Ancuta Mortu: A Script-Based Understanding of Art Appreciation

Czech Society for Aesthetics cordially invites you to a lecture by Dr Ancuta Maria Mortu that will take place on 8 December from 5:30 pm to 7 pm in Jan Čejka Gallery in Campus Hybernská.

Annotation of the lecture:

In cognitive psychology, scripts are defined as mental structures that play an important role in organising experiences occurring frequently by arranging them into conventionalised conceptual sequences or “knowledge-structures.” I argue that the appreciation of an artwork relies on art-historical, script-based, predictions, or approximations about the place a work occupies in a tradition of art (Gombrich, 1960; Ucko,1977; Wollheim 1990), rather than being based on mere perceptual knowledge and everyday perceptual routines. To get a grasp on script-based predictions –i.e., predictions that take as their object temporal relationships between works and their place in art history – I identify their features within a broader typology of predictions and then examine how such predictions impact art appreciation. I propose that this happens by correcting predictive failure (Van de Cruys, Wagemans 2011) with important consequences for the affective value that colours our appreciative acts.