Responses to Altered Pictures

In Expt. I 30 transparencies of representational pictures were used. Fifteen of the pictures were projected from the wrong side to produce right‐left reversal. Thirty subjects judged the correctness or otherwise of each painting's orientation: only 53 per cent of these judgements were correct. In Expt. II details in 16 reproductions of abstract pictures were rearranged to form alternative versions. Paired original and altered versions were presented twice; on the first occasion the 60 subjects indicated which versions they preferred and on the second occasion they guessed which was the original version of each pair. Generally, the detection of original versions was low (62 per cent) and original versions were preferred on only 55 per cent of trials. Aesthetic experiments in which works of art have been deliberately altered are rare. It is argued that such alterations are technically feasible and may afford valuable ways of testing aesthetic theories.