Being moved by modern abstract art

Although being emotionally moved has been studied as a key dimension of appreciation in visual art research, it remains unclear whether this response truly reflects the distinct emotion of being moved and whether such a complex emotion can be reliably elicited by abstract art in the absence of curatorial text, which provides minimal pre-existing narrative cues for meaning construction. This study explored whether and how such artworks can evoke the emotion of being moved. We conducted three exploratory studies triangulating across methods and contexts. Study 1 assessed how often being moved is related to visual art by collecting autobiographical moving memories using a modified <i>Geneva Affective Questionnaire</i>. Study 2 explored the characteristics of being moved by paintings. Conducted at the Heidi Horten Collection in Vienna, participants completed surveys before and after exhibition visits. They nominated up to five paintings that moved them and rated each selected work on its art features, emotional dimensions, bodily sensations, understanding, elicitors, and prosocial tendencies. Building on this, Study 3 aimed to explore whether being moved could emerge naturally without any priming or explicit guidance. Conducted in the same exhibition, this study used a broad, non-directive survey to measure whole-exhibition-visit emotion profile, including being moved without highlighting it. The results showed that strongly moving autobiographical memories were rarely related to visual art, whereas ratings of being moved in nominated paintings and whole-exhibition visits spanned the full intensity scale. Correlation analyses showed that understanding, elicitors, prosocial tendencies, as well as sadness and arousal, were significantly associated with being moved by paintings. In contrast, low-level visual features that were frequently nominated, such as color and composition, were not predictive, whereas content and personal relevance emerged as meaningful correlates. These exploratory findings suggest that even when viewing paintings without clear narratives and in the absence of curatorial text, viewers can experience genuine, though typically moderate, emotions of being moved. Such emotions appear to depend primarily on viewer-centered meaning-making and interpretive engagement. This not only highlights the cognitive demands involved in being moved by visual art but also underscores lay audiences' capacity to construct meaning during visual art appreciation.