First Blush: People's Intuitive Reactions to Famous Art

by Dan Hill

How good are we at truly understanding what imagery does and doesn't grab our attention, and makes us care? This groundbreaking book tackles that question by using two unique scientific tools to provide objective, quantifiable see/feel answers. First Blush is twice as large in scope as any study ever conducted before that links eye-tracking technology and world-class art. It also draws on facial coding to capture and identify people's quick, real-time emotional responses to 88 famous art works, across eras, from da Vinci and Rembrandt to the latest contemporary creations. "Art is either plagiarism or revolution," wrote Paul Gauguin. Welcome to revolution. You won't find another art book like First Blush anywhere else.

224 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2019

About the author

Dan is an internationally recognized expert on emotions and personalities, and the host of "Dan HIll's EQ Spotlight" podcast on the New Books Network devoted to interviewing quality authors. Dan's three latest books consist of:

1) Famous Faces Decoded: A Guidebook for Reading Others, an EQ primer using celebrity photos and stories to assist, among others, teachers, sales people, managers, and people dating or in marriages read and navigate the emotions people's faces reveal.

2) Two Cheers for Democracy: How Emotions Drive Leadership Style, an exploration of what emotive patterns correlate best to effectiveness in office (U.S. presidents) or in creating stable democracies (abroad).

3) First Blush: People's Intuitive Reactions to Famous Art, a study using eye tracking and facial coding to capture the specific see/feel responses of people to 88 art works, ranging from paintings to photography.

Dan is the founder and president of Sensory Logic, Inc., which pioneered the use of facial coding to scientifically capture and quantify emotions in business beginning in 1998 and has done consulting work for over 50% of the world's top 100 business-to-consumer (B2C) oriented companies. Dan is the recipient of seven U.S. patents related to facial coding and is also a certified Facial Action Coding System (FACS) practitioner.

Dan’s TV appearances have ranged from ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Bloomberg TV, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, MSNBC, NBC’s “The Today Show,” and PBS, to The Tennis Channel. Besides front-page coverage in The New York Times, other print and digital coverage of Dan’s work has included: Allure, China Forbes, Cosmopolitan, Fast Company, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Politico, Time, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal.

Dan received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University, following studies at St. Olaf College, Oxford University and Brown University. Along with his wife, Karen Bernthal, he lives in St. Paul, Minnesota and Palm Desert, California.