Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye / New Version

by Arnheim, Rudolf

• ISBN13: 9780520243835
• ISBN10: 0520243838
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-10-01
• Publisher: Ingram Pub Services

Summary

Since its publication fifty years ago, this work has established itself as a classic. It casts the visual process in psychological terms and describes the creative way one's eye organizes visual material according to specific psychological premises. In 1974 this book was revised and expanded, and since then it has continued to burnish Rudolf Arnheim's reputation as a groundbreaking theoretician in the fields of art and psychology.

Author Biography

Rudolf Arnheim is Professor Emeritus of the Psychology of Art at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Preface to the New Version	ix
Introduction	1	(9)
Balance	10	(32)
The hidden structure of a square	10	(6)
What are perceptual forces?	16	(2)
Two disks in a square	18	(1)
Psychological and physical balance	19	(1)
Why balance?	20	(3)
Weight	23	(3)
Direction	26	(3)
Patterns of balance	29	(1)
Top and bottom	30	(3)
Right and left	33	(3)
Balance and the human mind	36	(1)
Madame Cezanne in a yellow chair	37	(5)
Shape	42	(54)
Vision as active exploration	42	(1)
Grasping the essentials	43	(1)
Perceptual concepts	44	(3)
What is shape?	47	(1)
The influence of the past	48	(3)
Seeing shape	51	(4)
Simplicity	55	(8)
Simplification demonstrated	63	(3)
Leveling and sharpening	66	(1)
A whole maintains itself	67	(2)
Subdivision	69	(4)
Why the eyes often tell the truth	73	(1)
Subdivision in the arts	74	(2)
What is a part?	76	(3)
Similarity and difference	79	(9)
Examples from art	88	(4)
The structural skeleton	92	(4)
Form	96	(66)
Orientation in space	98	(5)
Projections	103	(3)
Which aspect is best?	106	(6)
The Egyptian method	112	(4)
Foreshortening	116	(4)
Overlapping	120	(3)
What good does overlapping do?	123	(4)
Interplay of plane and depth	127	(3)
Competing aspects	130	(4)
Realism and reality	134	(2)
What looks lifelike?	136	(3)
Form as invention	139	(5)
Levels of abstraction	144	(8)
La source	152	(4)
Visual information	156	(6)
Growth	162	(56)
Why do children draw that way?	163	(1)
The intellectualistic theory	164	(3)
They draw what they see	167	(2)
Representational concepts	169	(2)
Drawing as motion	171	(3)
The primordial circle	174	(5)
The law of differentiation	179	(3)
Verticle and horizontal	182	(5)
Obliqueness	187	(4)
The fusion of parts	191	(4)
Size	195	(2)
The misnamed tadpoles	197	(2)
Translation into two dimensions	199	(4)
Educational consequences	203	(5)
The birth of form in sculpture	208	(1)
Sticks and slabs	209	(6)
The cube and the round	215	(3)
Space	218	(85)
Line and contour	219	(4)
Contour rivalry	223	(4)
Figure and ground	227	(6)
Depth levels	233	(1)
Application to painting	234	(5)
Frames and windows	239	(2)
Concavity in sculpture	241	(4)
Why do we see depth?	245	(3)
Depth by overlapping	248	(5)
Transparency	253	(5)
Deformations create space	258	(3)
Boxes in three dimensions	261	(8)
Help from physical space	269	(2)
Simple rather than truthful	271	(4)
Gradients create depth	275	(5)
Toward a convergence of space	280	(3)
The two roots of central perspective	283	(2)
Not a faithful projection	285	(2)
Pyramidal space	287	(7)
The symbolism of a focused world	294	(3)
Centrality and infinity	297	(1)
Playing with the rules	298	(5)
Light	303	(27)
The experience of light	303	(2)
Relative brightness	305	(4)
Illumination	309	(2)
Light creates space	311	(4)
Shadows	315	(5)
Painting without lighting	320	(4)
The symbolism of light	324	(6)
Color	330	(42)
From light to color	330	(2)
Shape and color	332	(5)
How colors come about	337	(2)
The generative primaries	339	(2)
Addition and subtraction	341	(1)
Generative complementaries	342	(2)
A capricious medium	344	(2)
The quest for harmony	346	(4)
The elements of the scale	350	(3)
Syntax of combinations	353	(4)
The fundamental complementaries	357	(5)
Interaction of color	362	(2)
Matisse and El Greco	364	(4)
Reactions to color	368	(1)
Warm and cold	369	(3)
Movement	372	(38)
Happenings and time	372	(3)
Simultaneity and sequence	375	(3)
When do we see motion?	378	(4)
Direction	382	(2)
The revelations of speed	384	(3)
Stroboscopic movement	387	(5)
Some problems of film editing	392	(2)
Visible motor forces	394	(4)
A scale of complexity	398	(5)
The body as instrument	403	(3)
The kinesthetic body image	406	(4)
Dynamics	410	(34)
Simplicity is not enough	410	(2)
Dynamics and its traditional interpretations	412	(4)
A diagram of forces	416	(3)
Experiments on directed tension	419	(4)
Immobile motion	423	(1)
The dynamics of obliqueness	424	(4)
Tension in deformation	428	(4)
Dynamic composition	432	(2)
Stroboscopic effects	434	(3)
How does dynamics come about?	437	(3)
Examples from art	440	(4)
Expression	444	(19)
Traditional theories	445	(4)
Expression embedded in structure	449	(5)
The priority of expression	454	(3)
Symbolism in art	457	(6)
Notes	463	(24)
Bibliography	487	(16)
Index	503