Quantitative analysis of artworks: emotions and color usage within Vincent van Gogh

Abstract

The relationship between color and emotion has been studied extensively within psychology and cognitive sciences. Most research have focused on how different color in terms of hue, saturation, and value affect the emotional state of the perceiver. However, not much quantitative research has been conducted on how emotion affect the usage of color. In this article, we used the information from letters and artworks created by Vincent van Gogh to demonstrate that quantitative research could be conducted using historical data. We implemented a state space analysis on the time series data obtained from the letters and artworks to see whether positive or negative emotions affect the usage of saturation and value in van Gogh paintings. The data suggested that positive emotions increase both saturation and value, but negative emotions only decrease value. This result is basically consistent with the previous result showing how saturation and value affect negative and positive emotions. Discussion on the advantages of using such historical data is discussed.