Between the Senses and Meanings

This article examines the pathic dimension of art experience from a post-phenomenological perspective, investigating how sensory perception relates to meaning-making in art reception. The study combines insights from neuroscience with phenomenological approaches to analyse how viewers engage with artworks at both sensory and cognitive levels. Based on qualitative interviews analysing viewers’ responses to contemporary artworks, the research identifies three distinct models of pathic art reception: emanation-based reception, emotional-sensory attunement, and a mixed model featuring greater cognitive distance. These forms of art reception disrupt established perceptual patterns, placing the viewer into a state of sensory-cognitive surprise. They also challenge the dominance of purely mental or structural approaches to art. Instead, they foreground an intuitive sensitivity to bodily signals and a surrender to the immediacy of the encounter. Concomitantly, such a shift draws attention to the broader theme of change—a foundational concern in both the arts and the social sciences, including within the Polish sociological tradition

Art criticism · Cognition · Immediacy · Instrumentalism · Modalities · Perception · The arts · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art · Visual Culture and Art Theory