All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention. Rudolf Arnheim More Quotes by Rudolf Arnheim More Quotes From Rudolf Arnheim Television is a new, hard test of our wisdom. If we succeed in mastering the new medium it will enrich us. But it can also put our mind to sleep. We must not forget that in the past the inability to transport immediate experience and to convey it to others made the use of language necessary and thus compelled the human mind to develop concepts. For in order to describe things one must draw the general from the specific; one must select, compare, think. When communication can be achieved by pointing with the finger, however, the mouth grows silent, the writing hand stops, and the mind shrinks. Rudolf Arnheim communicationsleepwriting Once it is recognized that productive thinking in any area of cognition is perceptual thinking, the central function of art in general education will become evident. Rudolf Arnheim cognitionartthinking In a land of immigrants, one was not an alien but simply the latest arrival. Rudolf Arnheim immigrantslandaliens The arts are neglected because they are based on perception, and perception is disdained because it is not assumed to involve thought. Rudolf Arnheim neglectedperceptionart When the thing observed... is seen as an agglomeration of pieces, the details lose their meaning and the whole becomes unrecognizable. This is often true of snapshots in which no pattern of salient shapes organizes the mass of vague and complex nuances. Rudolf Arnheim nuancesnapshotsdetails The least touchable object in the world is the eye. Rudolf Arnheim objectseyeworld Variety is more than a means of avoiding boredom, since art is more than an entertainment of the senses. Rudolf Arnheim blessingmeanart Good art theory must smell of the studio, although its language should differ from the household talk of painters and sculptors. Rudolf Arnheim smelllanguageart Every act is a visual judgement. Rudolf Arnheim visualsjudgementchoices From building a fire one can learn something about artistic composition. If you use only small kindling and large logs, the fire will quickly eat up the small pieces but will not become strong enough to attack the large ones. You must supply a scale of sizes from the smallest to the largest. The human eye also will not make its way into a painting or building unless a continuum of shapes leads from the small to the large, from the large to the small. Rudolf Arnheim eyestrongfire 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. Rudolf Arnheim good-morningtakentravel No longer can we consider what the artist does to be a self-contained activity, mysteriously inspired from above, unrelated and unrelatable to other human activities. Instead, we recognize the exalted kind of seeing that leads to the creation of great art as an outgrowth of the humbler and more common activity of the eyes in everyday life. Just as the prosaic search for information is "artistic" because it involves giving and finding shape and meaning, so the artist's conceiving is an instrument of life, a refined way of understanding who and where we are. Rudolf Arnheim eyeselfart But art not only exploits the variety of appearances, it also affirms the validity of individual outlook and thereby admits a further dimension of variety. Since the shapes of art do not primarily bear witness to the objective nature of the things for which they stand, they can reflect individual interpretation and invention. Rudolf Arnheim shapesbearsart 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. Rudolf Arnheim teamanimalorder The ambition of instantaneous photography... was that of preserving the spontaneity of action and avoiding any indication that the presence of the picture taker had a modifying influence on what was going on. Rudolf Arnheim photographyambitionaction The principle of parsimony is valid esthetically in that the artist must not go beyond what is needed for his purpose. Rudolf Arnheim purposeprinciplesartist Both art and science are bent on the understanding of the forces that shape existence, and both call for a dedication to what is. Neither of them can tolerate capricious subjectivity because both are subject to their criteria of truth. Both require precision, order, and discipline because no comprehensible statement can be made without these. Both accept the sensory world as what the Middle Ages called signatura regrum, the signature of things, but in quite different ways. Rudolf Arnheim dedicationorderart Since mechanically obtained randomness contains all kinds of possible permutations, including the most regular ones, it cannot be relied upon always to exhibit a pervasive irregularity. Rudolf Arnheim irregularityrandomnesskind Now the work of art also represents a state of final equilibrium, of accomplished order and maximum relative entropy, and there are those who resent it. But art is not meant to stop the stream of life. Within a narrow span of duration and space the work of art concentrates a view of the human condition; and sometimes it marks the steps of progression, just as a man climbing the dark stairs of a medieval tower assures himself by the changing sights glimpsed through its narrow windows that he is getting somewhere after all. Rudolf Arnheim darkmenart Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination. Rudolf Arnheim eyestronghumility
