As you enter your local art gallery, you let your eyes wander amongst the hanging paintings. A flash of bright colour captures your eye and you let your feet guide you to the few people crowded at the base of the frame on the wall. Observing the brushstrokes more closely now, you make out an image of a woman gazing out over a landscape. Something about the painting draws you in. Is it the splash of complementary reds and greens? Or is it the shapes and movement created from brushstrokes? You study the expression on the face of the lady in the frame and follow the gaze of her eyes….
Breaking your stare to glance around at the few people also at the base of the painting, you wonder… What do they think about this painting? Are they as visually attracted to this artwork as you are?
This has been a common question in the visual science space. Scientists Ramachandran and Hirstein attempted to address the more generalised question of ‘What makes art visually appealing?’ by creating The Eight Laws of Aesthetic Experience (1999). These are laws that attempt to define a framework explaining the visual science behind the experience of attraction to an artwork that’s felt by a viewer (1). In turn, perhaps providing a framework for artists to exploit, whether they are conscious or unconscious decisions.
Broadly, Ramachandran and Hirstein’s ‘Eight Laws’ detail that some visual techniques reinforce the networks in the brain that like forming and connecting patterns, thereby making an image more pleasurable for the viewer (1).
It is pertinent to note that these eight laws do not provide a strict regime that artwork must follow for it to be considered aesthetically pleasing. Combinations of these laws together, just one law alone, or perhaps none at all may be used in an artwork, as these eight laws are rather an attempt at defining scientifically a framework with which something can be viewed as aesthetically pleasing.
Law 1: The Peak Shift Principle
The first of the eight laws states that exaggerated elements in an artwork or image are attractive to a viewer. The foremost example of this is caricature, whereby artists amplify the differences in a person’s face or body in the artwork.
This law stems from testing done on animal discrimination learning: rats were taught to discriminate between a square and a rectangle (ratio of sides 3:2) and had an even greater response to a rectangle with a ratio of 4:1, illustrating an exaggerated response to exaggerated stimuli (1,2).
Ramachandran and Hirstein highlight that this law can apply broadly in art to exaggerated elements, whether it be the classical caricature art that you may find on a street in Europe or caricature in colour space - for example where the changing of a person’s skin tone with a severe greyish tone can represent illness. Exaggerations in highlights, shading and the perception of motion in artworks are other dimensions in which this effect can take place (2).
Furthermore, Ramachandran and Hirstein promote that “art is caricature” in itself: art attempts to capture the essence of something and amplify it for the viewer’s pleasure. It’s postulated that the exaggeration of something beyond what can naturally occur provides a “super stimulus” (1,2) to the brain, as neural networks are more powerfully activated in contrast to the original object.
Law 2: Perceptual Grouping
This second law proposes that grouping things together in images aids in delineating objects in the visual field, which is an early visual learning function. By segregating elements due to colour, movement, or the form (such as a repeating pattern) and by discovering such correlations throughout an image, the viewer is reinforced with a pleasing or rewarding sensation from the limbic system. This stems from the limbic system’s direct link with the brain, which discovers such correlations in elements through the pathway from the eyes to the brain (2). It’s presumed that the favoured groupings are the ones that produce greater limbic activation.
Law 3: Isolating a single cue
In just a slight shift from the previous law, the third law of aesthetically pleasing artwork is where attention is allocated to a single object or facet of the artwork. It is the process of making elements stand out from a background, allowing the viewer to more easily notice artistic enhancements. In some ways, this can be thought of as an aspect of Law 1: through isolating a single cue, we reduce redundant information about an object, thus focussing on the main attraction (caricature) rather than other elements. This produces an intense limbic system activation. One such example of this in art is line drawings (1), where the form of the object is being caricatured, while the lines are simultaneously grouped visually into a central image.
Law 4: Contrast Extraction
Contrast extraction is the process before grouping, whereby the edges of objects and elements in an image are revealed through changes in luminance. This is detected visually by the ‘centre and surround’ gradient detection that’s present in our eyes (2), allowing us to extract the contrasting luminance of elements. As our eyes see this change it rewards our brain for detecting the difference. These differences can again be in areas like color, texture, and motion and usually is a contrast extracted between dissimilar features of these that are situated close together in an artwork.
Law 5: Perceptual Problem Solving
Enjoying the pleasing sensation when an obscured object or puzzle within an image is realised or solved is proposed to be more alluring than an artwork whose message is explicit.
For example, needing to follow the gaze of a person in an artwork to discover what they are having emotions about or seeing a body behind a thin veil. These ensure that the visual system ‘struggles’ for a solution and is rewarded in the brain when solved.
Law 6: Generic Viewpoints
Ramachandran and Hirstein promoted that our visual system finds unique vantage points suspicious in artworks, as proposed to generic scenarios which are deemed more probable.
A neuroscientist named Horace Barlow proposed this idea that the brain “abhors suspicious coincidences,” (2) postulating that the brain follows a pattern of Bayesian perception (using previous data about the world to influence and predict current and future perception) when viewing artwork (3). Thus if something goes against what is predicted in the brain, it is deemed less favourable.
Law 7: Metaphors enhance art
Visual puns or metaphors may enhance art by providing a similar reward system to the brain when the metaphor is decoded. Recognising a metaphor allows the viewer to then discard other distracting information in the image and focus on the “important” aspect. This use in artwork may employ the classification of objects into categories which is a vital aspect to human survival. The discovery of similarities and linking of superficially dissimilar objects or events again leads to limbic system activation, which ensures this process is rewarding.
Law 8: Symmetry is Attractive
In a similar way to the previous law, symmetry in art being attractive may tap into the biologically important aspect whereby predators, prey, or mates are symmetrical. Expanding on the latter, it is proven that there is a preference in animals and humans for symmetrical partners, especially in regards to people’s faces (2). This stems from asymmetric growth potentially indicating poor fertility and therefore the aesthetic preference for symmetry in artwork is understandably a potential built-in aspect of visually appealing art (2).
In all, these laws provide a framework in clarifying why artwork is visually appealing; primarily displaying that the aesthetic appeal of images is in part linked to the visual system’s sensitivity to them. Although these laws don’t take into account the individual’s unique psychological vantage point deriving from personal experiences, they are a step towards bridging the gap between art and science by evaluating aesthetics on a neurobiological framework. What do you think of these laws?
References
Ramachandran VS, Hirstein W. The science of art: a neurological theory of aesthetic experience. J Conscious Stud. 1999.
Anderson, A. Aesthetics 2: Can Vision Science Explain What Makes Art Appealing? [PowerPoint slides]. In OPTO20004 - Perception, Illusions and Art. Place of publication: University of Melbourne; 2025.
Clifford CWG, Mareschal I, Otsuka Y, Watson TL. A Bayesian approach to person perception. Conscious Cogn. 2015.
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