Article:

Dem Auge auf der Spur: Eine historische und empirische Studie zur Blickbewegung beim Betrachten von Gemälden

As part of an interdisciplinary DFG funded research project between Art History and Psychology we studied gaze movements from 1.) a historical point of view – examining art literature, esp. descriptions of art works; 2.) an empirical point of view – using an eye-tracker, questionnaires and interviews. We collected and keyworded more than 500 text passages that address eye-movements in the context of art beholding in order to explain the history of the description of eye movements in art literature. In a second step we analyzed the relation between these literary descriptions and the physiological processes of perception. We found out that the gaze movement patterns of the test persons do in fact resemble the structure of the paintings similarly to the way in which gaze movement paths are described in the historical text passages. We also examined in which way the instruction to speak about paintings while looking at them influences the test persons’ gaze movement patterns. As to the influence of instructions on the process of perception, our preliminary results have strong implications for the constructive role of language in the beholding of visual arts.