Contemporary artists often deliberately challenge viewers employing a wide range of means that include different variants of ambiguity. In this study we focus on how inconsistencies relating to a painting's content (presence of semantic violations) and title (its semantic incoherence with what is depicted in the painting) influence aesthetic judgement, namely the liking and understanding of contemporary artworks. We also tested if personality traits relate to appreciation of ambiguous works of art and subjective understanding of paintings with semantic violations. Participants (naïve viewers) viewed reproductions of paintings both with and without semantic violations in one of three conditions: with a coherent title, with an incoherent title, or without a title. We showed that need for cognitive closure was negatively correlated with aesthetic liking – but only in the case of paintings with semantic violations, and it was not correlated with understanding. Openness was positively correlated with liking and subjective understanding. In line with our hypotheses, paintings without semantic violations were subjectively understood less when equipped with incoherent, rather than coherent, titles. By contrast, the incoherence of the title did not influence the evaluation of paintings with semantic violations. Moreover, paintings with semantic violations were both liked less and understood less than paintings without violations. In sum, our results suggest the positive effect of fluency and openness to experience on the liking and understanding of contemporary paintings by naïve observers.

当代艺术家经常故意使用各种手段来挑战观众，其中包括不同的歧义变体。在这项研究中，我们关注与绘画内容（存在语义违规的存在）和标题（其与绘画中所描绘的语义不一致）相关的不一致如何影响审美判断，即对当代艺术作品的喜好和理解。我们还测试了个性特征是否与对模棱两可的艺术作品的欣赏和对具有语义侵犯的绘画的主观理解有关。参与者（幼稚的观众）在以下三种情况之一中观看了有或没有违反语义的绘画复制品：有连贯的标题，有不连贯的标题，或没有标题。我们表明，认知闭合的需要与审美喜好呈负相关——但仅限于违反语义的绘画，与理解无关。开放性与喜好和主观理解呈正相关。与我们的假设一致，没有语义违反的绘画在配备不连贯而不是连贯的标题时，主观上理解较少。相比之下，标题的不连贯性并不影响对语义违反的绘画的评价。此外，语义违规的画作比没有违规的画更受人喜爱和理解。总而言之，我们的研究结果表明，流畅性和开放的体验对天真的观察者对当代绘画的喜好和理解产生了积极的影响。