No such thing as the female eye: ditching gender-binary categories in art perception
- Author(s)
- Anna Miscená, Vanessa Frentzen, Jozsef Arato, Zoya Dare, Helmut Leder, Raphael Rosenberg
- Abstract
We still know little about whether and how gender informs, shapes, or influences art perception. This multidisciplinary article investigates the role that gender might play in the perception of art through historical analyses and an eye-tracking experiment. We first traced how gender identity, sexual identity, and sexual orientation have been used to theorize the existence of a gender-binary difference between viewers in traditional aesthetics and feminist art theory. To test whether such claims reflect any measurable experience, we collected eye-tracking data from 84 participants and divided them into two groups of cisgender, heterosexual individuals by self-definition. Each group participated in two experiments; the first showed digital reproductions of mixed artworks, varying in subject, style, form, and size; the second showed artworks with only one figure, either explicitly showing sex-linked traits or not. In both cases, we measured the number of fixations, average fixation duration, and saccade amplitude as well as differences in the location of fixations and entropy. Our analysis did not detect any significant difference between the groups. This proves empirically, for the first time, that in spite of having been often reiterated in history, gender binary categories are not suitable for describing the visual perception of art.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Art History, Vienna Cognitive Science Hub, Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology
- External organisation(s)
- University of Vienna
- Journal
- Feminist Media Studies
- Pages
- 1-25
- No. of pages
- 25
- ISSN
- 1468-0777
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2024.2361043
- Publication date
- 08-2024
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 604019 Art history
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication, Gender Studies, Visual Arts and Performing Arts
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/68323ac3-0fa4-48ad-8efd-207db7861fc2