Week 1 AS

Philiosophical vs psychological approach to art

philosophy seeks to define what art is

psychology attempts to define how art is experienced

disinterested pleasure

appreciating, liking, or finding something beautiful without wanting to possess it

top down aesthetics

aconcepts and theories about what is good art

bottom up aesthetics

empirical inquiry into what people think good art is

used to draw conclusions about what makes art good

the perceptual threshold

the point at which a stimulus becomes possible to perceive

aesthetic threshold

hypothetical point of intensity at which a stimulus becomes pleasurable

unity in variety

most pleasurable visual stimuli have some elements of unity and some elements of variety

the golden ratio

resulting from fechner’s study of preferences for rectangle proportions

found that we like a 1:1.61 ratio, not too extreme or too square

led to golden ratio theory

criticisms of golden ratio theory

across a large sample the effect is weak - could be due to small effect or inconsistent (but large) effect

might result from prototypicality of rectangles with 1:1.61 ratio

Gestalt psychology

a ‘gestalt’ is more than the sum of its parts

the elements can change but the whole stays the same

can produce ‘illusory contours’

perceptual grouping