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Art Theory and Psychological Aesthetics
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Art Theory and Psychological Aesthetics

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (23 December 2022) | Viewed by 23442

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Peter Tzanev

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Art Psychology and Art Education, National Academy of Arts, Sofia, Bulgaria
Interests: psychology of art; representation of psychological concepts in art

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue considers the long-lasting controversy between art theory and psychological aesthetics about the nature of psychological facts in art. The current state of the psychological aesthetics must be seen in the light of its history. Psychological aesthetics as a name emerged at the end of the eighteenth century, when Johann Heinrich Zschokke (1771–1848) published a book entitled Ideas on Psychological Aesthetics (1793). The book was provoked by the newly established theoretical field of aesthetics, initiated by Alexander Baumgarten (1714–1762) who elaborated a new discipline as a science of sensual knowledge. Gustav Fechner (1801–1887) in his On experimental aesthetics (1871) dealt with different aesthetic issues which can be empirically discovered by investigating preferences of subjects when perceiving objects. Psychological aesthetics and its interest in the psychological foundation of aesthetic experience was an important part of the development of aesthetics in recent decades of the nineteenth and at the turn of the twentieth century. Theodor Lipps (1851–1914) in his two volume Aesthetics (1903/1906) with the subtitle Psychology of Art and Beauty concluded that aesthetics was a psychological discipline. Psychological aesthetics found extensive application in experimental psychology at the twentieth century. After the Second World War, the term psychological aesthetics have been used sporadically in the borderline context of disciplines such as psychology of art and empirical aesthetics.

Today, the return of interest in psychological aesthetics, which belongs to the oldest tradition of psychological approaches to art, is related to the challenges of art theory to articulate the psychological significance of those artistic practices that remain outside the norms and limits of institutional creativity. The contemporary function of psychological aesthetics as a basis for theoretical concepts and speculations about the nature of aesthetic phenomena in the arts intersects with the expansion of art theory to the context of new psychological situations and new psychological categories. Contributors are invited to submit articles examining the role of convergence between art theory and psychological aesthetics focusing a broad range of topics: aesthetic property, aesthetic experience, definitions of art, ontology of art, representation in art, creative process, history of ideas, psychology of art, and empirical aesthetics.

Prof. Dr. Peter Tzanev
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • aesthetic experience
  • psychology of aesthetic categories
  • aesthetic value
  • art appreciation
  • imagination
  • empathy
  • artistic eccentricity

Published Papers (8 papers)

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Research

9 pages, 223 KiB  
Article
A Contemporary Atomistic Model of Art—A First-Person Introspection of the Artistic Process
by Atanas Dimitrov Totlyakov
Arts 2023, 12(4), 128; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040128 - 26 Jun 2023
Viewed by 1047
Abstract
In modern science and human activity, we increasingly refer to creative thinking that does not belong to the strict definition of art. Art studies and art theory should answer the questions that emerge in the complex interaction among diverse creative fields. Art experience [...] Read more.
In modern science and human activity, we increasingly refer to creative thinking that does not belong to the strict definition of art. Art studies and art theory should answer the questions that emerge in the complex interaction among diverse creative fields. Art experience may be considered as one of many different manifestations of creative thinking (general creativity). When we develop ideas involving heterogeneous nuclei, our thoughts aim to encompass or reflect upon the area in between their fusion. This paper proposes a method of implementing an introspective analysis that brings the artist to a new position—the position of an explorer of their own cognitive space. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art Theory and Psychological Aesthetics)
8 pages, 271 KiB  
Article
Defining Art as Phenomenal Being
by Ivan Kolev
Arts 2023, 12(3), 100; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12030100 - 12 May 2023
Viewed by 1264
Abstract
At the beginning of the 20th century, the definition of art became one of the difficult topics of aesthetics and art theory. The emergence of the institutional approach and the debates surrounding it provoked many responses. This article proposes one possible response that [...] Read more.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the definition of art became one of the difficult topics of aesthetics and art theory. The emergence of the institutional approach and the debates surrounding it provoked many responses. This article proposes one possible response that uses Kant’s example of category deduction as a productive analogy that can serve as a “deduction of art categories”. Art is seen as a phenomenal entity constituted by multiple meaning perspectives, each of which has a figure representing it (author, spectator, patron, collector, curator, connoisseur, critic, historian, typologist, theorist, aesthetician, and metaphysician). The position of each of these figures legitimates a categorical definition that participates in the constitution of the “phenomenal being of art”. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art Theory and Psychological Aesthetics)
10 pages, 1166 KiB  
Article
Installation Art and the Elaboration of Psychological Concepts: A Definition of the Term ‘Excursive’
by Lilyana Georgieva Karadjova
Arts 2023, 12(3), 87; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12030087 - 29 Apr 2023
Viewed by 2287
Abstract
This paper focuses on installation art and its potential to employ and elaborate psychological concepts. As Claire Bishop argues, installation art has a psychologically absorptive character because it activates and immerses the viewing subject. To analyze this immersive experience, she refers to Maurice [...] Read more.
This paper focuses on installation art and its potential to employ and elaborate psychological concepts. As Claire Bishop argues, installation art has a psychologically absorptive character because it activates and immerses the viewing subject. To analyze this immersive experience, she refers to Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the premise that subject and object are intertwined and reciprocally interdependent. In this paper I refer to these registers of artistic perception in order to explore the concept of ‘excursive object’, which was introduced by the contemporary artist and theorist Peter Tzanev in a site-specific installation (Credo Bonum Gallery, Sofia, 2018). It refers to both Elizabeth Helsinger’s term ‘excursive sight’ and to Michel Foucault’s notion of ‘discursive object’. Whereas the latter is a discursive textual formation, which consists of apparent internal relations inside a statement, the excursive object of art emerges as a less perceivable configuration of elements. It does not result in a clear perceptual experience and reflects the unstable phenomenological interdependence of subject and object. Thus, Tzanev’s novel excursive objects depart from the usual modes of perception. His concept reveals the viewer’s particular experience of unstable configurations of elements in installation art. Furthermore, it could be explored as a resourceful term to describe perceptive situations in the psychology of contemporary art. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art Theory and Psychological Aesthetics)
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14 pages, 231 KiB  
Article
The Aura of the Object and the Work of Art: A Critical Analysis of Walter Benjamin’s Theory in the Context of Contemporary Art and Culture
by Kiril Vassilev
Arts 2023, 12(2), 59; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12020059 - 19 Mar 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 5251
Abstract
This text is a critical interpretation of Walter Benjamin’s theory in the context of the contemporary situation in art and culture. Benjamin’s innovative method of analysis and key concepts in art theory and their simultaneous research and political function are carefully reconstructed. This [...] Read more.
This text is a critical interpretation of Walter Benjamin’s theory in the context of the contemporary situation in art and culture. Benjamin’s innovative method of analysis and key concepts in art theory and their simultaneous research and political function are carefully reconstructed. This critical analysis is centered on the main concept of Benjamin’s philosophical aesthetics, the concept of ‘aura’. This analysis shows how Benjamin mixes and replaces the aura of the work of art with the aura of the historical object. Benjamin’s main thesis about the loss of the aura of the work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility is disputed. Technical reproducibility does not take away the aura of the work of art, but separates its aura from the aura of the historical object. Auraticness is inherent in every work insofar as it is a work of art. The aura of the historical object does not disappear in modernity either. With the emergence of historical and aesthetic consciousness, of the historical and art museum, the almost mechanical production of auratic objects began in modernity. As a result of the critical analysis of the concept of “aura”, the main binary oppositions that frame Benjamin’s theory of art—art with aura/art without aura; art with cult value/art without cult value; aestheticization of politics/politicization of art—are questioned. At the end of this text, the key lines of analysis proposed by Benjamin in an attempt to make sense of the radical changes in art since the beginning of the 20th century are used to outline the contemporary situation in art and the changes in perception with which it is associated. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art Theory and Psychological Aesthetics)
10 pages, 4516 KiB  
Article
I Dream of Being a Beautiful Princess but I Am a Socialist Girl: The Psychological and Ideological Aspects of the Illustrations for the Fairy Tale “Cinderella” in Bulgaria in the Second Half of the 20th Century
by Katerina Zdravkova Gadjeva
Arts 2023, 12(2), 48; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12020048 - 08 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1517
Abstract
Fairy tales are often accompanied by illustrations that extend and complicate the messages of the text, and adapt it to the specific characteristics of different political and cultural situations. This article focuses on the images of one of the best-known fairy tales recorded [...] Read more.
Fairy tales are often accompanied by illustrations that extend and complicate the messages of the text, and adapt it to the specific characteristics of different political and cultural situations. This article focuses on the images of one of the best-known fairy tales recorded by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, “Cinderella,” and looks for an answer to the question of how, in the second half of the 20th century, when the world was divided by the Iron Curtain, the socialist ideology attempted to make a “visual translation” of the story, which had been known for centuries, thus sending new aesthetic and political messages to adolescents. The emphasis is placed not only on the opposition of the roles of woman in socialist and capitalist societies but also on making the differences in appearance, behavior, and upbringing stand out. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art Theory and Psychological Aesthetics)
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20 pages, 304 KiB  
Article
The Sources of the Psychology of Art and Its Place among the Disciplines That Study Art and Creativity
by Antanas Andrijauskas
Arts 2022, 11(5), 96; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050096 - 28 Sep 2022
Viewed by 2639
Abstract
The goal of this article is to analyze, on the basis of today’s research strategies and the sources that deal with the psychology of Western art during the 20th century, the emerging field of the psychology of art and of its component, the [...] Read more.
The goal of this article is to analyze, on the basis of today’s research strategies and the sources that deal with the psychology of Western art during the 20th century, the emerging field of the psychology of art and of its component, the psychology of the creative process, in different national traditions and in various fields of the humanities (aesthetics, the philosophy of art, experimental and general psychology, physiology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, art history). Through comparative analysis, this article reveals how German-speaking countries, France, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union changed their attitude toward the artist, his creative potential, creative work, the creative process, and other problems of the psychology of art. The author devotes special attention to highlighting the distinctive ideas, theoretical positions, and main categories of the psychology of art in the West and in the great civilizations of the East (India, China, Japan). All of this has acquired exceptional importance in today’s metacivilizational culture, in which, as never before, there is active interaction between the ideas of various Eastern and Western peoples about the psychology of art. Finally, on the basis of a comparative analysis of today’s main national traditions relating to the psychology of art, this article highlights its place, functions, and role in the disciplines that study art. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art Theory and Psychological Aesthetics)
26 pages, 341 KiB  
Article
Metamodernism or Metamodernity
by Dina Stoev
Arts 2022, 11(5), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050091 - 21 Sep 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4369
Abstract
The concept of metamodernism relies on our understanding of modernism, postmodernism and the bigger cultural periods that originated them. While modernism is a product of modernity, postmodernism is not situated comprehensively within a well-defined period. Moreover, when dealing with the dichotomy of movement [...] Read more.
The concept of metamodernism relies on our understanding of modernism, postmodernism and the bigger cultural periods that originated them. While modernism is a product of modernity, postmodernism is not situated comprehensively within a well-defined period. Moreover, when dealing with the dichotomy of movement and era in the last century, we are presented with a taxonomic dilemma of conflating eras and their aesthetical manifestations. Contrary to the prevalent view of cultural shifts, here I propose a different attempt at periodising and understanding ontologically the concepts of modernism, postmodernism and metamodernism, and the related cultural periods in which they are situated. I argue that modernism and postmodernism should be considered as a continuum in a temporal sense, but not as equal orders in a categorical sense, and that postmodernism is not an apt descriptor for the period following modernity, nor for the aesthetic paradigm following modernism. To resolve this problem, on the one hand, I propose we adopt the term metamodernity, which better reflects the new era of cultural development. On the other hand, I discuss metamodernism, which is the current aesthetical, and to a degree axiological, manifestation of this new era. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art Theory and Psychological Aesthetics)
11 pages, 225 KiB  
Article
Emotions in the Psychology of Aesthetics
by Bjarne Sode Funch
Arts 2022, 11(4), 76; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11040076 - 09 Aug 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3082
Abstract
Ever since Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762) introduced the concept of aesthetics, the prevailing idea has been that the fine arts provide an alternative source of knowledge to the traditional sciences. Art, however, has always been closely associated with emotions. Taking Baumgarten’s treatise on [...] Read more.
Ever since Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762) introduced the concept of aesthetics, the prevailing idea has been that the fine arts provide an alternative source of knowledge to the traditional sciences. Art, however, has always been closely associated with emotions. Taking Baumgarten’s treatise on poetry as a point of departure, I argue that Baumgarten laid the ground for a conception of art that emphasizes emotion rather than cognition with a particular appeal to psychology to provide principles of aesthetic appreciation of art. This appeal is met here with a phenomenological discussion of a series of precepts within contemporary emotion theories, which provides the necessary and sufficient conditions for a psychological theory of aesthetic appreciation of art. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art Theory and Psychological Aesthetics)
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