Rudolf Arnheim

The line that describes the beautiful is elliptical. It has simplicity and constant change. It cannot be described by a compass, and…

— Rudolf Arnheim

When the thing observed... is seen as an agglomeration of pieces, the details lose their meaning and the whole becomes unrecognizable. This…

— Rudolf Arnheim

A good documentary or educational film is not raw experience. The material has passed the mill of reason, it has been sifted…

— Rudolf Arnheim

The ambition of instantaneous photography... was that of preserving the spontaneity of action and avoiding any indication that the presence of the…

— Rudolf Arnheim

The arts, as a reflection of human existence at its highest, have always and spontaneously lived up to this demand of plenitude.…

— Rudolf Arnheim

Order is a necessary condition for making a structure function. A physical mechanism, be it a team of laborers, the body of…

— Rudolf Arnheim

The clarification of visual forms and their organization in integrated patterns as well as the attribution of such forms to suitable objects…

— Rudolf Arnheim

Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it…

— Rudolf Arnheim

Both art and science are bent on the understanding of the forces that shape existence, and both call for a dedication to…

— 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…

— Rudolf Arnheim

From building a fire one can learn something about artistic composition. If you use only small kindling and large logs, the fire…

— Rudolf Arnheim

“Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees…

— Rudolf Arnheim

It would be most wholesome if for at least twenty years art historians were forbidden to refer to any derivations. If they…

— Rudolf Arnheim

A system is in equilibrium when the forces constituting it are arranged in such a way as to compensate each other, like…

— Rudolf Arnheim

A cloud can look like a camel, but a camel is unlikely to look like a cloud. This is so because the…

— Rudolf Arnheim

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

— Rudolf Arnheim

The fundamental peculiarity of the photographic medium; the physical objects themselves print their image by means of the optical and chemical action…

— Rudolf Arnheim

Since mechanically obtained randomness contains all kinds of possible permutations, including the most regular ones, it cannot be relied upon always to…

— Rudolf Arnheim

As one gets older, it happens that in the morning one fails to remember the airplane trip to be taken in a…

— Rudolf Arnheim

The absurd consequences of neglecting structure but using the concept of order just the same are evident if one examines the present…

— Rudolf Arnheim

Entropy theory, on the other hand, is not concerned with the probability of succession in a series of items but with the…

— Rudolf Arnheim

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

— Rudolf Arnheim