Your Body Sizes Up Art

By Shirley M. Mueller, M.D.

We like to think we buy art using our brain only, but evidence indicates otherwise. Our bodies are involved too.

How do we know this?

Psychologist Wolfgang Tschacher and colleagues studied 373 visitors to the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland. The researchers gave museum visitors a specially designed glove that wirelessly measured movement, heart rate, and skin conductance as they walked through the exhibition. This was not exactly the usual museum experience. Most of us enter a gallery with a purse, coat, phone, or perhaps a catalog. These visitors had scientific equipment attached to their hands.

The researchers found that physiological responses were associated with the way visitors experienced particular works. Beautiful, aesthetically pleasing works and those that were surprising or humorous were associated with greater heart-rate variability. Art perceived as powerful or stimulating was associated with changes in skin conductance and a decrease in heart rate.

In other words, looking at art was not simply something happening in the brain. The body was also participating.

This should not be entirely surprising. We already know that emotions have physical consequences. Fear can make the heart race. Anxiety can make the palms sweat. Excitement can produce that familiar flutter in the chest. Why should aesthetic emotion be different?

That mysterious object across the room
Antique dealers and collectors may recognize this phenomenon particularly well.

Imagine walking into an antiques show. There may be hundreds of objects competing for your attention. You have promised yourself you will be disciplined. Then you see a Chinese export porcelain bowl. You walk closer. You look at the decoration. You examine the foot. You check the condition. You look again. Something about it is pulling you toward it. Perhaps it reminds you of something your grandmother owned or is unusually beautiful or the workmanship is exceptional. Or, you cannot articulate the reason at all. You simply like it.

Neuroscience suggests that the inability to explain our attraction does not mean that nothing is happening. Quite the opposite. Our brains rapidly evaluate visual information. Memories and associations can be activated. Attention narrows. Emotion enters the picture. And the autonomic nervous system, the part of the nervous system that regulates many functions we do not consciously control can respond as well.

The result can be remarkably physical.

We may lean forward.

And, occasionally, we may experience that wonderfully irrational collector’s sensation: ‘I have to have it.’

Resisting the urge to buy on emotion
Of course, neuroscience does not mean that every time your heart skips a beat in front of a vase, you should buy it. That would be a dangerous financial strategy. There is another important lesson here. Art does not affect everyone in the same way. One person can stand breathlessly in front of a Rothko while another wonders whether someone forgot to finish the painting.

One collector may become weak in the knees over a Ming porcelain bowl. Another may wonder why anyone would spend thousands of dollars on an object that cannot even hold a decent-sized salad.

Our reactions are shaped by experience, memory, knowledge, culture, and personal taste. The more we know about an object, the more ways we have to respond to it. Knowledge does not necessarily replace emotion. It can amplify it.

That may be one reason collecting becomes so absorbing. The object we once regarded as merely beautiful can gradually acquire layers of meaning. Eventually, when we look at it, we are not seeing only an object. We are seeing a story.

And for collectors, it may explain why something that looked ordinary at an auction preview suddenly looks magnificent when it arrives home and is placed properly.

In conclusion
Here is where I find science particularly intriguing. We tend to think of collecting as an intellectual enterprise. But collecting is also emotional and physical.

We can become excited by the hunt. We can feel anticipation before an auction. We can experience disappointment when we lose an object, and exhilaration when we win. And, though it may seem counter-intuitive, our bodies are participants in all of this just as our brains are.

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References
Tschacher, W., Greenwood, S., Kirchberg, V., Wintzerith, S., van den Berg, K., & Tröndle, M. (2012). Physiological correlates of aesthetic perception of artworks in a museum. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 6(1), 96–103. (Psychology Today)
Mueller, S. M. (2015, June 11). Appreciating art: Not all in the brain. Medical Economics. https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/appreciating-art-not-all-in-the-brain
Mueller, S. M. (2026, August 10). Why art moves us: Body and brain. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mind-of-a-collector/202608/why-art-moves-us-body-and-brain

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Shirley M. Mueller, M.D., is known for her expertise in Chinese export porcelain and neuroscience. Her unique knowledge in these two areas motivated her to explore the neuropsychological aspects of collecting, both to help herself and others as well. This guided her to write her landmark book, Inside the Head of a Collector: Neuropsychological Forces at Play. In it, she uses the new field of neuropsychology to explain the often-enigmatic behavior of collectors. Shirley is also a well-known speaker. She has shared her insights in London, Paris, Shanghai, and other major cities worldwide as well as across the United States. In these lectures, she blends art and science to unravel the mysteries of the collector’s mind.