This question touches on a long-standing debate on the nature of sublime as an object (i.e., elicitor) or as a mental process (i.e., a subjective state experienced while reacting to a given elicitor) (see for a brief review). Does this distinction between ‘real’ and ‘representation’ matter when it comes to experiencing the sublime? However, these scenes would differ, too, because one would know that one elicitor is real and the other is a representation. These features are crucial for the emergence of a particular mental process traditionally called the sublime or (equivalently) sublimity or, in more recent years, awe. Both the real natural scenery and the painting of it would likely display similar physical properties, such as apparent vastness, rarity, and novelty.
One can imagine similarities and differences between one’s reactions to these two scenes.
Then, imagine viewing a masterful painting of the same scene. Imagine first the most awe-inspiring natural scenery that you have ever seen, generally involving a grand and sweeping panorama. This study compares different sublime stimuli (nature vs. The nature-based format induced higher intensity emotional responses than the art-based format. We measured participants’ emotional responses before and after each exposure, as well as the sense of presence. We compared Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night with a photorealistic version of the actual place depicted in the painting, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. In order to experimentally compare nature and art, we exposed 50 participants to sublimity-inducing content in two different formats (nature-based and art-based) using 360° videos. However, it has not yet been empirically demonstrated whether two major elicitors of the sublime–nature and art–differ in inducing this state.
Recently, psychology has conceived of the sublime as an emotion, often referred to as awe, arising from natural or artistic stimuli that are great, rare, and/or vast. One of the major philosophical issues concerns whether the sublime is best thought of as a subjective response or as a stimulus. The sublime–the mixed aesthetic experience of uplift and elevation in response to a powerful or vast object that otherwise is experienced as menacing–has nurtured philosophical discourse for centuries.
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