Fear Heightens Appreciation of Abstract Art - Miller-McCune
Does abstract art fail to evoke a profound emotional response? Try viewing it while you’re terrified.t
Are you puzzled by Picasso? Perplexed by Pollock? Do you feel you’re missing out on something profound when friends discuss their intense reaction to abstract art?
You could do some research to better understand what you’re looking at. Or you could turn off the lights and watch a DVD of Psycho.
A newly published study finds people are more likely to be moved and intrigued by abstract paintings if they have just experienced a good scare. This suggests the allure of art may be “a byproduct of one’s tendency to be alarmed by such environmental features as novelty, ambiguity, and the fantastic,” argues lead author Kendall Eskine, a research psychologist at Loyola University New Orleans.
“Artists may be tapping into this natural sense when their work takes people’s breath away,” he and his colleagues write in the journal Emotion.
Their study was inspired by 18th-century philosopher Edmund Burke, who argued there is a strong link between fear and our experience of the sublime. To test this thesis, the researchers conducted an experiment featuring 85 Brooklyn College students.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: fear (which was evoked by viewing a brief frightening video); happiness (evoked by a watching a brief pleasing video); high physical arousal (they performed 30 jumping jacks); low physical arousal (15 jumping jacks); or a control group.