Quotessence
Home / Authors / Rudolf Arnheim
Rudolf Arnheim

Rudolf Arnheim Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllArtOrderHumansIfsMenObjectsShapesEyeScienceUnderstandingWayAccountsActionArt IsArtistConditionsCountryDifferentEntropyEquilibrium

Famous Rudolf Arnheim Quotes

“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.”

MenHumansArtSometimesStatesOrderDarkSpaceViewsStepsConditionsArt IsWindowSightMarkFinalsStreamsAccomplishedWorks Of ArtClimbingRelativeHuman ConditionTowersMaximumStairsMedievalProgressionResentEquilibriumDurationEntropy
Book:Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order
Create image

“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.”

WayGivingHumansKindDoeArtSelfEyeArtistUnderstandingCommonSeeingInformationCreationActivityShapesFindingsInstrumentsInspiredEverydayArtisticEveryday LifeGreat ArtRefinedExaltedHuman ActivitySelf ContainedConceiving
Book:Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
Create image

“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.”

ArtIndividualBearsShapesAppearanceInventionObjectivesWitnessVarietyDimensionsInterpretationOutlookExploitsValidity
Book:Visual Thinking
Create image

“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.”

ArtImaginationClassMiddleIntellectualIllusionNotionSmellMiddle ClassQuotationsClosetsDisbeliefDressed UpStaleNegationSuspensionPedestriansSuspension Of Disbelief
Book:Parables of Sun Light: Observations on Psychology, the Arts, and the Rest
Create image

“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.”

IfsYearsArtWould BeDealsNeededAccountsTwentiesWorks Of ArtHistorianForbiddenTracing
Book:Parables of Sun Light: Observations on Psychology, the Arts, and the Rest
Create image

“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.”

ArtBodyFallActorsAwarenessAdventureProudBalanceToolsPerformancesDanceTensionMusclesDancerStabilityBalletRelaxationVerticalDance Performance
Book:Toward a Psychology of Art: Collected Essays
Create image

“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.”

WorldWayArtMadeDifferentAgeOrderForceUnderstandingExistenceAcceptingMiddleSubjectsDisciplineShapesStatementsDifferent WaysDedicationTolerateBentMiddle AgesCriteriaPrecisionSignaturesSubjectivitySensoryArt And ScienceCapricious
Author:Rudolf Arnheim
Create image