Abstract
In this text I propose to analyse the contributions of the Russian, Moscow-based, philosopher and pedagogue Tsezar Pavlovitch Baltalon (1855–1913) to psychological aesthetics. The experiments he organized took place in the first Psychological Laboratory of Moscow University in 1900. The repetition of Fechner’s experimental protocols with rectangles and the inclusion of new experimental insights into raised hypotheses permitted him to conclude that the aesthetic pleasure that comes from the perception of geometric forms does not depend on their formal mathematical properties and proportions. The geometric shapes organized according to different mathematical relations could cause similar impressions of aesthetic pleasure or, on the contrary, forms with equal mathematical proportions could cause displeasure. The aesthetics of geometrical shapes could scarcely be confined to psychology merely as the aesthetics of spatial relations. It should be understood mainly as the aesthetic of visual, motor, and other perceptions that occur as a consequence of a combination of sensations and feelings.
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Notes
- 1.
In 1899, Jean Larguier de Bancels (1876–1961) published an extensive article in “L’Année Psychologique” on the methods of experimental aesthetics. Gustav Fechner’s experiments were discussed by Charles Lalo (1877–1953) and the results were presented in the monograph “L’Esthétique Experimentale Contemporaine” (1908).
- 2.
Published a year before his death, in two volumes, this is a compilation of 14 articles on aspects of aesthetics written between 1865 and 1872 (Barasch, 1998). This text has been widely quoted but, to date, has not been translated into another language apart from one of its chapters, XIV “Various attempts to establish a basic form of beauty: experimental aesthetics, golden section, and square”, published in 1977 in the journal “Empirical Studies of the Arts”.
- 3.
In 1995, Philip Marshall and colleagues published an article entitled “Fechner Redux: A Comparison of the Holbein Madonnas”, presenting the results of a study replicating the experiment with black and white reproductions of the two works using university students. In the first study two questions were posed, and in the second, seven-point Likert scales were used to assess seven dimensions, including beauty, which among the dimensions assessed, according to the participants, did not discriminate between the qualities of the two paintings.
- 4.
According to Colin Martindale (1943–2008), Fechner did not propose a general aesthetic theory, but established a set of principles that have stood the test of time (see Empirical Aesthetics, In Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, vol. 2, p. 11, 1988).
- 5.
All the quotes translated from the Russian language are the responsibility of the author.
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Fróis, J.P. (2018). Psychological Aesthetics in Russia on the Threshold of the Nineteenth-Century. In: Tateo, L. (eds) An Old Melody in a New Song. Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92339-0_4
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