Why Are We Drawn to Art?

The primary author of this article is Dr. Pablo Tinio.

Art wakes up and stirs emotions. How does this happen? This is the big question that Dr. Katherine Cotter, psychologist at the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, asked in a lecture in the Art Seeking Understanding series. Her new research, published in The Empirical Studies in the Arts, shows how tightly related are thoughts and feelings we have about art when we visit museums.

Julie Le Brun (1780–1819) Looking in a Mirror

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Bequest of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 2019

Imagine visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and coming upon the painting, Julie Le Brun (1780–1819) Looking in a Mirror (1787), by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. The work is eye-catching with its rich, warm colors and charming subject: a young child with rosy cheeks and adorable outfit looking at herself in a mirror. The name in the title suggests that the artist was Julie’s mother. The label will confirm this. What a delightful, tender moment between a doting mother and her child. Before parting with the piece, you might snap a photo of it and later that day send it to a friend who shares your appreciation for art.

While your friend might share your appreciation for art, they may not share your perspective on the Le Brun painting. What you consider charming they might consider creepy. They notice that something just does not seem right. The image in the mirror does not match the position of Julie’s head. There is a bit of a blank stare, as if she is hiding something. The image of Julie could easily be taken from a horror movie, like Poltergeist II (1986). “They’rrrrrreeee baaaaaack!”

This is part of the allure of art. The emotions people get from looking at art are intense and varied, and what one might feel after looking at Julie’s painting could be completely different from what another person feels. Multiple experiences and emotions are welcome.

What does art make us feel?

Dr. Cotter and her team of international researchers wanted to understand the complex reactions that people have when visiting museums, especially emotional reactions to art. What, and how varied, are the emotions? Do art viewers experience only a few emotions or many different types? If many different types, are some more dominant than others?

One of Dr. Cotter’s studies was conducted at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, a modern and contemporary museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. Museum visitors completed surveys before and immediately after their museum visit. The survey presented the visitors a list of 10 emotions and asked them which of those they felt during their time in the museum: happy, sad, interested, disgusted, awe-inspired, angry, bored, relaxed, curious, annoyed. The scientists were asking about the visitors’ emotional portfolio during the entirety of their visit—how many emotions did they experience and whether any of them were more strongly felt than others?

The results showed two important things. First, although museum visitors described experiencing as few as three and as many as 10 emotions, on average, they experienced seven different emotions. In other words, art makes us feel many things. The second key finding is that not one emotion was reported more strongly than others. Art expands our emotional range.

How our thoughts and feelings come together

It is not just emotions that are stirred by art. In another study, Dr. Cotter and colleagues wanted to uncover how thoughts and emotions come together in looking at art. They conducted a study at the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Austria. As visitors exited various galleries within the museum, they were asked to describe their experience. Again, scientists gave people a long list of emotions, from sadness and fear to joy and amusement, to surprise and wonder and more. This time researchers also asked about people’s thoughts as they visited various galleries: whether they had sudden insights, whether they experienced a sense of profundity, whether they understood the artist’s intention, whether they changed their mind about something.

The analyses showed five clusters of thoughts and emotions:

(1) Transformation described peak moments of profound experiences illustrated by awe and wonder.

(2) Negativity was about stress or embarrassment.

(3) Facile experiences were marked by disappointment or boredom.

(4) Positive encounters evoked serenity and joy.

(5) Novelty was about being surprised and finding insight.

What the research showed was how rich and complex the experience of art is in a museum. We do not only go to a museum to see something we like. Rather, in one building, we encounter much of the span of human emotions and find everything from cognitive confusion to transformative change.

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What does the latest research show as a whole about why we are drawn to art museums? By the time we walk out of the museum, we might have seen hundreds of different types of artworks: abstract paintings that might require some background knowledge to interpret, highly conceptual art that plays with our eyes and minds, political and activist art that challenge our thinking and beliefs, and Julie Le Brun looking in a mirror.

The impact of each of these on us adds up, and we leave the museum with a portfolio of thoughts and emotions, important insights about ourselves, society, and the world. Art is a way to experience a full range of what being human means.

Dr. Pablo Tinio, Department of Educational Foundations, Montclair State University.