Arnheim, Gestalt and Art A Psychological Theory
Arnheim, Gestalt and Art is the first book-length discussion of the powerful thinking of the psychologist of art, Rudolf Arnheim. Written as a complete overview of Arnheim’s thinking, it covers fundamental issues of the importance of psychological discuss
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Arnheim, Gestalt and Art A Psychological Theory
SpringerWienNewYork
Ian Verstegen The University of Georgia Studies Abroad Program Cortona, Italy
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically those of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, broadcasting, reproduction by photocopying machines or similar means, and storage in data banks. © 2005 Springer-Verlag Wien · Printed in Austria SpringerWienNewYork is a part of Springer Science + Business Media springeronline.com Product Liability: The publisher can give no guarantee for all the information contained in this book. The use of registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Typesetting: Camera ready by author Printing: Börsedruck Ges.m.b.H., 1230 Wien, Österreich Printed on acid-free and chlorine-free bleached paper SPIN: 11553045 Library of Congress Control Number: 2005933044
ISBN 10 3-211-28864-3 SpringerWienNewYork ISBN 13 978-3-211-28864-1 SpringerWienNewYork
PREFACE When one hears the words, the ‘psychology of art,’ one is likely to think of the name of Rudolf Arnheim. Because of his great productivity we have been fortunate to hear the latest words of wisdom from this remarkable nonegenarian, almost up to the present day. But while Arnheim the personality is always intriguing, his system risks being left behind. Although Arnheim has remained in remarkable contact with younger scholars around the world, his ideas have risked alienation from their basic gestalt basis. This book is a presentation of the whole unified Arnheim through the lens of a living, breathing Gestalt psychology. Arnheim’s two complementary works, Art and Visual Perception (1954/1974) and The Power of the Center (1982/1988) will surely hold their own in visual art theory for some time to come. But Arnheim, himself, never attempted to provide a general psychology of art. Nor, it seems, did he presume he ought to. In fact, he once wrote that the book by Hans and Shulamaith Kreitler “may well claim to have established the psychology of arts as a discipline” (1973, p. 647). As much as that may have been true then, it is much less true now. Arnheim has by now written on every subject of the psychology of art and a general approach may be said to exist, if not in one place. This work is an attempt to bring into a single coherent statement this theory. I began to discern in Arnheim’s a unified approach centered on the idea of perceptual dynamics. The Power of the Center (1982/1988) raised new problems of theoretical exposition, and suggested that its compositional scheme was the key to this unified approach. Indeed, in The Dynamics of Architectural Form (1977) Arnheim suggested that “I have come increasingly to believe that the dynamics of shape, color, and movement is the decisive, although the least explored, factor o
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