Art and Visual Perception - 50th Edition by Rudolf Arnheim (Paperback)

About the Book

"In "The Ego and the Id "Freud argued that a cogent thought process, to say nothing of conscious intellectual work, could not exist amidst the unruliness of visual experience. Over the last half century in a sequence of landmark books, Rudolf Arnheim has not only shown us how wrong that is, he has parsed the grammar of form with uncanny acuity and taught us how to read it."--Jonathan Fineberg, author of "Art since 1940: Strategies of Being "

Book Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

"In The Ego and the Id Freud argued that a cogent thought process, to say nothing of conscious intellectual work, could not exist amidst the unruliness of visual experience. Over the last half century in a sequence of landmark books, Rudolf Arnheim has not only shown us how wrong that is, he has parsed the grammar of form with uncanny acuity and taught us how to read it."--Jonathan Fineberg, author of Art since 1940: Strategies of Being

"It is a book of first-rate importance, and many aspects of the psychology of art are for the first time given a scientific basis. It is sure to have a far-reaching influence, and artists themselves would benefit from reading it."--Sir Herbert Read

Review Quotes

"Definitive. . . . translated into fourteen languages, it is one of the most widely-read and influential art books of the century."-- "Leonardo"

"A book which reflects so well the author's urbanity, catholicity, and keenness of mind, as well as his technical grasp of the scientific and the artistic, is no small achievement."-- "Psychological Bulletin"

"In this much-needed book, the author brings together the results of good thinking in areas, heretofore, comparatively removed from one another."-- "Audio-Communication Bulletin"

"The author starts with a kernel of hard-boiled psychological fact . . . as a landing platform for a soaring stratospheric flight into a beautiful, amorphous sky."-- "Quarterly Review of Biology"

"The clear, direct, flexible writing is powerfully reinforced by the numerous illustrations . . . not one of which is superfluous."-- "Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism"

About the Author

Rudolf Arnheim is Professor Emeritus of the Psychology of Art at Harvard University. His books include Film as Art (California, 1957), Visual Thinking (1969), The Dynamics of Architectural Form (California, 1977), The Split and the Structure: Twenty-eight Essays (California, 1996).