Rudolf Arnheim Quotes About Art

Quotes about: Art

• Good art theory must smell of the studio, although its language should differ from the household talk of painters and sculptors.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Art, Smell, Language

  Rudolf Arnheim (2004). “Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye”, p.4, Univ of California Press

• Variety is more than a means of avoiding boredom, since art is more than an entertainment of the senses.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Art, Mean, Blessing

  Rudolf Arnheim (1974). “Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order”, p.55, Univ of California Press

• 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.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Country, Art, Giving

• The dance, just as the performance of the actor, is kinesthetic art, art of the muscle sense. The awareness of tension and relaxation within his own body, the sense of balance that distinguishes the proud stability of the vertical from the risky adventures of thrusting and falling--these are the tools of the dancer.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Dance, Art, Fall

  Rudolf Arnheim (1966). “Toward a Psychology of Art: Collected Essays”, p.261, Univ of California Press

• Art is continually working to take the crust of familiarity off everyday objects.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Art, Everyday Objects, Familiarity

• Just as a chemist "isolates" a substance from contaminations that distort his view of its nature and effects, so the work of art purifies significant appearance. It presents abstract themes in their generality, but not reduced to diagrams.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Art, Science, Views

  Rudolf Arnheim (2004). “Visual Thinking”, p.273, Univ of California Press

• 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

  Art, Reflection, Simple

  Rudolf Arnheim (1974). “Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order”, p.49, Univ of California Press

• 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

  Art, Dark, Men

  Rudolf Arnheim (1974). “Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order”, p.56, Univ of California Press

• 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

  Art, Dedication, Order

• 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

  Art, Eye, Self

  Rudolf Arnheim (2004). “Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye”, p.5, Univ of California Press

• The arts are neglected because they are based on perception, and perception is disdained because it is not assumed to involve thought.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Art, Perception, Neglected

  Rudolf Arnheim (2004). “Visual Thinking”, p.3, Univ of California Press

• 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

  Art, Shapes, Bears

  Rudolf Arnheim (2004). “Visual Thinking”, p.300, Univ of California Press

• 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

  Art, Thinking, Cognition

• Some popular quotations smell of airless closets. They exhale the stale imagination of the intellectual lower middle class. "Suspension of disbelief" has become one of them. Dressed up as a scintillating double negation, it serves the pedestrian notion of art as illusion.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Art, Class, Smell

  Rudolf Arnheim (1990). “Parables of Sun Light: Observations on Psychology, the Arts, and the Rest”, p.163, Univ of California Press

• It would be most wholesome if for at least twenty years art historians were forbidden to refer to any derivations. If they were not allowed to account for a work of art mainly by tracing where it comes from, they would have to deal with it in and by itself--which is what they are most needed for.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Art, Years, Twenties

  Rudolf Arnheim (1990). “Parables of Sun Light: Observations on Psychology, the Arts, and the Rest”, p.247, Univ of California Press

• No mature style of art in any culture has ever been simple. In certain cultures, an overall symmetry may conceal the complexity of the work at first glance.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Art, Simple, Style

  Rudolf Arnheim (1974). “Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order”, p.49, Univ of California Press

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