"When you look at a painting, what do you think you process first - the painting's content or its style? According to Dorothee Augustin and colleagues it is the content of a painting that we register first, with dazzling speed - within 10 ms (less than a hundredth of a second) - while processing of a painting's style comes later, from 50ms onwards. [...] The research also shows that even people without any expertise in art are impacted early on by the artistic style of a painting. 'If we consider style the characteristic of art,' the researchers concluded, 'this characteristic needs some time to unfold - but still, it unfolds quicker than you may think.'" (story)
