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Although aesthetic experiences are frequent in modern life, there is as of yet no scientifically comprehensive theory that explains what psychologically constitutes such experiences. These experiences are particularly interesting because of their hedonic properties and the possibility to provide self-rewarding cognitive operations. We shall explain why modern art's large number of individualized styles, innovativeness and conceptuality offer positive aesthetic experiences. Moreover, the challenge of art is mainly driven by a need for understanding. Cognitive challenges of both abstract art and other conceptual, complex and multidimensional stimuli require an extension of previous approaches to empirical aesthetics. We present an information-processing stage model of aesthetic processing. According to the model, aesthetic experiences involve five stages: perception, explicit classification, implicit classification, cognitive mastering and evaluation. The model differentiates between aesthetic emotion and aesthetic judgments as two types of output.
Psychology of aesthetic appreciation
Our aim in this article is to explain why people are attracted by art. We give an answer from a psychological perspective with special interest paid to psychologically relevant features of art, especially modern art. We discuss how cognitive processing of art produces affective, often positive and self-rewarding aesthetic experiences. We propose a model that represents different processing stages as well as important variables that are involved in aesthetic experiences. We aim to understand the art-specific cognitive experiences that give art such a prominent position in human culture and thus go beyond perceiving art solely as an interesting perceptual stimulus. Moreover, we show that the often-controversial modern or contemporary art is particularly interesting from such a psychological perspective. Although we mainly focus on visual arts, the mechanisms we describe should also be transferable to aesthetic experiences with other forms of art and aesthetic experiences. There is no doubt that art is the prototypical domain for questions of aesthetic research but other objects may also be treated as aesthetically relevant. There is, for example, considerable progress in understanding which faces are found aesthetically pleasing (Etcoff, 1999) or what design in everyday objects such as cars is aesthetically appreciated (Hekkert, Snelders, & van Wieringen, 2003; Leder & Carbon, in press).
Every year thousands attend blockbuster art exhibitions. The 'Matisse-Picasso' exhibition in the Tate Modern in London sold just under half a million tickets, and the 2002...