Previous research has documented systematic cultural variations in adults’ cognitive processes. In particular, research on culture and aesthetics suggests that East Asian adults’ aesthetic expression tends to be holistic and context-oriented, whereas North American adults’ aesthetic expression tends to be analytic and object-oriented (Masuda, Gonzalez, Kwan, & Nisbett, 2008). However, research ...

Very often the titles of Futurist paintings contain words denoting movement in order to satisfy their artistic poetic focused on motion and velocity. The aim of the present study is to investigate the reported dynamism and aesthetic quality of several Futurist artworks as a function of their title. Ten Futurist artworks with a movement-related word in the title were selected for this study. The...

The rapid progress of deep neural network architectures is allowing both to automate the production of artworks and to extend the domain of creative expression. As such, it is opening new ground for professional and amateur artists alike. A major asset of these new computer processes is their capacity to derive, from a training phase, a generative model from which new artifacts can be produced....

Antique statues and engraving in rocks are fascinating pieces of history which survived through time. They depict both shapes and ancient lifestyle as seen in Fig. 1 Although constrained to be engraved as a single static shape, these art works commonly illustrate living animated scenes, or can even sometimes be interpreted as a unique character depicted in different time periods. They therefore...

We describe an integrated and straightforward new analytical protocol that identifies plant gums from various sample sources including cultural heritage. Our approach is based on the identification of saccharidic fingerprints using mass spectrometry following controlled enzymatic hydrolysis. We developed an enzyme cocktail suitable for plant gums of unknown composition. Distinctive MS profiles ...

In a task of rating images of artworks in an fMRI scanner, regions in the medial prefrontal cortex that are known to be part of the default mode network (DMN) were positively activated on the highest-rated trials. This is surprising given the DMN's original characterization as the set of brain regions that show greater fMRI activity during rest periods than during performance of tasks requiring...

Previous work has shown that the artist of an artwork can be identified by use of computational methods that analyse digital images. However, the digitised artworks are often investigated at a coarse scale discarding many of the important details that may define an artist’s style. In recent years high resolution images of artworks have become available, which, combined with increased processing...

Across cultures and throughout recorded history, humans have produced visual art. This raises the question of why people report such an emotional response to artworks and find some works more beautiful or compelling than others. In the current study we investigated the interplay between art expertise, and emotional and preference judgments. Sixty participants (40 novices, 20 art experts) rated ...

Research has shown that genuine artworks in the museum are appreciated more than reproductions in the laboratory. However, in previous studies, the effects of genuineness (authenticity or originality) and physical context varied together. Therefore, here we attempted to dissociate the impact of genuineness and physical context on the experience of art by using a 2 2 between-subjects design. Par...

While viewing works of art in galleries, we evaluate them by integrating at least two types of information: their visual properties (e.g., colors, symmetry, and proportion) and contextual information accompanying them (e.g., titles and names of artists). How rapidly the brain integrates visual and contextual information of artworks remains to be investigated. Using electroencephalography (EEG),...