The effects of art on perception and emotion

Art in its broadest sense takes in painting, music, writing, sculpting, and all its associated fields. The word means making things that are pleasing to look at, to listen to, or to think about.

What we are dealing with here is painting and how it affects us visually and emotionally.

In art, there’s truth in the saying, what you see is what you get. If, as an example, you see an abstract painting as nothing more than paint smeared on a canvas, then that’s all you will get. If, on the other hand, you see it as a playful juxtaposition of colors interacting with and enhancing each other, you are reacting to it with your emotions.

In what ways do abstract art affect us visually and emotionally? Since abstract art does no paint us a clear picture of some known object, what we make of it is left to us the viewer. Representational art, its opposite, has as its objective, to present a likeness to some person, place or thing.

How we, as museum goers or art viewers in general, react to what we are exposed to has to do with our own innate sense of what we think art is. Art teachers and students will have much different views that the average person.

They will have worked in the process and will know what to look for. How they react emotionally and perceptually may not be that much different from how we react, only possibly more intense. Viewers’ are left to decide and it helps if they know something of the artist’s beliefs, background, the thinking process as well as general trends of art and some of its history.

Generally, abstract art elicits more emotion than regular art. Sometimes the artist seems to be deliberately insulting the public. Subversion may or may not be the intention of the artist but often, if the word goes against what the general public believes to be common decency, then the emotional response is high.

This kind of art often is not so much abstract, as using represent art in new and provocative ways. The intention is clearly to get responses from the viewers. The artist is, in a sense, saying something to the viewers about conditions and affairs and is forcing them to see and to comment.

It is in this way that perception and emotion interplay in the world of art. What about the hordes that views works of art? What is their mind set? How can the average contemplative art viewer respond to what he or she does not understand?

They need an uncluttered link leading them into their own inner selves, into that reservoir of

Abstract Art – Part 1

Nonrepresentational or nonobjective art is not an invention of the twentieth century. A number of cultures, like the Islamic and Jewish, have developed over the centuries a high standard of decorative or non-figurative art forms. Today, abstract art is generally understood to be the form of art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses shapes and colors in a nonrepresentational or subjective way.

According to art experts, in its purest form in Western art, an abstract art is one without a recognizable subject, one which does not relate to something external. This type of ornamental art, without figurative representation occurs today in many cultures. As the modern abstract movement in sculpture and paining emerged in Europe and North America between 1910 and 1920, two approaches have been generally accepted to produce different abstract styles: images that have been “abstracted” from nature to the point where they no longer reflect a conventional reality, and nonobjective, or “pure” art forms, which do not share any reference to reality. A further distinction tends to be made between abstract art which is geometric, such as the work of Piet Mondrian, and abstract art that is more fluid, such as in the works of Wassily Kandinsky. It was Kandinsky who once said that “of all arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and of colors, and that you are a true poet; this last is essential.”

Abstract art began in the avant-garde movements of the late 19th century -Impressionism, neo-Impressionism, and post-Impressionism. These painting styles reduced the importance of the original subject matter and began to emphasize the creative process of painting itself. As artists in Europe at the early twentieth century “broke free” from the conventional representational rules art forms had to follow, figurative abstractions, or simplifications of reality, where detail is eliminated from recognizable objects leaving only the essence or some degree of recognizable form, became popular increasing the variations of art forms and view points. With different abstract styles, like Synchronism and Orphism, abstract art emphasized on color over form, on feelings over logic. The action painting of an American Abstract Expressionist, Jackson Pollock, who dripped, dropped, smeared, spattered, or thrown paint on the canvas, is a good example of such a tremendous change in art focus and technique.

After the introduction of technology and the mass utilization of software programs that assisted people “play around” with their own photographs, paintings or other art forms, abstract art has gained more popularity than ever before. But although being able to draw well is not an issue anymore, as Kandinsky pointed out, being a “true” poet is what still separates the amateur attempts to create abstract art from the artifacts of a true talent.