Creative Design: The Foundation Institute of the Hungarian University of Craft and Design

Pavlova, E. Dmitrieva and L. Lagutina) succeeded in singling out a number of stable individual strategies of information -processing in the perception of prose, painting and theater. Another experimental series has as its aim the development of experimental techniques to determine the effect of a work (of classical or popular music, poetry or-theater) on the personality (research by G. Ivanchenko,J. Volkova, T. Delskaya, M. Nazarova and Y. Yemelyanov). In one experiment, D. Leontiev, along with G. Ivanchenko, E. Dmitrieva and L. Lagutina, attempted to establish connections between individual types of art perception, concrete impressions of a given artwork and personality traits. Besides being of purely cognitive interest, such studies may be useful in art education. L. Dorfman and his group study the relationship of personality to the creative artistic process and its products through research on authors, performers and perceivers. In this study, artists, on the one hand, and the other participants /systems that make up the rest of the world of art, on the other, are seen as two interacting but relatively autonomous systems. Such an approach permits one to distinguish two aspects of the relationship between the perception of art and the formation of the personality: (l) artworks are created and perceived in accordance with a person's own nature, thereby transforming the artistic life of society; (2) a person assimilates the traditions and norms that are accepted in the artistic life of society. Both aspects of the personality were studied in connection with the emotions accompanying artistic activity. Several experimental investigations were made concerning emotional experiences that arise under the influence of music: the building of emotional images by means of choreography and painting, and individual emotional styles in music, choreography , etc. The results of these investigations are now used in the practice of art education in Russia. On the basis of these and other experiments , the international symposium "Art and Emotions" was held in Perm in September 1991 [2]. More than 60 scientists and artists from nine countries participated in two plenary sessions and five section meetings. Two volumes, Art and Emotions (in both English and Russian) and Emotions and Art (in English), were published [3]. It is our intention to hold international symposia, such as the one in Perm, on a regular basis, thus uniting both theoreticians and artists. The above investigations and meetings make a weighty contribution to our aim of crossing the "unbridgeable" gulf between science and the humanities and between the theory and the practice of art. Recently inspired by this movement, a group of Moscow painters, writers and poetsjoined psychologists and aestheticians to form a new art movement -constructive conceptualism, which uses psychological research in the practice of art. The essence of this movement is the belief that each work of art contains both a definite structure (which influences the emotional sphere of a recipient), and a reflection of this structure-that is, a scientific explanation of the influence of this structure on the rational sphere of the recipient. Connections such as these between art and science are expected to continue to develop in the near future. References and Notes 1. Some traits ofthe Russian national mentality also contributed to this process, primarily the trend toward synthetic global thinking. 2. See Vladimir Petrov and Leonid Dorfman, "Art and Emotions: International Symposium, Perm, Russia, 17-21 September 1991," Leonardo 26, No.3 (1993) p. 249. 3. See L. Va. Dorfman, D. A. Leontiev, V. M. Petrov and V.A. Sozinov, eds. Art and Emotions, Proceedings of the IAEA (Perm: International Association of Empirical Aesthetics [USSR Branch]-Perm State Institute of Culture, 1991); and L. Va. Dorfman, D. A. Leontiev, V. M. Petrov and V.A. Sozinov, eds. Emotionsand Art: Problems, Approaches, Explorations (Perm: International Association of Empirical Aesthetics [Russian Branchl-Perm institute for Arts and Culture, 1992). Bibliography Danilova, Olga N., and Petrov, Vladimir M. "Brain Asymmetry and Creativity: A Model and Attempt of Quantitative Investigation," in L. Halasz, ed., Proceedings of theEleventhInternational Congress on EmpiricalAesthetics (Budapest: Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1990) pp.45-48. Golitsyn, German A. "IIprincipio de massima informazione in arte," Rivista di Psichologia dell'Arte, Nuova Serie, 12, No.2, 13...