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  • Arnheim, Gestalt and Art: A Psychological Theory
  • Amy Ione
Arnheim, Gestalt and Art: A Psychological Theory by Ian Verstegen. Springer, 2005. 188 pp. ISBN: 3211288643.

In his foreword to New Essays on the Psychology of Art (1986) [1], Rudolf Arnheim writes: "My papers tend to look like mavericks in the company in which they first appear and reveal their raison d'être only when they are allowed to come home and complement one another." Reading this statement several years ago, I thought how apt it was. His name invariably comes up in discussions of art and perception. Yet, I believe, he remains an enigma, a powerful thinker who seems to defy classification. Part of the puzzle in locating his niche, perhaps, is that his original and perceptive approach is not easily placed within typical categories. Another component, no doubt, is that until recently there have been no book-length studies of his work.

Ian Verstegen's recently published Arnheim, Gestalt and Art: A Psychological Theory remedies this lacuna. Verstegen, who clearly admires Rudolf Arnheim, carefully explains this thinker's core ideas and his influences. The book's main theme is that Arnheim's analysis of art serves a fundamental need in studies of the psychology of art. Verste-gen's expansive critique demonstrates how. Overall, the book offers a piercing critical examination of interrelated themes in Arnheim's work and examines where his major ideas intersect with the writings of major figures who have written on similar topics. Structurally the book is divided into three parts: foundational principles, such principles applied to the various arts, and the developmental aspect of art. It also communicates that Arnheim distinguished three levels in the perception of affects. First, he identifies a crucial cognitive state of the identification of objects. This could correspond to the affect as it is experienced. Then, there is the expressive and motivational component. These are identical and could correspond to the perceptual expression that is available to other perceivers. Thirdly, there is the emotional expression, the level of tension that is perceived by the person. Within this framework, Verstegen proposes that Arnheim's use of the Gestalt approach offers a worthwhile option, providing a unified approach to perception. Areas considered include the various sense modalities and media, how dynamic processes unfold in time, and how these processes imbued Arnheim's views of creativity and development.

Buttressing his argument are the far-reaching summaries that contrast Arnheim's thought with that of others. These range from Arnheim's rejection of the naïve epistemological idea of unconscious drives working blindly —the Freudian legacy—to his disappointments with Gibson's failure to adequately incorporate art into his visual theories. Verstegen also compares cognitive nativism (associated with J.J. Gibson) with cognitive inferentialism (associated with Helmholtz). In short, Arnheim recognized that the Gibson-ian view left little space for imagination and made it difficult to discuss anything other than representational art, a point often made by others as well. The Infer-entialists, on the other hand, depend so much on "inference" that the vast terrain covered by their theories fails to adequately grapple with the problems of perceptual organization in a way that meaningfully integrates the dynamic aspects of the art experience and the creation of art. Also mentioned are topics such as the recent revival of Gestalt psychology (in the work of people such as Steven Lehar), how Arnheim intersects with researchers commonly associated with vision and cognitive science (e.g. Zeki, Solso, Shepard, Kosslyn), where he dissents from Gombrich and Wollheim, how Gestalt psychology compares with information processing, and how his views align with those of Werner, Piaget and various art educators.

Development is an important aspect of Arnheim's work, so I was pleased to see that the sections of the book devoted to Arnheim's developmental studies are solid and substantive. They convey that many of his ideas (e.g. dynamics of visual action or pantomimic form) have their roots in Arnheim's classic Film as Art (1932), first published when he was only 28, which occupies a unique place in terms of formal theories of visual perception. Sections on Arnheim's view of creativity are...

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