The representational change as a mechanism of aesthetic experience during the perception of artistic paintings

Context and relevance. The article is devoted to the study of the representational change as one of the mechanisms of aesthetic perception of painting. The relationship between such phenomena as insight and intellectual fine art, related to the practice of obtaining pleasure of the mind, is considered. This pleasure is based on the violation of expectations caused by the initial representation, the representational change and the creation of a new interpretation. The representational change is accompanied by an emotional reaction. One of the ways to the representational change in the perception of painting is the discrepancy between the title of the painting and the primary superficial interpretation of the image. The paper presents the results of an experimental study of the influence of the role of the title, the representational change on the aesthetic experience of the viewer and the severity of the aha-experience. Objective: to test the assumption about the fundamental similarity of the mechanisms of subjective experiences during insight and perception of works of art, including a change in the primary superficial interpretation of the image, which underlies intellectual art. Hypothesis. Paintings with titles that change representation (intellectual) have higher scores on the scales: interest, aesthetic pleasure and higher scores on the battery of A. Danek scales for identifying the degree of expression of the aha-experience than paintings with titles that do not change the initial representation (descriptive) and paintings without titles. Methods and materials. The study involved 60 subjects, aged 17—27 years (M = 19.5, SD = 1.49), including 3 men, 57 women. This article attempts to compare the processes of insightful solution and perception of art within the framework of a single phenomenology, using tools that have not previously been used in studies devoted to the perception of art — a modification of the questionnaire for assessing insight by A. Danek. Results. It is shown that paintings with a title that changes the initial representation arouse greater interest, as well as higher scores on the aha-experience scales, than paintings with titles that do not change the representation or paintings without a title. Conclusions. One of the mechanisms of aesthetic perception of intellectual art is a change in the viewer's representation due to the violation of his expectations. One of the ways of such a change in representation in the perception of painting is the title of the painting, which changes the initial representation caused by a superficial interpretation of the image.