Preferences for the Visual Arts: A Review of Recent Studies

This article reviewed 20 recent studies which investigated preference for visual arts stimuli. Each study was examined in terms of research objective, methods, and results. Two conclusions were evident: (a) researchers have made no concentrated effort to isolate specific dimensions of stimuli in visual art which are critical to understanding preference judgments and (b) researchers appear to have little interest in relating findings to broad theoretical issues.

Lateral Organization in Pictures and Aesthetic Preference: III. A Search for Additional Predictor Variables

10 pictures by Western artists were reproduced as sets of transparent component overlays. For each work, University Ss, 37 women and 17 men, first rendered aesthetic preferences for original vs mirror-image views. Ss then disassembled the two views, and by restoring corresponding components, worked to achieve a partial representation in which the initially non-preferred view became the preferred one. The data allow certain extensions and refinements of conclusions from earlier studies in this series: I. The normal effect of promoting liking for a view exercised by a principal mass in the lower left quadrant may be reversed if the object is present beyond a certain level of prominence. II. Ease of entering the picture space may for some persons be more determinative of aesthetic value than the distribution of principal masses. III. Lines and contours consistent with the path of glance ease entry into the picture space, hence, promote liking for a view. Consistency may, however, be excessive, and the effect on liking may reverse.

Lateral Organization in Pictures and Aesthetic Preference: IV. Construction with Original vs Mirror-Image Elements

Six pictures by Western artists were selected from a group of 10 reproduced as sets of transparent component overlays. For each work university students, 34 women and 16 men, were presented with one set of disassembled overlays, all either in original orientation or all laterally reversed. Their task was to select that assemblage of elements which created the best picture. Subjects' constructions confirmed that in each picture there is a constancy of structure that is independent of lateral organization. This fact coexists with whatever differential effects eliminating a component may achieve as a function of picture orientation. Pictures differ, it is suggested: (a) in the distribution of contributions which individual components make to the organization of the work and (b) in their resistance to fragmentation. Lateral elements in particular are expendable. Susceptibility to fragmentation is greater for mirror-image than original representations.