Psychology Research: blue and red paintings are most pleasing

Paintings the use of color has been evaluated aesthetically for ages, but it has now become clear that color also affects the sale of a work.

Economist Marshall Xiaoyin Ma from Erasmus University in the Netherlands and colleagues studied the matter with the help of nearly 500 Chinese, American and Dutch volunteers. These estimated just under 5,000 abstract paintings and drawings that had been sold at art auctions between 1994 and 2017.

The blue works produced the most pleasure – and the more blue there was in the work, the more the viewer was willing to pay for it. At the trial auction, the hammer price of monochrome blue paintings rose nearly one-fifth higher than that of green, yellow, orange, or purple.

Stateside blue was by far the most popular board color, and red became a good second. In China and the Netherlands, red wedged a little past blue. These colors were also most valued in the two-color works.

In all three countries, the tails remained purple, orange, and yellow. The order remained, although the subjects’ gender, education, income, artistic pursuit, intelligence, and color vision were taken into account. The study was published in the European Economic Review.

Published in Science 2/2022