Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder: Paris Edition

Dear Friend,

What is it about quintessential European cities that tenderly pulls at our heartstrings and calls to us? For me, it is the simple art and beauty sprinkled throughout the cities, hidden in almost every little detail. This is my second time and Paris, and after stepping out of my dorm in Cité and catching the Métro to the heart of the city, I found myself in awe while exiting the station at Saint-Michel-Notre Dame, reveling at the scene around me. As I walked around the City of Light, brimming with art and culture, I made a mental note of the places that I wanted to visit.

Finally, when the first weekend crept around the corner, some of my friends and I decided to take advantage of the leisure time we had and partake in touristy activities around Paris. After making a brief stop at the Latin Quarter to grab a quick bite, recharging ourselves, we headed to Notre Dame. Upon arrival, the hordes of people faded into the background, and I marveled at the grand façade of the cathedral before me, still standing tall and strong. It’s hard to believe that Notre Dame is over 800 years old!

The bells (though not ringing) of Notre Dame!

Upon following the throng of people into the cathedral, we were hit by a peaceful silence that really allowed us to soak in the scene encompassing us. We strolled along the pews, pausing here and there to appreciate the curves and contours crafted into the stone, scattered with a multitude of stained glass windows here and there.

The glorious Notre Dame from inside.

We spent a good thirty minutes inside the church before deciding to proceed with the tower climb. However, after waiting in the shade for a grueling hour and barely moving an inch in line, we made a quick change of plans and headed to the gothic chapel Sainte-Chapelle, a hidden gem which houses some of the most important relics of Christianity. The chapel is embedded from plain sight by the Palais de Justice and just a mere five minute walk away from Notre Dame. We were able to get inside (much faster than waiting in line for the tower!) and boy, was it rewarding. I was awestruck by the architectural beauty, though this one was different than Notre Dame’s. Stained glass windows lined every wall, detailing stories encrypted in the Bible.

Stained glass windows encompassing Sainte-Chapelle.

After seeing both Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle, I was intrigued by how appreciative my friends and I were of such places, and this piqued my interest, so I decided to do a little research. I came across a rising field in architecture that combines neuroscience and beauty: neuroaesthetics. Neuroaesthetics has become increasingly popular and focuses on the neural processes involved with our perception and interpretation of finding works of art aesthetically pleasing (Leder 2013). Our intuitions that explain how we feel can be reflected in physical features around us (Vartanian et al., 2013), which could explain why we all felt at peace while walking among the churches.

Appreciating the beauty of Sainte-Chapelle, while not yet knowing the mechanism of how this happens.

More recent theories involve how such architectural designs can lead to particular behavioral outcomes. After further research, I found an article regarding the effect of architectural contour lines on aesthetic judgments. The researchers hypothesized that more curvaceous structures were more likely beautiful and cause people to enter them. They further postulated reward pathways within the brain triggered judgments in response to aesthetically pleasing objects (Vartnanian et al., 2013).

In order to test their predictions, experimenters placed participants in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner and presented images of varying contour designs. The researchers then asked participants two questions regarding the image: whether or not it was beautiful. The images portrayed rooms that had many curves (curvilinear) or straight lines (rectilinear), and within these they had either high or low ceilings and were open or enclosed spaces.

So what did this study find? Behaviorally speaking, participants rated the curvilinear spaces more beautiful and pleasant to look at than the rectilinear ones, though contour did not have any effect on approach-avoidance decisions. At a neural level, curvilinear structures activated the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of the brain, which previously proved its involvement in processing aesthetic images (Brown et al., 2011). The ACC, in turn, is connected reward processing via the main reward mechanism system in the brain, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). The findings therefore show that humans find that curvier structures are visually appealing and linked through the reward system in the brain.

How does all this research relate to the various buildings I’ve seen throughout Paris? Well, most of the interior in Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle were curvilinear, which explains why I felt blissful while absorbing the scene around me. That being said, we can still find rectilinear structures pleasant to view. Take the controversial pyramid outside the Louvre, for instance. Though it represents a clash between old and new, it possesses its own unique beauty.

Next architectural wonder: the Louvre!

And that takes me to where I will hopefully be heading in my next journey through Paris! After spending a day doing homework at the beautiful Jardin des Tuileries just the other day, a few of us made a quick stop to check out the Louvre. We have not been in yet, but we shall go in soon, all in due time.

That’s it for now. I’ll talk to you later!

Sincerely,

Kaavya Mandi

References:

Brown S, Gao X, Tisdelle L, Eickhoff SB, Liotti M (2011) Naturalizing aesthetics: Brain areas for aesthetic appraisal across sensory modalities. Neuroimage 58(1):250–258.

Leder H (2013). Next steps in neuroaesthetics: which processes and processing stages to study?. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 7(1): 27-37.

Vartanian O, Navarrete G, Chatterjee A, Fich LB, Leder H, Modroño C, Nadal M, Rostrup N, Skov M (2013) Impact of contour on aesthetic judgments and approach-avoidance decisions in architecture. PNAS 110: 10445-10453.