Art history and related disciplines often remain silent about the processes that occur within a viewer of visual artworks, assuming that the viewer merely reacts passively to the respective stimuli. However, every human perception is an active process in which the perceptual apparatus constructs a perception according to its specifications. While this is theoretically acknowledged in art history, it is not explored in depth. Meanwhile, neuropsychologists have attempted to achieve reliable results in this regard with their newly developed methods, but they are still at the beginning and far from providing exhaustive answers. Among other things, the factors of "set" and "setting" are not sufficiently considered in both fields of science. This book not only thoroughly examines the "setting" provided by our current Western art exhibition system but also the "set," meaning the various states of the brain. It describes both stable structural characteristics of human perception and factors such as motivation, expertise, or attention, which can vary significantly depending on culture, situation, and individual. It becomes evident that especially in the reception of art, our brain, which apparently operates according to aesthetic principles, comes into play more prominently than in everyday perception processes.