Bao Yan, Yang Taoxi, Zhang Jinfan, Zhang Jiyuan, Lin Xiaoxiong, Paolini Marco, Pöppel Ernst, Silveira Sarita
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behaviour and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Institute for Medical Psychology and Human Science Center, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany.
Psych J. 2017 Jun;6(2):110-119. doi: 10.1002/pchj.167.
The eminent Chinese artist LaoZhu has created a homogeneous set of abstract pictures that are referred to as the "third abstraction." By definition, these pictures are meant to be representations of the artist's personal involvement and as such to create an internal point of view in the observer on an implicit level of processing. Aiming at investigating whether the artist's choice of a specific color is experienced in a specific way in the recipient, we assessed both explicit and implicit (i.e. neurocognitive) correlates in naive viewers of LaoZhu's pieces. The behavioral results reveal a preference of the original red paintings over color-changed counterparts in green or black. Paradoxically and inconsistent with predictions, we found higher levels of neural activation in several brain regions (predominantly in the frontal and parietal cortices) for the color-changed compared to the original red conditions. These observations add empirically to the complementarity of early visual pathways and higher-order cognition as well as of explicit and implicit information processing during aesthetic appreciation. We discuss our findings in light of processing effort and top-down control of the color-changed paintings. With regard to the third abstraction as defined by LaoZhu, in particular to the distinction between an external and internal point of view when viewing abstract art, our results contribute to an understanding of "abstraction and empathy" as a fundamental part of aesthetic appreciations.
中国著名艺术家老朱创作了一组风格统一的抽象画作，被称为“第三种抽象”。从定义上来说，这些画作旨在展现艺术家的个人情感投入，从而在观者潜意识的层面上营造一种内在视角。为了探究观者对艺术家特定色彩选择的体验方式，我们对老朱作品的普通观者进行了显性和隐性（即神经认知）关联评估。行为结果显示，相较于绿色或黑色的变色画作，观者更偏爱原作中的红色画作。矛盾的是，与预测结果不符，我们发现变色画作（相较于原作红色画作）在几个脑区（主要是额叶和顶叶皮质）引发了更高水平的神经激活。这些观察结果从实证角度补充了早期视觉通路与高阶认知的互补性，以及审美欣赏过程中显性和隐性信息处理的互补性。我们根据对变色画作的处理难度和自上而下的控制来讨论研究结果。关于老朱所定义的“第三种抽象”，尤其是在观看抽象艺术时外部视角与内部视角的区别，我们的研究结果有助于理解“抽象与共情”，这是审美欣赏的一个基本组成部分。
