Commentary: But Is It really Art? The Classification of Images as a??Arta??/a??Not Arta?? and Correlation with Appraisal and Viewer Interpersonal Differences

摘要

Scientific aesthetics aims to understand the creation and appreciation of aesthetics and art using scientific methods devised to yield valid and reliable empirical evidence. The pursuit of such evidence, as in other domains of science, has made of the laboratory an indispensable research environment, and of laboratory experimental procedures the preferred means to conduct research (Fechner, 1876; Külpe, 1907; Valentine, 1913). In the laboratory, reproductions of artworks have often been used as stimuli. Sometimes because the object of study is the experience of these as artworks, other times because the object of study is an aesthetic dimension (e.g., balance) along which they vary systematically (Pearce et al., 2016). In both cases it is assumed that the artistic status of the stimuli is relevant to participants' responses, and that participants actually do regard those stimuli as artworks.