Takmåleri och perception – Att spåra möten mellan sinnesförnimmelser och takmåleriets konstitution

Sammanfattning: This study investigates the perceptual effect of ceiling painting on the viewer in relation to spatiality. Three case studies have been conducted of ceiling paintings by Johan Sylvius from 1690, Karl XI's gallery at Drottningholm Palace; Karl Axel Pehrson Transfigurata from 1978, at Thielska Gallery; and by Malin Gabriella Nordin from 2021, at the restaurant Ricordi, all in Stockholm Sweden. The objects represent ceiling paintings with different mediums, pictorial expressions, and motifs. This study presents how ceiling painting's formal and aesthetic structures and mechanisms activate the viewer's perception and performative action. Together with the room, these elements shape the viewer's overall experience of the ceiling painting and the spaciousness. The perceptual influence takes place in interaction with the individual's subjective psychological make up, which filters the mentally and physically perceived information. This means that each individual's experience is characterized by subjective perceptions: the same colour, expression or form can generate different impressions in different individuals – depending on the individual's previous experience with similar elements. The aim is not to find a common experience, but to track which elements and how they activate the viewer. These elements are the ceiling painting's internal and external factors, which activate the senses and shapes the viewer's movements in the room. Sensations together with the viewer's choreography create an overall experience within the viewer. The thesis in the essay postulates that these structures and mechanisms are conditioned in the ceiling painting's particular placement in the inner ceiling of the room, its materiality and spatial relationship. The perceptual impact is the initial awareness of the art, before the intellectual, ceiling painting is not sought to be interpreted but to be experienced. Most of the research in the visual arts and especially on ceiling painting is devoted primarily to narratology, the narrative content. The purpose of the essay is therefore to highlight ceiling painting as an art form and shed light on its perceptual impact on the viewer and the spatiality, as an introductory part to the subsequent intellectual interpretations. This pre-narratological stage conveys both the sensuous potential of the ceiling painting itself, and knowledge that can contribute with extensions of the narratological content.