Beauty and Beyond

Abstract

The main mental and social functions of art are the expression and transmission of emotions, in relationships among creative artists and their appreciators. Artistic emotions are semantic pointers in brains that integrate sensory representations with combinations of physiological changes and cognitive appraisals. The central emotional response to art is beauty, resulting from pleasurable emotional coherence through unity in diversity of sensory representations. Art generates other important emotional responses, including interest, shock, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. Art is good or bad depending on the intensity and quality of the emotions that it generates. Art can offer valuable contributions to the needs-related emotions of its producers and appreciators. Art occurs at the social intersection of mind and world when creators and appreciators use their brains to generate and perceive works that stimulate emotions.