CHASING SCIENCE CULTURE


GIVE ME GESTALT! 
PREFERENCE FOR CUBIST 
ARTWORKS REVEALING HIGH 
DETECTABILITY OF OBJECTS 
Claudia Muth1, Robert Pepperell2, Claus-
Christian Carbon1, 
1Department of General Psychology and 
Methodology, University of Bamberg, 
96047 Bamberg, Germany 
2Cardiff School of Art & Design, Cardiff 
Metropolitan University, Cardiff CF24 
0SP, UK 
E-mail: <claudia.muth@uni-
bamberg.de> 

Submitted: <leave for Editor to date> 

Abstract 
In cubist paintings by Picasso, Braque and Gris it is 
possible to detect everyday objects like guitars, 
bottles or jugs, although they are often difficult to 
decipher. In this art-science collaborative study we 
found that participants without expertise in cubism 
appreciated cubist artworks more if they were able 
to detect concealed objects in them. The finding of 
this strong correlation between detectability and 
preference offers wide implications for art history 
and human cognition as it points to a mechanism 
that allows us to derive pleasure from searching for 
and finding meaningful patterns. 
 
Keywords: Art perception, Gestalt, Ambiguity, 
Indeterminacy, Cubism 
 
Introduction 
The visual system continually constructs 
order out of highly ambiguous and insta-
ble stimuli we receive from the world. 
Artworks often exploit, reveal, and play 
with the perceptual and cognitive mech-
anisms involved by presenting viewers 
with prediction-errors [1], contradictions 
[2], indeterminacy [3,4], or ambiguity [3, 
5] inducing elaboration of various inter-
pretations at the same time. Cubist paint-
ings are especially open to interpretation 
as they are full of everyday objects that 
are concealed because they are depicted 
in a fragmented way that makes immedi-
ate recognition very difficult. In this 
paper we show that viewers’ apprecia-
tion of cubist paintings is closely linked 
to their ability to identify an object, or a 
Gestalt, respectively, from partial clues.  

Many art theorists and perception re-
searchers have proposed such a relation 
between appreciation and emerging or-
der from disorder, ambiguity, or inde-
terminacy. The philosopher of art 
George Dickie stresses the recognition of 
“uniformity in variety” or “simplicity in 
complexity” [6] while according to the 
psychologists Hekkert and Leder: “we 
like to look at patterns that allow us to 
see relationships or create order” [7]. 
Reber et al. claim that increased fluency 
in processing a complex topic enhances 
appreciation [8]. Meanwhile, Van de 

Cruys and Wagemans suggest that art-
works often violate viewers’ perceptual 
predictions, and that they are then able to 
derive aesthetic pleasure from reducing 
the cognitive uncertainty induced by 
those violations [1]. The neurologists 
Ramachandran and Hirstein argue that 
perceptual grouping processes in general 
are linked with the neural structures 
known as the ‘reward system’ [9].  

But despite the frequent claims that 
detecting Gestalt, or recognizable form, 
in challenging visual stimuli is inherent-
ly pleasing, to date this has not been 
demonstrated empirically. In this study 
we chose as stimuli cubist artworks by 
Picasso, Braque and Gris because they 
offer a high degree of visual indetermi-
nacy and ambiguity yet at the same time 
are full of recognizable depicted objects 
[3, 4]. Thus, they provide a perfect op-
portunity to test whether the viewers’ 
ability to detect these objects is linked to 
their appreciation of the paintings.  

 
Participants 
Twenty participants (Mage= 23.8 yrs; 
range: 19-36 yrs; 13 females) volun-
teered in the study. They had normal or 
corrected-to-normal vision ensured by a 
Standard Snellen’s eye chart test and by 
a short version of the Ishihara color vi-
sion test. They had no expertise in cubist 
art. 
 
 
 
 
 

Apparatus and stimuli 
Stimuli consisted of photographs of 120 
cubist artworks by Pablo Picasso (47), 
Georges Braque (33), and Juan Gris 
(40); all of them being adapted to 450 
pixels width and 600 pixels height (if the 
proportion was not 4.5:6 we cropped the 
pictures accordingly). The participants 
sat with an approximate distance of 55 
cm in front of a LG W2220P screen with 
22-inch screen size at a resolution of 
1680 × 1050 pixels yielding a visual 
angle of about 16.6° x 21.6° for the 
stimuli.  
 
Procedure and results 
The study was structured in two blocks, 
each showing the stimuli in a random-
ized order. During the first block, sub-
jects had to rate the pictures on liking. 
During the second block, participants 
rated how well they could detect objects 
within the artwork. All ratings were cho-
sen from a 7-point-Likert-scale from 1 
(‘not at all’) to 7 (‘very’). 

For both variables we aggregated data 
across participants revealing a strong 
relationship between the detectability of 
objects within cubist artworks and liking 
indicated by a Pearson correlation of R= 
.781, p<.0001 (see Fig. 1). 
 
Discussion 
The results show that Gestalt formation 
is closely linked to appreciation; viewers 
much preferred paintings in which they 
were able to decipher concealed objects. 
This finding is in line with previous pro-
posals about the link between detecting 

Fig. 1. Data points represent detectability of objects and liking per stimulus revealing that 
the better the participants could detect objects within an artwork, the more they liked it. 
The amount of explained variance is 60.9% indicated by R2. The equation gives the rela-
tionship of X (Detectability) and Y (Liking).  

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order and appreciation [7], reward by 
uncertainty reduction [1] and the detec-
tion of simplicity in complexity [6, 8]. 
We did not replicate previous findings 
showing that over-familiar [10] or insuf-
ficiently ambiguous stimuli [5] had a 
negative effect on appreciation. 

The reason why Gestalt recognition is 
linked to positive appreciation in the 
case of cubist paintings, however, may 
not be due merely to the fact that hitherto 
objects invisible are recognized, or be-
cause enjoyment is derived from in-
creased fluency in coping with a 
complex perceptual process [8]. As the 
art historian Dario Gamboni demon-
strates, cubist paintings of this period 
(1909-1914) never show explicit or 
complete objects but rather ‘potential’ 
objects, as he puts it, which cannot be 
fully resolved [3]. Ernst Gombrich points 
out that the experience of reading a cub-
ist painting is unsettling because the 
paintings present us with “contrary clues 
which will resist all attempts to apply the 
test of consistency…We will always 
come across a contradiction somewhere 
which compels us to start afresh” [11]. 
Another art historian, Robert Hughes, 
writes of the paintings that “as a descrip-
tion of a fixed form they are useless”; 
their value lies in the way they “report 
on multiple meanings, on process” [12].  

Unlike images that offer effortless and 
determinate recognition cubist paintings 
present the viewer with ongoing percep-
tual indeterminacy while offering clues 
to enable Gestalt recognition. Our find-
ing of increased preference for paintings 
revealing high detectability of objects 
might then be attributable not just to the 
mere recognition of forms but also to the 
fact that recognition is occurring against 
a background of ongoing uncertainty. 
The principle of ‘uniformity in variety’ 
noted above highlights this point while 
holding provided that we can appreciate 
the qualities of uniformity and variety at 
the same time. As the critic and early 
supporter of cubism Guillaume Apolli-
naire emphasized, this requires great 
involvement and effort of the viewer, 
which enhances aesthetic pleasure [13].  

This link between elaboration and ap-
preciation is supported by empirical 
studies showing that appreciation in-
creases with the elaboration of innova-
tive material but not with that of 
conventional and easy stimuli [14] – a 
result that is consistent across different 
types of measurement [15] and different 
age groups [16]. In line with Van de 
Cruys and Wagemans we thus propose 
that it is the presence of novelty, uncer-

tainty or other challenges evoked by a 
stimulus that promotes dynamic aesthetic 
processes [1], not the fluency or imme-
diacy of recognition per se. Further stud-
ies might assess in which way Gestalt 
detection influences those dynamics: is 
there an immediate effect of the insight 
[17] during Gestalt recognition on aes-
thetic appreciation and how does this 
relation unfold with time?  

Getting the balance right between un-
recognizability and recognizability 
seems critical to maximizing aesthetic 
response. This can be illustrated by a key 
episode in the history of the development 
of cubism: In 1910 Picasso spent the 
summer in the Spanish town of Ca-
daqués where he produced a large body 
of highly abstract paintings in which 
objects were barely discernible. Art his-
torians now refer to this as the ‘hermetic’ 
phase of cubism. Picasso’s main dealer, 
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, declined to 
buy any of these works (with one excep-
tion) – a sign that he had concerns about 
selling them on to collectors [18]. Prob-
ably stung by this (the dealer had pur-
chased nearly all of the artist’s cubist 
works up to that point) Picasso quickly 
embarked on a major portrait of Kahn-
weiler (1910, Art institute of Chicago) 
which is notable for the reintroduction 
into the cubist language of much more 
identifiable cues about the objects being 
depicted [19]. Kahnweiler soon resumed 
purchasing Picasso's works, which there-
after explicitly avoided indecipherable 
abstraction.  

Together with our empirical findings, 
this episode suggests that part of the 
reason we value perceptually challenging 
images, and cubist paintings in particu-
lar, is that they offer us an opportunity to 
wrestle with our own perceptual pro-
cesses and discover hidden patterns and 
order. When this process of discovery 
becomes too difficult appreciation is 
diminished; when the struggle is reward-
ed then it is increased. The motivation 
for and success of the perceivers’ efforts 
are likely to be linked to the interplay 
between determinacy and ambiguity or 
order and disorder, which the cubist art-
ists were highly successful at manifest-
ing in their works.  

Our findings have relevance beyond 
aesthetic perception and art history as 
they might point to a general principle of 
cognition: we derive pleasure from stim-
uli in which we can detect meaning and 
ambiguity at the same time. Understand-
ing the appreciation of works of art thus 
offers insights into the way the human 
mind operates.  

References 
1. S. Van de Cruys and J. Wagemans, “Putting 
reward in art: A tentative prediction error account 
of visual art,” i-Perception 2, No. 9 (2011) pp. 
1035-1062.  

2. Meinhardt (2009), 
<http://www.artnet.de/magazine/uber-den-
gedachtnisverlust-der-gegenwartskunst>, accessed 
December 2010. 

3. D. Gamboni, Potential images: Ambiguity and 
indeterminacy in modern art (London: Reaktion 
Books, 2004). 

4. R. Pepperell, “Connecting art and the brain. An 
artist's perspective on visual indeterminacy,” Fron-
tiers in Human Neuroscience 5 (2011) pp. 1-12. 

5. M. Jakesch and H. Leder, “Finding meaning in 
art: Preferred levels of ambiguity in art apprecia-
tion,” The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psy-
chology 62, No. 11 (2009) pp. 2105-2112. 

6. G. Dickie, Introduction to aesthetics: An analytic 
approach (New York: Oxford University Press, 
1997). 

7. P. Hekkert and H. Leder, “Product aesthetics”, H. 
N. J. Schifferstein and P. Hekkert, eds., Product 
Experience (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2007) p. 262. 

8. R. Reber, N. Schwarz, and & P. Winkielman, 
“Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure. Is beau-
ty in the perceiver's processing experience?,” Per-
sonality and Social Psychology Review 8, No. 4 
(2004) pp. 364-382.  

9. V. S. Ramachandran and W. Hirstein, “The 
science of art. A neurological theory of aesthetic 
experience,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 6, 
No. 6-7 (1999) pp. 15-51. 

10. D. E. Berlyne, Studies in the new experimental 
aesthetics: Steps toward an objective psychology of 
aesthetic appreciation (Oxford, U.K.: Hemisphere, 
1974). 

11. E. Gombrich, Art & Illusion: A study in the 
psychology of pictorial representation (London: 
Phaidon, 1960). 

12. R. Hughes, The shock of the new. Art and the 
century of change (London: Thames & Hudson, 
1991) p. 32. 

13. G. Apollinaire, Les peintres cubistes. Médita-
tions Esthétiques (Paris: E. Figuière, 1913). 

14. C. C. Carbon and H. Leder, “The Repeated 
Evaluation Technique (RET). A method to capture 
dynamic effects of innovativeness and attractive-
ness,” Applied Cognitive Psychology 19, No. 5 
(2005) pp. 587-601.  

15. C. C. Carbon, L. Michael, and H. Leder, “De-
sign evaluation by combination of repeated evalua-
tion technique and measurement of electrodermal 
activity,” Research in Engineering Design 19, No. 
2-3 (2008) pp. 143-149.  

16. C. C. Carbon and J. P. L. Schoormans, “Rigidity 
rather than age as a limiting factor to appreciate 
innovative design,” Swiss Journal of Psychology 
71, No. 2 (2012) pp. 51-58.  

17. W. Köhler, Die Aufgabe der Gestaltpsychologie 
(Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1971). 

18. J. Richardson, J., A life of Picasso: 1907-1917: 
The painter of modern life (London: Jonathan Cape, 
1996). 

19. R. Penrose, “Picasso's Portrait of Kahnweiler,” 
The Burlington Magazine 116, No. 852 (1974) pp. 
124-133.  

 

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	Give me Gestalt! Preference for cubist artworks revealing high detectability of objects