Emotion and Perception: A Case Study of Aesthetic Response to Frith's Narrative Painting "The Railway Station"

This study intends to exam Clive Bell’s theory of significant form. For Bell, a painting could not be a work of art if line and color were used to recount anecdotes, express ideas, and indicate the lifestyle of an age. In his influential book Art, Bell claimed that William Powell Frith’s famous narrative painting The Railway Station was not a work of art. This paper used Frith’s painting as the subject to explore whether viewers’ aesthetic responses to a narrative painting would be affected by their perceptive awareness of image. Statistical data showed that, contrary to Bell’s criticism, the artistic value of the work was confirmed by viewers’ responses, demonstrating that he underestimated the attractiveness of representational painting. The results of this study partly supported Bell’s argument. Comparing with artist’s achievement of realistic representation, the viewers were indeed unmoved by the effects of idea communication and emotional expression in the painting. No significant association was found between viewers’ perceptive awareness and their aesthetic judgments, suggesting that visual attraction could be more critical than cognitive information for viewers’ aesthetic responses to a work of art.