Toward a Psychology of Art: Collected Essays

188 Pages·1965·115.737 MB·English

by  Rudoplh Arnheim

BY HERBERT READ
Towards a
ICON A D IDEA
The Function of Art in the Development of Human Consciousness
'A rlnsely written argument, compact of thought and erudition ... the illustrations
are unusual and most pertinent. In the cour e of his exposition Sir Herbert gives
an admirable accou1it in critical terms of the main stages in the history of art.' Psycho
Anthony Bertram in the Tablet. Illustrated 42s net
log~
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN ART
'. . . a thoroughly provocative book ... with passages of enlightenment and
sensibility we expect from him ... .' Apollo Faber Paper Couered Edition 12s 6d net
ART A D INDUSTRY
' lothing has appeared in our time on this subject which can compare with it,
either in scope or in clarity of thought.' Noel Carrington in The Listener of ART
Illustrated 36s net
ART AND SOCIETY
'. .. it bears evidence of wide reading and careful thinking ... its lucidity brings it
well within the range of the general reader.' The Times Litera1y Supj1lement
Illustrated 35s net
THE MEA ING OF ART
'The best "pocket" introduction to the understanding of art that has ever been
published.' Star Illus/rated 18s net
EDUCATION THROUGH ART
'It is the most widely read book on art education of our time .. . a mass of philo
r,ophical and psychological evidence to support his contention that the arts should
be the basis of education.' The Times Literary Suj1plement Illustrated 36s net
ART OW
'. .. the book which remains and is likely to remain the best and most complete
expo ition of contemporary art in painting and sculpture.' The Times
• Illustrated 36s net
THE ART OF SCULPTURE
The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts
given in Wa1hingt:...n in 1954. Rudolf
'This is an intensely interesting, imaginative and thoughtful book ... The author
lifts, as it were, the whole volume of sculpture into his hands and presents it, quite
small, as a thing the reader can encompass.' Connoisseur Illustrated 84s net
THE GRASS ROOTS OF ART
-rw
'. .. those who want to grasp why reaJism is irrelevant and why modern ::.1t is as
it is what it means and symbolizes ... should read Sir Herbert Read's The Grass
Roots of Art.' J. P. Hodin in the Lilera7J• Guide. Illustrated 21s net ~ Arnheim
L
FABER & FABER LIMITED
1
24 RUSSELL SQUARE LOI DON WC1
ARN
Rudolf Arnheim TOWA RDS A
PSYCHOLOGY OF ART
COLLECTED ESSAYS
FABER AND FABER
24 Russell Square, London
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. Keynotes
7
FORl\I AND THE CONSUl\IER
17 AGENDA FOR THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ART
II. The Sense of Sight
27
PERCEPTUAL ABSTRACTION AND ART
51
THE GESTALT THEORY OF EXPRESSION
7-f PERCEPTUAL AND AESTHETIC ASPECTS
OF THE l\IOVEl\IENT RESPONSE
90 PERCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF A RORSCHACH CARD
102 A REVIEW OF PROPORTION
I II. The Visible World
1 2 3 ORDER AND COMPLEXITY IN LANDSCAPE DESIGN
36
1 THE MYTH OF THE BLEATI G LAMB
51
i ART HISTORY AND THE PARTIAL GOD
62
i ACCIDENT A1 D THE ECESSITY OF ART
viii CONTENTS
i 81 MELANCHOLY UNSHAPED INTRODUCTION
192 FROM FUNCTION TO EXPRESSION
N. Symbols
215 ARTISTIC SYMBOLS-FREUDIAN AND OTHERWISE
·,,,__f\
222 PERCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF A SYMBOL OF INTERACTION
C)c
245 FOUR ANALYSES:
c (.
THE HOLES OF HENRY MOORE
{
A NOTE ON MONSTERS u0
0
PICASSO'S "NIGHTFISHING AT ANTIBES" ('
CONCERNING THE DANCE
266 ABSTRACT LANGUAGE AND THE METAPHOR
V. Generalities
285 ON INSPIRATION
292 CONTEMPLATION AND CREATIVITY
302
EMOTION AND FEELING IN PSYCHOLOGY AND ART A pyramid of science is under construction. The ambition of the build
3 20 THE ROBIN AND THE SAINT ers is eventually to "cover" all things, mental and physical, human and
natural, animate and inanimate, by a few rules. The ramid will look
VI. To Teachers and Artists sharp enou h t the eak, but toward the base it will vanish inevitably
in a fog of stimulating ignorance like one of those mountains that dissolve
3 37
WHAT KIND OF PSYCHOLOGY?
in the emptiness of untouched silk in Chinese brush paintings. For as
343
IS MODERN ART NECESSARY? the base broadens to encompass an ever greater refinement of species,
3 5 3 THE FORM WE SEEK those few sturdy rules will intertwine in endless complexity and form
patterns so intricate as to appear untouchable by reason.
The prospect is challenging but also frightening. In particular, we
may feel tempted to approach the individuality of human nature,
human actions, and human creations in an attitude of defeatist awe. To
reject all generalization in this field looks good. Who would not like to
be the one who respects the ultimate mystery of all things? With the
smile of the sage one can, without effort, watch the sacrilegious and
clumsy manipulations of the professors. It is an attitude that triumphs in
conversation and noncommittal criticism. Unfortunately it gets us no
where.
Psychology as a humanistic science is beginning to emerge from an
uneasy rapprochement between the philosophical and poetical interpre
tations of the mind on the one hand and the experimental investigations
of muscle, nerve, and gland on the other. And barely are we getting used
2 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION 3
to what such a science of the mind might be like, when we are faced many overlappings will act as unifying reinforcements rather than as
with attempts to deal scientifically with the most delicate, the most in repetitions.
tangible, and the most human among the human manifestations. V.le These papers represent much of the output of the quarter of a cen
attempt a psychology of art. tury during which I have been privileged to live, study, and teach in the
It is a recent example of the many cross-connections that are being United States. To me, they are not so much the steps of a development
established, during the construction of the great pyramid, between thus as the gradual spelling-out of a position. For this reason, I have grouped
far unrelated disciplines of knowledge. "Psychology of Art" - there is a them systematically, not chronologically. For the same reason, I did not
moment of silence during which a person confronted with this notion hesitate to change the words I wrote years ago wherever I thought I
for the first time tries hastily to reconcile an approach and a subject could clarify their meaning. Removed from my original intimacy with
matter, psychology and art, which do not seem to relate well. 0 yes, at the content, I approached the text as an unprepared reader, and when I
second thought there appear some fleeting connotations: Leonardo's vul stumbled, I tried to repair the road. In some instances, I recast whole
ture, Beethoven's nephew, Van Gogh's ear. The prospect does not sections, not in order to bring them up to date, but in the hope of saying
please the friends of the arts, and it may worry the psychologist. better what I meant at the time.
The papers collected in this book are based on the assumption that Some of the earlier papers led to my book, Art and Visual Percep
art, as any other activity of the mind, is subject to psychology, accessible tion, which was written in i951 and first published in i954. Sections of
to understanding, and needed for any comprehensive survey of mental the articles on perceptual abstraction, on the Gestalt theory of expres
functioning. The author believes, furthermore, that the science of psy sion, and on Henry Moore are incorporated in that book. Others con
chology is not limited to measurements under controlled laboratory con tinued where the book left off, for instance, the attempts to describe
ditions, but must comprise all attempts to obtain generalizations by more explicitly the symbolism conveyed by visual form. The short piece
means of facts as thoroughly established and concepts as well defined as on inspiration provided the substance for the introductory chapter on
the investigated situation permits. Therefore the psychological findings creativity in my more recent book, Picasso's Guemica. Finally, in re
offered or referred to in these papers range all the way from experiments reading the material, I was surprised to find how many passages point to
in the perception of shape or observations on the art work of children to what is shaping up as my next task, namely, a presentation of visual
broad deliberations on the nature of images or of inspiration and con thinking as the common and necessary way of productive problem solv
templation. It is also assumed that every area of general psychology calls ing in any human activity.
for applications to art. The study of perception applies to the effects of Ten of the papers in this book were first published in the Journal of
shape, color, movement, and expression in the visual arts. Motivation Aesthetics and Art Criticism. To mention this is to express my indebted
raises the question of what needs are fulfilled by the production and ness to the only scholarly periodical in the United States devoted to the
reception of art. The psychology of the normal and the disturbed person theory of art. In particular, Thomas Munro, its first editor, showed a great
ality searches the work of art for manifestations of individual attitudes. trust in the contribution of psychology. He made me feel at home
And social psychology relates the artist and his contribution to his fellow among the philosophers, art historians, and literary critics whose lively
men. propositions inhabit the hostel he founded and sustained. To him, as
A systematic book on the psychology of art would have to survey well as to my friends of the University of California Press, who are now
relevant work in all of these areas. My papers undertake nothing of the publishing my fourth book, I wish to say that much of what I thought
kind. They are due to one man's outlook and interest, and they report about in these years might not have been cast into final writing, had it
on whatever happened to occur to him. They are presented together be not been for their sympathy, which encouraged the novice and keeps a
cause they turn out to be concerned with a limited number of common critical eye on the more self-assured pro.
themes. Often, but unintentionally, a hint in one paper is expanded to There are a few scientific papers here, originally written for psycholog·
full exposition in another, and different applications of one and the ical journals but free, I hope, of the terminological incrustation that
same concept are found in different papers. I can only hope that the would hide their meaning from sight. There are essays for the educated
4
INTRODUCTION
friend of the arts. And there are speeches, intended to suggest practical I. K01notes
consequences for art education, for the concerns of the artist, and for
the function of art in our time. These public lectures are hardly the prod
ucts of a missionary temperament. In fact, I marveled why anybody
would go to a theorist for counsel, illumination, and reassurance in prac
tical matters. However, when I responded to such requests I noticed,
bewildered and delighted, that some of my findings suggested tangible
consequences, and that these consequences were wanted.
FORM AND THE CONSU 1ER
Art has become incomprehensible. Perhaps nothing so much as this fact
distinguishes art today from what it has been at any other place or time.
Art has always been used, and thought of, as a means of interpreting the
nature of world and life to human eyes and ears; but now the objects of
art are apparently among the most puzzling implements man has ever
made. Now it is they that need interpretation.
Not only are the paintings, the sculpture, and the music of today
incomprehensible to many, but even what, according to our experts, we
are supposed to find in the art of the past no longer makes sense to the
average person. Listen to what happens when one of the best known
modem critics, Roger Fry, looks at a painting of the i 7th century:
Let us note our impressions as nearly as possible in the order in which they
arise. First the curious impression of the receding rectangular hollow of the
hall seen in perspective and the lateral spread, in contrast to that, of the cham
ber in which the scene takes place. This we see to be almost continuously
occupied by the volumes of the figures disposed around the circular table,
and these volumes are all ample and clearly distinguished but bound together
by contrasted movements of the whole body and also by the flowing rhythm
set up by the arms, a rhythm which, as it were, plays over and across the main
\'Olumes. Next, I find, the four dark rectangular openings at the end of the hall
First published in the College Art fournal, Fall 1959, i9, 2-<).
8 FORM AND THE CONSUMER FORM AND THE CONSUMER 9
impose themselves and are instantly and agreeably related to the two dark Leonardo that this natural gift of form began to suffer a rare disturb
masses of the chamber wall to right and left, as well as to various darker masses ance, created by a civilization that was to replace perceiving with meas
in the dresses. We note, too, almost at once, that the excessive symmetry of uring, inventing with copying, images with intellectual concepts, and
these four openings is broken by the figure of one of the girls, and that this appearances with abstract forces. In the nineteenth century, to be a
also somehow fits in with the slight asymmetry of the dark masses of the cham good artist had become much more difficult than it had been for two
ber walls ( 3, p. 23).
thousand years. And whereas normally one of the hardest tasks for a
Now'. this painting, attributed to Nicolas Poussin, tells the story of human being is to make an ugly object, an epidemic of ugliness now in
how Achilles was dressed as a girl by his mother Thetis and hid fected everything within the reach of the new civilization.
among the daughters of King Lycomedes because she did not want him Therapy often requires radical measures, and it was the instinct of
to go to Troy and be killed in the war. In the picture, we plainly see self-preservation that made sensitive critics insensitive to the perversity
Odysseus who in the costume of a peddler entertains the girls with his of such sentences as: "Art is the contemplation of formal relations." But
wares and traps the disguised Achilles by baiting him with a helmet and that is what was said about painting and sculpture. In a neighboring
a shield. field, the remarkable Eduard Hanslick, battling against the notion that
No one could possibly miss seeing the six persons in the foreground music existed for the purpose of reproducing the feelings of the human
of the picture. Roger Fry saw them too, but he hardly looked at them. mind, maintained instead that the content of music was "tonend
He thought the story was boringly told and did not matter. Nor did he bewegte Formen," that is, "sounding forms in motion" ( 5, ch. 2).
consider it relevant that the painter Poussin himself "would have been The consequences of such an approach are illustrated in Fry's anal
speechless with indignation" at the analysis of what the critic thought ysis of the so-called Poussin. No doubt, it indicates a frightening es
the picture was about. trangement of the sensory experiences from their meaning. At the same
me summarize wha we have eard so far. A great artist has told time, we must acknowledge the size of the threat to which such formal
a story. Th - .' does no at,.ter. The fact that he wanted to tell the ism was and is reacting. The danger shows not so much in the work of
story does not matter. The fact that.he is supposed to have told it badly the few great artists who succeed in struggling to the heights, but-to
5locs not matter. His picture is great. It deals with rectangular hollows speak only of painting and sculpture-in the middle-class of insipidly
and volumes and contrasted movements and dark openings. At this realistic portraits and landscapes, in the snapshots cast in bronze that
e;iint, if your and my senses still WQrk, we feel a cold shiver as though celebrate the memory of famous men in our public squares, in the op
touched b the wing of madness. pressive materialism of official Communist art, in the symbolic marble
Yet Roger Fry was a very sane man. And equally sane are most of athletes on the fa~ades of our own government buildings, in the shape
the men and women who speak and write and teach as he did. But Fry lessness of old-fashioned ornaments and new-fangled "abstract" con
was fighting a battle. Art had fallen into the dan(Ter of losing form glomerations of geometry and texture. Man's natural sense of form is
mainly by trying to become a mechanically correct 0r eproduction of na-' indeed threatened, and a large-scale reclaiming action is in order.
ture. That art should make faithful reproductions had been maintained But it is one thing to pay attention to the damage and quite another
in theory for a long time. When Leonardo da Vinci and his colleagues to restrict the concern of art to the elements of sensory phenomena. The
talked about their craft, they discussed paints and tools and materials assertion that "art is the contemplation of formal relation(' must be con
and hundreds of tricks as to how to represent animate and inanimate fronted here with the fundamental and well-established principle that
things in a strictly life-like manner. They had much less to say about "good ,form does not show."
what we now call the sense of form, namely, the capacity to furnish visi Let us remember that a well-mannered erson is one whose man
ble objects with such properties as clarity, unity, harmony, balance, fit ners ;,,e do not notice; tliat a good perfume is perceived as an aspect of
tingness, or relevance; because these virtues exert themselves naturally the ady's own mood and character, not as an odor; that a good tailor or
whenever any human being builds a boat, or makes a dress or a clay fig hairdresser fashions the person; that the art of the interior decorator or
ure, or beats a rhythm, or sings a tune. But it was precisely in the age of lighting designer has failed when it attracts attention to itself instead of
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FOR!ll AND THE CONSUMER 11
10 FORM AND THE CONSUMER
making the room comfortable, elegant, dignified, cold, warm, or what For what has been said here requires reservations. Form is seen to
have you; that the ingredients of a good salad dressing are hard to trace, dissolve into content only when the statement is made to conform to the
and that the best musical accompaniment of a stage play or film intensi beholder's way of perceiving things. Exotic manners, for instance, strike
fies the forces of the dramatic action without being heard by itself. The us with the strangeness of their formal devices. Foreign music may im
music at a funeral, in a church, or in a dance hall cannot serve its pur press us as a display of odd sound-effects. In examining a piece of sculp
pose if it is contemplated as a set of formal relations. And it is the fu ture done in an unfamiliar style, we may be unable to get beyond the
neral, the religious ceremony, and the carnival dance to which we must shape, which puzzles us or which wc admire as original or as masterfully
look for the prototypes of artistic experience, not the museum display of proportioned. Granted that educated \Vesterners have become
remote objects and the so-called "aesthetic distance" such display pro capable of overcoming this obstacle to a remarkable extent for almost
duces. any style the history of art has brought forward anywhere. Flexibility,
Is it not true that the great works of art are notoriously reluctant to however, has its limits. Also we pay for it with an extremely unstable
yield their secret to analysis? Many useful and clever things are said sense of form. Having trained ourselves to perceive in any idiom, there is
about them, but what precisely creates the greatness in the face of an no set of shapes, arbitrary and wilful as it may be, which wc cannot wel
old man in a Rembrandt portrait, the desperate passion of a Beethoven come, but, on the other hand, there is no longer any one idiom into
quartet, the perfection of a Greek temple, or the intense freshness of a which we slip completely. Being strangers unto nobody and everybody,
passage in Dante's Commedia? If we are admitted to the grace of such we find ourselves concerned with shapes.
company, we surrender to the magic and barely remember the question: It seems safe to say that the awareness of style, especially one's own
How is it done? The formal devices used are submerged in the state style, is an unusual experience. The invariant attributes of one's own
ment, in the effect. Precisely this submergence is one of the prerequisites way of being and of doing things are hardly noticed. One cannot really
of the work's greatness. see one's own face in the mirror, because what is always around tends to
Good form does not show. tue re resentin a wom ..u -~--.. evade consciousness. Similarly, we cannot see the reflection of our per
woman no he hape of a woman,-this holds true for a Roman Venus sonal manner in the objects we make. Robust cultures think of their
or a Gothic Madonna, and also for an African wood carving or the re own way as the correct way of making things, and distinguish it from the
clining figures of Henry Moore. And, in fact, even the woman is part of inferior efforts of the barbarians. In our midst, a genuine artist is likely
the form that disappears in order to leave only the pure visible embodi to feel uneasy about what we call his style, since this aspect of his work
ment of meaning or character. If, instead of meaning and character, you is almost invisible to him. Cezanne looking at one of his landscapes is
see a human body in the flesh, or if, instead of the human body, you see likely to have seen simply the mountain, which he had attempted to de
formal relations, something is wrong with the figure ( i). pict as accurately as he could. If somebody had suggested to him that
But where does this leave abstract art or music, which, after all, are surely he had changed nature in order to adapt it to his own style, it is
nothing other than shapes, colors, sound, rhythm? Exactly the same likely he would have flown into one of his magnificent rages.
principle holds true for them. In a successful piece of abstract art or -But Cezanne's style is only partly shared by the consumers. To
music, a pattern of forces transmits its particular blend of calmness and them, the Mont Ste Victoire is one mountain among many others, which
tenseness, lightness and heaviness-a complete transubstantiation of have been painted by Hiroshige or by Goya, by Brueghel or by Leo
form into meaningful expression. As soon, however, as the red circles or nardo. If the consumers are fortunate, their minds will gain from this
the blue bars, the crusts of metal or the carefully daubed areas of noth variety of views a rich, but unified conception of what a mountain can
ingness make themselves conspicuous; as soon as, in music, the har be. Otherwise, the mountain will vanish and a parade of styles will re
monic progressions of the score or the tremolos of the instruments, the main. The Cezanne landscape becomes an arrangement of post
diatonic routine or the atonal irresponsibilities, the grating noises or the Impressionist brushstrokes. Or, to use an example from opera: l\fozart's
twelve-tone rows are heard as such, something is wrong with the paint voung lovers no longer sing out their suffering and joy, but utter the
ing, the sculpture, the music. Or, indeed, with the consumer. melodies and rhythms of the late Baroque.
FORM AND THE CONSUMER 13
12 FORM AND THE CONSUMER
times do, they will hold forth on what is good and what is bad, who
The eclecticism or, if you wish, the universality of our culture is not
imitates whom, and how the performance compares with the Budapest
alone in being responsible for our worship of form. There are other,
Quartet or with Jean-Louis Barrault, or that the second aria was too fast
weighty causes, of which I can mention only one, namely, what I will
or that the last act betrays the latent homosexuality of the author. All
call our "insignificant living." We neglect the human privilege of under
these critical observations are presented with a chilly detachment that
standing individual events and objects as reflections of the meaning of
makes it perfectly clear that the speaker cannot h~ve been ~n recent
life. When we break bread or wash our hands, we are only concerned
communion with Beethoven or Shakespeare, Verdi, or Matisse. The
with nutrition and hygiene. Our waking life is no longer symbolic. This
pose coveted by our young intellectuals is no longer. ~hat of the. stirred
philosophical and religious decline produces an opacity of the world of
lover of the beautiful but the poker face of the cntic, who smffs and
experience that is fatal to art because art relies on the world of experi
judges. I cannot but think with gratitude of the Texas businessman
ence as the carrier of ideas. When the world is no longer transparent,
whose wife showed me the precious Renoirs and Derains and Dufys they
when objects are nothing but objects, then shapes, colors, and sounds are
had on the walls, only to confess with a sigh of resignation: "But I have
nothing but shapes, colors, and sounds, and art becomes a technique for
never been able to find a Picasso that does not upset my husband when
entertaining the senses. Unconscious symbolism, to which we have been
he eats his dinner!" If a man has preserved the sense to know that Pi
running for salvation, is much too primitive to shoulder the task by it
casso is upsetting, the light may shine again some day in the darkness.
self.
Everything seems to count except what the work of art is about. A
Art is the most powerful reminder that man cannot live by bread
friend of mine in the theater department talked with a colleague from
alone; but we manage to ignore the message by treating art as a set of
out-of-town, who had just initiated a course in playwriting. Yes, he sai~,
pleasant stimuli. One of my students told me the other day that she
the students were doing well indeed. Some fine dialogue had been writ
found herself greatly disturbed when she attended a cheerful beer party
ten, and there was increasing conciseness and logical sequence. "Of
in the living room of friends who had just acquired a very large repro
course," he added, "there is no content!" Such episodes make me wo~­
duction of Picasso's Guernica. Undoubtedly the friends, being connois
der whether it is not high time for us to remember tha~ where there is
seurs, thought of Picasso's outcry against the massacre of innocents as a
no content there can be no form.
decorative pattern of formal relations. And when I remember being
The notion of composition for its own sake, which I illustrated with
shown through a very modern home in the hills of Los Angeles where a
Fry's analysis of a painting, has its counterpart in the studio practice of
high-fidelity performance of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion was used to
some of our art departments, art schools, and professional art ;ts. There
demonstrate that music could be piped through all the rooms of the
is great refinement of technique, but little indication that unles~ the art
house, including the laundry and the bathrooms, and also how often I
ist has something to say there can be no distinction between nght and
have had to suffer from recordings of great music being used as back
wrong, no preference for one technique as against another. By n~w, we
ground noise for conversation by otherwise well-bred and kindly people,
start in kindergarten to overwhelm children with an endless vanety of
I cannot but realize that music indeed may lose all depth of meaning
materials and tricks, which keep them distracted-distracted from the
and be reduced to sounding shapes.
only task that counts, namely, the slow and patient and disciplined
The formalistic approach to art is a device for fending off the dis
search for the one and only form that fits the underlying experience.
quieting demands that are art's essence.1 Listen to what the audience
To be sure, artists have good reasons for being wary of discussing
says after one of those concerts that are advertised by nothing but the
the ideas expressed in works of art. Any verbal shortcut threatens to re
name of the virtuoso, or in an art gallery, or at the theater during inter
place the work in its particular concrete complexity ~nd there~y threat
mission. If they talk about what they just saw or heard, as they some-
ens to paralyze the artist or blind the beholder. That 1s why artists prefer
to deal with technique. But there is a decisive difference between the
1 There are other ways of avoiding the issue. The tradition of discussing the modesty of the artist who talks about paints and chisels while his every
subject matter instead of what it expresses survives in the search for clinical
thought and move is in pursuit of his deepest vision, and the implied
symbols.