Pictorial research can rely on computational or human annotations. Computational annotations offer scalability, facilitating so-called distant-viewing studies. On the other hand, human annotations provide insights into individual differences, judgments of subjective nature. In this study, we demonstrate the difference in objective and subjective human annotations in two pictorial research studies: one focusing on Avercamp’s perspective choices and the other on Rembrandt’s compositional choices. In the first experiment, we investigated perspective handling by the Dutch painter Hendrick Avercamp. Using visual annotations of human figures and horizons, we could reconstruct the virtual viewpoint from where Avercamp depicted his landscapes. Results revealed an interesting trend: with increasing age, Avercamp lowered his viewpoint. In the second experiment, we studied the compositional choice that Rembrandt van Rijn made in Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild. Based on imaging studies it is known that Rembrandt doubted where to place the servant, and we let 100 annotators make the same choice. Subjective data was in line with evidence from imaging studies. Aside from having their own merit, the two experiments demonstrate two distinctive ways of performing pictorial research, one that concerns the picture alone (objective) and one that concerns the relation between the picture and the viewer (subjective).
In this preliminary work we created a database of ten images representative of typical digital photographic imagery, and evaluated both the Birkhoff and Eysenck aesthetic measures, M, for each. We then used the methodology of Liu et al. to assess a compositional figure of merit, EA, for each of the test images. We found a significant correlation between EA and entropy, which implies a commonality between informational and compositional features of an image. The images were then presented to a panel of experienced observers from the arts community, and a rank order for aesthetic merit was determined from their evaluations. Although the rank order correlated weakly with the Eysenck aesthetic measure, a much stronger correlation was observed with the compositional metric characterizing adherence of the composition of the image to the rule of thirds, suggesting that adherence of the composition to the rule of thirds dominates sophisticated observers intuitive apprehension of the aesthetic value of the image. These results render problematical the attempt to establish an exclusively information theory-based aesthetic measure.