A new study has shown that ordinary people can tell the difference between abstract oil paintings created by a professional artist, and abstract canvas wall art that has been created by a child.

The study was conducted by Angelina Hawley-Dolan and Ellen Winner, in which they showed people pairs of unlabelled oil paintings; one which was created by a professional expressionist artist, and one which was done by a young child, or even an animal. The artists have all had their work published in one famous art history publication, while the animals included monkeys, gorillas and even elephants!

The people who were not art students preferred the work which was produced by the professional artists by 56% and deemed it better by 65%. Art students preferred the work made by the artists by 63%, and judged their work better by 67%.

This suggests that despite the controversial popular opinion that abstract canvas art painted by professional artists could have been done by a child, it seems that people can actually in fact judge real professional art as better- even by just a small percentage.

These findings suggest that we do in fact know more about abstract art than we think; as the study has shown that we can differentiate between the brush strokes and lines painted by a professional expressionist, and those created by a child or an animal.