Sublime Viewpoint

Emmanuel Kant spoke often about the sublime, and specifically how art becomes more sublime when beauty mixes with terror. Now research provides some support for this philosophical viewpoint . Scientists had 85 subjects experience one of five different things. One group watched a brief scary movie, another group watched a happy movie, and two other groups performed either 30 or 15 jumping jacks. The control group did nothing. Then all the subjects looked at four abstract paintings , for 30 seconds each, by a Russian artist, El Lissitsky. And they rated the art based on qualities of how inspiring , stimulating, rousing, boring, forgetful or uninteresting the piece was for them. The group that watched the scary movie rated the art as more sublime and positive than any other of the groups.