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Consistent Emotions Elicited by

Low-Level Visual Features in
Abstract Art
Article January 2014
DOI: 10.1163/22134913-00002012

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Art & Perception 2 (2014) 99118

brill.com/artp

Consistent Emotions Elicited by Low-Level Visual

Features in Abstract Art
Jorien van Paasschen 1 , Elisa Zamboni 1 , Francesca Bacci 2 and David Melcher 1,
1

Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, Palazzo Fedrigotti,

Corso Bettini 31, 38068 Rovereto, Italy
2
Museo dArte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Italy
Received 12 April 2013; accepted 2 September 2013

Abstract
It is often assumed that works of art have the ability to elicit emotion in their observers. An emotional response to a visual stimulus can occur as early as 120 ms after stimulus onset, before object
categorisation can take place. This implies that emotions elicited by an artwork may depend in part
on bottom-up processing of its visual features (e.g., shape, colour, composition) and not just on object recognition or understanding of artistic style. We predicted that participants are able to judge
the emotion conveyed by an artwork in a manner that is consistent across observers. We tested this
hypothesis using abstract paintings; these do not provide any reference to objects or narrative contexts, so that any perceived emotion must stem from basic visual characteristics. Nineteen participants
with no background in art rated 340 abstract artworks from different artistic movements on valence
and arousal on a Likert scale. An intra-class correlation model showed a high consistency in ratings
across observers. Importantly, observers used the whole range of the rating scale. Artworks with a
high number of edges (complex) and dark colours were rated as more arousing and more negative
compared to paintings containing clear lines, bright colours and geometric shapes. These findings
provide evidence that emotions can be captured in a meaningful way by the artist in a set of low-level
visual characteristics, and that observers interpret this emotional message in a consistent, uniform
manner.
Keywords
Aesthetic experience, perception, emotion, aesthetic viewing

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: david.melcher@unitn.it

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2014

DOI:10.1163/22134913-00002012

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1. Introduction
It is often assumed that works of art have the ability to elicit emotion in
their observers, and indeed, people often ascribe emotional valence to artworks (Cskszentmihlyi and Robinson, 1990). However, little is known as
to whether artworks are able to induce similar, shared emotions in spectators
(comparable to, for example, the response to an emotional face), or whether
observers experience a divergent range of emotions when viewing the same
artwork (rendering the experience of the artwork purely subjective). A comprehensive theory of emotion perception would need to take into account this
affective response to visual art, music and other stimuli. Here, we start by
investigating whether there are commonalities in emotional responses to abstract artworks or whether instead, there is truth in the old adage that theres
no accounting for taste when it comes to art.
We begin by discussing the neuropsychological basis underlying emotional
and aesthetic experiences. We then consider why it is plausible that at least
some aspects of the experience of emotions conveyed by artworks may be
homogenous across observers. Next we will present theories from artists and
art historians regarding the ways in which art, in particular abstract paintings,
might evoke emotion. Finally, we present our hypotheses regarding emotional
cues in abstract artworks and explain how we mean to test these empirically.
1.1. The Role of Emotion in Aesthetic Perception
Art has the power to disturb us, agitate us, or make us weep (Ellis, 1999,
p. 163). But how is an artwork able to trigger such a response, and when in
the viewing process do these emotions occur? Inherent to it being a visual
stimulus, it follows that visual art must initially be processed based on early
visual properties (e.g., shape, colour) in the primary visual areas within the
occipital cortex. An emotional response to a visual stimulus (e.g., a face) can
occur as early as 120 ms after stimulus onset (Pizzagalli et al., 1999, 2002),
before object categorisation can take place. Barrett and Bar (2009) have suggested that before object recognition takes place, gist-level visual information
(in the case of a visual artwork this could include low spatial frequency information, colour and some aspects of composition) engages fronto-parietal
attention circuits, which in turn relay affective information about the stimulus
back to the dorsal stream as an initial estimate of its affective and motivational
value. Heightened attention to a given stimulus then modulates object recognition within the ventral stream (e.g., Pessoa et al., 2003; Shulman et al., 1997)
and allows for the stimulus to be experienced more vividly. Thus, this affective
information guides our vision.
The notion that emotional responses already occur during the very first
stages of vision implies that emotions elicited by an artwork may depend at

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least in part on bottom-up processing of its visual features such as shape and
colour, in addition to higher cognitive processes such as object recognition or
understanding of artistic style (for review, see Melcher and Cavanagh, 2011).
Abstract artworks provide an interesting case study for attempts to understand
perception of emotion in artworks. Contrary to most artistic movements, abstract art is a category that defines paintings which do not intend to give a
faithful imitation of visual reality. There are no recognizable objects or contexts that could evoke emotion, in contrast to most of the existing studies
of emotion expression. In this sense, the emotional response to abstract artworks might be compared to that of music, where explicit reference to real
objects or scenes is rare (Blood and Zatorre, 2001; for review, see Koelsch,
2010; Melcher and Zampini, 2011). Since most of what we know about visual
emotion perception is based on studies of responses to stimuli like faces and
photographs, abstract artworks provide a unique and valuable stimulus set for
studying perception of emotion in visual stimuli.
Indeed, many artists have claimed that their abstract artworks are, in the
words of Jackson Pollock, expressing . . . feelings rather than illustrating
(OConnor, 1967, p. 79). Mark Rothko argued that his works expressed basic human emotions . . . tragedy, ecstasy, doom (Baal-Teshuva, 2003, p. 56).
As described below in more detail, artists have in many cases provided specific, testable claims about how and why their works evoke these emotions.
Implicit in most of these claims is the idea that there are commonalities in the
emotional response of different viewers of abstract artworks. Thus, in addition
to more narrative or top-down influences on emotion perception for artworks,
visual properties such as colour and form, which are dominant in abstract art
but also important in representational art, may play a role in the emotional
response to some artworks.
Some evidence for agreement when it comes to the emotion expressed by
abstract art comes from a study showing that children were able to correctly
match one of two abstract paintings to a representational target painting in
terms of conveyed emotion (Blank et al., 1984). This indicates that even young
children have the ability to detect emotion in an artwork, despite probably not
having a very developed concept of artistic style. A different study, also including (preschool) children, has shown that children as young as three are able to
distinguish different artistic styles (Hasenfus et al., 1983), which suggests that
nave observers tend to decode or understand works of art at a deeper level
than might be assumed (p. 861). A behavioural study comparing representational and indeterminate art (paintings which contain strong suggestions of
natural shapes, but no actual formal objects) found no difference in scores reflecting how much the artworks affected participants emotionally (Ishai et al.,
2007). The authors concluded that emotional and aesthetic judgments (which
were comparable for representational and indeterminate artworks) appeared

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to be based on low and intermediate visual features, independent of semantic

meaning. A similar finding was observed by Takahashi (1995) in an intriguing
study in which participants who had no specific background in art were asked
to produce abstract line drawings reflecting a particular topic (e.g., anger, joy,
femininity, illness). Next, the drawings were grouped according to topic and a
larger group of different participants was asked to pick the five drawings that
best expressed the topic. Takahashi found considerable agreement in the top
five drawings chosen for each category, with 3555% of participants agreeing on the most appropriate drawing for each topic. Takahashi concluded that
there may be a . . . shared intuition that contributes visually to ones understanding of the concept that a drawing means to express (p. 675). Although
both the study design and results are intriguing, it remains unclear to what extent participants truly agreed on the representative value of the drawings. For
example, the drawings were already grouped according to theme when participants selected the most representative drawing for that theme. This is quite
different to asking people to pick the most representative drawing for a particular theme out of all available drawings there may have been considerable
crossing over of drawings and categories.
From a cognitive neuroscience perspective, neuroimaging studies suggest
that there are central, supramodal neural mechanisms that underlie emotional
evaluation and experience. The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, for example,
has been implicated in the representation of emotions independent of modality
(Adolphs, 2009; Peelen et al., 2010) and in peoples appraisal and experience
of emotions as well as the evaluation of emotional content of a stimulus, irrespective of the nature of the emotion (Kober et al., 2008; Lee and Siegle,
2012; Reiman et al., 1997). Taken together, these findings demonstrate that
there are neural mechanisms in the brain that are involved in the cross-modal
representation of different emotion categories.
1.2. Artists and Art Theorists on Emotion Perception in Abstract Art
One important question, before starting any study of the perception of abstract
artwork, is which works to choose for study. For the present study, we adopted
a stylistic criterion in order to create two stimulus sets. As proposed by Alfred
H. Barr on the occasion of the exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art (1936),
we can think of abstract paintings as falling in one of two broad categories:
geometrical abstract art and non-geometrical abstract art (see Fig. 1).
Barrs stylistic analysis outlines the presence of a scientific attitude that is
found in Geometrical Abstract Art: the analytical use of colour by the Pointillists, and the methodical breakdown of space into basic geometrical units by
Cubists and Constructivists. Geometrical Abstract Art is characterized by a
well-planned design that is based on the use of uniform colours and geometrical elements such as lines and shapes. Non-Geometrical Abstract Art, instead,

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Figure 1. Depiction of the historical developments in art leading to two main tendencies in
abstract art. From Albert H. Barr Jrs exhibition catalogue for the MoMA show Cubism and
Abstract Art (1936). This figure is published in color in the online version.

uses elements chosen for their symbolic and subjective value. Gauguin and the
Fauve artists chose to represent reality through non-imitative colours, in order
to augment the symbolic content of their paintings. The Expressionists and
Futurists exploited colours expressive potential, and the Dada and Surrealist
artists incorporated chance effects of doodling marks, which were believed
to stem from a persons unconscious. Non-Geometrical abstract art can thus
be characterised by the presence of fluid curved lines and sweeping strokes,

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gestural spreading of colours in hasty marks or splashes and drippings and,

generally speaking, an intense, almost sloppy execution, as if they were made
because of an inner necessity of the artist rather than being the result of careful
planning or theoretical reasoning.
In the current study we explored whether the emotional response to paintings from these two art movements shows a meaningful difference in arousal
or valence traceable to the artworks intrinsic characteristics. We included
paintings from Abstract Expressionism (AbEx) and Geometric Abstraction
(Geom). Abstract Expressionism paintings are arguably non-geometric and
are characterised by apparently random strokes and splashes of paint; there
is a complete absence of recognisable forms (examples are works by Hans
Hartung and Antonio Corpora, see Fig. 2A). Geometric Abstraction paintings,
instead, are characterised by distinct geometric shapes and clear lines (for example, works by Aldo Schmid and Luigi Senesi, see Fig. 2B).
1.3. Rationale for the Current Study
As discussed above, there might be general principles that help explain why art
evokes an emotional response in viewers, and these principles have a neurological basis, hence are common to all observers. We predict that nave observers
with no formal background in arts would be able to pick up the emotion conveyed by an artwork, and that they would do so in a manner that is consistent
across observers. We tested this hypothesis using images of abstract paintings.
One distinct advantage of this class of stimuli is that they do not provide any
reference to objects or narrative contexts as a site of emotional expression,
so that any perceived emotion must stem from basic visual features such as
colour, shape, and composition. To ensure participants could not place the artworks in any semantic context, it was especially important to include only
nave subjects in the study. We compared ratings from nave participants on
valence (happy/sad) and arousal (exciting/calm) dimensions for 170 Abstract
Expressionism and 170 Geometric Abstraction paintings.
Unlike previous studies on this topic, we have included a much larger set
of artworks (n = 340) to be rated. As a comparison, Takahashi (1995) used
46 line drawings per emotional category, while Blank et al. (1984) used 16
abstract artworks. In addition, participants in the current study had the option
to rate the artwork as neutral if they felt the artwork was not particularly
emotional, as opposed to the forced choice method employed by Takahashi
and Blank and colleagues, where artworks had to be matched to emotional
labels or categories. Furthermore, our participants rated to what extent they
felt an artwork corresponded to a particular emotional category. Using this
approach, we were able to calculate reliability in scoring patterns between
the different raters for all artworks, instead of assessing whether a particular
painting was chosen to represent an emotional label above chance level.

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105

(A)

(B)

Figure 2. (A) Examples of Abstract Expressionism works (Hans Hartung T 1963-H13, 1963;
and Antonio Corpora Notturno, 1952). (B) Examples of Geometric Abstraction works (Aldo
Schmid No title (from the Sequenze cycle), 19651966; and Luigi Senesi Percorsocromatico (verde-rosso), 1974).

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We predicted that ratings would be consistent across observers for paintings

from both art movements. We were also interested in whether artworks from
one movement may be experienced as more positive and/or more exciting than
the other. Given that these artworks cannot differ on semantic content, subjects
must base their evaluation on low-level perceptual features such as colour,
composition, shape, and style. Our participants knew equally little about the
backgrounds of either art movement. Therefore, any differences in affective
ratings between the two art streams are unlikely to be the result of successfully
mastering one style but not the other. Instead, such a result would support the
idea that particular visual features that characterise one art movement but not
the other evoke emotions in their observers.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Participants
Nineteen participants (6 men, 13 women, mean age 23.5 4.8 years, range
1938) took part in the study. Participants were students from the University
of Trento or residents from the local community (Rovereto, Italy), recruited
through advertisements on the internet. All participants had normal or corrected to normal vision. Participants had no specific background or training
in art or art history. Most participants visited a modern arts museum at least
once a year (mean 1.9 1.3). All were paid for their participation. All participants gave written informed consent prior to participation. The experimental
procedures were in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the University of
Trento and Declaration of Helsinki.
2.2. Materials
Participants were asked to rate digital images of abstract artworks from two
major abstract art movements (Abstract Expressionism and Geometric Abstraction). We used digitalised images of paintings from the MART collection (Museo dArte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto), and
freely available images through the websites of the Guggenheim museum, the
MoMA, the Whitney museum, and Tate Modern. Furthermore, artwork reproductions in books were scanned in by the researchers.
Out of this larger collection of digital images, FB, EZ and JVP selected 170
paintings from each art movement for the rating experiment. The suitability
of each artwork was discussed and artworks were selected only if all three
authors reached consensus on the suitability of the painting for a particular
category (AbEx or Geom). A further 12 paintings were selected for a practice
run. For Abstract Expressionism we included paintings that had no clear lines
or forms. For Geometric Abstraction, we chose paintings that had clearly defined lines and recognisable shapes. Paintings were excluded if they were part

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of a composition of different paintings, if they depicted an actual figure or object, if there were any letters or numbers (or signs that appeared as such) on the
painting, if they displayed formal characteristics belonging to both categories,
or if there was a three-dimensional object attached to the painting.
To obtain some uniformity in size of the stimuli without distorting the original proportions of the paintings, the largest dimension on each painting was
resized to 600 pixels; the smaller dimension was then resized in relation to
that. Paintings were shown on a Toshiba Satellite Pro L500-1VZ laptop using
NBS Presentation software (version 16.0, www.neurobs.com).
2.3. Measures
For the rating task, participants were required to rate each artwork on one of
two dimensions: Arousal (ranging from calm to excited) and Valence (ranging
from sad to happy), in a fashion similar to the instructions given to participants
who rated pictures for the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang
et al., 2008). There was one question per trial, so that each painting was viewed
twice in total (one viewing per question). The order of the questions (Arousal
or Valence) and paintings was randomised.
Following the example of the IAPS, in the instructions provided at the
start of the experiment, the Arousal dimension was explained as the extent
to which the painting made participants feel stimulated, excited, frenzied, jittery, wide-awake, aroused, or rather completely relaxed, calm, sluggish, dull,
sleepy, unaroused. During the actual experiment, we only presented the labels
calm and excited. The Arousal scale consisted of five figures taken from
the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM; Hodes et al., 1985) that depicted a little man ranging from eyes closed (calm) to exploding with eyes wide open
(excited). The Valence dimension was explained as the extent to which each
painting made subjects feel happy, pleased, satisfied, contented, hopeful, or on
the other end of the scale, completely unhappy, annoyed, unsatisfied, melancholic, despaired. Again, during the actual experiment we only presented the
simplified labels sad and happy. The Valence scale consisted of five faces
from the WongBaker faces pain scale (Wong and Baker, 1988). The faces
were similar to cartoon style smiley faces and ranged from an inverted Ushape mouth and hanging eyebrows (sad) to a big smile with raised eyebrows
(happy).
The rating scale was depicted on the screen, and pictures of each rating
option were attached to buttons on the keyboard using five buttons to the right
of the U key and five buttons to the right of the J key. The position of
the two rating scales (top row or bottom row of keys) was counterbalanced
between participants.

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2.4. Procedure
All participants performed a practice run with a different subset of paintings
before engaging in the actual experiment. Each trial started with a fixation
cross (500 ms) along with printed information on the dimension that the participant would be rating the painting on. For Arousal, it said calm/excited
and for Valence it said sad/happy. A painting was then shown for 2000 ms.
During this presentation no rating could be made. Immediately following presentation, a screen appeared with the word rating and the appropriate scale.
Participants were instructed to make their response as fast as possible and not
to think too long about their response. There was a 1000 ms blank screen before the start of the next trial. The experiment was self-paced and lasted about
50 min, depending on the speed with which participants gave their rating.
3. Results
3.1. Rating Consistency
Rating scores were first converted to standardised z-scores to correct for any
bias in rating across subjects. In order to assess whether participants rated the
paintings in a consistent way, we analysed the standardised rating scores from
each participant for each painting using a two-way random effects intra-class
correlation (ICC) model to test consistency for each dimension separately.
The ICC coefficient for Valence was very high (ICC = 0.845; 95% CI =
0.820.87), suggesting a consistent pattern of valence ratings for different
paintings across participants. Consistency in valence rating was slightly higher
for AbEx paintings (ICC = 0.844; 95% CI = 0.800.88) than for Geom paintings (ICC = 0.786; 95% CI = 0.730.83). The ICC coefficient for Arousal
was also high (ICC = 0.854; 95% CI = 0.830.88). In contrast to the valence
ratings, ratings for arousal were more consistent for Geom paintings (ICC =
0.866; 95% CI = 0.830.90) than for AbEx paintings (ICC = 0.757; 95%
CI = 0.700.81).
To test whether the consistency in scores does not simply reflect a vast
amount of neutral ratings, we calculated the frequency of the mean rating
awarded to each artwork. These results are summarised in Table 1. Frequency
tables showed that about 50% of the AbEx and 30% of Geom artworks received a mean Valence rating that was either lower than 2.5 (sad) or higher
than 3.5 (happy). On the Arousal dimension, 38% of AbEx paintings and
60% of Geom paintings received scores that clearly reflected calm or excited. This means that especially with regards to the Valence ratings for the
Geom artworks, the majority of artworks was rated as neutral. To check that
the consistency was not merely driven by these neutral ratings, we repeated the
intraclass correlation but excluded the neutrally rated artworks from the anal-

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Table 1.
Number of paintings with mean high, neutral, and low Arousal and Valence ratings. AbEx:
Abstract Expressionism; Geom: Geometric Abstraction
Mean rating

Low (<2.5)
Neutral (2.53.5)
High (>3.5)

Valence

Arousal

AbEx

Geom

AbEx

Geom

75
85
10

18
120
32

22
105
43

86
69
15

yses. Consistency in ratings remained high for both Valence (AbEx: ICC =
0.749; 95% CI = 0.660.83; Geom: ICC = 0.895; 95% CI = 0.840.94) and
Arousal (AbEx: ICC = 0.871; 95% CI = 0.820.92; Geom: ICC = 0.910;
95% CI = 0.880.94).
3.2. Differences Between the Two Art Types

To explore whether there were differences in ratings between AbEx and Geom
paintings, standardised ratings were entered into a repeated measures analysis of variance using Art Type (AbEx, Geom) as a between-group factor
and Dimension (Arousal, Valence) as a within-group factor. There was a significant interaction between Art Type and Dimension (F (1, 338) = 238.149,
p < 0.001). No other effects were found. A follow-up independent samples
t-test showed that AbEx paintings were rated as significantly more negative
(mean raw score 2.69 0.54; note that raw scores are used in the text for
meaningfulness; for the analyses standardised z-scores were used) than Geom
paintings (mean raw score 3.17 0.44) (t (338) = 8.978, p < 0.001). Geom
paintings were rated as significantly more calm (mean raw score 2.53 0.64)
(t (338) = 8.519, p < 0.001) than AbEx paintings (mean raw score 3.09
0.49). Figure 3 illustrates these results.
There was a highly significant positive relationship between standardised
ratings for valence and arousal for Geom paintings (r = 0.547, p < 0.001), as
well as for AbEx paintings (r = 0.177, p = 0.021).
To see whether AbEx and Geom paintings differed significantly in terms
of basic visual features, we compared saturation (vividness of colour, where
lower saturation colours contain more grey), brightness (luminance; or the
black/white quality), and complexity (as assessed by an index of the number of
edges detected in each artwork) in an independent samples t-test. Assumptions
for equality of the variances were not met for all three features; hence the degrees of freedom were adjusted. AbEx and Geom paintings did not differ significantly on saturation (t (316.565) = 1.914, p = 0.168 (Bonferroni corrected
for multiple comparisons); mean saturation AbEx: 31.18% 17.06; mean sat-

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Figure 3. Mean standardised ratings for Arousal and Valence for 340 paintings. AbEx: Abstract
Expressionism; Geom: Geometric Abstraction. This figure is published in color in the online
version.

uration Geom: 35.31% 22.21). However, Geom paintings were significantly

brighter than AbEx artworks (t (323.348) = 5.217, p < 0.001 (Bonf.corr.);
mean brightness AbEx: 53.49% 17.41; mean brightness Geom: 64.59%
21.43), while works in the AbEx category were significantly more complex
than in the Geom group (t (317.550) = 4.618, p < 0.001 (Bonf.corr)).
We also sampled the mean hue (i.e., wavelength) in degrees for each artwork and calculated a mean hue for each art stream by converting the degrees
to radians (mean hue AbEx: 30.71; mean hue Geom: 11.32). The coordinates
for the vectors making up each radian were entered into a bootstrap procedure
with 10 000 iterations and a threshold of = 0.05. The bootstrap procedure
showed that the set of AbEx and Geom artworks significantly differed in mean
hue (p = 0.006). Overall the AbEx works tended to golden orange, while the
Geom set leaned to more red.
Subsequently, we correlated ratings for valence and arousal with saturation, brightness and complexity indices (a meaningful correlation with hue
was not possible since the values were either vectors or degrees). Valence
ratings were positively correlated with arousal ratings for both art streams
(AbEx: r = 0.177, p = 0.021; Geom: r = 0.547, p < 0.001). For AbEx artworks, valence ratings increased as paintings became more colourful, bright,
and complex (saturation: r = 0.231, p = 0.003; brightness: r = 0.610, p <
0.001; complexity: r = 0.233, p = 0.002). AbEx artworks were rated as

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111

more arousing the more complex (r = 0.330, p < 0.001) and dark they were
(r = 0.183, p = 0.019), but we found no significant correlation between
arousal ratings and saturation (r = 0.083, p = 0.288). Interestingly, a different pattern was found for Geom artworks: these were rated more positively
the brighter they were (r = 0.503, p < 0.001), while there was no relation
between valence ratings and saturation (r = 0.064, p = 0.406) or complexity (r = 0.145, p = 0.058). On the other hand, arousal ratings were higher
for more colourful and complex paintings (saturation: r = 0.204, p = 0.008;
complexity: r = 0.230, p = 0.002) whereas no significant correlation existed
between arousal ratings and brightness (r = 0.085, p = 0.268).
4. Discussion
The current study obtained valence and arousal ratings for a large set of abstract artworks. We hypothesised that observers who are nave to art are able to
pick up emotion conveyed by abstract artworks in a consistent manner. Indeed
we found highly consistent ratings on both valence and arousal for artworks
from Abstract Expressionism and Geometric Abstraction, suggesting that the
artworks evoked common emotional processes across observers. Importantly,
observers placed artworks consistently along either dimension, showing that
the agreement in scoring is not simply due to all works being rated as neutral.
We also explored whether there were differences in ratings between the two
art movements. Overall, ratings were more positive and calm for paintings belonging to Geometric Abstraction compared to Abstract Expressionism, which
were judged as sadder and more exciting.
Because our participants were nave to art, they were not able to base their
valence and arousal judgments on anything other than the basic visual features
presented to them by an artwork. Given that the artworks bear no reference to
real-life objects, we pose that an emotional response to such stimuli is based to
a large part on bottom-up visual features. Similar ideas have been proposed by
some of the artists producing art these artworks, and indeed affective reactions
have been reported previously for single visual stimuli such as simple geometric shapes (e.g., Larson et al., 2007, 2011) and colours (e.g., Kaya and Epps,
2004; Moller et al., 2009; Ou et al., 2004). However, to date there is little empirical evidence for consistent affective reactions across different observers in
response to visual art. Many models of aesthetic viewing emphasise the individuality of aesthetic experiences and affective reactions to art these are
regarded as the interplay between an observer and the situation (e.g., Jacobsen
et al., 2006; Leder et al., 2004). Our findings complement studies of the role
of context and top-down factors by showing also the existence of a consistent
interpretation of emotion for abstract artworks by nave participants.

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4.1. Bottom-up Emotion Cues

The idea that colour can trigger an emotional response is generally accepted,
but the precise relationship between colour and affective reaction is complex and context-dependent (for review, see Elliot and Maier, 2007; Gage,
1999). Colour includes hue, saturation, and brightness. The relationship between colours may be as important as the colours themselves, and the finding
that many of the most positive images contained a combination of bright yellow and blue is consistent with the long-standing idea that complementary
colours hold a special place in visual art (Gage, 1999).
When looking at the presence of specific colours, and ignoring the role of
the interactions between colours, it is possible to compare the current findings
to previous studies using single colour patches. The AbEx and Geom artworks
in the present study did not differ significantly on saturation, an indication of
the intensity of colours used. Moreover, valence ratings for Geom artworks
did not correlate with saturation, suggesting that colour intensity does not explain the higher proportion of happy ratings for Geom artworks. The two
sets of artworks in the current study differed on mean hue, with AbEx artworks overall containing more golden-orange and Geom works overall more
red. As mentioned above, the previous literature on colour and emotion (or
preference) contains contradictory findings regarding specific hues. In one
study investigating peoples emotional reaction to colours, a red-purple hue
was among the most pleasant hues whereas a yellow hue was rated as least
pleasant (Valdez and Mehrabian, 1994). A red-purple hue was also rated as
less dominant than a green-yellow hue. Similarly, a different study comparing 20 colours on a likedislike scale found that purplish blue was the most
liked whereas muddy yellow was the most disliked (Ou et al., 2004), a finding
corroborated by a different study comparing male and female participants
although the men seemed to prefer blue-green to purplish blue (Hurlbert and
Ling, 2007). However, colours that are liked or disliked when seen on their
own may be combined in a particular artwork. Ou and colleagues (2004)
pointed out that although there is a strong correlation between preference for
individual colours and perceived harmony of a colour pair, there are colours
for which this does not hold. The relationship between colour preference and
combinations of more than one colour has not been properly investigated, but
is presumably more complex.
One possibility is that the presence of certain colours in abstract artworks
would directly influence emotion ratings. Using computer vision techniques,
Yanulevskaya and colleagues (2012) trained a classifier to recognise which
statistical patterns in abstract paintings predict whether that painting was rated
as positive or negative by human observers. The algorithm was able to predict
human emotion ratings based on colour (CIELAB) and form (SIFT: Lowe,

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2004) information. They also found that brighter yellow, blue and red were
associated with positive emotions, while dark colours were related to negative
emotions. In the current study, the Geom artworks as a set were brighter than
the AbEx artworks, which received more sad ratings. This is in line with the
study by Yanulevskaya and colleagues, who found that darker colours were
predictive of a negative rating.
Another possibility for the difference in ratings between the two art streams
is that the presence of clearly discernible shapes in the Geom artworks may
have resulted in more well-defined uniform planes. As described above, a classifier trained on form and texture features (SIFT) was able to predict whether
human judgments of the emotion of an abstract artwork were positive or negative (Yanulevskaya et al., 2012). It has been previously demonstrated that
when using simple geometric shapes, people prefer stimuli with a high figureground contrast, presumably because this facilitates processing fluency (Reber
et al., 2004). Reber and colleagues further argue that stimuli with less information are more pleasing to the observer, again because this is easier to
process. The finding that Geom artworks were on average brighter and less
complex than AbEx artworks may indicate that Geom paintings contain more
large contrasting sections. Complexity was assessed using an index of edge
detection; AbEx paintings were found to contain more edges and were thus
more fragmented, containing more angles than Geom paintings. An earlier
study demonstrated that people preferred large abstract geometrical shapes and
characters over smaller versions of the same stimulus, supposedly because biologically speaking larger specimens convey a sense of power, attractiveness,
and physical strength (Silvera et al., 2002).
Bar and Neta (2006) showed that if given a choice, people prefer the rounder
version of neutral everyday objects (a sofa, a watch, and so on). They attributed this to a potential sense of threat that is conveyed by sharp angles.
This sense of threat is even conveyed by simple geometric shapes such as
triangles, a finding that was traced back to threatening facial features such
as downward pointing eyebrows in an angry face (Aronoff, 2006; Larson et
al., 2007). A downward pointing triangle was perceived as particularly threatening, as expressed by heightened brain activity in the amygdala (Larson et
al., 2009), a subcortical structure involved in basic emotional processing and
threat detection (e.g., LeDoux, 2000; Vuilleumier et al., 2003). Larson and colleagues (2009) pointed out that circles, one of the control stimuli in their study,
were not threatening but elicited greater activation in visual processing areas
compared to other geometric shapes and thus can be regarded as more potent
and salient visual stimuli. Similarly, statistical patterns in abstract paintings
corresponding to straight lines and smooth curves were associated with positive emotions while chaotic patterns were associated with negative emotions,
even if these arrays appeared in positive colours (Yanulevskaya et al., 2012).

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However, there is a limit to the role of bottom-up features like shape, since topdown factors must play an important role in judging the emotional content of
an object or scene. For example, objects that were round but carried a negative
valence (e.g., a bomb, or a snake) were not preferred over negative sharp objects (Leder et al., 2011). Round objects were only preferred over sharp angles
if their valence was neutral or positive, showing that object associations also
play an important role in emotion perception. Similarly, it is unlikely that the
ratings of the IAPS pictures is determined largely by bottom-up visual cues,
but instead depends on recognition of specific objects and situations.
Overall, the idea that visual characteristics such as brightness, low visual
complexity, and round shape tend to be regarded as more positive may help to
explain why participants in our study were so consistent in their higher happy and calm ratings for the Geom artworks compared to AbEx artworks.
As shown in the study by Yanulevskaya and colleagues (2012), at least some
of the visual features in abstract artworks are basic enough that they can be
used by computational vision algorithms to predict human emotion ratings.
Thus, although the identity of objects and other forms of top-down knowledge
undoubtedly influence emotional responses, artists are also able to manipulate
basic visual features such as colour, shape and brightness in order to modulate
the respone of viewers.
4.2. Limitations of the Current Study and Directions for Future Research
Although consistency in ratings in the current study was high even when the
neutrally rated paintings were excluded from the analysis, it should be noted
that a large proportion of the Geometric Abstraction artworks (70%) was rated
as neutral. This could be the result of the particular artworks that we selected,
but it may also suggests that for this set of artworks perhaps the happysad
scale was not the best possible dimension to assess affective responses (as a
comparison, on the calmexcited scale, less than half (40%) of the Geom
artworks received a neutral rating). One aim of the current study was to test
the feasibility of developing a dataset of abstract artworks, similar to the International Affection Picture Scale (Lang et al., 2008), for use in studying the
neural correlates of emotional responses to a range of visual stimuli such as
faces, pictures and abstract paintings. The valence and arousal measures allow for making such direct comparisons, but future research could consider a
wider spectrum of emotions and obtain ratings for different facets of emotion.
For example, a study investigating emotions evoked by music, Zentner et al.
(2008) identified nine factors, each including two or more items. For example,
agitated and nervous relate to the factor tension, while energetic and
fiery relate to the factor power. Moreover, this study took into account ratings for perceived and felt emotion, i.e., what emotion was expressed by the
music, and what emotion was felt by the subject. An open question for future

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research is the extent to which the complex mechanisms involved in creating

emotional responses to music, which changes dynamically over time (for review, see Juslin and Vstfjll, 2008), are similar to methods used for static
images.
In addition to including more specific emotional labels to characterise what
emotions abstract art evokes, future research could focus on supramodal emotional processes that viewing abstract art shares with viewing emotional scenes
or faces. If evoked emotions through abstract art are indeed highly consistent,
it should be possible, for example, to classify brain activity related to viewing a
happy artwork in a similar way to viewing a happy scene. If there are brain
areas that respond to happy stimuli, irrespective of presentation type, then
we would expect to find supramodal areas of activation regardless of whether
the participants are shown abstract artworks, faces, or scenes.
4.3. Conclusions
We report here consistent emotional evaluations of abstract artworks. Our results support the idea that artists can use low-level visual characteristics to
influence the emotional perception of observers. Participants rated the Geometric Abstraction artworks as more calm and more positive compared to
those belonging to Abstract Expressionism. The Geometric Abstraction artworks were overall brighter, contained discernible, more rounded shapes, and
more figure-ground contrast compared to the Abstract Expressionism artworks. Previous research has demonstrated that such visual features are
individually regarded as positive, which may explain why ratings in our
participants were so consistent. The observers in our study had no formal
training in art, yet awarded comparable emotional ratings to particular artworks. Hence, we conclude that affective reactions to viewing art may depend
at least in part on bottom-up visual features, and that these aspects of emotion
perception in art may be more universal than previously assumed.
Acknowledgement
This research was funded by a grant from the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio
di Trento e Rovereto awarded to FB and DM.
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