Linking Visual Properties and Aesthetic Attractiveness Through Perceived Abstraction in Abstract Art

Abstract art tends to receive lower and more variable aesthetic ratings than representational art among non-expert viewers, yet the role of abstraction in aesthetic judgment remains underexplored. We investigated whether perceived abstraction accounted for part of the relations between quantitative visual properties and aesthetic attractiveness. Three hundred paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, and Piet Mondrian were analyzed using five image measures: local subsymmetrical complexity (LSC), deviation of the center of mass (DCM), Fourier spectral slope (FS), fractal dimension (FD), and color entropy (CE). Fifty-two non-expert viewers rated each painting for perceived abstraction and aesthetic attractiveness. Mediation analyses showed significant indirect associations of LSC, DCM, FD, and CE with attractiveness through perceived abstraction. These findings suggest that, in modernist abstract art, aesthetic judgment is linked to how formal visual properties are perceived as abstract, with greater visual order and formal reduction associated with higher perceived abstraction and lower aesthetic attractiveness.