Preference for Curvature in Paintings extends to Museum Context

Abstract

In the last two decades, contour shape has been widely studied as a factor in visual aesthetic preference. Many studies have shown that humans and other species usually prefer curved to sharp-angled contours. The reasons for this preference, although keenly debated, still remain unclear. Studies of preference for curvature have tended to rely on simple visual stimuli due to the need to control confounding variables, which has limited investigation of this effect in complex stimuli like artworks. Our objective in this study was to test whether the effect of preference for curvature can be extended to the art domain in an ecologically valid setting. We conducted two studies using original artworks exhibited in a museum context. Stimuli consisted of a series of 48 paintings divided into 16 sets with three versions in each set: one curved, one sharp-angled, and one mixed, while color, size and style were controlled for across each set. In both studies, we recorded participants’ preferred viewing distance and responses about liking and wanting the paintings. The results showed that participants looked at the curved paintings from a closer distance than the sharp-angled paintings, which we used as an implicit measure of approachability. Participants also liked and wanted the curved paintings significantly more than the sharp-angled paintings. We conclude that contour curvature is an important perceptual factor in people’s aesthetic judgements about artworks viewed in an ecologically valid setting.

Affordances and curvature preference: The case of real objects and spaces

“…When it comes to preferences for curved geometries, we believe that the data speak more to a phenomenon associated with detached or secure viewing conditions with a fixed point-of-view and severely limited interaction possibilities, rather than being a universal outcome of design. Subsequent work by Munar, Chuquichambi, and colleagues 33 was able to identify a preference for curvature when looking at paintings in real-world museums, but this again references 2D pictures in a detached viewing environment, which retains many aspects of the laboratory context in regard to the affordances that are available when viewing the painted objects. As Chuquichambi and colleagues 1 briefly and rightfully touch upon near the end of their meta-analysis, an empirical neurobiological investigation of the visual curvature hypothesis versus contextual affordances might help us to more precisely characterize and understand the nature of this preference.…”