Lateral Organization in Pictures and Aesthetic Preference: IV. Construction with Original vs Mirror-Image Elements

Abstract

Six pictures by Western artists were selected from a group of 10 reproduced as sets of transparent component overlays. For each work university students, 34 women and 16 men, were presented with one set of disassembled overlays, all either in original orientation or all laterally reversed. Their task was to select that assemblage of elements which created the best picture. Subjects' constructions confirmed that in each picture there is a constancy of structure that is independent of lateral organization. This fact coexists with whatever differential effects eliminating a component may achieve as a function of picture orientation. Pictures differ, it is suggested: (a) in the distribution of contributions which individual components make to the organization of the work and (b) in their resistance to fragmentation. Lateral elements in particular are expendable. Susceptibility to fragmentation is greater for mirror-image than original representations.

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