Who’s interested in contemporary paintings with semantic and syntactic violations?
Who’s interested in contemporary paintings with semantic and syntactic violations?

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary art often contains disruption of form and content, here operationalised as syntactic and semantic violations. The presented research examined whether violated paintings evoke interest in viewers and who in terms of personality and expertise would be interested in this type of art. Expert (N=37) and naive viewers (N=56) appraised 20 paintings (divided into four groups, i.e. no violation, single syntactic or semantic violation, and both violations) and filled in measuresof Big Five and Need for Closure. In general, conflictual paintings evoked more interest in viewers, however the effect was significant only for syntactic violations. No interactions between types of violation, individual differences, and appraisal were observed. Expertise did not predict reaction of interest. In turn, we found that individuals high on Openness and Need for Closure and low on Neuroticism experienced more interest towards contemporary paintings.

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