Jonah Lehrer has a nice blogpost about the frontal cortex role when making aesthetic judgements. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/frontal-cortex/
In one experiment subjects taste tested Cabernet Sauvignons inside an fMRI machine. In another subjects looked at Rembrandts – also in a fMRI. He concludes “We want to believe that pleasure is simple, that our delight in a fine painting or bottle of wine is due entirely to the thing itself. But that’s not the way reality works. Whenever we experience anything, that experience is shaped by factors and beliefs that are not visible on the canvas or present in the glass.”