Wallraven, ChristianCunningham, Douglas W.Fleming, RolandDouglas W. Cunningham and Victoria Interrante and Paul Brown and Jon McCormack2013-10-222013-10-222008978-3-905674-08-81816-0859https://doi.org/10.2312/COMPAESTH/COMPAESTH08/131-138The categorization of art (paintings, literature) into distinct styles such as expressionism, or surrealism has had a profound influence on how art is presented, marketed, analyzed, and historicized. Here, we present results from several perceptual experiments with the goal of determining whether such categories also have a perceptual foundation. Following experimental methods from perceptual psychology on category formation, naive, non-expert participants were asked to sort printouts of artworks from different art periods into categories. Converting these data into similarity data and running a multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) analysis, we found distinct perceptual categories which did in some cases correspond to canonical art periods. Initial results from a comparison with several computational algorithms for image analysis and scene categorization are also reported.Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): J.4 [Computer Application]: Social and Behavioural Sciences Psychology; J.5 [Computer Application]: Arts and Humanities Fine arts