Rudolf Arnheim (1904 - 2007) was a German author, psychologist and philosopher who studied under the tutelage of two of the creators of Gestalt theory, Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler, at the University of Berlin. Later, he applied what he had learned from them to the world of cinema and art.
Arnheim became most famous for his book Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye, which he published in 1954. Some of his other published books were Visual Thought (1969), and The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in visual arts (1982).
Abstract description of the Image and its functions, based on the book «Visual Thought» by Arnheim. Source: Aditya Dipankar
Rudolf Arnheim lived in several countries, including Germany, Italy, England, and the United States. In the latter he worked as a professor at such important institutions as Harvard University and the University of Michigan. In fact, he became a very influential figure in the United States in fields such as psychology and art history.
His main objective was to use science to try to better understand art. Among other things, I wanted to understand how perception (especially visual) can influence the way we understand the world.
In this sense, it went against the prevailing theory in psychology at the time, which said that thought was the main modulator of perception.
Biography
Early years
Rudolf Arnheim was born into a family in Alexanderplatz (Berlin), in 1904. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Kaiserdamm, in Charlottenburg, where they remained until the beginning of the 1930s. From his first years of life, he was interested in art, for example painting from a very young age.
Although Arnheim originally planned to take over his father's factory when he grew up, he began studying at the University of Berlin, as he had always been fascinated by psychology. Although at first he was interested in psychoanalysis, later his studies led him in other ways.
During the time he was studying at the University of Berlin, there were a number of famous professors at this institution, including Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler.
Mainly due to the presence of the latter two, the psychology taught in the faculty was based almost exclusively on the Gestalt Theory.
In 1928, Arnheim got his doctorate, with a thesis in which he studied human facial expressions in relation to people's handwriting. This was the psychologist's gateway to studies on human expression, which he later related to art in his research.
Career
During the 1920s, Arnheim worked as a film critic for a German magazine called Stachelschwein. However, when the Nazis began to gain power in Berlin, his closest friends advised him to leave the country, due to his Jewish ancestry and some critical work with the movement that he had carried out.
Thus, in 1933, Arnheim moved to Rome, where he continued to write about films and radio shows for 6 years. Then he spent a few years in London, when the Second World War broke out; and finally, in 1940, he moved to the United States. There, in 1943, he secured a position as professor of psychology at Sarah Lawrence College.
From this moment, he began to investigate the perception of art, initially trying to apply his knowledge of Gestalt to this field. Throughout the years he published several important works; and in 1968 he was invited to join Harvard University as a professor of the subject of Psychology of Art.
In 1974 he retired to Ann Arbor with his wife Mary, with whom he had several children; although he continued teaching at different universities in the United States and collaborating with different associations. He died in 2007 of natural causes.
Theories
Rudolf Arnheim, due to his fascination with both art and psychology, tried to unite both fields in his theoretical studies. His main idea was that human beings are capable of perceiving the world, life and its meaning in the form of patterns, colors and shapes; and that by studying these, we can understand what they mean and the way we each interpret reality.
On the other hand, Arnheim believed that art was a way of expressing this way of seeing the world, rather than a simple composition of attractive shapes and colors. For this psychologist, art is a tool that helps people understand the world and their own mind, allowing them to reach the essence of things through it.
In addition to this, this psychologist believed that during early adulthood, people develop an idea that they become obsessed with, and that they spend the rest of their lives working on. He was very clear that his was the possibility of understanding the world through the previously mentioned patterns.
On the other hand, Arnheim studied in depth fields of art such as aesthetics, focus, colors or the use of different forms; all this related to the investigations that his professors of the Gestalt School had carried out.
Plays
Rudolf Arnheim's most important work was Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye. This book took the author fifteen months of work, although in his interviews he said that he felt that he had done it in one sitting. After its revision in 1974, it has been translated into fourteen languages, and is considered by many to be the most influential art book of the 20th century.
In this work, Arnheim tries to use the scientific method to better understand art, while remaining aware of aspects such as intuition, cognitive biases, and self-expression.
In other of his works, including Visual Thought and The Power of the Center, Arnheim explored other aspects related to art and psychology, such as the difference between thought and perception, or the importance of patterns in the painting and architecture for the human experience.
References
- "Rudolf Arnheim" in: Britannica. Retrieved on: June 12, 2019 from Britannica: britannica.com.
- "Rudolf Arnheim" in: The Independent. Retrieved on: June 12, 2019 from The Independent: independent.co.uk.
- "Rudolf Arnheim" in: A Cuchillo. Retrieved on: June 12, 2019 from A Cuchillo: acuchillo.net.
- "Rudolf Arnheim" in: Infoamérica. Retrieved on: June 12, 2019 from Infoamérica: infoamerica.org.
- "Rudolf Arnheim" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: June 12, 2019 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.