Arnheim = Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye

Theories[edit]
Arnheim believed that most people have their most productive ideas in their early twenties.[3] They get hooked on an idea and spend the rest of their lives expanding on it.[3] Arnheim’s productive or generative idea was that the meaning of life and the world could be perceived in the patterns, shapes, and colors of the world.[3] Therefore, he believed that we have to study those patterns and discover what they mean.[3] He also believed that artwork is visual thinking and a means of expression, not just putting shapes and colors together that look appealing.[3] Art is a way to help people understand the world, and a way to see how the world changes through your mind.[3] Its function is to show the essence of something, like our existence.[1] Arnheim’s writing and thinking were most important to him, and his goal was to understand things for himself.[3] Arnheim maintained that vision and perception are creative, active understanding, and that we organize perceptions into structures and form with which to understand them.[1] Without order we wouldn’t understand anything, so the world is ordered just by being perceived.[1] Overall, he wrote fifteen books about perceptual psychology and art, architecture, and film.[2]