Why do people bother with art at all? When you think about it, dealing with art is often hard. Was Hamlet really hung up on his mother? How do we tell, and does that way of looking at things really help us to grasp the play better? Who is this guy Godot we seem to be waiting for? The Mona Lisa's smile means just what? How does Picasso's Nightfisbing in Antibes speak to us? How does Bart6k's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta make sense to our ears?
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David N. Perkins (1988) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched one closely related paper. Consider it for comparative context: