The artful mind meets art history:Toward a
psycho-historicalframework for the scienceof art appreciation
Nicolas J. BullotARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its
Disorders, Department of
Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, New South Wales 2109,
[email protected]://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/members/prole.html?memberID=521
Rolf ReberDepartment of Education, University of Bergen,
Postboks 7807, N-5020Bergen, Norway
[email protected]://www.uib.no/persons/Rolf.Reber#publikasjoner
Abstract: Research seeking a scientic foundation for the theory
of art appreciation has raised controversies at the intersection
ofthe social and cognitive sciences. Though equally relevant to a
scientic inquiry into art appreciation, psychological and
historicalapproaches to art developed independently and lack a
common core of theoretical principles. Historicists argue that
psychologicaland brain sciences ignore the fact that artworks are
artifacts produced and appreciated in the context of unique
historical situationsand artistic intentions. After revealing aws
in the psychological approach, we introduce a psycho-historical
framework for thescience of art appreciation. This framework
demonstrates that a science of art appreciation must investigate
how appreciatorsprocess causal and historical information to
classify and explain their psychological responses to art.
Expanding on research aboutthe cognition of artifacts, we identify
three modes of appreciation: basic exposure to an artwork, the
artistic design stance, andartistic understanding. The artistic
design stance, a requisite for artistic understanding, is an
attitude whereby appreciators developtheir sensitivity to
art-historical contexts by means of inquiries into the making,
authorship, and functions of artworks. We defendand illustrate the
psycho-historical framework with an analysis of existing studies on
art appreciation in empirical aesthetics.Finally, we argue that the
uency theory of aesthetic pleasure can be amended to meet the
requirements of the framework. Weconclude that scientists can
tackle fundamental questions about the nature and appreciation of
art within the psycho-historicalframework.
Keywords: art appreciation; causal reasoning; cognition of
artifacts; cognitive tracking; design stance; essentialism;
function; history ofart; mindreading; processing uency;
psycho-historical framework
Does the study of the minds inner life provide a theoreti-cal
foundation for a science of art? Scientists in empiricalaesthetics
and neuroaesthetics think so. They adhere towhat we, along with
Pickford (1972), call the psychologi-cal approach to art, which
uses methods of psychologyand neuroscience to study art and its
appreciation.Because of its focus on the minds processes and
thebrains internal structures, psychological research oftenignores
the historical approach to art, which focuses onthe role of
historical contexts in the making and appreci-ation of works of
art. The psychological and historicalapproaches have developed
conicting research pro-grams in the study of art appreciation and
of art ingeneral. They offer diverging accounts of the degree
towhich historical knowledge is involved in art appreciation.After
introducing the debate between these two tra-ditions, we propose in
sections 2 and 3 a psycho-historical
framework that unies psychological and historical inqui-ries
into art appreciation. We argue that art-historicalcontexts, which
encompass historical events, artistsactions, and mental processes,
leave causal informationin each work of art. The processing of this
informationby human appreciators1 includes at least three
distinctmodes of art appreciation: basic exposure of appreciatorsto
the work; causal reasoning resulting from an artisticdesign stance;
and artistic understanding of the workbased on knowledge of the
art-historical context. Insection 4, we demonstrate that empirical
researchwithin the framework is feasible. Finally, we describe
insection 5 how an existing psychological theory, the
pro-cessing-uency theory of aesthetic pleasure, can be com-bined
with the psycho-historical framework to examine howappreciation
depends on context-specic manipulations ofuency.
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2013) 36,
123180doi:10.1017/S0140525X12000489
Cambridge University Press 2013 0140-525X/13 $40.00 123
