What is art?

• Art definition

  A range of human creative activities that produce visual, auditory or performing artefacts to express the creator’s imagination, conceptual idea, or technical skill, which are appreciated for their beauty or emotional power”
• Art is

  • shaped by different individual, social, cultural, societal, political and other force
  • Used to challenge sociocultural norms and differences in our lives
• Art in..

  • Classical Terms
  • Painting
  • Sculpture
  • Architecture
  • Performing Arts
  • Music
  • Film
  • Theatre
  • Dance and other performances arts
• Art history

  • Until 17th century art was any skill or mastery
  • when aesthetic consideration became dominant, fine arts were separated
  • definition is often disputed (David, 19919) and subject to change
  • agreed to involve imagination or technical skill (Belton, 2012)
• Long intertwined history

  • Art AND science are both essential and fundamental to experience, investigate and shape internal and external worlds
  • integral to communication of science so scientists study art from variety of disciplines
  • informed understanding of past societies, environments and scientific and therapeutic practice
• Neuroaesthetics

  • how aesthetic perception, production, judgement and appreciation and emotional responses are experienced from a neurological basis
• Mental imagery and creativity

  • tests aimed at assessing creative imagination (vividness of imagery, orignality etc)
  • the Artistic Creativity Domains Compendium (Lunke and Meier)
  • Creative Imagery Abilities (Jankowska and Karwowski)
• The Artistic Creativity Domains Compendium (Lunke and Meier),

  • assesses interest, ability and performance in a distinct way for different domains of artistic creativity. 
  • 270 adults tested with the ACDC, standard tests of divergent and convergent thinking, and tests of cognitive functions.
  • ACDC is a valid instrument to assess artistic creativity and that a fine-grained analysis reveals distinct patterns of relationships between separate domains of creativity and cognition.
• Creative Imagery Abilities (Jankowska and Karwowski)

  • new theoretical model of creative visual imagination, which bridges creativity and imagination research, as well as presents a new psychometric instrument, called the Test of Creative Imagery Abilities
  • developed to measure creative imagery abilities
  • assesses three components of creative imagination:
  • vividness of imagery
  • originality of responses
  • transformative imagery ability
  • 9 studies on a total sample of 1700+ participants
• Psychophysics

  • branch of psych that deals with relation between physical stimuli and mental phenomena
  • investigated art through psychophysics
  • visual cognition
  • brain basis of perception and aesthetics
  • metal imagery
  • clinical art therapy
• Visual cognition

  • exploring differences in visual-spatial ability between artists and non-artists
• Question of how humans perceive art and sensory perception fascinates artists AND scientists

  • art students outperform non-art students on drawing measures and some visual-spatial tasks
  • pattern of results broadly supports notion that art students differ in their ability to exert top-down control over attentional processing (but not low level visual processing)
• Art; socio-cultural

  • Much research has followed the method investigating by Fechner objective correlates
  • led to neglect of meanings conveyed in art objects such as symbols of identity and group membership
  • Function of art to create/reflect culture
  • exploration of how art and behavioural action intersects
  • neglect of the consideration of embodied experience (what is the outcome and experience)
• Art; Social psychology

  • scientific study of how we think, feel and relate to one another and how they’re influences by actual, imagined or implied presence of others
  • prejudice, stereotypes, persuasion, presocial behaviour altruism and culture
  • art has a unique ability to influecen how people think/feel/realte makes us reconsider our own position, create empathy, connection, allegiance, disconnection, dissonance etc
  • strong emotional reaction can act as catalysts to a change in thoughts and actions
• Cultural psychology

  • the scientific study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members
• Culture

  • the behaviours, ideas, attitudes and traditions that are shared by groups and transmitted over generations (defined by all sorts of parameters: geography, sexuality, music, language)
• features of culture include

  • Norms- rules for accepted/expected behaviour
  • Taboos - prohibitions or restrictions imposed by a culture
• Art; cultural psych

  • Art is part of the fabric of life that
  • informs our sense of self and group
  • identity, in doing so if creates the
  • norms and the taboos for our behaviour
  • our engagement with art allows for the questioning, reaffirmation… etc. to shape or change features and parameters of our cultural context
  • use art to represent, learn and relearn how to think, feel and behave within the groups that we are part of
• Art; cultural psych

  • Art creates a critical discourse to challenge what is acceptable through our emotional response
  • engage in this active way with the object through affordances (even if this is to turn away and reject)
  • Affordance <–> emotion <-> dissonance
• Art; cultural psych

  • Art can evoke emotion and therefore result in cultural dissonance.
• Cultural Dissonance

  • sense of discomfort people experience when there are inconsistencies in cultural expectations, associated with belonging to one or more cultures or when overall cultural perceptions are shifting
• Holy Virgin Mary by Ofili

  • black Madonna decorated with a resin-covered lump of elephant dung,
  • the figure is surrounded by small images of vaginas from porn mags.
  • Solso (1994)
• Solso 1994

  • presented with a Holy Virgin Mary or the Virgin and Child
  • Found 3 possible response
  • Reject: dismiss the art object
  • Reflect: think about an association with religious purity and elephant dung could mean.
  • Revise: i.e. change the parts you don't like.
• The Virgin and Child by Botticelli

  • was once the centre of scandal, (or at least discomfort and indignation)
  • Duggin (2016)- “(during the Renaissance) when the Virgin Mary began to look too much like the prettiest girl in town, the boundaries of religious art were strained, if not erased”
• Art; socio-cultural psych

  • Yygotsky (1978) and Bakhtin (1981) – Mediated action involves two elements:
  • the agent who is doing the acting
  • cultural tools present in the environment used by the agent to accomplish the action
• Art; socio-cultural psych

  • Affordances
  • how we perceive environments/objects as ways to afford us our needs
  • If an environment does not provide or afford, the necessary items then individuals are less likely to interact with the environment
  • People can collectively remember a national past through engagement with cultural
  • process of remembering is mediated through engagement with a particular tool in the environment, and interaction with it
• Art; socio-cultural psych

  • memory is not limited to the biological underpinning of brain architecture - it's reflected in the social environment
  • people construct an experience of ‘national identity’ through cultural tools
  • “natural” expressions of human psychology require scaffolded engagement with cultural tools
• Art; socio-cultural psych

  • consider that these various structures or patterns as cultural products that afford particular psychological experiences
  • products are not NEUTRAL in creation or IMPACT
  • CULTURE IS SHAPED BY PEOPLE (e.g. product of action) and SHAPES PEOPLE (conditioning element for future action).
• Idenitites

  • Self
  • Group
  • Family
  • Cultural
  • Religious
  • Gender
  • work
• Portraits

  • Vangogh - mental illness
  • Frida Khalo - strength, power, strong women, postcolonialism, class, race
  • Dante Rosetti - feminine men, against masculine ideas
  • Francis Bacon - raw imagery, personal motifs, heavy experimentation, Christianity themes
• Zora Neale Hurston

  • preserve her african heritage through art
  • harlem rennaissance
• Shan Murrel

  • returned to Monserrat after eruption
  • produced art of what it was like before
  • preserve the true meaning
• Benefits of art therapy

  • relationship improvements
  • counters isolation
  • increases of understanding of
  • facilitates thinking about the future
  • perspective
  • distraction and escapism
  • personal achievement
  • relaxation
  • empowerment
• Intervention is hard to standardise

  • involves multiple interacting mechanisms
  • Uttley 2016,
  • 15 RCTs
  • depression, cancer, HIV, sickle cell, PTSD, dementia, asthma
  • compared to CBT
  • meta analysis not possible
  • 4 studies reported improvement from baseline
  • no significant difference
• Art therapy

  • art is not used as diagnostic tool but as a medium to address emotional issues which may be confusing and distressing
  • BAAT 2019
  • art as the primary mode of expression
  • non-verbal expressions
  • profound and long lasting healing
  • release from trauma
• 6 Factors of flow

  • intense and focused concentration on present moment
  • merging of action and awareness
  • loss of reflective self-consciousness
  • sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
  • distortion of temporal experience, sense of time is distorted
  • experience of activity as intrinsically rewarding
• Schaffer (2013) 7 conditions of flow

  • Knowing what to do
  • Knowing how to do it
  • Knowing how well you are doing
  • Knowing where to go (if navigation is involved)
  • High perceived challenges
  • High perceived skills
  • Freedom from distractions
• The self

  • self concept
  • self-awareness, esteem, deception
  • agent self
  • self control, active responding
  • interpersonal self
  • self-presentation, relationships, social roles, reputation