Abstract

A critical and theoretical review on the modern approaches to painting styles and the possibilities of describing them based on perceptual theories was made to develop a model capturing the relationships between painting styles and aesthetic impressions. It is assumed that a painting style can be defined by perceptual features characterizing a painting, to the extent that they affect the viewers' aesthetic responses. With an analytic point of view, relationships between the subject and style of expression and the aesthetic impression were discussed along the presumed stages of conceiving a painting ideation by a painter. In a critical review on modern approaches to painting styles, six criteria of completedness, generality, systematic formulation, parsimony, objectiveness, and independence were applied to investigate the applicability and reliability of Arnheim, Wölfflin, Berlyn, and Moles' systems for describing painting styles. Based on a conclusion derived from this critical review and theoretical propositions for the importance of perceptual features as the determinants of a painting style, a set of 16 perceptual features related to form, color, depth, and vantage point were suggested as a viable system of describing painting styles and its applicability was discussed with a couple of modern paintings.