Meaning Making with Art: Expert and Lay Perspectives in Understanding Artworks and Exhibition Concepts

Abstract

In the present dissertation aesthetic meaning making is understood as a process combining perceptual, emotional and cognitive shares that can be experienced as more or less successful and satisfying in relation to the final understanding of a painting’s meaning. Referring to different scientific fields, such as philosophy, visual sciences, art history and psychology, it is explained that paintings represent meaning on different levels of abstraction that have to be considered in dependence to multiple contexts, such as personal previous knowledge and level of experience, or the social situation and physical setting in which a painting is viewed. It is discussed how expertise in art influences meaning making by presenting different models and frameworks of aesthetic processing: Developmental models describing identified skills and abilities of beholders in reference to different stages of visual literacy, and cognitive models conceptualizing meaning making as a sequence of perceptual, emotional and cognitive processes that take place while looking at a present work of art. Leder et al.’s cognitive model (2004) that describes aesthetic processing in five stages and considering possible influences of expertise and context is combined with Panofsky’s model of iconography and iconology (1975) that describes a systematic method of art historic art inquiry and built into an integrated model of meaning making used as basic framework for analyses in this dissertation. Studies of aesthetic psychology are reviewed and presented in accordance to Leder et al.’s (2004) and Panofsky’s (1975) model to discuss differences in meaning making of experts and laymen of art. These theoretical and analytical considerations are used to examine the special expertise of art historians in relation to meaning making with art. Referring to the form versus content approach in aesthetic psychology and using the integrated model of aesthetic processing as basic theoretical framework, the dissertation focused on experts’ and laymen’s use of content for meaning making when looking at representational art. Three studies were conducted to get deeper insights into the specific characteristics of art historian expertise (Study 1), to address the influence of social and physical context on meaning making when exploring a set of representational art chosen and arranged by an art historic professional (Study 2), and to specify expert-layman differences in using informative and less informative content for meaning making with single representational paintings (Study 3). Study 1, a focus group with art historians discussing about aims, skills and concepts according to their professional frameworks, indicates that the meaning potential of specific pictorial features and content is defined before actually engaging into viewing a painting by specific hypotheses that an art historian wants to test by analyzing a painting that determines the angle or perspective on a painting and is connected to the use of specific methods of art inquiry. According to the art historians of the focus group, meaning making itself is characterized by attempts of interpreting different features of a painting using asking questions and comparison as main strategies or tools of relating aspects in or between paintings. In Study 2, groups of students were videotaped while exploring a gallery space and engaging into card sorting tasks outside the gallery with paintings by the expressionist Edvard Munch. Meaning making was analyzed in relation to the exhibition concept and educational means of the exhibition curator, using socio cultural methods and discussing results according to the five stage model of aesthetic processing by Leder et al. (2004). Findings showed a mediating effect of the social and physical context of the exhibition context as well as task-specific mediation of comparison between paintings outside the gallery setting. Comparisons between paintings inside the gallery settings indicating an occupation with the curatorial concept behind the arrangement of the paintings could not be shown, indicating that participants were not aware of this meta-level of meaningful information provided by the curator in the gallery space. Finally, Study 3 explored differences in meaning making of experts and laymen of art history when viewing Renaissance portraits presented to them one by one on slides in a laboratory setting. Using eye tracking and simultaneous thinking aloud, participants’ perceptual and cognitive reference to content with high meaning potential compared to content less informative for meaning making was investigated. Findings show, that experts of art history look longer at symbolic content in relation to areas depicting human features. Further, in contrast to laymen, experts’ thinking aloud consists of a higher percentage of interpretation, reveals more often the meaning of symbolic objects and is more structured. In sum, the studies of this dissertation provide first evidence how meaning making with representational art understood as interlocked sequence of perceptual and cognitive processes is influenced by art historian expertise and the social and physical setting of art inquiry. Thus the present dissertation addresses a topic of great interest for both art education and museums that seek to provide situations, tools and different formats for laymen to engage into effective meaning making with art with the potential to learn and improve visual literacy according to the expert perspective of the art historian community.

In der vorliegenden Dissertation wird die ästhetische Auseinandersetzung mit figurativer Kunst von Laien und Experten der Kunstgeschichte betrachtet. Bedeutsam für die Studien dieser Arbeit ist das kognitive Modell der ästhetischen Wahrnehmung und Verarbeitung von Leder et al. (2004), das in der Abfolge von fünf Verarbeitungsstufen Einflussfaktoren wie Expertise, Museumskontext und soziale Situation der Kunstbetrachtung berücksichtigt. Dieses Modell wird mit dem Ansatz der Ikonographie und Ikonologie des Kunsthistorikers Erwin Panofsky (1975) verknüpft. Panofsky beschreibt darin einen dreistufigen Verlauf der Bildanalyse in Abhängigkeit von bestimmten kunsthistorischen Fähigkeiten und Fertigkeiten. Die Integration beider Modelle dient als theoretische Grundlage für Konzeption und Analyse der Dissertationsstudien und wird dazu verwendet, Unterschiede zwischen Laien und Experten bei der Betrachtung von Bildern zu diskutieren. Drei Studien wurden durchgeführt, um (Studie 1) die charakteristischen Eigenschaften kunsthistorischer Expertise zu erfassen, (Studie 2) den Einfluss des sozialen und physischen Kontexts auf die Erfassung der Bedeutung eines Ausstellungskonzeptes zu untersuchen und (Studie 3) Experten-Laien Unterschiede im Gebrauch von informativem und weniger informativem Inhalt bei der perzeptuellen und kognitiven Analyse figurativer Bilder zu spezifizieren. Die Ergebnisse der Dissertation zeigen, dass Inhalt für die Erfassung von Bildbedeutung von Experten und Laien der Kunstgeschichte unterschiedlich genutzt wird. Die Debatte innerhalb der ästhetischen Psychologie den Bezug auf Form versus Inhalt eines Kunstwerks als herausragenden Unterschied zwischen Laien und Experten der Kunst zu betrachten, muss also neu geführt werden. Zukünftige Forschung sollte demnach stärkeren Fokus auf die Nutzung von inhaltlichen und formellen Aspekten für die Erfassung von Bildern auf höheren Bedeutungsebenen durch Laien und Experten legen. Die Ergebnisse der vorliegenden Arbeit sind aber auch für die museale Praxis von Bedeutung, da sie andere Herangehensweisen an die Kunstvermittlung im Museum empfiehlt, die Besucherinnen und Besuchern Situationen und Instrumente bereit stellen, in denen gemeinsam und vergleichend der Bedeutung von Bildern nachgegangen werden kann.