Rudolf Arnheim’s Contribution to Gestalt Psychology Ian Verstegen Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Gestalt psychology was the foundation of Rudolf Arnheim’s approach to art. Reviewing Arnheim’s long and productive career, it becomes useful to assess his relationship to the evolving theory. By paying special attention to the issues of (1) perceptual abstraction and visual thinking, (2) perceptual dynamics and expression, and (3) perceptual “goodness” and beauty, it can be seen the degree to which Arnheim actually altered the basis of the general theory of Gestalt psychology, affirming the centrality of art in its purview. Keywords: Gestalt psychology, Rudolf Arnheim, visual thinking, expression, pra ¨gnanz In 1969, the 65-year-old Rudolf Arnheim took up an appoint- ment at Harvard University’s Design department, ending more than two decades of teaching psychology at Sarah Lawrence College and the being on the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. 1 His “exit” from psychology was preceded only two years earlier by the death of the last of the founders of Gestalt psychology, Wolfgang Ko ¨hler (1887–1967). Ko ¨hler had been a productive researcher up until the end (e.g., Ko ¨hler, 1965/ 1971), thus, the bulk of Arnheim’s career and writing had taken place during the life of his great teacher; Arnheim applied a preexisting theory to art. This would be an unfortunate character- ization, however, not only because Arnheim continued to be ex- tremely productive in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, but also because the centrality of art in Gestalt psychology allowed Arnheim to make fundamental contributions to theory itself. Although it is easy in some cases to interpret Arnheim’s later defenses of Gestalt ideas in a very rigid and orthodox way (cf., Arnheim, 1986/1992), in at least two areas—the theory of expres- sion and creativity— he could be said to have altered the face of the theory in substantial ways. This article is about Arnheim as a Gestalt psychologist and the ways in which he developed his theories against the backdrop of the foundation laid by his teach- ers, Ko ¨hler and Max Wertheimer (1880 –1943), and the American discipline he found upon his emigration from Europe in 1940. By reviewing three areas, (1) perceptual abstraction and visual think- ing, (2) perceptual dynamics and expression, and (3) perceptual “goodness” and beauty, I will show the ways in which Arnheim helped articulate key areas of Gestalt thinking and even how general Gestalt theory could inform some of his points. It is something of a surprise to learn that the young Arnheim had little interest in becoming a research professor. A true public intellectual in Berlin, he participated in the literary culture of the city writing criticism (Arnheim, 1977/1997), as well as his influ- ential studies of the emerging media of film and radio (Arnheim, 1932/1957; 1937/1979). Even upon his move to Italy, forced by the rise of Hitler, Arnheim worked away from the academy, helping to oversee an international encyclopedia of cinema. After a brief period in London, Arnheim finally arrived in New York where he could be free from racial persecution and the escalation of World War II. There, he found Wertheimer teaching at the newly formed New School for Social Research and was thrust back to his situation of a decade previous, when he worked closely with his dissertation supervisor on an influential thesis on the psychology of expression (Arnheim, 1928). Thus, world destiny carried Arnheim to academia, and he joined the heady environment of the “University in Exile.” The intellectual life of the school is vividly brought to life in the notebooks of Abraham and Edith Luchins (Luchins & Luchins, 1978), who recorded minutely Wertheimer’s lectures. Reading the transcripts of lectures on the psychology of art, one sees the good ground prepared for Arn- heim’s work. Fate called again when Wertheimer passed away suddenly in 1943, and Arnheim was asked to take over his courses. Thus, Arnheim began his career at both the New School and Sarah Lawrence college, as he began to appreciate the uniqueness of his training now that he found himself in behaviorist America (Ash, 1995). The fact that the suggestive starts toward a Gestalt psychology of art were only promises is shown in the fact that after receiving a grant from the Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 1943, Arnheim realized he would have to undertake preliminary studies before he could state definitively what Gestalt psychology meant to the arts. Some of this work was relatively mechanical, as when Arnheim reflected on the famous figure ground phenomenon in three di- mensions, in “The Holes of Henry Moore” (1948/1966). However, at least two studies that resulted from this period, “Perceptual Abstraction and Art” (1948/1966) and “The Gestalt Theory of Expression” (1949/1966) really did become foundational docu- ments and were recognized as such by the so-called New York school of Gestalt psychology when they were included in the collective volume, Documents of Gestalt Psychology edited by Mary Henle (1962b). Arnheim’s classic, Art and Visual Percep- tion: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (1954/1974), became so identified as a “Gestalt” work that it was cited as a strictly 1 On the life of Arnheim, see Verstegen (2005, Appendix). Ian Verstegen, independent scholar, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ian Verstegen, 2129 Walnut Street, Apartment 3, Philadelphia, PA 19103. E-mail: ianverstegen@yahoo.com Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts Copyright 2007 by the American Psychological Association 2007, Vol. 1, No. 1, 8 –15 1931-3896/07/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1931-3896.1.1.8 8