Aesthetic Orientations In The Appreciation Of Representative And Expressive Arts

The representative art is destined to depict the objects as they are, while the expressive artists believe that the aim of art is to express their emotion and affection. Those previous empirical aesthetic studies, which mainly adopted representative paintings as materials, were based on the hypothesis that acquiring essential features of the real world is the very purpose of the art as well as the human brain.Nevertheless, the feature of expressive art is not included in that framework. This present study investigated the differences of aesthetic orientation in the appreciation of representative and expressive arts by adopting realism paintings as materials of representative art and expressionism paintings and Chinese freehand brushwork as materials of expressive art.By adopting western paintings as materials of representative art and Chinese freehand brushwork as materials of expressive art, the pilot study investigated the difference of aesthetic orientation of viewer in appreciating reproductive and expressive arts via word production task. The results showed that participants tended to pay more attention to the objects depicted in the paintings rather than the affection expressed by artists no matter what style the painting was; in terms of the frequency of produced content words, there was no significant difference in both western and Chinese paintings, while more affection words were induced in the appreciation of western paintings than that of Chinese paintings, and more association words were showed in the appreciation of Chinese works than that of western ones.By adopting western realism paintings as materials of representative art and expressionism paintings and Chinese freehand brushwork as materials of expressive art, Experiment1explored the aesthetic preference in the appreciation of representative and expressionism arts via priming paradigm.. The results showed that participants tended to pay more attention to the affection expressed through the paintings when appreciating the expressive art, while there was no preference to affection or object when appreciating the representative art.Experiment2investigated the aesthetic criteria in the appreciation of realism and expressionism art adopting implicit association test (IAT). It showed that participants tended to adopt objective criteria in the appreciation of the realism paintings by the extent of represent the natural world, while adopted subjective criteria in the expressive paintings by the extent of expressing the inner affection.Experiment3explored the aesthetic criteria in the appreciation of realism and the traditional Chinese freehand brushwork adopting implicit association test (IAT). It showed that participants tend to judge the realism paintings by the extent of represent the natural world, but judged the Chinese freehand brushwork by the extent of expressing the inner affection.In conclusion, there exist differences between the appreciation of representative and expressive arts. These differences were shown in two aspects:Firstly, viewers showed their aesthetic orientation on emotion and affection expressed by artists when they appreciate expressive art while no preference when they watch representative works.Secondly, viewers preferred to adopt objective criteria to judge whether objects in representative paintings depicted similarly as what they are in the real world and subjective criteria to appreciate emotion or affection expressed by those expressive works.