Aesthetic properties of pictorial perception.

The present study assessed the dynamic person-object relationship in pictorial perception as associated with a high-level experience like the aesthetic. A series of experiments was designed to gain insight into the complexities of self-world interactions involving the perceptual experience, which is the basis of artistic communication. Participants were asked to produce line drawings, which were then ranked by a larger group of participants as to whether they conveyed expressive contents. This resulted in considerable agreement among the judges. In addition, the factor structure of the semantic differential responses was determined. The results indicated that considerable semantic space existed between them. A theory of a linkage between affective and cognitive processes in perceptual experience is proposed.