Product Description

Gestalt theory and the psychology of visual perception form the basis for an analysis of art and its basic elements.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #100526 in Books
• Published on: 1974-09-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 508 pages

Review
The clear, direct, flexible writing is powerfully reinforced by the numerous illustrations . . . not one of which is superfluous. -- Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

From the Inside Flap
"In The Ego and the Id Freud argued that a cogent thought process, to say nothing of conscious intellectual work, could not exist amidst the unruliness of visual experience. Over the last half century in a sequence of landmark books, Rudolf Arnheim has not only shown us how wrong that is, he has parsed the grammar of form with uncanny acuity and taught us how to read it."--Jonathan Fineberg, author of Art since 1940: Strategies of Being

From the Back Cover
"In The Ego and the Id Freud argued that a cogent thought process, to say nothing of conscious intellectual work, could not exist amidst the unruliness of visual experience. Over the last half century in a sequence of landmark books, Rudolf Arnheim has not only shown us how wrong that is, he has parsed the grammar of form with uncanny acuity and taught us how to read it."-Jonathan Fineburg, author of Art since 1940: Strategies of Being

Customer Reviews

Science meets art in Gestalt theory
Rudolf Arnheim is one of those rare and exceptional thinkers gifted in both the arts and science, in this case the science of psychology. This book is about the relation between psychology and art. Its value will be immediately recognized by artists, as well as by those who are interested in how the mind makes sense of the visual world. But the most interesting and valuable aspect of this book is its implications for psychology. The Gestalt theory on which Arnheim's approach is based is a minority view in contemporary psychology, but it is a theoretical viewpoint that is destined for a renaissance. For Gestalt theory recognizes the holistic, emergent aspects of perception, which are so difficult to account for in terms of contemporary neuroscience, but are so clearly evident in the laws of artistic composition. Although this book was originally published in 1954, I believe it is only a matter of time before it receives the recognition it deserves as an invaluable contribution to psychology, as soon as psychology has the wisdom to recognize it as such.

Science meets art in Gestalt theory
Rudolf Arnheim is one of those rare and exceptional thinkers gifted in both the arts and science, in this case the science of psychology. This book is about the relation between psychology and art. Its value will be immediately recognized by artists, as well as by those who are interested in how the mind makes sense of the visual world. But the most interesting and valuable aspect of this book is its implications for psychology. The Gestalt theory on which Arnheim's approach is based is a minority view in contemporary psychology, but it is a theoretical viewpoint that is destined for a renaissance. For Gestalt theory recognizes the holistic, emergent aspects of perception, which are so difficult to account for in terms of contemporary neuroscience, but are so clearly evident in the laws of artistic composition. Although this book was originally published in 1954, I believe it is only a matter of time before it receives the recognition it deserves as an invaluable contribution to psychology, as soon as psychology has the wisdom to recognize it as such.

the true gateway to perception
If you want to learn why the things are seen in the way they are seen or want to control the look of your objects to build up as a concrete whole, wheter in a motion picture, a paint, a photograph, architecture, sculpture, a graphical design piece, or more strictly speaking, if you ever asked yourself what is a line, what makes a triangle more interesting than a square, why my piece of design looks unstable, and start to think that you are going mad :) this is the decisive beginning for understanding visual communication... Must be bought together with "The Power of the Center" for a complete look... Basics of geometry, psychology, philosophy and history of art are required...