Visual Art and Emotion – AVE

Pictorial art generates a rich fund of experiences which involve a significant part of our mental life, from perception to cognition, from creation to reception. The emotional side of our relation with pictorial works of art is probably the least known and most problematic. In the West, since the end of the 18th century and especially the 19th century, the expression theory of art has claimed that an artifact expresses emotions. This theory, endorsed by most philosophers and artists, needs to be made clearer from a conceptual point of view and sustained empirically. AVE will try, by focusing on pictorial art, to bridge this gap. Thus, AVE will postulate that the expression theory of art, recently developed in the West, would greatly benefit from being brought together with the much older tradition of Chinese calligraphy and landscape painting which sees in the brush stroke a central element of the emotional expressiveness of pictorial art. By basing itself on this practical and theoretical tradition, AVE will elaborate experimental protocols in experimental psychology and affective neuroscience to understand certain causal processes at the root of the emotional expressiveness of pictorial art. The AVE project will bring together researchers in the field of social sciences as well as specialists in cognitive science around a common goal, which is to understand the art of expressing emotions in Chinese calligraphy and landscape painting. The AVE partners are the « Institut Jean Nicod » (UMR 8129, CNRS-ENS-EHESS), the « Centre Emotion, Remédiation et Réalité Virtuelle » (USR 3246), the « Centre de Recherche sur les Arts et le Langage » (CRAL, UMR 8566, CNRS - EHESS), the « Laboratoire de Physiologie de la Perception et de l’Action » (LPPA, UMR 7152, CNRS – Collège de France) and « Stem-cell and Brain Research Institute » (U846, Inserm). Neuroscientific experiments will explore emotional qualities from Chinese pictorial art stimuli using methods of experimental psychology as well as functional neuroimaging technique. Two experiments will test several stages of emotional information processing including emotional perception and emotional regulation. We will conduct a fMRI study to measure brain networks activated in response to the detection of picturial art stimuli previously validated for their emotional content. Second, a MEG experiment will explore the temporal dynamics of emotional processing of picturial art stimuli. AVE will exploit the results of the experiments in each discipline involved in the project as well as from an interdisciplinary perspective. There will be crossings between the various disciplines involved such as philosophy (partner 1: Institut Jean Nicod) and neuroscience (partner 2: Centre Emotion, partner 4: LPPA, partner 5: Stem-cell and Brain Research Institute), philosophy (partner 1: Institut Jean Nicod) and sinology (partner 3: CRAL). The crossing between philosophy and neuroscience should allow to promote the ongoing emergence of the cognitive philosophy of art. The crossing between Chinese and Western philosophies should demonstrate that it is possible for art, amidst the creative diversity of pictorial art, to transcend the differences between countries and cultures. The multidisciplinary AVE project is the first step in the scientific assessment of a Chinese secular hypothesis that has relevance regarding Chinese philosophy, the Western philosophy of art and neuroscience.