Visual Arts

Researchers explore how we depict and perceive emotions through colour and line in visual art

siddiq22 — Wed, 03 May 2023 19:41:52 +0000

Researchers explore how we depict and perceive emotions through colour and line in visual art

siddiq22 Wed, 05/03/2023 - 15:41

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A new study by U of T researchers confirms the use of certain colours and lines to depict emotions such as joy, as shown in this reference illustration from the study (Damiano, Bernhardt-Walther, et al.)

Chris Sasaki

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Visual Arts

Are you feeling blue – or seeing red? Maybe turning green with envy?

You’re not alone in colour-coding your emotions, University of Toronto researchers say in a new paper confirming associations between feelings and certain shades and shapes.

Dirk Bernhardt-Walther

In a new study in the Journal of Vision, researchers from the Faculty of Arts & Science's department of psychology and their collaborators have confirmed research identifying consistent associations between certain colours and lines, and particular emotions.

In addition, they’ve shown that it is easier to predict the emotion being depicted with colour drawings than line drawings; and that emotion predictions are more accurate for colour drawings by non-artists than by artists.

“What we confirmed in our study was the systematic use of certain colours and lines to depict certain emotions,” says Dirk Bernhardt-Walther, an associate professor in the department of psychology.

“For example, anger is depicted using red, or in drawings with densely packed lines. Sadness is blue and associated with vertical lines. We use these conventions to portray emotions – and observers perceive the emotions intended.”

The findings could help designers and visual artists convey emotions to users or viewers, or create architectural or designed spaces that evoke positive responses. It could also lead to a better understanding of visual esthetics – how artists depict emotions in their work and whether it evokes the response they desire from viewers.

The study's lead author is Claudia Damiano, a postdoctoral researcher with the department of brain and cognition at KU Leuven in Belgium, and a former graduate student in Bernhardt-Walther's lab. Damiano conducted the research with Pinaki Gayen, a visiting graduate student who came to U of T's department of psychology in 2019 on a Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute Research Fellowship. U of T co-authors include Bernhardt-Walther and postdoctoral fellow Morteza Rezanejad, also in the department of psychology.

For the study, Bernhardt-Walther and his colleagues recruited 40 students from visual arts programs at OCAD University and 41 non-artists from STEM programs at U of T. All were instructed to create two abstract drawings – one using colour and one lines – for each of six emotions: anger, disgust, fear, sadness, joy and wonder.

The researchers began by validating the idea that distinct emotions were depicted in a consistent manner. First, they conducted computational analysis of the lines and colours in all the drawings. They then built a computational model that could predict the emotion from the visual properties of drawings by artists and non-artists.

They found that drawings depicting negative emotions tended to contain more lines and darker colours: red, blue, brown, black and grey. Drawings of positive emotions were less dense, had more curved or oblique lines and contained brighter colours.

Images for joy were predominantly yellow-green, those depicting disgust were a darker green, anger was shown as red while sadness was blue, and so on. The line drawings exhibited different styles of lines – from strong, intersecting lines for anger, to wavy and curved lines for joy.

Sample colour and line drawings for each emotion, made by one artist and one non-artist participating in the study (Damiano, Bernhardt-Walther, et al.)

The team also compared how artists and non-artists conveyed emotions with colours and found that trained artists generally used a smaller number of colours than non-artists and that the colours they used were unconventional. They also discovered that non-artists were better at conveying emotions through colour than artists.

“I believe the reason for this difference could be that non-artists tend to follow convention, whereas artists strive to be innovative – they want to do something distinctive,” Bernhardt-Walther says. “Artists know what the conventions are but they want to break from those conventions in order to provoke, stand out and create something special.”

The researchers also found that it is easier to guess the emotion a colour drawing is portraying than in a line drawing. They speculate that this is because the associations between colours and emotions are stronger for people than those between lines and emotions.

And while the study did not delve into whether these associations are innate or learned, Bernhardt-Walther draws on his own research and that of other academics, noting these colour-emotion matches aren’t just culturally learned – in other words, we didn’t learn them simply from the paintings, illustrations and movies viewed throughout our lives.

“There is generally very good agreement on the association between colours and emotions across cultures that have developed independently,” Bernhardt-Walther says.

“There is consensus that red has significance because it is associated with blood – whether it’s your prey’s blood or your own. Our faces turn red when we are angry and grey or green when we feel nauseous. Darkness is scary because of the unknown danger.

“And in addition to being associated with sadness, blue is also calming – and the obvious association with the sky and water and being in the open where you are less at risk from a danger like a predator. We imitate these colours in artwork to specifically evoke these emotions.”

For Bernhardt-Walther, the study is consistent with his growing interest in the effect of the visual environment on our emotions.

“I’m studying visual esthetics more and more now as part of my research,” he says.

“I want to know what people find esthetically pleasing and why, because I think it is an integral part of our perceptual experience. Liking or disliking what we see is directly related to how we think and how we perceive the world.”

'I don't like gatekeepers': Mixed-media artist Andrew James Paterson wins Governor General’s Award

perry.king — Tue, 28 May 2019 20:24:33 +0000

'I don't like gatekeepers': Mixed-media artist Andrew James Paterson wins Governor General’s Award

perry.king Tue, 05/28/2019 - 16:24

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Andrew James Paterson, a University of Toronto alumnus and Innis College graduate, was named one of eight recipients of the 2019 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts (photo by Perry King)

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The artwork of Andrew James Paterson, a University of Toronto alumnus and interdisciplinary artist with a portfolio spanning nearly 40 years, is currently on display in the National Gallery of Canada after Paterson was named one of eight recipients of the 2019 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts earlier this year.

A graduate of Innis College, Paterson’s videos, films and performances have appeared in Berlin, Seoul, Buenos Aires, Montréal and Toronto, among other places. He is an active programmer and curator for independent media and visual art exhibitions, including Cinematheque Ontario and Toronto’s Images Festival.

Speaking from his home, nestled above the Cameron House music hall in downtown Toronto, Paterson said he was humbled by the honour and in awe of his fellow award winners, which include Indigenous art curator Lee-Ann Martin and environmental artist Marlene Creates.

“It’s slightly unbelievable because, in some ways, [I think] ‘Me? Among that company?’” says Paterson, who sees some of his art as “conceptual one-liners” that take a critical eye to issues like language, technology, the human body, politics and capitalism.

The Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts were created in 1999 by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Governor General of Canada. Paterson’s award – in the Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award category – recognizes a body of work and its contribution to visual arts, the media arts and contemporary practices in the field.

The winners are selected by a peer committee and receive a $25,000 prize. Governor General Julie Payette presented the 2019 award recipients with a bronze medallion during a March 28 ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.

Governor General Julie Payette and Andrew James Patterson at Rideau Hall earlier this year (photo by LS Anne-Marie Brisson, Rideau Hall © OSGG, 2019)

Paterson’s vast body of work draws upon literature, philosophy, queer aesthetics, performance art and music. His work “defies singular categorization,” says his nominator Scott Miller Berry, a filmmaker and festival organizer based in Toronto.

Paterson began his career as a musician – he was the main vocalist and writer for the post-punk band The Government between 1977 and 1982. His passion for music and art was deeply influenced by his parents. His father, G. R. Paterson, was a U of T professor emeritus in pharmaceutical chemistry and a big fan of classical music. His mother, Ida Paterson, was a painter.

But Paterson wanted to evolve, to be more “than just a career musician,” he says.

Paterson found the experience of attending U of T in the 1970s to be “stimulating.” Between courses in English and film studies, and time spent at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse and Hart House Theatre, Paterson was able to explore his different interests – a practice that he continued throughout his career.

He also got involved with VideoCabaret, a Toronto-based mixed-media company that integrates music and video. “There was all this video around, so I started going, ‘What could I do with the medium?’” Paterson recalls.

Paterson went on to produce small animation projects and performance-based pieces. He has published numerous books – including fiction and art commentary – and edited or co-edited numerous essays and anthologies. In 2018, he published a novelette, Not Joy Division, a fictional mystery that incorporates social media elements.

To this day, Paterson refuses to limit his artistic reach, choosing instead to maintain a relationship to defined art “communities,” he says. “One thing that runs through my work is this ‘meta’ in relation to art worlds, or so-called ‘art communities.’ I try to avoid using the definite article with the word ‘community’ as much as possible.

“I don’t like gatekeepers.”

Did a retired U of T professor discover a lost Vincent van Gogh sketchbook?

ullahnor — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 16:14:56 +0000

Did a retired U of T professor discover a lost Vincent van Gogh sketchbook?

ullahnor Tue, 11/15/2016 - 11:14

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Vincent van Gogh's 1889 "self-portrait." One of 43 such self portraits from the artist, this one is from the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (photo by rocor via Flickr)

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In her book Vincent van Gogh: The Lost Arles Sketchbook, retired U of T art history professor Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, an internationally renowned expert on Vincent van Gogh, says she found a lost sketchbook belonging to the artist.

But the book, which was published around the world today, is now generating controversy. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam says the drawings in the "lost" sketchbook are "imitations of Van Gogh's work and that the notebook raises many questions."

"At an earlier stage (in 2008 and 2012), our experts gave their opinion on its authenticity – an opinion not mentioned in the publication – at the request of various owners of drawings from the album," the museum says in a statement on its website. "Our researchers and curators are happy about every new work that can correctly be attributed to Van Gogh, but on the basis of high-quality photographs sent to them of 56 of the 65 drawings now published, they concluded that these could not be attributed to Vincent van Gogh."

Welsh-Ovcharov has said the lost sketchbook contains drawings from what art historians believe is the most significant period of Van Gogh's life. At the time, he was living in the south of France. He produced some of his most famous paintings, but he was also suffering from a mental illness that led him to cut off his ear.

Welsh-Ovcharov is considered one of the world's top experts on Van Gogh. She taught art history for more than 25 years at U of T Mississauga's department of fine art in what was then-called Erindale College.

The globally recognized art historian was the first non-French art scholar to be invited to curate the inaugural exhibition for the Musée D'Orsay in France. In 1994, she was awarded the “Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académique“ for her scholarly contributions to French art history. She also curated exhibitions on the work of Van Gogh and his contemporaries including "Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism" (Art Gallery of Ontario, Vincent van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam).

Read the Globe and Mail story on her discovery

Her articles have appeared in the British Art Journal, The Burlington Magazine, and she was a contributor to an exhibition “The Mystical Landscape: From Claude Monet to Emily Carr,” organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2016, and the Musée D’Orsay in Paris in 2017.

Three years ago, she was visiting France when she was asked by a local art scholar to look at an album that could contain some of the Van Gogh's material.

"When I opened it up, the first thing I said was, 'No, unbelievable!'" Welsh-Ovcharov told CBC News. "The first drawing that I took out and held in my hands, it was a moment of total mystical experience: 'Oh my goodness, this is impossible!'"

But the museum says that after examining a number of the original drawings in 2013 and now reading Welsh-Ovcharov's new book, their experts have not changed their minds.

"Their opinion, based on years of research on Van Gogh's drawings in the museum's own collection and elsewhere...is that the drawings in Vincent van Gogh: The Lost Arles Sketchbook are imitations of Van Gogh's drawings," the museum says on its website. "The experts examined the style, technique, materials and iconography of the drawings in the sketchbook. Among their conclusions were that it contains distinctive topographical errors and that its maker based it on discoloured drawings by Van Gogh."

Visual Arts

Researchers explore how we depict and perceive emotions through colour and line in visual art

'I don't like gatekeepers': Mixed-media artist Andrew James Paterson wins Governor General’s Award

Did a retired U of T professor discover a lost Vincent van Gogh sketchbook?

Read the Globe and Mail story on her discovery

Read the CBC News story