Another Slant on the Oblique Effect in Drawings and Paintings

Abstract

Latto and Russell-Duff (2002) showed that artists used more horizontal and vertical than oblique lines in museum paintings, concluding that this preference was a reflection of the traditional (presumably neurogically mediated) “oblique effect.” Alternative explanations, however, could be that oblique orientations have a unique status as a result of artistic training and tradition, and/or that a quadrilateral frame may induce such preferences, and/or that most of the paintings were representational, and the real world is more horizontal and vertical than oblique. Sixty-three undergraduates drew two pictures, one representational and the other abstract, on circular sheets of paper. Fewer oblique than horizontal or vertical lines were used in representational drawings. However, for abstract pictures there was no difference among the three orientations. Similar results occurred for line length. The average extent to which line angles departed from oblique was significantly less for abstract than representational pictures. It was concluded that the “oblique effect” reported by Latto and Russell-Duff could have been at least in part a reflection of the subject matter of the paintings rather than an inherent preference for horizontal and vertical orientations.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Appelle

(1972). Perception and discrimination as a function of stimulus orientation: The “oblique effect” in man and animals. Psychological Bulletin, 78, 266–278.

Andrews

D. P.

(1967a). Perception of contour orientation in the central fovea part I. Short lines. Vision Research, 7, 975–997.

Andrews

D. P.

(1967b). Perception of contour orientation in the central fovea part II. Spatial integration. Vision Research, 7, 999–1013.

Arnheim

(1974). Art and visual perception: A psychology of the creative eye (Rev. ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Arnheim

(1988). The power of the center: A study of composition in the visual arts. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bouma

, & Andriessen

J. J.

(1968). Perceived orientation of isolated line segments. Vision Research, 8, 493–507.

Braddick

(1995). The many faces of motion perception. In Gregory

Harris

Heard

, & Rose

(Eds.), The artful eye (pp. 205–231). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Coppola

D. M.

Purves

H. R.

McCoy

A. N.

, & Purves

(1998). The distribution of oriented contours in the real world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95, 4002–4006.

Davidoff

J. B.

(1974). An observation concerning the preferred perception of the visual horizontal and vertical. Perception, 3, 47–48.

10.

Essock

E. A.

(1990). The influence of stimulus length on the oblique effect of contrast sensitivity. Vision Research, 30, 1243–1246.

11.

Foley

P. J.

(1962). Stimulus orientation and retinal summation. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 52, 474–475.

12.

Hayter

S. W.

(1965). Orientation, direction, cheirality, velocity and rhythm. In Kepes

(Ed.), The nature and art of motion (pp. 71–80). New York: George Braziller.

13.

Heeley

D. W.

, & Buchanan-Smith

H. M.

(1994). Evidence for separate, task dependent noise processes in orientation and size perception. Vision Research, 34, 2059–2069.

14.

Heeley

D. W.

, & Timney

(1988). Meridional anisotropies of orientation discrimination for sine wave gratings. Vision Research, 28, 337–344.

15.

Hubel

D. H.

, & Wiesel

T. N.

(1959). Receptive fields of single neurons in the cat's striate cortex. Journal of Physiology—London, 148, 574–591.

16.

Hubel

D. H.

, & Wiesel

T. N.

(1977). Functional architecture of macaque monkey visual cortex. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 198, 1–59.

17.

Latto

(1995). The brain of the beholder. In Gregory

Harris

Heard

, & Rose

(Eds.), The artful eye (pp. 66–94). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

18.

Latto

Brain

, & Kelly

(2000). An oblique effect in aesthetics: Homage to Mondrian (1872-1944). Perception, 29, 981–987.

19.

Latto

, & Russell-Duff

(2002). An oblique effect in the selection of line orientation by twentieth century painters. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 20, 49–60.

20.

Leibowitz

(1955). Some factors influencing the variability of vernier adjustments. American Journal of Psychology, 68, 266–273.

21.

Locher

Cornelis

Wagemans

, & Stappers

P. J.

(2001). Artists' use of compositional balance for creating visual displays. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 19, 213–227.

22.

Mori

, & Kataoka

(2004). Frame effects in visual search for line orientation. Perception & Psychophysics, 66, 303–327.

23.

Naeli

, & Harris

P. L.

(1976). Orientation of the diamond and the square. Perception, 5, 73–77.

24.

Ogilvie

J. C.

, & Taylor

M. M.

(1958). Effect of orientation on the visibility of fine wires. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 48, 628–629.

25.

Ogilvie

J. C.

, & Taylor

M. M.

(1959). Effect of length on the visibility of a fine line. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 49, 898–900.

26.

Smith

S. I.

(1962). Angular estimation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 46, 240–246.

27.

Taylor

J. F. A.

(1964). Design and expression in the visual arts. New York: Dover.

28.

Ward

J. L.

(1979). A piece of the action: Moving figures in still pictures. In Nodine

C. F.

& Fisher

D. F.

(Eds.), Perception and pictorial representation (pp. 246–259). New York: Praeger.

29.

Zeki

(1999). Inner vision: An exploration of art and the brain. New York: Oxford University Press.

30.

Zusne

(1970). Visual perception of form. New York: Academic Press.