What Color as an Integrated Pictorial Element in Himalayan Art Can Communicate: Cross-Cultural Congruence of Color-Emotion Conceptualizations in Himalayan Art

The idea of art as a language of emotion has historical roots. This study asked if color, as an integrated pictorial element in Himalayan art, can communicate the intended emotions to North American viewers. To investigate the extent to which those emotions are congruent cross-culturally, participants were assigned to four conditions of varying levels of informativeness, based on whether they did or did not receive an informational brochure and a checklist of emotional terms to reference. Results were analyzed using Latent Semantic Analysis to assess the similarity of word meanings. Participant responses were compared to the emotions that should be conveyed according to Himalayan culture and curators of an exhibit on Himalayan art. Cosine values were generally high in all conditions, indicating that certain colors (i.e., red, black, and gold) can convey consistent emotional information to viewers from very different cultures, even with little or no corresponding verbal material.