Why are we fascinated by artists like Van Gogh or Lady Gaga? Science has the answer

Van Gogh, Salvador Dali and Picasso are among many international artists who have become famous for both their eccentricities and their undoubted talent.

According to recent studies, people seem to be more attracted to artists who are out of the ordinary than those who are more "normal." Are you fascinated by eccentric artists? Click on to find out!

The art world is full of artists of all kinds, but many of them have left indelible marks that have made them truly immortal stars, such as Vincent Van Gogh.

A British study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology looked at the famous painter Van Gogh. According to this experiment, people seem to be much more attracted to eccentric artists than to "normal" people.

This is what is known as the "eccentricity effect", which is due to the fact that our perception of the author's work is strongly influenced by the prejudices we have about the artist in question.

The experiment in this study consisted of presenting Vincent Van Gogh's famous Sunflowers to two groups of participants. The first group also learned about the episode of the artist's self-mutilation on his ear, while the second group wasn't given this information.

The result was overwhelming, as the first group gave much more positive feedback on the work, with comments and opinions being more enthusiastic than those of the second group.

So this result was clear evidence of the well-known "eccentricity effect": people are much more attracted to bizarre and unusual stories.

However this does not apply only to artists from the past, but also with modern figures such as the eclectic Lady Gaga, the queen of eccentricity. A similar experiment was conducted with the international singer.

Here, too, two groups of participants were brought together. The first group was shown a picture of the singer in an elegant black dress, while the second group was shown a picture of Lady Gaga in a suit, also in black but with a conspicuous mask over her face.

The second group seems to have enjoyed the music of the famous international singer much more than the first, confirming the experiment previously carried out with Vincent Van Gogh.

In the Lady Gaga experiment, researchers wanted to go further to see how attracted we are to an artist's eccentricity.

Participants were told that the singer's quirks and eccentricities were created by marketers and that her fame rests on a fictional character.

After hearing this, the participants expressed great disappointment and the previously expressed appreciation dropped significantly. This shows that the eccentric, even if it attracts us unconsciously, has to be authentic and not artificial.

Today there are many artists who base their success on their particular individuality, like Tim Burton's films or the performances of Elton John or Michael Jackson.

So the eccentricity effect is definitely there. But one of the questions that arises is: Why are we more attracted to the bizarre?

According to modern psychology, we may be attracted to everything we are not or cannot be, and therefore see in these somewhat "alien" characters a part of ourselves that we would like to express in the same way, but which we are denied due to social conventions.

Photo: Unsplush, di Eye for Ebony

However, a central problem emerges from the results of the conducted studies: everything bizarre and eccentric is only accepted in art, but not in science, where more conventional people are preferred.