ABSTRACT
The aesthetic experience of art is a complex, cognitive function that remains poorly understood, despite humankind’s long-standing interest in the topic. Over 2,000 years ago, Plato became one of the first to describe aesthetics relative to human perception. In defining beauty as “that which is pleasing to the eye and ear,” he fundamentally introduced the idea that the nature of art can be explored through the experience of the perceiver (Plato, 390 BC/2006). This concept was not explicitly developed, however, until Kant’s Critique of Esthetic Judgment elaborated on the possibility of using empirical cognitive evidence to examine the phenomenon of beauty (Kant, 1790). Wundt (1874) and Fechner (1876) were among the first to pioneer studies in experimental aesthetics, using simple visual stimuli to methodically explain judgments of pleasure and preference. More recent behavioral studies found that symmetry (Frith & Nias, 1974), good Gestalts (Arnheim, 1954), and salience of structural organization (Locher, 2003) correlate with aesthetic preference. It was not until the 1990s, however, that developments in imaging technology provided the means to practically explore the neuroanatomical correlates of aesthetic experience.
