Boredom is conspicuously absent from Menninghaus et al.'s discussion. This is surprising. First, as a transitory affective state, boredom is an all-too-common experience. It affects individuals of all ages, genders, and cultures, and it does so in a wide range of situations (Acee et al. Reference Acee, Kim, Kim, Kim, Hsiang-Ning, Kim, Cho and Wicker2010; Fisher Reference Fisher1993; Game Reference Game2007; Grubb Reference Grubb1975; Iso-Ahola & Weissinger Reference Iso-Ahola and Weissinger1987; Ng et al. Reference Ng, Liu, Chen and Eastwood2015; Sundberg et al. Reference Sundberg, Latkin, Farmer and Saoud1991; Weinstein et al. Reference Weinstein, Xie and Cleanthous1995). Second, boredom is the topic of an active interdisciplinary research program. Its antecedents, effects, experiential profile, and neurophysiological correlates are all currently explored (Danckert & Merrifield Reference Danckert and Merrifield2016; Eastwood et al. Reference Eastwood, Frischen, Fenske and Smilek2012; Fahlman et al. Reference Fahlman, Mercer-Lynn, Flora and Eastwood2013), and there is strong evidence in support of the claim that boredom is an emotion in its own right (Van Tilburg & Igou Reference Van Tilburg and Igou2012). Third, a great deal of art is boring (Moller Reference Moller2014). The cetology sections of Moby Dick are boring. Satie's Vexations, if played in its entirety, is boring. Wagner's Ring Cycle is boring. And so is Warhol's Empire, William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops, much of slow cinema, and many second movements of symphonies.

Although the authors do not discuss boredom, their remarks suggest that the Distancing-Embracing model does not apply to boredom. We are told that the compositional interplays of positive and negative emotions can lead to enjoyment because they render the experience of boredom less likely to occur. If the reduction or elimination of the experience of boredom is a desideratum of the Distancing-Embracing model, then boredom would seem to be a negative emotion that is incapable of enhancing aesthetic experience.

But if the Distancing-Embracing model does not apply to boredom, then the model fails to account for an experience that much of art elicits in audiences. Such a conclusion need not perturb the authors. The authors could respond that their model is not intended to apply to all negative affective experiences that arise within art, only to those that give rise to enjoyment. Assuming that boredom never leads to enjoyment, boredom falls outside of the scope of their model.

Although such a response is dialectically available, it might not be desirable. First, the authors would need to argue that the experience of boredom never gives rise to enjoyment. Second, the Distancing-Embracing model would offer an incomplete picture of our experience of negative emotions in art – an explanation of the role of boredom would still be needed. For those two reasons, I suggest a way of incorporating boredom into the authors' model. I argue that recent findings on the nature of boredom allow us to think of boredom as a potentially useful emotion in art reception, one that could promote an intense and focused aesthetic experience.

What is boredom? By “boredom” I mean the state of boredom (Elpidorou Reference Elpidorou2017b) and not the personality trait of boredom – the latter is conceptualized as the frequent experience of boredom in a wide range of situations, is measured using self-report scales (Farmer & Sundberg Reference Farmer and Sundberg1986), and has been shown to be correlated with a number of harms (Elpidorou Reference Elpidorou2017a; Vodanovich Reference Vodanovich2003; Vodanovich & Watt Reference Vodanovich and Watt2015). As a state, boredom is a concrete and short-lived affective experience that is characterized by feelings of dissatisfaction (Csikszentmihalyi Reference Csikszentmihalyi1975; Fahlman et al. Reference Fahlman, Mercer-Lynn, Flora and Eastwood2013; Greenson Reference Greenson1953; Hartocollis Reference Hartocollis1972), attentional difficulties (Eastwood et al. Reference Eastwood, Frischen, Fenske and Smilek2012), and the perception of meaninglessness (Van Tilburg & Igou Reference Van Tilburg and Igou2012). In a state of boredom, one is disengaged with one's situation (Fahlman et al. Reference Fahlman, Mercer-Lynn, Flora and Eastwood2013) and one wishes to do something else (Bench & Lench Reference Bench and Lench2013; Elpidorou Reference Elpidorou2017b; Reference Elpidorou2017c).

Recent work on boredom suggests that boredom is an emotion with a self-regulatory function. Because of its affective, cognitive, and volitional character, boredom can motivate the pursuit of a new goal when the current goal ceases to be attractive, meaningful, or satisfactory (Bench & Lench Reference Bench and Lench2013; Elpidorou Reference Elpidorou2014; Reference Elpidorou2015; Reference Elpidorou2017b; Reference Elpidorou2017c; Pekrun et al. Reference Pekrun, Goetz, Daniels, Stupnisky and Perry2010; Van Tilburg & Igou Reference Van Tilburg and Igou2011, 2012). Specifically, Van Tilburg and Igou (Reference Van Tilburg and Igou2011; 2012) have argued that boredom not only makes one's activities seem meaningless, but also motivates one to re-establish a sense of meaningfulness. Indeed, boredom is capable of triggering meaning re-establishment strategies that affect an individual's behavior and cognition (Barbalet Reference Barbalet1999). Furthermore, it has been shown that boredom can elicit nostalgia (Van Tilburg et al. Reference Van Tilburg, Igou and Sedikides2013). Nostalgia can promote meaningfulness and is itself a bittersweet (although primarily positive) affective state (Routledge et al. Reference Routledge, Wildschut, Sedikides, Juhl and Arndt2012; Sedikides et al. Reference Sedikides, Wildschut, Arndt and Routledge2008; Wildschut et al. Reference Wildschut, Sedikides, Arndt and Routledge2006).

These two features of boredom – its capacity to promote meaning re-establishment strategies and its relationship to nostalgia – render boredom an emotion that is consistent with the Embracing factor of the authors' proposed model. First, boredom can motivate us to find or discover meaning in an artwork that previously failed to capture our attention. If we have no other option but to engage with the artwork, we will have to alleviate boredom by seeking alternative ways to interact with the artwork. Many contemporary works in theater, film, and music do precisely that: by not permitting easy solutions to boredom, they force us to return to the artwork and to try to uncover meaning. Boredom can thus produce a multilayered and cognitively demanding engagement with the work of art. What is more, by compelling us to discover meaning, boredom could lead to the favorable retroactive appraisal of the artwork (Oliver & Woolley Reference Oliver, Woolley, Döverin, Scheve and Konijn2010).

Second, and somewhat more speculatively, just like other negative emotions (e.g., sadness and fear), boredom may also give rise to a concomitant feeling of a mixed affective nature that can reconcile the presence of boredom with our hedonic expectations of art reception. In the case of boredom, nostalgia could be the mediator emotion that transforms our experience and leads us to judge that our engagement with a boring work of art is not bereft of enjoyment.

The above considerations constitute only the beginning of an account of the role of boredom within art. Still, they underscore boredom's potential value in art and show how the Distancing-Embracing model can be applied to the case of boredom.