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Emmanuel Kant spoke often about the sublime, and specifically how art becomes more sublime when beauty mixes with terror. Now research provides some support for this philosophical viewpoint.
Scientists had 85 subjects experience one of five different things. One group watched a brief scary movie, another group watched a happy movie, and two other groups performed either 30 or 15 jumping jacks. The control group did nothing.
Then all the subjects looked at four abstract paintings, for 30 seconds each, by a Russian artist, El Lissitsky. And they rated the art—based on qualities of how inspiring, stimulating, rousing, boring, forgetful or uninteresting the piece was for them.
The group that watched the scary movie rated the art as more sublime and positive than any other of the groups. In fact the other four groups did not significantly differ in their ratings.
We might not think of describing art as frightening. The researchers note, however, that art can “…be surprising, elicit goose bumps, and inspire awe.”
Who knew that pairing The Walking Dead with a trip to the Museum of Modern Art would make the entire experience more sublime.
—Christie Nicholson
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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6 Comments
Add CommentArt in people's eyes tends to be sublime simply cos people normally do not have enough courage to think that they can get access to it. But once people find something that they feel outragesly beyond their normal comprehension and capacity to understand, such as fears or terror, they would get access into art more smoothly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis may be removed because it will disagree with the subject, but, in fact, the title, even the "experiment" are misleading. Watching a scary movie doesn't necessarily create fear. Many come out [erhaps agitated or distracted, but that's not necessarily the same. Having the subjects sit in a room full of spiders might be more appropriate. Too, since most horror movies tend to rely on dark scenes, the subjects may only be responding to bright colors in El Lissitsky's material. And, consider, having all the subjects exposed only to El Lissitsky's work means that you are not gauging ther responset ao "art", but toi el Lissitsky. And it still has to be involked that things like "abstract art" is not necessarily art! Art has content and insight, and it provides that to you directly, it doesn't require you to make your own "interpretation" oif what it's "saying". If you have to "interpret" a piece your way, then it's not "saying" anything!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a suibtext, though, It is generally granted thatfear and uncertainty have become more common coin in modern society. During precisely the same period when "modern art" in all its forms has also become a powerhouse! Can it be that the "popularity" and "acceptance" "modern art" enjoys comes not from any inherent quality in it, but simply the fact that many people are so fearful today that they resonate to the material! "Modern art" isn't good, it isn't art, it's just a psychologically contrived manifestation that attracts fearful people! Maybe that's why it's being pushed so much, to lessen the eminent obviousness of the fearful machinations the New World Order plans to unleash!
julianpenrod--I agree with your point that this experiment has made unjustified assumptions (i.e. the effect of a horror movie always being fear, and the interpretation of abstract art as a art). You are onto something in these criticisms, but you do not quite reach it. Namely, the response to the horror film (as well as the other stimuli in the other conditions) needs to be understood in physiological terms so that it can be standardized. For example, the experimenters could be monitoring heart rate in order to measure "fear" (where fear is translated loosely to sympathetic nervous system activation--i.e. the "fight or flight" physiological response). That way, a stronger correlation could be established between fear and aesthetic pleasure. The next problem is thatone person's aesthetic pleasure is not the same as another's, and thus another method of measuring aesthetic experience needs to be used. The solution to this problem is more elusive, but can still be found.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, your point that abstract art is not art is not valid. It is pure opinion, and a highly speculative opinion at that. Who's to say that an artistic piece that has no overt meaning or tremendous amount of skill put into it is not artistically pleasing? Your idea that people enjoy modern art because they're socially pressured to is certainly interesting, but what's stopping anyone from saying that about all art? Why do you assume that Impressionistic paintings, for example, have intrinsic value? You cannot answer these questions without speaking from personal experience, and even then it's hard to say that an entire art movement would have arose out of social pressures alone.
Now, there is something to be taken from this criticism though. The participants could have, in fact, been socially pressured to respond well to the artwork than genuinely feeling aesthetic pleasure. It hard to get around this problem because it's hard to quantify aesthetic pleasure. One solution would be to know the genres of art that each participant enjoys and then show them pieces from that genre--that way, they would probably be more honest about their interpretation of it, as opposed to forcing an interpretation for a genre that they do not know how to interpret.
Regardless of the problems in this study, the data is still insightful. The interpretation of the data can certainly be way off base, but the number of participants and the fact that no other conditions matched the horror film's effect shows that there is something going on here and more research is needed.
The same mechanism is found in adventurous eaters- it's all about the thrill of the unfamiliar, regardless of its source.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not opinion that "modern art" does not constitute art. In fact, art must satisfy a numbre of qualities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst, it must be an act of actual dedication, a sign that someone set out to accomplish something and succeeded. You can take the mat off a mud room floor and hang it up, but that doesn't make it art. Yes, some may find it engaging, some may even be able to look at the patterns of tracks for hours,. but it is not art. Art must be something that someone set out to do.
And, being an act of will, it must have content, intent, will, purpose other than the craven. It can't be just a few random spatters on a canvas that an "art critic" is going to praise effusively, leading a pigeon to pay a quarter million dollars for, after which the "artist", "critic" and "gallery" owner divvy the loot. Something that the observer must be counted ohn seeing something in, something that has nothing of its own to offer except the deceitful suggestion that "there is something here", is not art. A piece of "modern art" was once hung accidentally upside down for a month without being discovered. The gullible looking on were convinced by the doggerel that they were looking at something genuine and so talked themselves into thinking they "saw something in it". Any swindler will tell you that often the victim is a participant in a scam, obligingly convincing themselves that they aren't being lied to. Selling someone a bill of goods and having them look at it and convince themselves it's genuine is the same as selling someone an aimless scribble on a canvas and having them con themselves into thinking it's good. In many ways, the "modern art" racket is the placebo effect in action!
In many ways, the concept of content has been perverted in many other areas of art, as well, recently. About fifteen years ago, a statue of a boy that stood in a nondescript fountain in some office building in New York was "revealed" to be a lost Michelangelo. Suddenly, the statue no one paid attention to previously "showed the sign of the master's touch" in its "divine evocation of the highest nature and aspirations of humanity". In the same way, a carton of photographic prints bearing an inscription that suggested they were taken by Ansel Adams was recently "discovered" in a garage. Many of the subjects were the same as feature in famous Ansel Adams pictures. They could be shots he rejected, they could be by competitors who never achieved his fame. "Experts" claimed it was crucial to determine because, if they were by another, the frames would be worth only a few hundred dollars, but, if they were by Adams, even rejects, they would be worth millions! Why? The same subject, the same execution, the same content! Yet many don't look at it that way! They are conned into thinking that, if they are by Adams, then they have "something" that they wouldn't have if by another!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr is this all an admission that, once someone gets included among the circle of "the ennobled", they have a substance, a power they infuse even their most slighting works with that genuinely energizes "the rubes"?