title: Style follows content: on the microgenesis of art perception.
abstract: Despite fruitful research in experimental aesthetics, the dynamics of aesthetics, i.e., the processes involved in art perception, have received little attention. Concerning representational art, two aspects seem most important in this respect: style and content. In two experiments, we examined the dynamics of processing of style and content by means of the microgenetic approach. This approach systematically varies perceptual conditions to find out about the stages involved in the formation of percepts--their microgenesis. Participants gave similarity ratings for pairs of pictures that were fully crossed in style (artist) and content (motif). Presentation times were systematically varied between 10, 50, 202 and 3000 ms (Experiment 1) plus unlimited presentation time (Experiment 2). While effects of content were present at all presentation times, effects of style were traceable from 50 ms onwards. The results show clear differences in the microgenesis of style and content, suggesting that in art perception style follows content.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Liebiggasse 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria. dorothee.augustin@univie.ac.at
authors.forename: M Dorothee
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Augustin
authors.forename: Helmut
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Leder
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hutzler
authors.forename: Claus-Christian
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Carbon
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001154:Art; D004954:Esthetics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D016555:Matched-Pair Analysis; D010151:Paintings; D014796:Visual Perception