Rudolf Arnheim

Art theorist and psychologist, born in Berlin, Germany. He studied at the University of Berlin, worked in Rome with the International Institute of Educational Films (1933–8), then taught at both the New School for Social Research and Sarah Lawrence College (1943–68), Harvard University (1968–74), and the University of Michigan (from 1974). He taught film history, but is most noted as a pioneering theorist of the psychology of the arts. Among his influential books are Art as Visual Perception (1954, 1974), Toward a Psychology of Art (1966), and Entropy and Art (1971).

Rudolf Arnheim (born July 15, 1904) is a German-born author, art and film theorist, and perceptual psychologist. He himself has said that his major books are Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (1954), Visual Thinking (1969), and The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts (1982), but it is Art and Visual Perception for which he is most widely known. Revised, enlarged and published as a New Version in 1974, it has been translated into 14 languages, and is very likely one of the most widely read and influential art books of the twentieth century.

Formative years

Arnheim was born in Berlin, where his father owned a small piano factory. Despite the expectation that he should become a businessman, he enrolled at the University of Berlin in 1923. There, he majored in psychology and philosophy, with secondary emphases in the histories of art and music.

Early writings

While a graduate student, Arnheim wrote weekly film reviews for progressive Berlin publications.

His preoccupation with film led to the publication in 1932 of his first book entitled Film als Kunst (Film as Art), in which he examined the various ways in which film images are (and should always aspire to be) different from literal encounters with reality. While living in Rome, he also wrote a second book, titled Radio: The Art of Sound (1936), in which he discussed the characteristics of radio with more or less the same approach with which he had looked at film.

Immigration to the U.S.

In the fall of 1940, he left England for the U.S., arriving at New York harbor at night, with all the buildings filled with lights, in sharp contrast to the blackout policies of London and the ship on which he sailed. Arriving with only ten dollars in his pocket, he received assistance from other Gestalt psychologists, including Max Wertheimer, who arranged for his appointment to the psychology faculty at the New School for Social Research. He was also prompted to apply (given his expertise in radio) for a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, by which he became an associate of the Office of Radio Research at Columbia University.

Only two years after arriving in the U.S., he also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, with which he proposed to research perceptual psychology in relation to the visual arts.

Later years

About ten years later, having received a second Rockefeller Fellowship, he took leave for fifteen months and wrote his pioneering book titled Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (1954). Ten years later, in 1969, he accepted an appointment at Harvard University as a Professor of the Psychology of Art. And then, in 1974, he retired from Harvard University and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where (formally and informally) he has been connected with the University of Michigan for many years. Neuausgaben: 1974, 1979, 2002 1943: Gestalt and art. 1949/1966: Toward a Psychology of Art. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1954/1974: Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1966: Toward a Psychology of Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. Berkeley: University of California Press. Berkeley: University of California Press. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Neuausgabe: 2001 (Suhrkamp) 1982/88: The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1986: New Essays on the Psychology of Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1989: Parables of Sun Light: Observations on Psychology, the Arts, and the Rest. Berkeley: University of California Press. Berkeley: University of California Press. Berkeley: University of California Press. Berkeley: University of California Press.