Paintings can be interpreted as the product of the complex neural machinery that translates physical light signals into behavior, experience, and emotion. The brain mechanisms responsible for vision and perception have been sculpted during evolution and further modified by cultural exposure and development. By closely examining artists' paintings and practices, we can discover hints to how the ...

Numerous economic studies have attempted to empirically document the profitability of investment in various collectibles including coins, violins, wine, antique furniture, and paintings. With profitability information, the collector will have some idea of the expected consumption cost of collecting (the residual between alternative financial returns and those of the collectible), and thus be in...

While it is difficult to imagine the way someone with mental illness perceives the world, paintings produced by mental illness sufferers with artistic talents offer a hint of this experience. Here we analyze these images in terms of statistics related to low-level visual processing. It is known that art in general possesses regular spatial frequency amplitude spectra, probably due to factors in...

There are many compositions artists use in their abstract paintings. A great way to practice your abstract art is to pick a composition style and then work through studies.

BACKGROUND A microclimate monitoring study was conducted in 2008 aimed at assessing the conservation risks affecting the valuable wall paintings decorating Ariadne's House (Pompeii, Italy). It was found that thermohygrometric conditions were very unfavorable for the conservation of frescoes. As a result, it was decided to implement corrective measures, and the transparent polycarbonate sheets c...

In three studies we investigated the question of whether children consider the attributes of the artist (sentience, age level, affective style, emotion) when making judgments about the traces (drawings) made by that artist. In Study 1, 2–5-year-old children were asked to find pictures drawn by a machine, an adult, an older and a younger child. Results indicated that children younger than 4 year...

Relationship between genius and mental illness has always been an issue of interest and controversy. Creative people in arts have been more prone to mental illness as compared to the men of science. Asylums of yesteryears in England, France and Spain have had eminent artists such as Hogarth, Dadd, Van Gough and Goya either as residents or as records of the scenes in those hospitals. These relat...