Rudolf Arnheim Quotes

38 quotes in 693 categories

• In a land of immigrants, one was not an alien but simply the latest arrival.
• At one of the annual conventions of the American Society for Aesthetics much confusion arose when the Society for Anesthetics met at the same time…
• A system is in equilibrium when the forces constituting it are arranged in such a way as to compensate each other, like the two weights…
• 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…
• All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention.
• Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that…
• Entropy theory, on the other hand, is not concerned with the probability of succession in a series of items but with the overall distribution of…
• Variety is more than a means of avoiding boredom, since art is more than an entertainment of the senses.
• Seeing consists of the grasping of structural features rather than the indiscriminate recording of detail.
• The rehabilitation of order as a universal principle, however, suggested at the same time that orderliness by itself is not sufficient to account for the…
• 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…
• Climbing is a heroic liberating act; and height spontaneously symbolizes things of high value, be it in the value of worldly power or of spirituality.…
• The arts are neglected because they are based on perception, and perception is disdained because it is not assumed to involve thought.
• The least touchable object in the world is the eye.
• 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…
• The line that describes the beautiful is elliptical. It has simplicity and constant change. It cannot be described by a compass, and it changes direction…
• Good art theory must smell of the studio, although its language should differ from the household talk of painters and sculptors.
• 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…
• Art is continually working to take the crust of familiarity off everyday objects.
• The clarification of visual forms and their organization in integrated patterns as well as the attribution of such forms to suitable objects is one of…

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