Perception and cognition in visual art experience

Experiences with visual art are complex, multi-faceted, contextually dependent phenomena. This chapter provides an overview of the current state of knowledge with respect to psychological and neural responses to visual art, attempting to draw the varied literature on this topic together. It can be seen that historical theoretical and empirical approaches that focus on specific aspects of visual art experience, and particularly on the art object itself, still drive current research questions in the field. They also provide a foundation for the development of more comprehensive models of visual art experience that have emerged in recent years. Up to the present day, these models have been embedded in wider understanding of neural mechanisms of perception and cognition. To delineate neuroscientific perspectives on this topic the contribution of emotion-valuation, sensory-motor and knowledge-meaning systems to visual art experience are considered. In articulating our current understanding of psychological and neuroscientific basis of visual art experience, it is possible to draw out unresolved questions in the literature, highlighting promising avenues for research in the field