| 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. |
