The Effect of Averageness in the Portrait Aesthetics: An Evolutionary- Cognitive Appraisal

Evolutionary aesthetics is one of the naturalistic approaches to aesthetics in which a distinction is made between natural beauty and artistic beauty. One of the topics in evolutionary aesthetics is the study of the aesthetics of portraits (painting, photography). In this article, the aesthetics of portraits (paintings) are compared with the aesthetics of natural human faces (photographies), and we will try to elucidate the similarities and differences between the aesthetic criteria in these two areas. The research of Graham et al. on the aesthetics of the 1100 top paintings in the art world shows that the criteria for the beauty of paintings are somewhat different from the criteria for the beauty of natural faces. In this study, we first briefly review “averageness” as the main criterion of beauty in natural faces, and in the second part, citing an article by Graham et al., the aspects of deviation from the natural beauty in paintings are introduced and examined. What the authors of the article do not mention is the causes of this deviation. At the end of the article, an explanation of the causes of this deviation will be provided by resorting to scientific and evolutionary data.