The Pleasure of Patterns in Art

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

prismatic

68 points

11 comments

thereader.mitpress.mit.eduOtherstory

calmpositive

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ArtCognitive PsychologyAesthetics

Key topics

Art

Cognitive Psychology

Aesthetics

The article explores why repetition in art is pleasing to the brain, sparking a discussion on the cognitive and artistic aspects of repetitive patterns.

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Aug 20, 2025 at 11:53 PM EDT
4 months ago
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Discussion (11 comments)

Showing 11 comments

sans_souse

4 months ago

2 replies

My first thought upon seeing the first picture and the header; [https://youtu.be/IyVj9sKldWg](Max Cooper - Repetition)

copypasterepeat

4 months ago

In a somewhat similar vein: https://youtu.be/0S43IwBF0uM (The Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar)

vok

4 months ago

Corrected link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO9aot9RgQc

gilleain

4 months ago

2 replies

An interesting feature of repetitive geometric art that took me a long time to appreciate is that the discipline of getting an even cover of paint in a highly repetitive painting is surely very difficult.

Take Bridget Riley - we are so used to how mechanical painting (that is, 'printing') makes getting such even cover, and straight lines trivial that doing it by hand seems no more impressive.

https://www.moma.co.uk/how-to-paint-like-bridget-riley/

knuckleheads

4 months ago

2 replies

Relatedly, I didn't "get" Rothko's paintings until I saw one in real life last year. Easy to look at through a screen and not get the effect that it has, what with everything on the screen being so pixel perfect. For me, looking at those Rothko's in real life had me thinking there was a pattern in the color somewhere just out of reach for me, that if I looked closer I could see a pixel or catch a line somewhere that would tell me what was really driving all the colors. It drew me in in person in a way that it simply could not via the screen or some sort of other reproduction. What he did with colors is magical and the stories around others calling it easy or trivial to do and then failing hard themselves are also fun to consider afterwards.

gilleain

4 months ago

1 reply

Totally agree. I used to really dislike Rothko paintings as I fell into the same trap of thinking there was 'nothing to it'. Well, try actually painting something with so few colours, and essentially no geometry. It's really hard to make something that looks good!

knuckleheads

4 months ago

Hahah just realized you could talk about Rothko’s basilisk as a mental trap of sorts the same way you could for Roko’s basilisk.

Xmd5a

4 months ago

I still dislike Richard Serra's work, because you know when you travel to the other side of the word and find that 40% of this famous museum space has been emptied for a piece of scrap metal, like the past 3 museums you visited during the last decade, well, you know what I mean bites fist

TheOtherHobbes

4 months ago

Vasarely was the master of this. Absolutely insane technical skill required to calculate and sketch the geometry, and mix and paint shades so precisely.

And it never even crosses your mind, because you're too busy looking at the image.

https://www.wikiart.org/pt/victor-vasarely

sjkeyser

4 months ago

1 reply

Repetition in the arts may well be the repurposing of a separate cognitive function evolutionarily installed to enhance survival. I’m thinking of Robert Zajonc’s “mere exposure“ phenomenon proposed by the social psychologist in 1968. That seems to be the origin of the link between repetition and pleasure. Consequently, artists, co-opting it for their own purposes, are able to add pleasure to their Works the way a MasterChef might add spices to a recipe.

IAmBroom

4 months ago

It's deeper than cognition.

You have special nerves that link multiple receptors in your eyes, specifically to recognize lines. There are more in the vertical than horizontal, so you can more readily see vertical lines ("Watch out for that tree!").

Repetition is deeply integral to our visual experience.

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