Art and Transformation
I argue that aesthetic emotions - such as interest, wonder, being moved - track the artistic value of art. That means they do two things. They keep us motivated to engage with an artwork we value while they at the same time structure our cognitive engagement.
Yet I also conduct large scale studies in Museums and with Public art, to explore the different functions art can have.
The Wonder Hypothesis
Wonder is the emotion that most directly tracks the artistic value of art.
The wonder hypothesis for art can be broken down into two sub-claims:
a) The emotion of wonder constitutes the evaluation of art as good or bad and motivates engagements with art as art, and
(b) the emotion of wonder constitutes a form of cognitive engagement that pertains to the expansive features of artworks and artifacts.
Figure 1. Schema of the functions of wonder as an epistemic and an aesthetic emotion. The items in the right column will be central for Affective Aesthetic Cognitivism.