Abstract
There exist pictures that people have recognized as great, beyond the borders of cultural differences, over the last 100 years. This suggests that such paintings would have certain aesthetic elements in common, and if people are able to recognize them through a shared sense of beauty, it is possible to study what kinds of properties influence people's evaluation of paintings. This study investigated the influence of motif composition on people's impression of Hokusai's paintings. In the experiment, participants were asked to give their impression of the paintings using two kinds of rating scales, the information rate scale (IRS), and the semantic differential (SD) scale. We defined symmetry, complexity and order as the elements of beauty. Results revealed three perceptual features that strongly affect people's impressions of the beauty of paintings.
