relationship between viewer and art. He argues that each emotion has a distinct appraisal structure or set of evaluations that evoke the response. These evaluations are inherently contextual and subjective, with the central assumption being that evaluations, not the object, are the local cause of experience.

As shown in Figure ​ Figure4, 4 , where we have produced a model based on his arguments, Silvia proposes that responses can be broken into two main components: (1) There is a “novelty check” (Silvia, 2005a , p. 122), which is connected to processing of “collative” factors (following Berlyne)—referring to the relative understandability, interestingness or uniqueness of art. This is also tied to the matching of object to the existing schema or expectations of the viewer, and might be further divided into both basic “congruence” and the relevance that the object or the act of matching has to one's goals or self (Silvia and Brown, 2007 ), with the output being a feeling of relative ease and understanding. (2) There is also “coping potential,” or estimate of relative control or efficacy within the situation itself (Silvia, 2005a ). Throughout his writing, he also includes a third factor, relating to (3) relative importance of the object/situation to the self.

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Silvia model (created by the authors for this paper) .

For example, in the case of interest (Silvia, 2005a , 2006 ), the appraisal structure would consist of: (1) a judgment of high novelty/complexity (i.e., low schema congruence), combined with (2) high coping potential, and (3) low self relevance or little importance for one's goals or expectations and thus low perceived threat. In contrast, anger (Cooper and Silvia, 2009 ) would combine appraising an event as (1) inconsistent with one's schema (low schema congruence), but also (2) with low coping potential (e.g., as action beyond one's control) and (3) closely tied to one's goals/self. Because of this structure, Silvia concludes that in any situation, different people will have different responses to these processing checks, and thus different emotions to the same stimulus, or the same person may even have different emotions depending on context (Silvia, 2005a ). Like Leder, Silvia also emphasizes that responses need not require overt awareness.

This model also makes an important contribution, especially regarding art impact. The two main outcomes, as in the above models, are Affect and Appraisal . Silvia however adds to the previous models by proposing pathways for specific reactions (Silvia and Warburton, 2006 ), giving a frame for empirical assessment of experience. By assessing the processing checks noted above, typically via Likert-type assessments, 8 the model can explain why people have different emotions to the same event, and why different personality traits, skills, and values can predict responses (Silvia and Brown, 2007 ). This also enables movement beyond simple pleasure and preference, to surprise, confusion (Silvia and Nusbaum, 2011 ) as well as Negative responses such as anger, disgust, contempt (Silvia, 2009 ). As shown in Figure ​ Figure5, 5 , these are specifically explained as arising from low congruency and differences in relative coping and self relevance. Beyond emotion, Silvia also groups outputs into clusters (Cooper and Silvia, 2009 , p. 111), noting that appraisal theories “are componential theories,” which include facial, vocal, postural expressions or other Actions , as well as Physiological response.

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Pelowski model (adapted from Pelowski and Akiba, 2011 ) .

The model also posits categories of responses that specifically tie to different self-art relations. He notes “knowledge emotions” (interest, confusion, surprise), which are tied to intellectual matching of stimuli to schema, typically in high coping contexts. “Hostile emotions” (anger, disgust, contempt), hinge on threat to goals/self. “Self-conscious” emotions (pride, shame, embarrassment) tie to appraising events as congruent or incongruent with one's goals, and are also viewed as being caused by oneself rather than external events (Silvia, 2009 ). In the knowledge emotion category, Silvia (2009, p. 49) also notes the role of meta-cognitive reflection on the self. These emotions “stem from people's appraisals of what they know, what they expect to happen, and what they think they can learn and understand.” With self-conscious emotions, “to experience feelings like pride, shame, guilt, regret…[we] must have a sense of self and the ability to reflect upon what the self has done” (p. 50). In both cases this reflection might act as a conduit to Adjustment /learning and/or creation of Meaning . Especially knowledge emotions may “motivate learning, thinking, and exploring, actions that foster the growth of knowledge” (Silvia, 2006 , p. 140), and would come about as an output of one model cycle. It is also presumably through the earlier matching of schema to art—or rather in mismatches, paired with acceptable levels of coping/relevance—that one encounters Novelty or changed perception.

In the discussion of hostile emotional responses, the role of the self relates to attack on identity or schema. Responses stem from a “deliberate trespass” (Silvia, 2009 , p. 49) against one's goals/values. These responses are tied to action that is often given as a means of maintaining or protecting the self, motivating aggression and self-assertion (Silvia, 2009 ). Finally, he notes potential longitudinal impact ( Self Adj .), claiming “a consistent finding …is that training in art affects people's emotional responses…[and] changes people's emotional responses by changing how they think about art” (Silvia, 2006 , p. 140). He links this especially to knowledge emotions experienced in the art processing experience.

Silvia also explicitly connects responses with inputs, specifically personality. He notes that perhaps the most important aspect is how events relate to important goals or values (Silvia and Brown, 2007 ). This was empirically considered, for example, in his finding of changes in correlation between complexity/coping and interest depending on other individual personality factors (Silvia, 2005a ). Elsewhere, in a study on chills and absorption, Silvia found that people high in “openness to experience” as well as art expertise reported more such responses (Silvia and Nusbaum, 2011 , p. 208).

Adjustments

Questions remain, especially regarding the ordering of the three assessment checks. Specifically, while previous writing tends to present them with only a rough order, one could argue that this would most likely not be the case. One might question whether there is a primacy of assessment for either schema congruence or self relevance. It could be argued that with low relevance, the outcome of the congruence check has little meaning. On the other hand, individuals may be predisposed to constant checks of congruence, relating to basic processing or self-preservation, and thus this assessment may often come first. Another question regards when and how we reflect on our experience. While Silvia does explain reactions in terms of self-related assessments, he does not detail exactly what kind of mechanism this would require. This is most clear in discussion of hostile reactions. Arguing against prior fluency or prototypicality approaches, Cooper and Silvia (2009, p. 113) claim “it seems unlikely” that people have hostile reactions to art “because they find it insufficiently pleasing, prototypical, meaningful.” Instead, “people appraise art in ways that evoke hostile emotions, …in short, some art makes some people mad.” However, this argument is rather circular. Therefore, it would be useful to go one step further, and visually articulate—within a model— why this might be so at the individual level. Similar discussions could also be made of specific actions or body responses. His approach also does not divide between automatic and more reflective experience. This question, he notes is “an intriguing, cutting-edge area of appraisal research” (Silvia, 2005b , p. 6). While noting that we might be changed from our experience and that emotional responses may change throughout art exposure, there is no explanation of how this might develop within experience itself (Silvia, 2006 ).

Pelowski et al.: discrepant and transformative reactions to art

The model of Pelowski (Pelowski and Akiba, 2009 , 2011 ) was also conceived as an extension of the Leder approach, with the addition of some appraisal theory elements, and attempts to refocus on the specific discussion of changes or evolutions in responses within the art interaction experience.

Pelowski et al. argue against a typical emphasis on harmony, fluency, or immediate understanding, and instead advocate a more labored process of discrepancy and subsequent adjustment. Pelowski and Akiba ( 2011 ) note that many past discussions of art experience—both theoretical and anecdotal—involve some means of disruption or break from the flow of everyday life experience. It is these untypical reactions that are argued to actually constitute the impact and importance of art, acting to disrupt a viewer's pre-expectations and forcing upon them a new means of perception or insight (see also Pelowski et al., 2012 ; Muth et al., 2015 for similar argument). Yet, these very qualities are often eliminated from the study of art perception. They further argue that models have come to “equate art perception to either an emotional/empathic alignment of viewer to artist or artwork” or to a cognitive “assessment of an artwork's …information” via matching of schema to the object of perception, leaving models “without a means of accounting for fundamental change within art experience” (Pelowski and Akiba, 2011 , p. 82). Like Silvia, they also argue that current approaches cannot describe how individuals arrive at specific reactions, limiting researchers' ability to unite cognitive, emotional, and evaluative reactions within experience.

Their model (Figure ​ (Figure5) 5 ) posits five stages, beginning with a specific conception of expectations or viewer identity. Pelowski and Akiba ( 2011 , p. 87) argues that viewers carry “fundamental meanings regarding themselves, other persons, objects, or behaviors—‘Who am I?’ ‘What is art?’ ‘How does art relate to me?”’ which collectively combine to form what they refer to as the “ideal self image.” Updating previous work by Carver ( 1996 ), Pelowski and Akiba ( 2011 ) specifically posit a theoretical construction for this self, which can be considered as a hierarchical pyramid with core traits (“be goals”) at the top, and branching down to expectations for general actions (“do goals”), and further subdivided into more specific schema. Through connection of low-level schema to core ideas of the self, all action (such as viewing art) then involves application of this structure. This occurs in tandem with human drives to protect the self image, through cognitive filters that lead attention away from potentially damaging information. Thus “success or failure in perception, as well as what individuals can [initially] perceive or understand, are a result of this postulate system” (pp. 85–87), and provide the mechanism for understanding reaction to art.

The authors then propose three main outcomes. First, individuals attempt to successfully match schema to art by classifying and understanding, coinciding with the “cognitive mastery” in the Leder model. They also acknowledge that this outcome is a general goal of most experience, and may induce pleasure, harmony, or even flow-type states. However, because this outcome marks a matching of schema to perception, mastery also would coincide with a “facile” reaction to art, reinforcing previous expectations and cutting off possibility for new perception or insight. Moving past this point, they argue, requires some “discrepancy” within experience. This can involve any number of aspects—e.g., between expectations for perception and art, between meaning and prior concepts, between bodily reactions and expectations for how one should act. In each case discrepancy acts to “bump” an individual out of their preconceived frame (Pelowski et al., 2014 , p. 4), forcing response or adjustment.

Upon discrepancy, the model then posits that individuals move to a “secondary control” stage in which they try to diminish or escape from the discrepant element. This is accompanied by actions—e.g., re-classifying art as bad or meaningless, diminishing importance of the encounter, or physically moving away—which avoid a questioning of higher-order aspects of the self image, and also explain the negative emotional or evaluative experiences sometimes had with art. On the other hand, if viewers persist, they may instead eventually alter their own schema in order to better approach the art. This is argued to be most likely when art-viewing has a fundamental tie to the self (representing a higher order goal) and one cannot easily escape (Pelowski and Akiba, 2011 ). This change also coincides with a shift from direct perception to a more meta-cognitive perspective, in which viewers give up previous attempts at control, acknowledge discrepancy, and eventually create new schema for viewing the art. They conclude that it is this process whereby one “transforms” the self, that can be connected to change, novelty, or insight, and coincides with highly positive emotion, and deepened or harmonious engagement.

This model is especially important for explaining both highly positive ( Aesthetic ), and Negative , as well as insightful or Novel and Transcendent reactions. The model also unites these within one progressive experience. It is argued that in order to arrive at the final outcome a viewer moves through all antecedent stages (Pelowski et al., 2012 ). In this vein, one of the model's key benefits is its division into specific stages, tied to application, protection or adjustment of the self. Thus the authors can attach general theory regarding various reactions noted for each of these events (see also Leder, 2013 ). Notably, they suggest emotion or Affect , which, following Silvia, would arise in specific clusters depending on the positive or negative experience of applying the self. They argue that empirical analysis of viewing art would be expected to show a progression from no emotion in the facile stage, to confusion, anxiety, and tension, followed by anger in secondary control, and finally self-awareness, epiphany, or happiness in the aesthetic stage. This division has also been supported by recent empirical evidence (Pelowski et al., 2012 ; Pelowski, 2015 ). Similar results are also tied to Physiology , specifically heart rate and skin conductance. They argue that the first stage should show little physiological response, while secondary control would lead to sympathetic (fight or flight), schema change to both parasympathetic and sympathetic, and the final stage to parasympathetic return to homeostasis. This final outcome was also recently tied to crying (Pelowski, 2015 ). They also suggest specific Action (need to leave) in the “secondary control” stage.

Regarding Appraisal , they also argue that evaluation ending in cognitive mastery may reveal appraisals that aid in ignoring or assimilating discrepancy (Pelowski and Akiba, 2011 ). On the other hand, in secondary control, self-protectionary strategies would manifest in negative hedonic appraisals, as well as lower “potency or activity” (e.g., Osgood et al., 1957 ). They further consider Meaning , dividing outcomes into three modes: (1) initial assessment for surface or mimetic qualities in cognitive mastery, (2) meaninglessness in secondary control, and (3) “a fundamental change in viewer-stimuli relation” in the last stages, where art meaning is tied to metacognitive reflection on its impact and the preceding psychological experience (Pelowski et al., 2012 , p. 249).

The model is also particularly unique in its explanation of changes or transformation with art. Recently, Pelowski et al. ( 2014 ) connected this outcome to goals of museum/art education, and pointed out its equivalence to discussions of insight or creativity. By breaking from the mastery process through the introduction of meta-cognitive assessment and schema-change, followed by re-engaging in final mastery with a new set of schema, they argue, “we introduce a means of explaining the transcendental quality of art” and of “connecting the existing conception of mastery to …novelty and personal growth” (Pelowski and Akiba, 2011 , p. 90). They also posit longitudinal impact, tied to changes in schema or the “hierarchical self.” Especially the aesthetic outcome may manifest in re-evaluation of a viewer's own self image, which may be detectible in paired self-evaluations before and after viewing ( Self Adj .). They also argue that both the abortive or transformative outcome may cause change in individual's relationship with the class of art or artists, involving hedonic and potency evaluations ( Social ), and may spur individuals to seek out/avoid other encounters.

Regarding inputs, the model considers the role of specific expectations or personality, and goes further to place these within a theory of the self. The authors note that “those who have a strong relationship to a stimulus, or high expectations for success…are [more] likely to find themselves in the intractable position” leading to aesthetic experience (Pelowski et al., 2012 , pp. 246–247). This might be tied to training in the arts, or might affect those who identify as art lovers, who have a high need to find meaning in artworks, or who have the general need for control. More recently, the authors have also taken into account the physical and social situation, noting that the environment, especially when one is among others who one considers more knowledgeable, may be likely to evoke facile or negative experience, tying to a need for protecting the self (Pelowski et al., 2014 ).

At the same time, the model has a conceptual focus, laying emphasis on schema and overlooking much of the way individuals might often respond to art (basic perceptions, mimetic evaluations, or pre-reflective experience). A recent review (Leder, 2013 ) also noted that it is “more descriptive than formalized,” requiring transformation into “more operative versions with process-based rules,” quantifying what feature of a representation at one stage affects latter stages.

Cupchik: detached/aesthetic and pragmatic approaches to art

Finally, the theories of Cupchik have also not yet been placed into a unified model, but have individually been instrumental in empirical art research. These also involve several themes which can be connected to form an understanding of art experience, 9 and thus were deemed an ideal target for this paper (Figure ​ (Figure6 6 ).

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Cupchik model (created by the authors for this paper) .

Similar to other cognitive approaches, Cupchik views art experience as a meeting of object, environment, and personality factors (Cupchik and Gignac, 2007 ). In order to understand their interaction, a main theme regards two modes of responses (Cupchik, 2011 , p. 321): “everyday pragmatic” and “aesthetic.” The way that these modes are integrated, and often which of the two the viewer employs, determine the outcomes of experience. The pragmatic involves a predominantly cognitive, schema-based assessment, in which one assesses meaning and significance. The “aesthetic,” on the other hand, involves integrating context, memory, and physical/sensory qualities “associated with style and symbolic information” (p. 321). This involves a more reactive or “holistic” appraisal “in which specific codes for interpreting are bound with affective responses that map onto dimensions of pleasure or arousal.” Cupchik ( 2006 , 2013 ) also posits an alternative naming for this division, suggesting a contrast between “subjective engagement” and “objective detachment.” While subjective engagement is based on intense personal responses, objective detachment reflects a more intellectual treatment 10 .

In engaging art, one may switch between modes in response to different information or one's processing experience. Cupchik ( 2011 , 2013 ) notes that the two modes' “extreme conditions” can also lead to unwanted experience. This would involve either “underdistancing,” in which subject matter reminds us of troubling aspects of our personal lives, or causes unwanted emotion, or “overdistancing,” when design aspects push one too far away (as in some avant-garde art), with little emotional involvement (Kemp and Cupchik, 2007 ). The most pleasant responses may occur when individuals find an “aesthetic middle” (Fechner, 1978 ) between absorption and detachment—“utmost decrease of distance without its disappearance” (Cupchik, 2006 , p. 217). Cupchik ( 2013 ) also argued that one appeal of art is the opportunity at reconciliation between modes. While he argues that it is not possible to be in both modes at the same time, we can “shift rapidly between the two” (2011, p. 321). Thus, it is “the capacity of a work of art to be grasped, elaborated, and experienced in several systems” that makes it compelling (p. 294).

The model can further be articulated through its discussion of outputs. First is its discussion of Appraisal , which it connects to the aesthetic or reactive mode. Cupchik notes potential for Meaning making , via reflective and/or pragmatic processing. Affect is also noted. In an earlier publication, Cupchik ( 1993 , p. 179) suggested that two kinds of emotional processes might in fact be distinguished, which would coincide with either the analytical/schema-based or holistic/experiential processing modes. These can be termed “dimensional” and “category” reactions. The former are closely tied to bodily states of pleasure/arousal caused by a particular stimulus. The latter pertain “to primary emotions,” such as happiness, interest, surprise, fear, anger, and emphasizing spontaneity or empathic reaction to art. More recently, Cupchik ( 2011 , p. 321) suggested that the former affect type may accompany aesthetic experiences “from the first moment of perception,” giving as evidence studies involving displaying artworks of differing complexities or affective contents for very short durations, and where participants would avoid a second viewing based on their ability to detect lack of order or unwanted emotional valence 11 . In turn, the primary emotions are associated with longer exposure durations “that enable a person to situate the work in the context of life experiences” (Cupchik and Gignac, 2007 ). He also notes that this often touches the reflective mode of appraising, which is more closely related to emotions linked to the self (Cupchik, 2011 ). He suggests that both cases may lead to Negative affect. This would come from either: (1) difficulty in initially processing art, leading to hedonic aversion through the reactive/aesthetic mode, (2) “under-distancing,” where the work is too close to one's self and/or a troubling situation, or (3) negatively perceived content in art as processed in the reflective mode.

Cupchik ( 2011 , p. 321) also argues for adaptive impact from emotional art response ( Self Adj .), noting especially “primary emotions” have adaptive value, “because they link the person to meaningful situations.” In turn, the reflective mode (Cupchik, 2011 , p. 321) can be related to the principle of “emotional elaboration,” which implies that a person searches for underlying layers of meaning, in part due to the prompting from their affective experience, and might be connected to growth/self-adjustment (Kemp and Cupchik, 2007 ). Especially when individuals are able to find the proper emotional distance, they may enter a state in which they break from a “normal outlook” and achieve new points of view or approaches (Cupchik, 2006 , p. 216). He also suggests that this can lead to a state of consciousness involving “suspension in the experience of time—a frozen moment in which the person and the work become one” (Cupchik, 2013 , p. 85). This event then might be connected to Aesthetic experiences, as well as Novelty and Transformation . His idea of aesthetic engagement has the posited impact of returning an individual to homeostasis or harmonious interaction with the environment, which might serve as an avenue to longitudinal impact ( Health ).

At the same time, Cupchik and Wroblewski-Raya ( 1998 , p. 65) note that while art can be used for wish fulfillment or revelation, it can also evoke “ego-defense.” “The subject matter …might also resonate with unresolved issues and needs.” This might lead to a “defensive intellectualizing response” in which the individual escapes or avoids processing, by, for example, focusing on its style or other benign elements. This could also lead to an adaptive moment. “The artwork …mirrors the person's life and externalizes what has been a private concern,” thereby providing “tension release.” This may involve ability to adopt some distance, which “permits the person to experience the emotion without having to address its consequences.” 12 This too might connect to a change in perception ( Novelty ) or insight, while the former outcome may lead to Negative emotion/responses. Cupchik ( 2006 ) also notes that while one can of course employ a pragmatic approach, in order to appreciate art as “Art,” one must shift to an aesthetic frame.

Regarding inputs, Cupchik primarily notes personality. For example, in an empirical study (see Cupchik and Gignac, 2007 ) he showed the impact of previous experience when determining what aspects a viewer might attend to, concluding that art-naive viewers generally focus on subject matter because it is easier to discern than style. The latter is more likely to be attended to by experts, which he connects with a reflective mode and desire for challenge 13 . On the other hand, much like Leder, he discusses the importance of previous experience when adopting an “aesthetic” mode. Individuals “bring appropriate codes of interpretation and engagement. [One takes] this for granted until encountering a new form of artistic expression,” which individuals do not know how to respond to (Cupchik, 2013 , p. 73). Cupchik ( 2006 , p. 214) also notes the present and/or desired affective state may play a role in art selection and attention. “People can intentionally modulate their states of pleasure or arousal by selecting stimuli that possess a needed quality.” This “wish fulfillment” (Cupchik and Wroblewski-Raya, 1998 , p. 65) might itself be largely involved when we take a “reactive” mode of appraising art, allowing return to homeostasis (Cupchik, 2011 ). Finally, Cupchik ( 2013 , p. 85) notes the implicit role of personality in discussion of more profound or harmonious experiences. He suggests that proper distancing may come through cases where “a work expressively embodies a person's sense of identity.” One may alter the mode of appraisal to escape from implications raised by art. He showed this by confronting viewers, who identified as lonely, with paintings depicting lonely scenes, and who were more likely to focus on style than content (Cupchik and Wroblewski-Raya, 1998 ).

Unclear aspects regard the two modes of appraisal. Much of Cupchik's discussion implies that these modes might occur roughly in parallel, or that individuals can actively select which mode to employ. However, his research on short and long time sequences seems to imply that we immediately take a reactive approach to assess the basic object. This would seem to fit to the work of Leder, Chatterjee etc. This raises the question of whether one mode might influence the other or how this might occur. Even more, his discussion of under-distancing and its ability to lead to ego defense or learning and growth, might imply a switch between an initial reactive to a reflective mode, at a late stage of experience. It may be useful to parse what would be these outcomes' differences.

Discussion and conclusion

This paper had the goal of taking existing theoretical explanations of the psychological processing of art, and placing these into a unified visual basis for the purpose of articulating how, and if , they address specific outcomes from our art experience. These outcomes were also tied to inputs or contextual factors, and general processing stages. Through this review, we hoped to both provide a new tool for discussing the modeling of art, displaying how models may differ or overlap, and providing a more general window into the present state of art psychology research. We conclude with a short discussion of these models' synthesis, and suggestions or implications for future research.

The state of art modeling: some agreement on outputs; many paths for how they are achieved; many avenues for empirical investigation

First, concerning outputs or psychological implications, as noted in the introduction, these factors might be said to drive art's psychological interest, and are thus the prime targets for modeling itself. This was also a main contribution of our paper, which sought to identify a range of potential outputs and label these when they were considered in the specific models. For the purpose of quick comparison, all outputs are summarized in Table ​ Table1, 1 , which denotes whether or not they are explicitly or implicitly included in each of the reviewed models, or omitted. This table also provides a similar review for inputs. For more extensive comparison, we have also provided a brief synopsis of each model's specific explanations for outputs in Table ​ Table2 2 (Parts 1 and 2) .

Overview of explicitly mentioned inputs and outputs in models of art experience .

Circle (○) signifies explicit mention and discussion of Input/Output factor by author(s). Dot (•) signifies implicit mention. Dash (–) signifies no mention .

Models of art experience and noted Outputs .

Output descriptions based on authors' published models and related publications. Factors preceded by a question mark (?) were not specifically mentioned by the authors, but were proposed by the present paper.

Looking at this comparison, it is interesting to note that all models share some common factors. Notably, almost all authors consider emotion and evaluations as main outputs, and also make an explicit connection to meaning making. This itself may tell us something about current modeling, and the present state of understanding and focus in art research. While this review obviously could not consider all approaches important to art, it does suggest that these common outputs may constitute what investigators feel to be important for defining art interaction. These outputs also mark major factors in present empirical assessment. This probably stems from the present information processing focus. Most models also consider several basic inputs, which might be roughly divided into social, contextual, experiential, and personality-derived elements.

At the same time, the models also differ greatly in their explanations for how one arrives at these outputs, and connects these elements to different processing components. For example in the case of appraisal, as Table ​ Table2 2 Part 1 shows, descriptions range from: an emphasis on visual object identification (Chatterjee), integration of vision with memory (Locher), emphasis on intellectual processing experience and understanding of art (Leder), relative matching of schema and self (Silvia, Pelowski), to taking a pragmatic vs. aesthetic mode (Cupchik). This diversity highlights the presently undetermined nature of current art psychological approaches, and the need for more comprehensive and comparative analyses.

Importantly, this also highlights the potential contribution of this paper, and of visual modeling. As noted above, one of the benefits of a visual model approach is that it forces an author to make an explicit connection between processes and outputs, articulating connections where they might be otherwise obscured in written theory. By placing these same outputs in the visual models, tracing back through their processing descriptions, and comparing between approaches, we may create grounds for future empirical research. We have set up this paper to facilitate this approach. We suggest that the reader might use this review as a means of considering the pathways to the various outputs, and thus the underlying factors and processing sequences. These could then be considered in empirical approaches. This review may also contribute to a better understanding of the theories of these individual researchers.

It should also be noted that this review does not imply that one model is “better” in describing outcomes than others. Rather these models are all presumably describing different aspects of the art processing sequence. This also shows in the models' relative emphasis on different general stages (early, intermediate, and late), which lead to different answers regarding outputs. Future studies might use these different models to consider the differential contribution of the posited sequences for determining their relative impact on output factors.

Missing elements: physiology, health, negative and profound reactions to art

This comparison also highlights factors that appear to be largely missing in present modeling, and by extension psychological art research. When placed side-by-side, it becomes clear that present approaches largely avoid several outputs. Notably, there is a dearth of discussion of negative factors as well as of novelty, change, or transformation. Beyond the immediate processing components, there are other, long-term outputs that appear under-represented—notably art's role in general well-being or health. As noted by Stevenson-Taylor and Mansell ( 2012 , p. 105), “seldom is a rigorous exploration given to ascertaining the effects of psychological change in the long-term. When and how these changes occur is rarely addressed.” This does certainly seem to be the case here. Longitudinal aspects were not directly mentioned by any author. Similarly, social aspects and socio-cultural adjustments also appear under-represented, with the latter only directly mentioned by Silvia. Similarly under-explored are insight, changed perception, and—somewhat surprisingly—harmonious or aesthetic experience. While several authors theoretically note how this might occur (for example Leder argues that it would involve an act of cognitive mastery approaching perfectly fluent matching of schema to work), it occurs nowhere as a specific model output. This raises the question of how these outcomes might actually have a lasting impact. Only Pelowski and Akiba ( 2011 ) specifically note how this might occur.

This general omission of factors as well is quite illuminating, and can be traced into present empirical study, as well as needed targets for future research. It has been recently noted that especially the above negative or transformative factors are often overlooked (Silvia and Brown, 2007 ; Leder, 2013 ; Pelowski, 2015 ), and remain prime candidates for future empirical approaches. As well, there have been calls for assessments of art's health or positive benefits on the viewer (e.g., Cuypers et al., 2012 ). By extrapolating from these missing outputs, we might say that present models and theoretical discussion appear to be missing a large number of consequences that might define the importance of art for society or individuals, and thus why art should, for example, be supported by public resources. Models also appear to omit what might be called “second order outputs” or executive behavior consequences of viewing, such as when anger leads to iconoclasm, vandalism, or violence (c.f. Freedberg, 1989 ). It is also interesting to note that most of the models do not account for the viewer's body, movement, or physiological responses, which might also be considered (Tschacher et al., 2012 ). These aspects, we would argue, remain key targets for future modeling, which may then allow for better empirical assessments. Interestingly, as we have tried to show in the suggested additions and updated model figures, many outputs might actually be connected to present model approaches, raising again an avenue for future research and what we hope can be a contribution of this paper.

Regarding inputs, there are also areas for future development. Specific artwork-related aspects such as style are not included in several models (Chatterjee, Silvia, Pelowski). The same can be said for the artwork's historical context, which was also recently argued to be a key processing input (Bullot and Reber, 2013 ), but in the present review only operationalized as one aspect of the background knowledge of viewers (e.g., by Locher and Leder, but see Pelowski and Akiba, 2011 ). It also appears that only the models put forward by Leder and Cupchik account for the current psychophysiological and affective state of the viewer. These aspects should be incorporated into the other models and systematically included when setting up experiments. In addition, while most authors specifically note the importance of memory components for processing, and often mention this in their written theory, it is often omitted in the models. This begs for integration and elaboration.

The models' differing discussion of factors, and many of their omissions, are also probably a result of present emphasis on early and intermediate processing stages, and tied to the importance of vision and early neurological components of object recognition. This too suggests a potential fruitful target for future theoretical research. Those models that do focus on late processing (Pelowski, Silvia) are more likely to consider the omitted outputs. This again does not imply that certain models are more or less important: the models that focus on earlier processes may, for example, involve a more detailed consideration of the bottom-up processing of artwork qualities, whereas models with a later focus may concern primarily top-down contributions of the viewer. This speaks to a need for combining these discussions into one processing sequence. Future researchers might consider how the visual processes (e.g., as described by Locher and Chatterjee) feed into the cognitive processes described by Leder, and then lead to the top-down consequences described by the remaining authors. It may also be fruitful to look at the described processing sequences for each output and consider a best solution, given these, and other model's descriptions. While such a synthesis is beyond the aim of the present manuscript, we argue that this is a necessary next step for future research.

Box and arrow models: limitations and future developments

Finally, a few words should also be given regarding the nature of above models themselves. As noted, they are all box and arrow designs. This represents an important fact in cognitive psychology and discussion of art, because they specifically require theoretical links between inputs, outputs, and processes. At the same time, this method has several general limitations, which future researchers might consider.

It should be clear from this review that while the simple act of connecting inputs to processes to outputs is an important theoretical step for a better understanding of psychological events, the simple arrows that make up many aspects of the above models often do not sufficiently explain how this might actually be accomplished. Many models, especially when visualized, also reveal gaps or confusions in their design. More detail and consideration of individual and contextual factors is often warranted. Many approaches might benefit from more careful consideration of both specific decisions or factors, which can determine specific model sequences, and placement of outputs. While we did attempt to take the step of systematizing the broad components of each approach, we also made the decision to maintain fidelity to the original model interior organization, which in many cases only highlights such suboptimal arrangements. From this review, we would be the first to argue that the field of modeling in aesthetics itself could benefit from more attention to such aspects of visual communication. We hope that future research might consider this.

The linear nature of these models can also lead to a myopic, “false” and often one-dimensional understanding of psychological processes themselves. In reality, these might often occur in concert as complex networks of activation (Cela-Conde et al., 2013 ), or with individuals cycling back and forth between stages, constantly adjusting and updating expectations, which influences perception and experience. While these aspects were at least addressed in some of the reviewed models (e.g., Pelowski, Silvia, and the discussion by Leder), such complex approaches, require further emphasis, and become even more necessary when taking the next step of connecting sequences to activity in the brain. Further, it may be that future research should even move past the box and arrow design, considering for example novel paradigms such as Bayesian flow models, or predictive processing theory (Clark, 2013 , 2015 ) which posits that the brain operates based on comparisons with automatic predictions of the environment; both result in more complex probabilistic models of outputs or experience.

To conclude, we hope that this review may contribute to such future modeling, and serve as a useful basis for needed future comparative and hypothesis-driven research.

Author contributions

All authors listed, have made substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Esben Gröndal for his helpful comments and suggestions. The writing of this manuscript was supported by a grant to MP and HL by Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA-IF-2014-EF: Individual Fellowships, 655379).

1 For example, for early vision, Chatterjee ( 2004 ) argues that occipital cortex and frontal-parietal attentional circuits play the most emphasis.

2 Noted regions for late vision include: orbitofrontal cortex, insula, temporal pole, ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These are connected to the interaction between cognitive and emotional processes and monitoring of one's own affective state.

3 This impact is interpreted empirically from the involvement of subcortical components of the reward circuit in aesthetic experiences, notably anterior cingulate cortex.

4 The model connected emotion to the anterior medial temporal lobe, medial and orbitofrontal cortices, and subcortical structures which mediate emotion and reward systems. Chatterjee ( 2010 ) connected appraisal to a widely distributed network, most importantly the dorsolateral frontal and medial frontal cortices.

5 In bilateral fusiform gyri, angular gyrus, and the superior parietal cortex.

6 More recently, Locher et al. ( 2010 ) integrated this model with consideration of the tactile and sensual aspects of the handling of object and assessment of its use, geared toward discussion of commercial, design products. However, the present discussion will focus only on visual aspects.

7 Locher et al. ( 2007 , p. 76) also question some of this model's arguments regarding location of processing aspects within its stages. In a study where participants were asked to view paintings and give a running oral report of their processing, Locher et al. noted that some participants' “initial reactions to the artworks would be classified as occurring in stage 4 …involve[ing] deliberate (top-down) self-related interpretations.” Locher et al. argued that their findings suggest that reactions “may occur much more rapidly and automatically than predicted.…suggesting that [individuals] are able to make a rapid evaluation of a picture's content and aesthetic appeal.”

8 Silvia specifically identified a set of key evaluations for identifying congruency, coping, and self-relevance (preference, uncertainty, level of disruption, novelty, complexity, interest).

9 Cupchik himself made this acknowledgment and suggestion that his work might be fit into a cohesive model in a recent retrospective address concerning his body of research (2011, p. 320).

10 See also Cupchik ( 1995 ) in which he also uses the terms “reactive” and “reflective” approaches.

11 He goes on to argue that this “clearly showed that the interaction of cognitive and affective processes in aesthetic perception take place holistically within the first glance” and thus contradicts Zajonc's (e.g., Zajonc, 2000 ) assumption that preferences are often unmediated by cognitive processing (Cupchik, 2006 , p. 212–213). This is a debate for another paper.

12 Shown empirically by Kemp and Cupchik ( 2007 ) who presented viewers in a negative state with a range of positive and negative paintings, and who found that viewers wanted to see the paintings with negative themes a second time, primarily however, “because they evoked thoughts rather than feelings.”

13 He was specifically referring to literary experiences, however this would presumably also apply to visual art.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Who made the paintings: artists or artificial intelligence the effects of identity on liking and purchase intention.

\r\nLi Gu

  • Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou, China

Investigating how people respond to and view AI-created artworks is becoming increasingly crucial as the technology’s current application spreads due to its affordability and accessibility. This study examined how AI art alters people’s evaluation, purchase intention, and collection intention toward Chinese-style and Western-style paintings, and whether art expertise plays a role. Study 1 recruited participants without professional art experience (non-experts) and found that those who made the paintings would not change their liking rating, purchase intention, and collection intention. In addition, they showed ingroup preference, favoring Chinese-style relative to Western-style paintings, in line with previous evidence on cultural preference in empirical aesthetics. Study 2 further investigated the modulation effect of art expertise. Art experts evaluated less favorably (less liking, lower purchase, and collection intentions) AI-generated paintings relative to artist-made paintings, while non-experts showed no preference. There was also an interaction effect between the author and the art expertise and interaction between the painting style and the art expertise. Collectively, the findings in this study showed that who made the art matters for experts and that the painting style affects aesthetic evaluation and ultimate reception of it. These results would also provide implications for AI-art practitioners.

The development of full AI (artificial intelligence) could spell the end of the human race.

— Stephen Hawking

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting humankind in various aspects. In recent years, scientists have been dedicated to generating creative products such as poetry, stories, jokes, music, paintings, and so on. For instance, taking advantage of Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), Elgammal et al. (2017) built a new system to generate art by learning about styles and deviating from style norms. Astonishingly, human subjects could not distinguish paintings generated by this system from paintings made by contemporary artists ( Elgammal et al., 2017 ). Although the art-generating agent is mature enough to deceive our eyes (for a review, see Cetinic and She, 2021 ), a more thought-provoking question is whether it could capture our minds.

Many discussions have been held on the value of artworks created by AI ( Ploin et al., 2022 ). Previous studies have focused on comparing AI-created and artist-made artworks such as paintings ( Chamberlain et al., 2018 ; Hong and Curran, 2019 ; Gangadharbatla, 2021 ), performing arts ( Darda and Cross, 2022b ), and music ( Moffat and Kelly, 2006 ). Researchers are interested in the following three important issues: whether observers could distinguish art generated by AI from those made by humans; whether a bias against AI-created artworks exists; and whether art experience plays a role. First, concerning the ability of observers to discern between computer and man-made art, most prior studies showed that observers could not differentiate between computer-generated and man-made art ( Chamberlain et al., 2018 ; Gangadharbatla, 2021 ; Darda and Cross, 2022b ), while Moffat and Kelly (2006) found that participants could differentiate musical pieces composed by a computer from those composed by humans. Second, a bias against AI-generated artworks has been proven in previous studies. For instance, both implicit and explicit biases against computer-generated paintings were found in Chamberlain et al. (2018) , that is, participants perceived paintings categorized as computer-generated by them had lower aesthetic value, irrespective of whether they rated or categorized the paintings first. Third, prior research on art expertise and aesthetics has shown that art experts and non-experts appreciate art differently ( Hekkert and Van Wieringen, 1996 ; Leder et al., 2012 ; Bimler et al., 2019 ). Researchers demonstrated that art experts gave higher ratings to artworks ( Leder et al., 2012 ) and showed a much higher level of comprehension than beginners ( Leder et al., 2004 ; Mullennix and Robinet, 2018 ). A few studies have explored the role of expertise in modulating the bias against AI-generated artworks ( Moffat and Kelly, 2006 ; Chamberlain et al., 2018 ; Darda and Cross, 2022b ). Moffat and Kelly (2006) showed that musicians had a heightened bias against computer-generated musical pieces than non-musicians, whereas Chamberlain et al. (2018) found no modulation effect of art education.

Another line of research in empirical aesthetics, including behavioral studies ( Belke et al., 2010 ; Hawley-Dolan and Winner, 2011 ; Mastandrea and Umiltà, 2016 ; Mastandrea and Crano, 2019 ) and neuroimaging studies ( Kirk et al., 2009 ; Silveira et al., 2015 ), investigated framing effects by exploring how labels and titles influence aesthetic processing and evaluations. For instance, Mastandrea and Crano (2019) demonstrated that artworks said to be created by famous artists were appreciated more than the same artworks attributed to non-famous artists, being judged more interesting and beautiful. Silveira et al. (2015) investigated whether a socially defined context would set a mental frame that modulates the neurocognitive processing of artworks. Participants were presented with identical abstract paintings from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York that were labeled as being either from the MoMA or from an adult education center. Higher neural activation was found when they were evaluating artworks from the MoMA than the education center. Kirk et al. (2009) labeled images as either originating from an art gallery or generated by a computer program (Photoshop) and presented images to participants. They found that participants’ aesthetic ratings were significantly higher for stimuli viewed in the “art gallery” than in “computer program” contexts. Overall, these findings indicate that mental frames play a role in aesthetic evaluations.

In addition, while much research has focused on participants’ perceptions of and biases toward AI-generated artworks, several bodies of research explored the ingroup bias in aesthetic evaluations (for a review, see Che et al., 2018 ). Prior behavioral and neurological evidence consistently indicated cultural preference (ingroup bias) in aesthetic evaluations ( Bao et al., 2016 ; Yang et al., 2019 ), that is, people showed a tendency to like artworks originating from one’s own culture more than another culture. Individuals may feel a sense of cultural identity and belongingness when looking at artworks from their own culture and therefore gave higher aesthetic ratings compared to those from another culture ( Bao et al., 2016 ). People showed ingroup bias in evaluating artwork, especially when they lack art-related expertise and experience ( Mastandrea et al., 2021 ), which could be accounted for by the uncertainty-identity theory ( Hogg, 2007 , 2015 ). The uncertainty-identity theory is an extension of social identity theory that proposes uncertainty reduction as a major driving force behind group and intergroup actions and social identity processes ( Hogg, 2007 ). According to this theory, people try to lessen their feelings of uncertainty about and connection to themselves through group identification, which would promote ingroup bias in behavior and attitudes.

The present research

In 2018, a painting called Portrait of Edmond Belamy, created by AI, rocked the art world, selling for $432,500 at Christie’s. Art, as an investment, is embedded with financial attributes. It is essential to understand people’s evaluations and ultimate reception of it. Thus, indicators of paintings’ value, such as purchase intention and collection intention, are worth noting, besides the aesthetic rating. For instance, Gangadharbatla (2021) measured purchase intention as well as the evaluation of artworks. Thus, the current studies measured participants’ liking ratings, purchase intentions, and collection intentions.

People’s ingroup bias in the context of AI-generated artworks and the modulation of art expertise warrants greater understanding. We conducted two studies to explore these questions in this study. The aim of study 1 was to explore the influence of the author (AI and human artists) and the style (Western and Chinese) of paintings in the aesthetic evaluations of Chinese participants without art-related experience or expertise. In line with previous research on the bias against artworks created by machine/AI (e.g., Chamberlain et al., 2018 ) and the framing effect, we expected a bias against AI-generated paintings irrespective of whether they were of Western or Chinese style. Moreover, based on findings in Mastandrea et al. (2021) and uncertainty-identity theory, we predict that people might be uncertain about the AI-generated context and may resort to cultural identity as an art appreciation heuristic, therefore showing a higher preference for Chinese-style than Western-style AI-generated paintings. Together, our first hypothesis (H1) includes (H1a) Chinese participants showed an overall bias against AI-generated paintings irrespective of whether they were Western or Chinese style; (H1b) Chinese participants favored Chinese-style paintings more than Western-style paintings; and (H1c) participants showed a greater ingroup bias in the context of AI-generated paintings.

Previous evidence suggests that people who are interested in art concur in their aesthetic judgments irrespective of their cultural backgrounds ( Child, 1965 ; Iwao and Child, 1966 ; Iwao et al., 1969 ). Moreover, previous research showed an ingroup bias for dance, but not for paintings, and also the modulation role of art expertise ( Darda and Cross, 2022a ). The aim of study 2 was to explore the influence of the author (AI and human artists) and the style (Western and Chinese) of paintings in aesthetic evaluations and whether it would be modulated by art expertise. Our second hypothesis (H2) extends H1 to incorporate the modulation effect of art expertise, and a three-way interaction would be tested. We first focused on the difference between human-artist and AI-created art for experts only (H2a), then the preference of non-experts toward different styles of paintings (H2b), and the difference between experts and non-experts in evaluating AI-generated paintings (H2c). Together, H2 includes (H2a) art experts showed a greater bias against AI-generated paintings irrespective of whether the painting was in Western or Chinese style; (H2b) non-experts favored Chinese-style paintings more than Western-style paintings irrespective of whether the painting was AI-generated or artist-made; and (H2c) art experts evaluated AI-generated paintings lower than non-experts.

Study 1 explored whether the author of paintings (AI and human artists) and art style (Western and Chinese) influence individuals’ perceptions of paintings.

Materials and methods

Design and participants.

Study 1 employed a two-factor mixed-subject design, with the author of paintings (AI art and human artists) as the between-subject factor and the art style (Western and Chinese) as the within-subject factor. Study data were collected from wenjuanxing 1 in China. As a professional survey company that provides online questionnaires and data collection services, Wenjuanxing has 2.6 million registered members on the platform. All participants were assured that the survey was completely anonymous and confidential, and they were informed that there were no right or wrong answers. A total of 106 participants were recruited online, and they all completed the study via the Wenjuanxing platform. The online study took approximately 10 min to complete. Participants first completed an online consent form and a question about their background in art. If the participant responded yes to the question “Have you ever received art-related training or worked in art-related areas?” the questionnaire would skip to the end. All participants reported no professional art-related experience in study 1. The average age of participants was 42.35 years ( SD = 7.41; range 21–50 years), and 39 were identified as men and 67 as women. Most held 4-year college degrees or higher (59.4% had 4-year college degrees, 9.4% had master’s degrees, and 3.8% had doctoral degrees).

The stimuli consisted of 12 high-quality digital paintings (6 were Western style and 6 were Chinese style), including landscape pictures, portraits, and abstract drawings. Following previous research ( Mastandrea et al., 2021 ), the proportions and brightness of the stimuli were in accord with the original format of each painting. The painting sizes and resolution in the display were between 18 and 54 cm in height and between 14 and 24 cm in width, with 72 dpi. All paintings were of similar dimensions, except for one Western-style landscape picture. Half of these paintings were randomly selected and presented to participants. All paintings were made by human artists who were acknowledged in the painting area but were not well-known to the popular. A pilot ( N = 20) was conducted to exclude the confounding effect that these paintings might be recognized especially by art experts. Both non-experts ( N = 7) and art experts ( N = 13; majoring in design and art education) reported that they could not recognize the paintings. This study manipulated the author of paintings (AI art and human artists) by describing the paintings based on the participant’s assigned condition before evaluation. In the AI art condition, the participants read a description of the technology used in art and were told that the paintings were generated by “AlphaART” based on learning original paintings. In the artist-made condition, participants were told that the paintings were done by famous artists. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions, with 53 participants in the AI art condition and 53 participants in the human artist condition.

Following Reymond et al. (2020) , we measured participants’ liking of a painting with a rating slider displayed below the image, offering the possibility to rate the paintings from 0 to 100 (0 = “not at all,” 100 = “very much”).

The willingness to buy and the willingness to collect

This study measured the willingness to buy a scale (I want to buy this painting; The likelihood of my purchasing this painting is high; The probability that I would buy this painting is high; α = 0.96) using a three-item scale adopted from Dodds et al. (1991) , and the purchase intention was calculated by averaging scores on these three items. Furthermore, the willingness to collect (I want to collect this painting; I think this painting is worth collecting; α = 0.94) was measured using a two-item scale, and the collection intention was calculated by averaging scores on these two items. For all items, agreement with the statements was assessed on a Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 = totally disagree to 7 = totally agree.

Data analysis

Greenhouse-Geisser corrections were applied to repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) analyses. Partial eta-squared (η p 2 ) was used as a measure of effect size, with values of 0.01, 0.06, and 0.14 indicating small, medium, and large effects, respectively ( Cohen, 2013 ). Effect sizes were reported using Cohen’s d z for within-subject comparisons ( Lakens, 2013 ). All t -tests were two-tailed. ANOVAs, simple tests, and t -tests were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 22.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, United States).

Liking of paintings

To investigate the effect of the author and style on participants’ liking of paintings, we ran a 2 (author: AI vs. human artists) × 2 (Style: Western vs. Chinese style) ANOVA (refer to Figure 1 ), with the former as a between-subject factor and the latter as a within-subject factor. The analysis revealed a significant main effect of the painting style [ F (1, 104) = 9.47, p = 0.003, η p 2 = 0.08], and the main effect of the author and their interaction effect was non-significant. Although the interaction effect was not significant, we conducted post-hoc tests (paired-t tests) to verify H1c. Results indicate that the liking of AI-generated Chinese paintings was greater than the liking of AI-generated Western paintings, t (52) = 3.45, p = 0.001, while no significant difference was found between Chinese and Western paintings made by artists, t (52) = 1.11, p = 0.272 (refer to Table 1 ).

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Figure 1. Mean values for the four conditions (author: AI vs. human artists; style: Western vs. Chinese style) in study 1. Participants gave higher ratings for Chinese-style paintings (A) and showed higher purchase intention (B) and collection intention (C) for Chinese-style paintings. Error bars stand for ± S.E.M.

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Table 1. Mean values of liking ratings, purchase intention, and collection intention toward paintings in different conditions.

Purchase intention and collection intention of paintings

For purchase intention and collection intention, 2 (author: AI vs. human artists) × 2 (style: Western vs. Chinese style) ANOVA tests indicated consistent results. The analysis revealed a significant painting style effect [purchase intention: F (1, 104) = 13.54, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.12; collection intention: F (1, 104) = 17.14, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.14], and the main effect of author and interaction effect were non-significant. Paired-t test (refer to Table 1 ) further indicated that the purchase and collection intention of AI-generated Chinese painting was greater than AI-generated Western painting [purchase intention: t (52) = 3.55, p = 0.001; collection intention: t (52) = 3.93, p < 0.001]. Moreover, the purchase and collection intention of artist-made Chinese painting was greater than artist-made Western painting [purchase intention: t (52) = 2.10, p = 0.041; collection intention: t (52) = 2.42, p = 0.019].

Results in study 1 showed that the main effect of the author under hypothesis H1a was not significant, suggesting that there was no bias against AI-generated paintings. In addition, the main effect of the painting style was significant, supporting H1b. Chinese participants favored Chinese-style paintings more than Western-style paintings. Although the interaction of the author and the style was not significant, we conducted a post-hoc analysis to verify the proposed H1c. Evidence suggests that participants preferred AI-generated Chinese-style paintings to AI-generated Western-style paintings. Specifically, they showed more purchase and collection intentions toward Chinese-style than Western-style paintings, no matter whether the paintings were AI-generated or artist-made. For the liking rating, participants gave a higher rating for AI-generated Chinese-style than Western-style paintings, while no significant preference for artist-made paintings was found.

In Study 2, we further explored the effect of art expertise on painting liking, purchase intention, and collection intention. We recruited participants with art experience from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (students and teachers majoring in design or art education), which is the only higher art institution in southern China approved by the Ministry of Education. Participants without art experience (non-experts) were recruited from Jinan University in the same city (students and teachers majoring in management). Participants first completed an online consent form and a question about their background in art. If the participant responded yes to the question “Have you ever received art-related training or worked in art-related areas?” they were labeled as art experts, otherwise labeled as non-experts. Participants completed the study online via the Wenjuanxing platform, and it took approximately 10 min to complete.

Study 2 employed a three-factor mixed-subject design, with the art expertise (experts and non-experts) and the author of paintings (AI art and human artists) as the between-subject factors and the art style (Western style and Chinese style) as the within-subject factor. A total of 301 participants were recruited, and 2 participants failed to complete it. Thus, 299 participants were included in the final analysis. The average age of participants was 28.20 years ( SD = 10.19; range 18–50), and 134 were identified as men and 165 as women. Participants consisted of 143 experts (mean age: 27.34, SD = 10.73) and 156 non-experts (mean age: 28.99, SD = 9.64), and there was no difference between the two groups in age or education (age: paired t -test, p = 0.162; education level: Mann-Whitney U test, p = 0.112). Stimuli, procedure, and measures adopted in study 2 were the same as that in study 1. The reliability of the willingness to buy a scale and the willingness to collect were both over 0.90.

For the liking of paintings, we ran a 2 (art expertise: experts vs. non-experts) × 2 (author: AI vs. human artists) × 2 (style: Western vs. Chinese style) ANOVA, with the former two as between-subject factors and the latter as a within-subject factor. The analysis revealed a significant main effect of the author effect [ F (1, 295) = 8.09, p = 0.005, η p 2 = 0.03], a significant interaction effect of the author and the art expertise [ F (1, 295) = 3.90, p = 0.049, η p 2 = 0.01], and a significant interaction effect of the style and the art expertise [ F (1, 295) = 10.42, p = 0.001, η p 2 = 0.03]. Neither the main effect of the style, the main effect of the art expertise, nor the interaction effect of the style and the author, the interaction effect of the three factors were significant ( Fs < 3.59, ps > 0.05).

The results of the author and the art expertise interaction are presented in Figure 2A , and mean values are listed in Table 2 (left panel). Simple effect analysis further showed that experts showed more liking toward artist-made paintings than AI-generated paintings, F (1, 296) = 11.53, p = 0.001; and no difference was found for non-experts, F (1, 296) = 0.43, p = 0.515. Moreover, experts showed less liking toward AI-generated paintings than non-experts, F (1, 296) = 5.72, p = 0.017; and no difference was found for artist-made paintings, F (1, 296) = 0.04, p = 0.832.

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Figure 2. Author (AI and artist) by art expertise (experts and non-experts) interaction. Consistent results were found for liking rating (A) , purchase intention (B) , and collection intention (C) . Error bars stand for ± S.E.M.

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Table 2. Mean values of liking ratings, purchase intention, and collection intention toward paintings.

The results of the painting style and the art expertise interaction are presented in Figure 3A , and mean values are listed in Table 2 . Simple effect analysis showed that non-experts showed more liking toward Chinese-style paintings, F (1, 297) = 7.27, p = 0.007 than experts, but not for Western-style paintings, F (1, 297) = 0.01, p = 0.943. Experts showed more liking toward Western-style than Chinese-style paintings, F (1, 297) = 7.51, p = 0.007, and non-experts showed no preference in liking, F (1, 297) = 3.50, p = 0.062.

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Figure 3. Painting style (Western style and Chinese style) by art expertise (experts and non-experts) interaction. Consistent results were found for liking rating (A) , purchase intention (B) , and collection intention (C) . Error bars stand for ± S.E.M.

For purchase intention and collection intention, a 2 (art expertise: experts vs. non-experts) × 2 (author: AI vs. human artists) × 2 (style: Western vs. Chinese style) ANOVA indicated consistent results. The analysis revealed a significant main effect of the author effect [purchase intention: F (1, 295) = 3.95, p = 0.048, η p 2 = 0.01; collection intention: F (1, 295) = 13.77, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.05], a significant interaction effect of the author and the art expertise [purchase intention: F (1, 295) = 4.78, p = 0.029, η p 2 = 0.02; collection intention: F (1, 295) = 8.38, p = 0.004, η p 2 = 0.03], and a significant interaction effect of the style and the art expertise [purchase intention: F (1, 295) = 15.28, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.05; collection intention: F (1, 295) = 21.71, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.07]. Neither the main effect of the style, the main effect of the art expertise, nor the interaction effect of the style and the author, the interaction effect of the three factors were significant ( Fs < 1.32, ps > 0.05).

For the interaction of the author and the art expertise, simple effect analysis on the purchase intention ( Figure 2B ) and collection intention ( Figure 2C ) revealed similar results. As expected, experts showed higher purchase and collection intentions toward artist-made paintings than AI-generated paintings ( Fs > 8.36, ps < 0.005), and no difference was found for non-experts ( Fs < 0.88, ps > 0.560). Besides, experts showed higher collection intention of artist-made paintings than non-experts, F (1, 296) = 5.36, p = 0.021; and no difference was found for AI-generated paintings, F (1, 296) = 2.12, p = 0.146. The purchase intention toward neither AI-generated paintings [ F (1, 296) = 2.26, p = 0.134] nor artist-made paintings [ F (1, 296) = 2.11, p = 0.148] was affected by art expertise.

For the interaction of the painting style and the art expertise, simple effect analysis on the purchase intention ( Figure 3B ) and collection intention ( Figure 3C ) also revealed similar results, except that experts were more willing to collect Western-style paintings than non-experts, F (1, 297) = 5.44, p = 0.020, but no difference in purchase intention. In addition, experts were more willing to buy and collect Western-style relative to Chinese-style paintings, F (1, 297) > 8.44, p < 0.004, while non-experts were more willing to buy and collect Chinese-style relative to Western-style paintings, F (1, 297) > 7.18, p < 0.008.

Collectively, art experts evaluated less favorably (less liking, lower purchase and collection intentions) AI-generated paintings relative to artist-made paintings, while non-experts showed no preference. Non-experts showed significantly higher purchase intention and collection intention toward Chinese-style paintings than Western-style paintings, but no difference in liking ratings, partially supporting H2b. Art experts evaluated AI-generated paintings lower than non-experts.

We investigated how AI art alters people’s liking, purchase intention, and collection intention toward Chinese-style and Western-style paintings, and whether art expertise plays a role. In study 1, several findings were revealed. One is that the main effect of the author under hypothesis H1a was not significant. Specifically, who made the art (AI vs. artists) would not influence evaluations, purchase intention, and collection intention toward paintings. Second, the main effect of painting style (ingroup preference) was revealed as hypothesized (H1b). Chinese participants favored Chinese-style paintings more than Western-style paintings. Third, although the interaction of the author and the style was not significant, we conducted post-hoc tests and found that participants preferred AI-generated Chinese-style paintings to AI-generated Western-style paintings in support of H1c. Study 2 further investigated the modulation effect of art expertise and found a significant main effect of the author, interaction of the author and the art expertise, and interaction of the style and the art expertise. In support of H2a, art experts evaluated less favorably (less liking, lower purchase and collection intentions) AI-generated paintings relative to artists-made paintings, while non-experts showed no preference. Non-experts showed significantly higher purchase intention and collection intention toward Chinese-style paintings than Western-style paintings, but no difference in liking ratings, partially supporting H2b. In support of H2c, art experts evaluated AI-generated paintings lower than non-experts. Overall, these findings partially supported our hypotheses.

We expected a bias against AI-generated paintings based on existing literature on the framing effect of labels or titles in empirical aesthetics ( Kirk et al., 2009 ; Belke et al., 2010 ; Hawley-Dolan and Winner, 2011 ; Silveira et al., 2015 ; Mastandrea and Umiltà, 2016 ; Mastandrea and Crano, 2019 ). However, participants (non-experts) in study 1 showed no bias against AI-generated paintings. One explanation was that the label “AI-generated” might make observers feel novel ( Israfilzade, 2020 ). Israfilzade (2020) found that abstract paintings were rated more novel and surprising when artificial intelligence accompanied the title, and no difference was found in terms of complexity, interestingness, and ambiguity arousal of the paintings. Moreover, participants in study 1 showed a preference for AI-generated Chinese-style to AI-generated Western-style paintings, in line with the uncertainty-identity hypothesis ( Mastandrea et al., 2021 ). They might be uncertain about the AI-generated context and may resort to cultural identity as an art appreciation heuristic.

As expected, non-experts in this research (study 1 and study 2) showed a preference for Chinese-style relative to Western-style paintings, indicating the existence of ingroup bias in aesthetic evaluations (for a review, refer to Che et al., 2018 ). However, art experts in study 2 showed a preference for Western-style paintings. One explanation might be that people who are interested in art concur in their aesthetic judgments irrespective of their cultural backgrounds ( Child, 1965 ; Iwao and Child, 1966 ; Iwao et al., 1969 ). This finding was consistent with results in Darda and Cross (2022a) , which found that art experts tended to agree in their judgments and showed lower ingroup preference than non-experts.

Additionally, we expected that art expertise modulated the bias against AI-generated paintings. As expected, we found a bias among art experts but not non-experts, in line with Darda and Cross (2022b) . However, this finding was inconsistent with Moffat and Kelly (2006) and Chamberlain et al. (2018) , which indicated a bias against computer-generated artworks by both experts and non-experts. One explanation for this discrepancy might be the stimuli adopted. We used artist-made paintings and labeled them as made by AI or artists. Chamberlain et al. (2018) selected paintings from computer art databases and matched them with man-made counterparts. The paintings used in our studies were of high artistic value, meanwhile avoiding being too well-known to be recognized by participants. Therefore, it is important to note that these findings should only be interpreted to the current image set and should not be broadened to the overall comparison of AI-generated and artist-made paintings.

Implications and limitations

As stated in Leder et al. (2012) , “Art is a unique feature of human experience. It involves the complex interplay among stimuli, persons, and contexts.” This may explain why the aesthetic appreciation of experts and non-experts differs to a great extent, and why the author of artworks matters to experts. The findings in this study offer support for the bias against AI-generated paintings and the modulation effect of art expertise, contributing to the framing effect and ingroup bias research in empirical aesthetics. In terms of applications, our findings also suggest that AI-related personnel, such as designers of websites and apps taking AI art as a focus, should consider how to decrease potential users’ bias against AI-generated paintings as well as enrich painting styles to meet individuals’ tastes and preferences. Increasing anthropomorphism of the “AI” system might be useful. Previous evidence suggested that viewing the creation of artwork by a robot increased aesthetic appreciation for it ( Chamberlain et al., 2018 ). It is worth noting that perceptions of AI anthropomorphicity can be manipulated by changing the language used to talk about AI—as a tool vs. agent ( Epstein et al., 2020 ). AI-enhanced, rather than AI-generated, has been used in the research report, and it is essential to emphasize that AI/machine was dedicated to helping unlock human creative potential ( Ploin et al., 2022 ).

Several limitations in this research should be addressed in future studies. First, the sample we recruited may have restricted the generalization of findings in the current studies. For ease of sampling, we collected data mainly from students and teachers in design and art education in China. Famous artists and a larger size of sample would be more appropriate. In addition, we only recruited Chinese participants for this research. It is preferable to recruit participants from both China and Western culture in future studies. Second, some relevant characteristics were not collected prior to the studies, such as the participants’ level of familiarity with Western-style and Chinese-style paintings, making it difficult to perform assessments of the specific effects of familiarity with paintings. The inclusion of characteristics such as this would add value to analyses in future studies. Third, although we conducted a pilot to make sure these paintings would not be recognized (author and name of the painting), especially by our sample population, several teachers reported that they might see the painting before even though they could not recall its name. Asking participants whether they recognized any of the paintings at the end of the study would be a better way to exclude the confounding effect.

Data availability statement

The data generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

Ethics statement

Ethical review and approval were not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Participants provided online informed consent before their enrollment in the study.

Author contributions

LG: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, writing (original draft), and visualization. YL: conceptualization and writing (revision). Both authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This research was supported by the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2020A1515010610) to LG and the Art Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China (19BG110) to YL.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords : artificial intelligence, painting style, art expertise, framing effect, liking, purchase intention

Citation: Gu L and Li Y (2022) Who made the paintings: Artists or artificial intelligence? The effects of identity on liking and purchase intention. Front. Psychol. 13:941163. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.941163

Received: 11 May 2022; Accepted: 11 July 2022; Published: 05 August 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Gu and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Li Gu, [email protected] ; Yong Li, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Application of digital technology in painting using new media and big data

  • Published: 30 June 2023
  • Volume 27 , pages 12691–12709, ( 2023 )

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  • Guoguang Qiu 1 &
  • Jian Zhang 2  

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These days, digital art has substantially improved painting art in China’s new media period through modern technology and specialized software, which has generated various digital artworks with painting effects, demonstrating their aesthetic, commercial, and cultural worth. As a result, designers must actively investigate intelligently linked and content-diverse techniques to innovate and improve digital media art. This investigation will allow the extraction of pivotal role of digital media communication and drives visual art to new heights in the modern digitized era. Based on this motivation, this paper tries to analyze the application of new media digital technology in painting creation using big data. The major goal is to obtain insights into artists’ behavior using behavioral habits and a morphological algorithm in digital painting. The study investigates the design process of digital painting by analyzing the habitual forms displayed by diverse painting user groups and integrating them with user experience design concepts. Two experimental methodologies are used to investigate painting user behavior: the interview method and the observation method. The observation approach collects comprehensive user behavior data to develop a habit form model that includes a both virtual and real activity. This model employs a hierarchical scheme emphasizing various behavior aspects and concepts throughout user interactions and painting system operations. The interview method, on the other hand, captures the psychological activities involved in user behavior decision-making. The study discovers and decomposes the traits specific to these characters by defining painted characters, developing their behavior sets, and making interactive decisions. The learned information and experience are then applied in interactive decision-making processes. Based on these findings, prototype development includes explicit and implicit interaction prototypes, with usability tests determining whether specific roles are included in the design. Throughout the study process, fuzzy mapping associations are built, and behavior mappings are labeled with varying relationship proportions, providing critical data for the habit form model’s construction. The paper uses new digital media technology to create paintings and experiments with 50 randomly selected persons. Forty-four participants are well-known authors on major painting websites, with the remaining six being interviewed as professional painters.

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This study was funded by the Liaoning Provincial General Higher Education undergraduate teaching reform research project: Research on the integration and practice of the basic teaching system of painting major.

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Writing a paper for an art history course is similar to the analytical, research-based papers that you may have written in English literature courses or history courses. Although art historical research and writing does include the analysis of written documents, there are distinctive differences between art history writing and other disciplines because the primary documents are works of art. A key reference guide for researching and analyzing works of art and for writing art history papers is the 10th edition (or later) of Sylvan Barnet’s work, A Short Guide to Writing about Art . Barnet directs students through the steps of thinking about a research topic, collecting information, and then writing and documenting a paper.

A website with helpful tips for writing art history papers is posted by the University of North Carolina.

Wesleyan University Writing Center has a useful guide for finding online writing resources.

The following are basic guidelines that you must use when documenting research papers for any art history class at UA Little Rock. Solid, thoughtful research and correct documentation of the sources used in this research (i.e., footnotes/endnotes, bibliography, and illustrations**) are essential. Additionally, these guidelines remind students about plagiarism, a serious academic offense.

Paper Format

Research papers should be in a 12-point font, double-spaced. Ample margins should be left for the instructor’s comments. All margins should be one inch to allow for comments. Number all pages. The cover sheet for the paper should include the following information: title of paper, your name, course title and number, course instructor, and date paper is submitted. A simple presentation of a paper is sufficient. Staple the pages together at the upper left or put them in a simple three-ring folder or binder. Do not put individual pages in plastic sleeves.

Documentation of Resources

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), as described in the most recent edition of Sylvan Barnet’s A Short Guide to Writing about Art is the department standard. Although you may have used MLA style for English papers or other disciplines, the Chicago Style is required for all students taking art history courses at UA Little Rock. There are significant differences between MLA style and Chicago Style. A “Quick Guide” for the Chicago Manual of Style footnote and bibliography format is found http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. The footnote examples are numbered and the bibliography example is last. Please note that the place of publication and the publisher are enclosed in parentheses in the footnote, but they are not in parentheses in the bibliography. Examples of CMS for some types of note and bibliography references are given below in this Guideline. Arabic numbers are used for footnotes. Some word processing programs may have Roman numerals as a choice, but the standard is Arabic numbers. The use of super script numbers, as given in examples below, is the standard in UA Little Rock art history papers.

The chapter “Manuscript Form” in the Barnet book (10th edition or later) provides models for the correct forms for footnotes/endnotes and the bibliography. For example, the note form for the FIRST REFERENCE to a book with a single author is:

1 Bruce Cole, Italian Art 1250-1550 (New York: New York University Press, 1971), 134.

But the BIBLIOGRAPHIC FORM for that same book is:

Cole, Bruce. Italian Art 1250-1550. New York: New York University Press. 1971.

The FIRST REFERENCE to a journal article (in a periodical that is paginated by volume) with a single author in a footnote is:

2 Anne H. Van Buren, “Madame Cézanne’s Fashions and the Dates of Her Portraits,” Art Quarterly 29 (1966): 199.

The FIRST REFERENCE to a journal article (in a periodical that is paginated by volume) with a single author in the BIBLIOGRAPHY is:

Van Buren, Anne H. “Madame Cézanne’s Fashions and the Dates of Her Portraits.” Art Quarterly 29 (1966): 185-204.

If you reference an article that you found through an electronic database such as JSTOR, you do not include the url for JSTOR or the date accessed in either the footnote or the bibliography. This is because the article is one that was originally printed in a hard-copy journal; what you located through JSTOR is simply a copy of printed pages. Your citation follows the same format for an article in a bound volume that you may have pulled from the library shelves. If, however, you use an article that originally was in an electronic format and is available only on-line, then follow the “non-print” forms listed below.

B. Non-Print

Citations for Internet sources such as online journals or scholarly web sites should follow the form described in Barnet’s chapter, “Writing a Research Paper.” For example, the footnote or endnote reference given by Barnet for a web site is:

3 Nigel Strudwick, Egyptology Resources , with the assistance of The Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge University, 1994, revised 16 June 2008, http://www.newton.ac.uk/egypt/ , 24 July 2008.

If you use microform or microfilm resources, consult the most recent edition of Kate Turabian, A Manual of Term Paper, Theses and Dissertations. A copy of Turabian is available at the reference desk in the main library.

C. Visual Documentation (Illustrations)

Art history papers require visual documentation such as photographs, photocopies, or scanned images of the art works you discuss. In the chapter “Manuscript Form” in A Short Guide to Writing about Art, Barnet explains how to identify illustrations or “figures” in the text of your paper and how to caption the visual material. Each photograph, photocopy, or scanned image should appear on a single sheet of paper unless two images and their captions will fit on a single sheet of paper with one inch margins on all sides. Note also that the title of a work of art is always italicized. Within the text, the reference to the illustration is enclosed in parentheses and placed at the end of the sentence. A period for the sentence comes after the parenthetical reference to the illustration. For UA Little Rcok art history papers, illustrations are placed at the end of the paper, not within the text. Illustration are not supplied as a Powerpoint presentation or as separate .jpgs submitted in an electronic format.

Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, dated 1893, represents a highly personal, expressive response to an experience the artist had while walking one evening (Figure 1).

The caption that accompanies the illustration at the end of the paper would read:

Figure 1. Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893. Tempera and casein on cardboard, 36 x 29″ (91.3 x 73.7 cm). Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, Norway.

Plagiarism is a form of thievery and is illegal. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, to plagiarize is to “take and pass off as one’s own the ideas, writings, etc. of another.” Barnet has some useful guidelines for acknowledging sources in his chapter “Manuscript Form;” review them so that you will not be mguilty of theft. Another useful website regarding plagiarism is provided by Cornell University, http://plagiarism.arts.cornell.edu/tutorial/index.cfm

Plagiarism is a serious offense, and students should understand that checking papers for plagiarized content is easy to do with Internet resources. Plagiarism will be reported as academic dishonesty to the Dean of Students; see Section VI of the Student Handbook which cites plagiarism as a specific violation. Take care that you fully and accurately acknowledge the source of another author, whether you are quoting the material verbatim or paraphrasing. Borrowing the idea of another author by merely changing some or even all of your source’s words does not allow you to claim the ideas as your own. You must credit both direct quotes and your paraphrases. Again, Barnet’s chapter “Manuscript Form” sets out clear guidelines for avoiding plagiarism.

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Computer Science > Computation and Language

Title: large language models: a survey.

Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have drawn a lot of attention due to their strong performance on a wide range of natural language tasks, since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022. LLMs' ability of general-purpose language understanding and generation is acquired by training billions of model's parameters on massive amounts of text data, as predicted by scaling laws \cite{kaplan2020scaling,hoffmann2022training}. The research area of LLMs, while very recent, is evolving rapidly in many different ways. In this paper, we review some of the most prominent LLMs, including three popular LLM families (GPT, LLaMA, PaLM), and discuss their characteristics, contributions and limitations. We also give an overview of techniques developed to build, and augment LLMs. We then survey popular datasets prepared for LLM training, fine-tuning, and evaluation, review widely used LLM evaluation metrics, and compare the performance of several popular LLMs on a set of representative benchmarks. Finally, we conclude the paper by discussing open challenges and future research directions.

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Oldest rock art in South America dates back 8,200 years

Cave paintings in argentina’s patagonia region predate others in that area by several millennia, according to research published in ‘science’.

Archaeologist Guadalupe Romero Villanueva documents paintings in the Huenul 1 cave in Argentina's Patagonia region.

Thousands of years ago, humans started painting the walls of a cave in an inhospitable part of South America. They used red, yellow, white and black pigments to create various designs, including geometric shapes. However, the exact date of these drawings remained unknown until now. After more than a decade of work, scientists from Argentina, Chile and the United States have successfully dated the Huenul 1 cave paintings in Argentina’s Patagonia region. According to a paper in Science magazine, the oldest paintings in the cave date back 8,200 years, several millennia earlier than previously suggested by ancient rock art in that area.

“It’s a milestone in the rock art tradition of South America,” said archaeologist Guadalupe Romero Villanueva, the lead author of the research article. She explained that dating rock art often relies on comparative methods, like evaluating evidence from the same or related sites to establish a chronology. While this is a valid dating approach, the archaeology team led by Romero used more precise direct dating. “These studies can be quite complex and don’t always produce solid results,” she said.

Cueva Huenul 1

A series of “lucky” breaks helped the scientists pursue the direct dating method. “There were sufficient carbon deposits with no contamination layers,” said Romero. This enabled the team to use carbon-14 (radiocarbon) dating on four samples, finding that the oldest painting dates back 7,600 years. The other three paintings were dated to approximately 6,200, 5,600 and 3,000 years ago, based on calibrated data. Using statistical modeling, the researchers refined the data and determined that the first rock art in the cave was painted 8,200 years ago.

Romero, a researcher with Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and the National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought (INAPL), began analyzing the art on the walls of the Huenul 1 cave a decade ago with Ramiro Barberena. The scarce existing research about the cave paintings was done in the 1970s and 1980s. Romero estimates that most of the cave’s artwork was created 2,000 years ago, during its peak occupation. “The surprise was that some of the motifs [paintings] are actually quite a bit older,” she said.

The cave, in the northwest corner of Argentina’s Neuquén province, is unique in the region due to the quantity and variety of its rock art. With over 440 motifs painted with diluted pigments and applied by fingers and utensils, the drawings mainly consist of geometric shapes created over hundreds of years. Scientists have identified continuity in the style, colors and materials used, which indicates that the cave was repeatedly occupied by various groups.

The cave was frequented by hunter-gatherers who occupied it for brief and recurring episodes, particularly during the late Holocene period (the current geological epoch). Extremely dry conditions kept South America sparsely populated during this period. Romero says small, dispersed groups would have needed a central spot to visually preserve their ecological and ritual knowledge. The rock art played a crucial role in this process.

Argentina Huenul

A strategy for socioecological resilience

Romero and her team say that “standardized pictorial events” in the Patagonian cave aimed to maintain large-scale safety nets. These pictures stored information in collective memory and ensured social preservation beyond oral tradition. “Rock art tied to a site turned by transgenerational practices into a keystone cultural place facilitated social and biological connectivity in a sparsely populated high-cost landscape.”

Romero says the specific information conveyed by the paintings on the walls of the Huenul 1 cave has been lost and “cannot be recovered by archaeology... [But] the studies enable us to infer that they transmitted ecological and social information.” For instance, it was crucial for people to know the whereabouts of other humans, their potential as social connections, and the location of resources. “Documenting this information on a durable medium made the area more livable and was highly useful for future generations.”

“Knowing past events and solutions can be crucial for building human resilience,” said Romero. “The information collected over time can offer successful approaches to dealing with events like climate change.” The paper published in Science provides valuable and thoughtful context relevant to our world today. “Building social resilience to environmental change is one of the main challenges faced by humanity today. While its severity may suggest that this is unprecedented, human societies have confronted a myriad of socioecological challenges during the Holocene.”

Huenul Cueva

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  • 12 February 2024

China conducts first nationwide review of retractions and research misconduct

  • Smriti Mallapaty

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The reputation of Chinese science has been "adversely affected" by the number of retractions in recent years, according to a government notice. Credit: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty

Chinese universities are days away from the deadline to complete a nationwide audit of retracted research papers and probe of research misconduct. By 15 February, universities must submit to the government a comprehensive list of all academic articles retracted from English- and Chinese-language journals in the past three years. They need to clarify why the papers were retracted and investigate cases involving misconduct, according to a 20 November notice from the Ministry of Education’s Department of Science, Technology and Informatization.

The government launched the nationwide self-review in response to Hindawi, a London-based subsidiary of the publisher Wiley, retracting a large number of papers by Chinese authors. These retractions, along with those from other publishers, “have adversely affected our country’s academic reputation and academic environment”, the notice states.

A Nature analysis shows that last year, Hindawi issued more than 9,600 retractions, of which the vast majority — about 8,200 — had a co-author in China. Nearly 14,000 retraction notices, of which some three-quarters involved a Chinese co-author, were issued by all publishers in 2023.

This is “the first time we’ve seen such a national operation on retraction investigations”, says Xiaotian Chen, a library and information scientist at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, who has studied retractions and research misconduct in China. Previous investigations have largely been carried out on a case-by-case basis — but this time, all institutions have to conduct their investigations simultaneously, says Chen.

Tight deadline

The ministry’s notice set off a chain of alerts, cascading to individual university departments. Bulletins posted on university websites required researchers to submit their retractions by a range of dates, mostly in January — leaving time for universities to collate and present the data.

Although the alerts included lists of retractions that the ministry or the universities were aware of, they also called for unlisted retractions to be added.

research paper on painting art

More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record

According to Nature ’s analysis, which includes only English-language journals, more than 17,000 retraction notices for papers published by Chinese co-authors have been issued since 1 January 2021, which is the start of the period of review specified in the notice. The analysis, an update of one conducted in December , used the Retraction Watch database, augmented with retraction notices collated from the Dimensions database, and involved assistance from Guillaume Cabanac, a computer scientist at the University of Toulouse in France. It is unclear whether the official lists contain the same number of retracted papers.

Regardless, the timing to submit the information will be tight, says Shu Fei, a bibliometrics scientist at Hangzhou Dianzi University in China. The ministry gave universities less than three months to complete their self-review — and this was cut shorter by the academic winter break, which typically starts in mid-January and concludes after the Chinese New Year, which fell this year on 10 February.

“The timing is not good,” he says. Shu expects that universities are most likely to submit only a preliminary report of their researchers’ retracted papers included on the official lists.

But Wang Fei, who studies research-integrity policy at Dalian University of Technology in China, says that because the ministry has set a deadline, universities will work hard to submit their findings on time.

Researchers with retracted papers will have to explain whether the retraction was owing to misconduct, such as image manipulation, or an honest mistake, such as authors identifying errors in their own work, says Chen: “In other words, they may have to defend themselves.” Universities then must investigate and penalize misconduct. If a researcher fails to declare their retracted paper and it is later uncovered, they will be punished, according to the ministry notice. The cost of not reporting is high, says Chen. “This is a very serious measure.”

It is not known what form punishment might take, but in 2021, China’s National Health Commission posted the results of its investigations into a batch of retracted papers. Punishments included salary cuts, withdrawal of bonuses, demotions and timed suspensions from applying for research grants and rewards.

The notice states explicitly that the first corresponding author of a paper is responsible for submitting the response. This requirement will largely address the problem of researchers shirking responsibility for collaborative work, says Li Tang, a science- and innovation-policy researcher at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. The notice also emphasizes due process, says Tang. Researchers alleged to have committed misconduct have a right to appeal during the investigation.

The notice is a good approach for addressing misconduct, says Wang. Previous efforts by the Chinese government have stopped at issuing new research-integrity guidelines that were poorly implemented, she says. And when government bodies did launch self-investigations of published literature, they were narrower in scope and lacked clear objectives. This time, the target is clear — retractions — and the scope is broad, involving the entire university research community, she says.

“Cultivating research integrity takes time, but China is on the right track,” says Tang.

It is not clear what the ministry will do with the flurry of submissions. Wang says that, because the retraction notices are already freely available, publicizing the collated lists and underlying reasons for retraction could be useful. She hopes that a similar review will be conducted every year “to put more pressure” on authors and universities to monitor research integrity.

What happens next will reveal how seriously the ministry regards research misconduct, says Shu. He suggests that, if the ministry does not take further action after the Chinese New Year, the notice could be an attempt to respond to the reputational damage caused by the mass retractions last year.

The ministry did not respond to Nature ’s questions about the misconduct investigation.

Chen says that, regardless of what the ministry does with the information, the reporting process itself will help to curb misconduct because it is “embarrassing to the people in the report”.

But it might primarily affect researchers publishing in English-language journals. Retraction notices in Chinese-language journals are rare.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00397-x

Data analysis by Richard Van Noorden.

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AI gone wild —

Scientists aghast at bizarre ai rat with huge genitals in peer-reviewed article, it's unclear how such egregiously bad images made it through peer-review..

Beth Mole - Feb 15, 2024 11:16 pm UTC

An actual laboratory rat, who is intrigued.

Appall and scorn ripped through scientists' social media networks Thursday as several egregiously bad AI-generated figures circulated from a peer-reviewed article recently published in a reputable journal. Those figures—which the authors acknowledge in the article's text were made by Midjourney—are all uninterpretable. They contain gibberish text and, most strikingly, one includes an image of a rat with grotesquely large and bizarre genitals, as well as a text label of "dck."

AI-generated Figure 1 of the paper. This image is supposed to show spermatogonial stem cells isolated, purified, and cultured from rat testes.

The article in question is titled "Cellular functions of spermatogonial stem cells in relation to JAK/STAT signaling pathway," which was authored by three researchers in China, including the corresponding author Dingjun Hao of Xi’an Honghui Hospital. It was published online Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.

Frontiers did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment, but we will update this post with any response.

Figure 2 is supposed to be a diagram of the JAK-STAT signaling pathway.

But the rat's package is far from the only problem. Figure 2 is less graphic but equally mangled. While it's intended to be a diagram of a complex signaling pathway, it instead is a jumbled mess. One scientific integrity expert questioned whether it provided an overly complicated explanation of "how to make a donut with colorful sprinkles." Like the first image, the diagram is rife with nonsense text and baffling images. Figure 3 is no better, offering a collage of small circular images that are densely annotated with gibberish. The image is supposed to provide visual representations of how the signaling pathway from Figure 2 regulates the biological properties of spermatogonial stem cells.

Some scientists online questioned whether the article's text was also AI-generated. One user noted that AI detection software determined that it was likely to be AI-generated; however, as Ars has reported previously, such software is unreliable .

Figure 3 is supposed to show the regulation of biological properties of spermatogonial stem cells by JAK/STAT signaling pathway.

The images, while egregious examples, highlight a growing problem in scientific publishing. A scientist's success relies heavily on their publication record, with a large volume of publications, frequent publishing, and articles appearing in top-tier journals, all of which earn scientists more prestige. The system incentivizes less-than-scrupulous researchers to push through low-quality articles, which, in the era of AI chatbots, could potentially be generated with the help of AI. Researchers worry that the growing use of AI will make published research less trustworthy. As such, research journals have recently set new authorship guidelines for AI-generated text to try to address the problem. But for now, as the Frontiers article shows, there are clearly some gaps.

reader comments

Channel ars technica.

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