The Power of the Center

by Arnheim, Rudolf

• ISBN13: 9780520261266
• ISBN10: 0520261267
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-10-19
• Publisher: Ingram Publisher Services, Inc.

Summary

What deternines the overall organization of visual form in works op painting, sculpture, and architecture? Artists have sometimes ventured practical rules of thumb, and mathmaticians have looked for formulas that would prescribe ideal spatial relations between shapes. This Companion to Rudolf Arnheim's classic, Art and Visual Perception, shows how compositional form makes sense only when it utilizes visual symbols of the life experience that makes art meaningful. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) was Professor Emeritus of the Psychology of Art at Harvard University and the author of many books, including Art and Visual Perception, Film as Art, The Dynamics of Architectural Form, and Visual Thinking.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. vii
Two Spatial Systems	p. 1
A master key to composition	p. 1
Centricity and eccentricity	p. 2
Vectors and their targets	p. 4
Interaction of the systems	p. 8
Centers And Their Rivals	p. 13
Geometric and dynamic	p. 13
The pull of gravity	p. 15
The visual center underneath	p. 18
Varieties of weight	p. 21
Sculpture and the ground	p. 24
Matisse under pressure	p. 33
The Viewer as a Center	p. 36
Self-centered vision	p. 36
Various positions in space	p. 37
A slab in suspense	p. 40
Seeing the world sideways	p. 42
The viewer as an influence	p. 44
Looking into depth	p. 47
Limits And Frames	p. 51
Enclosures spread energy	p. 51
Tampering with the range	p. 52
The functions of frames	p. 55
Framed space not quite closed	p. 58
Rectangular formats	p. 62
Challenges to the middle	p. 66
Perspective creates a center	p. 68
Ton Do And Square	p. 72
Floating shapes	p. 72
Tondi stress the middle	p. 75
The role of eccentricity	p. 79
Disks inside	p. 85
The oval	p. 89
Squares balance the coordinates	p. 94
Aibers's nests of squares	p. 101
Mondrian overrides centricity	p. 104
A square by Munch	p. 107
Centers as hubs	p. 109
Provimg Stability	p. 109
Tensition through deviation	p. 119
Dynamics of the human figuer	p. 126
Saltimbanques and Guernica	p. 129
Centers as Dividers	p. 133
Bipolar composition	p. 133
The necessary latch	p. 137
Diagonals	p. 143
Noli metengere	p. 146
Volumes and nodes	p. 149
Volumes and vectors interactiong	p. 149
Kinds of nodes	p. 151
Nodes of the body	p. 154
Faces and hands	p. 158
Singing man	p. 162
Space in depth	p. 166
Perceiving the third dimension	p. 166
Objects behaving in space	p. 168
Enclosures replacing frames	p. 170
The added view of projection	p. 177
Coctinuity of space	p. 179
What perspective Contributes	p. 183
Time in space	p. 187
The symbolism of the frontal plane	p. 190
Centers and grids in buildings	p. 195
Grids prevail	p. 195
Design in elevation	p. 197
Design on the ground	p. 200
Coping with full space	p. 204
Composition in time	p. 212
Are there exceptions?	p. 214
A physical foundation	p. 217
Composition carries meaning	p. 221
Glossary	p. 225
Bibliography	p. 231
Acknowledgments	p. 235
Index	p. 237
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