Rudolf Arnheim quotes

Rudolf Arnheim was a German artist, psychologist, and theorist, known for his influential work on the psychology of art and visual perception. His research bridged the fields of art, psychology, and philosophy, shaping modern understanding of how we perceive images and art. He made significant contributions to the development of Gestalt theory and authored several notable books on the subject. Here are 25 of his quotes:

The arts, as a reflection of human existence at its highest, have always and spontaneously lived up to this demand of plenitude. No mature style of art in any culture has ever been simple. (Rudolf Arnheim)
The clarification of visual forms and their organization in integrated patterns as well as the attribution of such forms to suitable objects is one of the most effective training grounds of the young mind. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
At one of the annual conventions of the American Society for Aesthetics much confusion arose when the Society for Anesthetics met at the same time in the same hotel. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
In a land of immigrants, one was not an alien but simply the latest arrival. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
Now equilibrium is the very opposite of disorder. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
Entropy theory, on the other hand, is not concerned with the probability of succession in a series of items but with the overall distribution of kinds of items in a given arrangement. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
Order is a necessary condition for anything the human mind is to understand. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
As one gets older, it happens that in the morning one fails to remember the airplane trip to be taken in a few hours or the lecture scheduled for the afternoon. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
The foreign accent was a promise, and indeed, all over the country, European imports added spice to the sciences, the arts, and other areas. What one had to give was not considered inferior to what one received. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
The least touchable object in the world is the eye. (Rudolf Arnheim)
Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
Variety is more than a means of avoiding boredom, since art is more than an entertainment of the senses. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
Good art theory must smell of the studio, although its language should differ from the household talk of painters and sculptors. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
In many instances, order is apprehended first of all by the senses. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
A system is in equilibrium when the forces constituting it are arranged in such a way as to compensate each other, like the two weights pulling at the arms of a pair of scales. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
When a system is considered in two different states, the difference in volume or in any other property, between the two states, depends solely upon those states themselves and not upon the manner in which the system may pass from one state to the other. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
The rehabilitation of order as a universal principle, however, suggested at the same time that orderliness by itself is not sufficient to account for the nature of organized systems in general or for those created by man in particular. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
The line that describes the beautiful is elliptical. It has simplicity and constant change. It cannot be described by a compass, and it changes direction at every one of its points. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
Rather than be asked to abandon one's own heritage and to adapt to the mores of the new country, one was expected to possess a treasure of foreign skills and customs that would enrich the resources of American living. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
Modem science, then, maintains on the one hand that nature, both organic and inorganic, strives towards a state of order and that man's actions are governed by the same tendency. (Rudolf Arnheim)
Furthermore, order is a necessary condition for making a structure function. A physical mechanism, be it a team of laborers, the body of an animal, or a machine, can work only if it is in physical order. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
Today we no longer regard the universe as the cause of our own undeserved troubles but perhaps, on the contrary, as the last refuge from the mismanagement of our earthly affairs. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
The absurd consequences of neglecting structure but using the concept of order just the same are evident if one examines the present terminology of information theory. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim
Man's striving for order, of which art is but one manifestation, derives from a similar universal tendency throughout the organic world; it is also paralleled by, and perhaps derived from, the striving towards the state of simplest structure in physical systems. View quote
Rudolf Arnheim

Rudolf Arnheim

Occupation: German Artist
Born: July 15, 1904
Died: June 9, 2007
Quotes count: 25