Personal Meanings Inspired by the Beauty of Paintings

Abstract

For many generations, works of art have been a source for experiencing beauty. They add to the wealth of our culture because they convey universal themes and values. In this study, we treat paintings as a stimulus for personal story-telling. The purpose was to explore the affective quality of personal meanings present in autobiographical narratives. Our findings show that subjective ratings of the beauty of figurative paintings are linked with the quality and theme of personal experiences recalled in response to viewing them, but not related to the length of the story. ‘Beautiful’ pictures elicit descriptions of desirable experiences associated with passive contemplation and satisfied self-enhancement motive. ‘Non-beautiful’ pictures call to mind difficult experiences linked with frustration. The experts formulated longer self-narratives inspired by paintings rated beautiful in comparison to laypersons, and laypersons formulated longer self-narratives inspired by paintings rated not beautiful in comparison to experts. The results are discussed in connection to the nature of the aesthetic experience and specificity of personal maenings.