How People View Abstract Art: An Eye Movement Study to Assess Information Processing and Viewing Strategy

Abstract

Perception of a form is primarily an individualistic experience. Viewing a product may involve perception of its function or an inherent coding of an idea in its form. Perception to an object or an artifact is like having a visual dialog with the form. The literature suggests that, the visual experience of a work of art, such as painting, is constructed in the same way as the experience of any aspect of the everyday world. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to analyze every aspect of the viewer perception. But, if the viewing aspect itself is observed, it may offer interesting insights, on how the visual dialog to an artifact or designed object is formed by the observer. In this research paper, we aim to explore some of the viewing aspects of viewers, observed through the eye movement research (EMR). The study has been done with 17 participants to establish an understanding in viewing strategy and information processing, while viewing select abstract paintings. Six paintings were used in this study. Selection of the paintings was done as a combination that included Abstract expressionistic paintings by Jackson Pollock and Willem DeKooning, which are spatially spread compositions. Mary Abbot and W. Kandinsky's directional and vigorous-movement stroke oriented paintings, and Piet Mondrian's neo-plastic, pure geometrical painting. Images were shown to the participants to investigate viewing strategy through visual attention and exploratory behavior: diverse or specific; in order to understand how abstract art is viewed. It was observed that spatially spread, uniform paintings offered maximum components of information for the viewer to process while pure abstraction evoked high visual search. We further discuss which paintings evoked, Ó Springer India 2013 477 high attention and discuss qualitatively the possible reasoning. One significant finding is that existence of high information processing may not necessitate a high diverse exploratory behavior.