Beautiful animations are calming. Pictures that calm your nerves

The twentieth century, in addition to technological breakthroughs, gave us its own plague - stress. The endless race for an ephemeral result, uncertainty about the future, crowds of people indifferent to you - all this makes you feel uncomfortable in this world over and over again.

Of course, you can return to the plow or to the forest, buy your own island and settle by the sea, but these methods are too drastic and are not suitable for everyone. And you can deal with everyday stress even more in simple ways, for example, by decorating your surrounding space with soothing paintings. And we are not talking about some healing paintings of adherents of a forgotten but revived religion, but about the most ordinary reproductions of paintings famous artists. After all, no one will argue with the fact that any piece of art conveys some mood or emotion to its viewer, and the influence of colors on the human psyche is scientifically substantiated. Of course, it cannot be said that there are specific paintings that calm everyone down and put them in a friendly mood - every person reacts to the influence in their own way, but there are paintings that can give peace to most of us.

“Quiet Abode” I. Levitan.

This landscape could have been included on the list just because of the title. But the picture itself is simply the quintessence of peace and tranquility. A quiet summer evening, the calm surface of the river, the tropics leading to the monastery, the majestic forest, the predominance of green and blue shades - everything breathes peace.

“Oak Grove” I. Shishkin.

In fact, there could be almost any landscape by this wonderful master: “Rye”, “ Birch Grove", "Forest distances", "Stream in a birch forest" - which is closer to whom. But it is “Oak Grove”, sparkling heated in the summer sun green, gives a peculiar sense of stability. These centuries-old giants seem to have been growing here since the beginning of time and will continue to grow forever, and it is this feeling of stability that is sometimes lacking.

This unfinished landscape is considered the artist's farewell painting. And in terms of its mood, it can only be compared to a lullaby: the warmth of a summer southern night, muted undertones, endless open spaces, the ideal surface of the river - all this evokes the sweet bliss of sleep and says: “tomorrow everything will pass.”

This picture is uncharacteristic of the work of an artist who loved bright colors, seething emotions, the scope of the plot. Here, all this is transformed into some kind of calm channel. The picture itself resembles an illustration of a story by a Russian classic about the first youthful love- spring evening, river, guitar, and the object of this first love. And the whole world, the whole universe is centered around you! clearly, but at the same time delicately says: “It’s so good to be young!”

People feel differently about autumn. Some people love it, while others, on the contrary, consider it the most terrible time of the year. But both will agree that this is the quietest season. The bright red of the leaves, the cool sun, the moral preparation for “hibernation” - all this pacifies and brings a slight taste of sadness to the mind. The painting “Park in Autumn” is imbued with all these emotions, which, unfortunately, is little known to the general public. In general, any landscape by this artist will have a relaxing effect on a person.

As mentioned above, when choosing a painting for relaxation, you need to take into account only your feelings. True, there are several unspoken rules:

1. undesirable genres - historical, everyday, genre, battle painting, still life, you need to be careful with portraits and marines, the best choice- this is a landscape.
2. The optimal color scheme is green, blue and dark blue; a lot of red, orange and black is undesirable.
3. Pay attention to the works of the French impressionists (to a lesser extent on and) - these people loved life and the world like no one else.

Today we will calm down pictures for your desktop, found on the Internet, in HD quality. To download the picture you like in full resolution, click on it, and then again to enlarge it. Then right-click on the picture, and in the context menu select “Save image as...”, or something similar.

Centennial Grove, for desktop, 1920 x 1200

Evening on the islands, for desktop, 1920 x 1080

Sea pier, for desktop, 1920 x 1080

Green mountains, desktop, 2560 x 1600

Bridge drowned in fog, for desktop, 1920 x 1080

For desktop, 1920 x 1200

Bench in a snowy park, on desktop, 1920 x 1200

Sea, sky and sand, desktop, 1920 x 1200

New York park in winter, 1680 x 1050

What helps with nerves?

Sometimes you just need to pause, expand the picture to full screen, and contemplate it thoughtfully. Gradually, problems will recede into the background, they will be replaced by thoughts about the eternal. After all, we were not born to sit in a cage.

Calming pictures. We use statics

How are calming pictures and photos different from any others? Photographers who master visual language understand the rules of using shapes and objects in an image. To create an atmosphere of calm, static is needed. This means more vertical and horizontal lines: Such objects create a feeling of stillness.

Imagine, for example, a vertical pillar or a horizon line. Do you associate them with stillness and calm? I think yes. On the contrary, diagonal lines should be avoided as they create an unstable effect. What will stay on a table that is tilted 45 degrees? If diagonals are justified for creating dynamic scenes, then they have no place in soothing photos.

The same can be said for lubrication. Blurring (in the professional language of photographers - movement) can be created intentionally, for the artistic effect of movement and dynamics. With conscious and targeted application of the effect, you can create photographs that deeply impact the viewer. But such pictures, of course, cannot be called calming.

This page contains just calming pictures for you. high resolution. To just relax and enjoy beautiful views. The quality of the pictures allows you to set them as wallpaper for your desktop.
I hope you liked some of the selected works.

Color palette in soothing photographs

The second point is the choice of color and shade palette. It's no secret that there are calming colors and irritating ones. Traditionally, calming shades include shades of white and gray, green and blue colors, which are classified as cold.

Again, coldness is a level of association. Imagine a frost-bound village, thickly covered with snow. Or mountain peaks shrouded in fog. Nevertheless warm shades- yellow, orange, can be successfully used in calming photography, but in combination with cold. You are unlikely to be annoyed by the field yellow dandelions, they turn yellow on the green carpet of grass.

The same green and blue may not be so cold - it all depends on the shade. After all, in the palette of real paints for artists, green color can be obtained by mixing blue and yellow, and depending on the proportion in which they are mixed, the color becomes warmer or cooler.

In general, using warm to create an atmosphere of calm is quite appropriate. Moreover, it is the contrast of warm and cold that allows us to evoke an association with comfort: imagine the windows of a wooden house glowing yellow or orange in the deep blue of the night. But hot colors will not help create a calming picture. Red, whatever one may say, is an active color that irritates the imagination. Unless it will be very, very small relative to the rest of the image area. A small red lifebuoy from a height of 20 meters in the endless blue sea, viewed from above? Like that:)

If possible, rate the quality of the page by clicking on the stars, or write in the comments if there is a picture here that you like, or tell me what topic you would like to see a photo on. Maybe I'll add one later.

Note:

In the body of a lover and why disgusting things are remembered better than pleasant things. But how does the brain determine what is beautiful and what is not? Look At Me talks about neuroaesthetics, a young science that understands matters of beauty.

How philosophy prepared the emergence of neuroaesthetics

Why should a person even think about beauty? Does it help you survive? How do other animal species manage without this? Philosophers, evolutionists and anthropologists tried to find the answer. According to one of the hypotheses (she and many others are described in the book “The Biological Origins of Art”), Our species was able to survive and supplant the Neanderthals because it was more receptive to aesthetics and creation in general.

Brain modern man designed to create and then analyze what was received. Confirmation of this is at least the existence of myths and legends. For the most part, they seem to have no practical value, but at the same time, those who can come up with and entertainingly present fairy tale plot, appreciated and will continue to be appreciated. It turns out that the ability to create stories is quite useful in practical terms. You don't have to play it problematic situation on the spot, but mentally simulate it, preserving your life and peace of mind. Creating pictures is also modeling situations, only non-verbal.

How pigeons helped found neuroaesthetics

The scientific approach to beauty began to be applied in the 1990s. Famous researchers visual perception, Semir Zeki and Vileyanur Ramachandran, proposed that consciousness divides artistic images just as the visual analyzer “separates” images of objects entering the retina according to their properties: brightness, color, speed and direction of their movements.

At the same time, the Japanese animal behavior researcher Shigeru Watanabe conducted one of the most famous studies, which, perhaps, can be considered proto-neuroaesthetics. Watanabe, together with his colleagues, proved that pigeons are able to distinguish the works of Picasso from the paintings of Monet, for which he was nominated for Ig Nobel Prize in psychology in 1995. Seven years later, the concept of “neuroaesthetics” appeared: it was defined as the study of the neural basis of the creation and contemplation of works of art.

Those same large hemispheres, whose size so distinguishes us from other mammals, developed largely thanks to the sense of smell. Most animals rely primarily on it, but they see poorly, and they don’t distinguish very many colors. But the primates (and people among them) They mainly switched from smell to vision. It is logical to assume that we perceive beauty mainly through it. Therefore, the bulk of work on neuroaesthetics is devoted to the visual assessment of beauty. Now from individual studies an approximate picture of exactly how this happens is gradually being built. However, our neuroaesthetic knowledge will not be complete for a long time.

How the brain reacts to majestic landscapes

It has not yet been possible to find out why tastes differ so much that it is better not to argue about them. However general patterns slowly learning. For example, in 2014, Semir Zeki and his colleague Tomohiro Ishizu found using fMRI that the brain perceives simply beautiful pictures And majestic landscapes. 21 volunteers were shown photographs of the beauty of nature, which first had to be rated on a scale of sublimity, assigning each picture a rating from 1 to 5. Then the same people were shown 5 images - from the most sublime (average rating 5) to the most ordinary (average rating 1).

It turned out that in response to majestic landscapes, completely different areas of the cerebral cortex are activated than when a person looks at beautiful, but not awe-inspiring views of nature. Viewing sublime scenes significantly activates the inferior temporal cortex, hippocampus, cerebellum, and head of the caudate nucleus. These parts of the brain are responsible for mental processes such as memory, hatred and pleasure. If a subject looks at a landscape that is aesthetic but not awe-inspiring, other areas, such as the medial orbitofrontal cortex and the body of the caudate nucleus, are activated. Of course, it is difficult to define the concept of “sublime.” However, apparently, the brain somehow copes with this task.

What pictures calm people down?

In addition to the awe that arises from paintings with sublime content, the observer may experience other feelings. One of them is calm. Landscapes using traditional Chinese techniques definitely have a calming effect. Experts in neuroaesthetics have found out how such paintings affect the observer’s ability to relax and remain in this state, and which objects of painting better help a person to cast aside all worries: Chinese landscapes or realistic European paintings. After previewing the landscapes, the subjects were placed in an MRI scanner, where the activity of brain regions was studied while admiring the picture. Subjects who looked at each example were asked to rate the truth of the statements:

I liked this picture.

I was engrossed in watching this picture.

I felt calm while watching this picture.

My attention was distracted while watching this picture.

I recognized many individual objects in this painting.

It turned out that landscapes in Chinese technology are really more relaxing. However, they also distract attention. Both the analysis of the participants' responses and the results of their fMRI indicated that after viewing Chinese paintings switching to anything is more difficult than after watching European ones. In addition, the latter maintain attention to detail, and when subjects look at the work of European masters, they notice much more more features drawing, which means they better manage their attention.

Tastes can be controlled

Transcranial brain stimulation, where the cerebral cortex is stimulated with magnetic or electrical impulses, is a provocative topic. On the one hand, this technique is safe because it does not require penetration into the body, anesthesia, incisions, etc. The devices that generate the pulses are placed near the head, and the subject does not feel pain. However, on the other hand, using this technique it is theoretically possible to greatly influence the behavior of an animal or a person. One of these methods, albeit harmless, was studied by European psychologists.

It is known that when perceiving paintings, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is activated. This area of ​​the frontal lobe of the brain is also involved in thought processes associated with planning. Scientists decided to use transcranial stimulation to influence this area in subjects when they looked at classic landscapes. Previously, psychologists found out how close such pictures were to each participant.

Six men and six women looked at not only classic paintings, but also photographs and abstract works. All images seen on the screen had to be assessed according to their degree of colorfulness (chromaticity rating) and attractiveness (aesthetic assessment), by placing the mouse cursor at the desired location on the scale (she was also on the screen). While viewing some images, the subjects' brains were stimulated with a very weak direct current. To prevent this fact from changing the perception of the pictures, sometimes instead of real stimulation a false one was performed: the stimulator was turned on, but in fact did not produce any signal. The subjects did not feel anything special and did not know when stimulation was occurring and when it was not.

It turned out that people will perceive the classics better if transcranial stimulation is used on them. Pictures and photographs seen during this procedure were perceived as more beautiful and pleasant, and abstract paintings the change in tastes did not spread. True, the difference was not very noticeable: overall rating paintings were rising
by 3%.

Why is neuroaesthetics dangerous?

Has humanity become more callous and cynical with the development of neuroscience? Perhaps, although with the same degree of probability this may be a consequence of the general technical progress. Be that as it may, critics believe that studying the soul on the principle of “cut it open and see what’s inside” or “break something in the brain and see what changes” kills that very soul. The situation is approximately the same with neuroaesthetics. A number of philosophers (and not only) believes that attempts to identify the neural nature of beauty will lead to the fact that this beauty will disappear. Most likely, they say, there is no universal recipe for beauty. And if it does exist, then, having found it, we will lose interest in aesthetics in general, because only what is unfamiliar and unknown is interesting.

However, such arguments do not mean that scientists should stop pursuing neuroaesthetics. Level modern knowledge knowledge about the brain, although high, is still incredibly far from a complete understanding of all neural processes. The same goes for the neuroscience of beauty. The unsolved things in it will not end very soon, but until then, humanity’s interest in how the brain is structured and works will not fade away.