This monograph presents a synthesis and reconstruction of Rudolf Arnheim’s theory of media. Combining both Arnheim’s well-known writings on film and radio with his later work on the psychology of art, the author presents a coherent approach to the problem of the nature of a medium, space and time, and the differentia between different media. The latent ontological commitments of Arnheim’s theories is drawn out by affirming Arnheim’s membership in the Brentano school of Austrian philosophy, which allows his theories to be clarified and strengthened, particularly with the metaphysical writings of Roman Ingarden. The resulting theory is relational, portraying essential medial differences with neutral criteria and allowing for a rigorous definition of a medium. The way in which a medium is based on the inherent dispositions of medial materials creates a highly appealing theory that is determinate without being deterministic. The theory is thus highly timely as people in media studies seek to address the determinate nature of media after the post-medium condition. The book will appeal to researchers and graduate students in cultural and media studies as well as architecture and design.

Arnheim, Gestalt and Art is the first book-length discussion of the powerful thinking of the psychologist of art, Rudolf Arnheim. Written as a complete overview of Arnheim’s thinking, it covers fundamental issues of the importance of psychological discussion of the arts, the status of gestalt psychology, the various sense modalities and media, and developmental issues. By proceeding in a direction from general to specific and then proceeding through dynamic processes as they unfold in time (creativity, development, etc.), the book discovers an unappreciated unity to Arnheim’s thinking. Not content to simply summarize Arnheim’s theory, however, Arnheim, Art, and Gestalt goes on to enrich (and occasionally question) Arnheim’s findings with the contemporary results of gestalt-theoretical research from around the world, but especially in Italy and Germany. The result is a workable overview of the psychology of art with bridges built to contemporary research, making Arnheim’s approach living and sustainable.

A 50-year-old classic, which was revised and expanded in 1974. Explains how the eye organizes visual material according to psychological laws.

Thousands of readers who have profited from engagement with the lively mind of Rudolf Arnheim over the decades will receive news of this new collection of essays expectantly. In the essays collected here, as in his earlier work on a large variety of art forms, Arnheim explores concrete poetry and the metaphors of Dante, photography and the meaning of music. There are essays on color composition, forgeries, and the problems of perspective, on art in education and therapy, on the style of artists' late works, and the reading of maps. Also, in a triplet of essays on pioneers in the psychology of art (Max Wertheimer, Gustav Theodor Fechner, and Wilhelm Worringer) Arnheim goes back to the roots of modern thinking about the mechanisms of artistic perception.

The tension between two systems for understanding and picturing space, the concentric and the Cartesian, is regarded by the author as the key to composition in painting, sculpture and architecture

The 35th anniversary of this classic of art theory.

Psychology.