The Affective Tone of Lines: Experimental Researches.

Literature about Art very often gives us descriptions of masterpieces, wherein pure lines are characterized by adjectives that indicate a more or less emotional quality.Thus authors used to write about melancholy lines in paintings by Perugino, quiet lines in certain classical schools, violent lines in the barocque art, etc.Out of these facts there arises a problem.Is the affective character of the line a quality which is bound to the line itself, or is it suggested by the literary subject of the masterpiece?Furthermore, is this quality a phenomenon that appears equally to different observers?In order to throw light upon these questions, the following experiments were undertaken.The procedure was very simple.The persons who acted as subjects were asked to draw lines, each of which was to express the affective tone of an adjective given verbally.In the first series 48 adjectives, divided into 13 groups of synonyms, were used as follows:I. Sad, melancholy,