Can Art Change the Way We See?

Visual art is pervasive in modern society. From advertising to fine arts galleries, the visual arts play a visible role in how we view and understand the world. In this review, we consider research that speaks to whether our experiences with art can change the way we see. Numerous studies speak, often indirectly, to this question—addressing whether artists see things differently from nonartists. Specifically, we reviewed literature that investigates the ways artistic ability and artistic training interact with visual abilities from the perspective that artists can be described as experts in visual media. Some work suggests that those who identify as artists or undergo artistic training perform better than nonartists on measures of low-level vision, high-level perception, and visual cognition, and show differences in brain activity while engaged in perceptual or artistic tasks. Other studies do not support these conclusions, however, and report no differences between artists and nonartists. We conclude that experimentally designed and well controlled training studies are necessary to elucidate whether artistic training shapes the brain and its perceptual and cognitive processes or whether budding artists gravitate toward the visual arts because of existing visual abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]