Perceptual dimensions of style in paintings

The main purpose of this study is to specify the basic perceptual dimensions underlying the judgments of the physical features which define the style in paintings (e.g. salient form, colorful surface, oval contours etc.). The other aim of the study is to correlate these dimensions with the subjective (affective) dimensions of the experience of paintings. In the preliminary study a set of 25 pairs of elementary perceptual descriptors were empirically specified, and a set of 25 bipolar scales were made (e.g. uncolored-multicolored). In the experiment 30 subjects judged 24 paintings (paintings were taken from the study of Radonjic and Markovic, 2004) on 25 scales. Factor analysis revealed the four factors: form (scales: precise, neat, salient form etc.), color (color contrast, lightness contrast, vivid colors), space (voluminosity, depth and oval contours) and complexity (multicolored, ornate, detailed). Obtained factors reflected the nature of the phenomenological and neural segregation of form, color, depth processing, and partially of complexity processing (e.g. spatial frequency processing within both the form and color subsystem). The aim of the next step of analysis was to specify the correlations between two groups of judgments: (a) mean judgments of 24 paintings on perceptual factors and (b) mean judgments of the same set of 24 paintings on subjective (affective) experience factors, i.e. regularity, attraction, arousal and relaxation (judgments taken from Radonjic and Markovic, 2005). The following significant correlations were obtained: regularity-form, regularity-space, attraction-form and arousal-complexity (negative correlation). The reasons for the unexpected negative correlation between arousal and complexity should be specified in further studies.