Motion and Lateral Organization in Monet’s Painting Impact Body Sway?

This study examined the effects of pictorial motion cues and lateral organization in artworks on postural stability. Body sway of adults was measured as they viewed two paintings by Monet projected in their artist-created, original and reversed, mirror-image views. The paintings were comparable in terms of pictorial content, color, image size and overall structural organization but differed in the strength of depicted motion. The variance of speed of body sway (related to the energy needed to control posture), was always higher while viewing either painting (either orientation) than in a baseline condition (fixation of a cross). Differences in surface area per se of body sway and the variance of the speed of body sway measures were observed between the original and its lateral reversal orientations for one painting but not the other. Findings suggest that the mechanisms responsible for postural stability can be differentially sensitive to depicted motion cues and the lateral organization in paintings. These preliminary results are discussed in terms of offline embodied cognition.