Let there be Light

It's amazing to me how important light is to our visual perception system, even though we are often not consciously aware that we are looking at light (i.e. When we are in the shadows of a room). Light is one of the “first causes of perception” (Arnheim, pg. 303). Without light, we cannot see.

Our ability to distinguish the luminance or brightness of an object is related to the context of what's around it. For instance, the man in figure 224 (Arnheim, pg. 308) is seen as in shadows relative to the woman, rather than having darker skin than the woman. One of the reasons for this interpretation is that his cloak is also engulfed in shadows, showing that the whole body is situated in a place of low light in the picture. If his clothes were not shadowed, then it would be more arguable to interpret his darkened face as darker skin.

I am not an artist (other than two art classes taken in high school), so I'm incredibly impressed, knowing now, how hard it is to separate the luminance and the color in our perception, that so many artists manage to balance the two perfectly (especially Leonardo Da Vinci). Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' picture of Princess Albert de Broglie (Arnheim, pg.126-127) is impressive. The caption is right – it is difficult to tell that the black and white is not the photograph of a person; in fact, I think it is only the unnaturally white skin that gives it away. The dress is captured perfectly with the way that light reflects off the shimmery material.

Livingston outlines how our visual system is adapted to perceive more luminances even though the actual perceptual ability of the individual parts of our system are limited. The center/surround system allows us to easily distinguish the difference between sharp contrasts. Gradual changes are overlooked when distinct changes occur. In this way, we increase our ability to see luminance differences.

I am intrigued about the correlation that Livingston draws between luminance contrasts and depth perception in paintings. She says that the Cathedral paintings that look flatter are also the ones that have little luminance contrast in the analysis of the luminance profiles. This is due to the fact that the Where system is colorblind and sensitive only to luminance changes in seeing shapes from shading. “Thus, a low luminance contrast alone stimulates the Where system but not the What system” (Livingston, pg. 128).

The two paintings by Monet (Livingston, pg. 132-133) demonstrate what happens when the artwork stimulates primarily the Where system. The objects in the picture are not distinct, and it is only after studying the picture for some time that one can distinguish the objects at all. Despite the fuzzy quality of the objects, the depth relations of where the blurry objects are situated is clear. This is due to the low luminance contrast and lack of color contrast.

I found it particularly striking that Andre Derain understood that by utilizing the luminance differences to show depth, an artist was freed from using descriptive colors to work with expressive colors. This ability is due to the colorblind-ness of the Where system which sees depth.

Starry House

Initially, when I looked at this image, I saw a church with three star-pointed towers and rays of light emerging from each of the three. The roofs are all triangular shapes, and the symmetry around a central axis means that the whole image appears like one triangle on top of another. Furthermore, the light beams bursting from the stars run parallel to the angles, completing the triangular imagery.

The background, meanwhile, was composed primarily of vertical lines. The lines appear to go straight up and down behind the building, even though the lines (by themselves) are actually angled. Because of the depth indicated through the lighter shading of the forward parts, the background appears to be parallel lines (though again, they're not strictly parallel when examined closely).

Flipping the picture 180 degrees really demonstrates Arnheim's discussion of “top-heavy” versus “bottom-heavy.” The picture that did not look at all unnatural (in terms of visual weight) previously, is suddenly precariously balanced on a narrow point and looks as though it will topple over at any minute. Minor balance is added because of the additional stars on either side, but the design does not appear as natural as it does “right side up.”

On its side, the image loses almost all of its visual symmetry. When I rotated it 90 degrees counterclockwise, I instinctively rotated my head to view it. Just like a violin that loses its power when placed on its side, this picture also loses its.

Felice Varini

"Playing with the Rules"

"A painter paints the appearances of things, not their object correctness; in fact, he creates new appearances of things."  The painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner said these words in 1927.  I find them especially applicable to the readings that we did by Livingstone, Solso, and Arnheim.  These readings discussed the role of the artist to recreate the world in their art, but also the opportunity they have to reinvent the world in their art.

One of the greatest mysteries to me is the artist's task of taking in a 3-D world using a 2-D retinal image, converting that information to 3-D using the brain, a

nd then transferring it back onto a 2-D surface, but with the attempts of making it look 3-D.  The mental gymnastics required for such a task are truly mind boggling, and something I never before realized had to occur.

It seems that the same clues our brain gets from the 2-D image produced by the retina are the same clues that artists use to portray a 3-D world with a 2-D surface.  These tools are perspective, shading, occlusion, haze, stereopsis, and relative motion.  For example, in terms of perspective, the further away an object is from the viewer, the smaller the image that is cast on the retina.  Thus our brain processes this information to say that as objects consistently get smaller, they consistently get further away.  This is exactly what artists do with perspective.  They use converging lines to map out the mathematical "shrinking" of objects the further away they become from the eye.  So, when we look at a painting using perspective, we see the laws our brain has already registered as truth and convert it to the information given to us on this 2-D surface.  Once again, as objects consistently get smaller, they consistently get further away.

What is interesting is when artists play with rules like perspective to create a new world, instead of an exact representation of the "real" one.

  Arnheim discusses this in his chapter on space.  He mentions Giorgio de Chirico, the artist that I happen to be studying in conference.  Surrealists like de Chirico base their art off of re-creating what is portrayed as "real," that is, painting realistically a world that could not physically be realistic.  De Chirico used perspective, but used it in "incorrect" ways.  At first glance, his paintings seem to make sense, but one is left with a feeling that something is off.  This is because de Chirico uses more than one vanishing point, but none of them in the "correct" way.

Traditional perspective uses one horizon line that all of the vanishing points go to.  It is in this way that perspective is created; it seems as though everything is receding in the same direction, just as it appears when we look at the world in real life.  De Chirico created vanishing points along different horizon lines, breaking the rules of ordinary perspective.  Some of the horizon lines are within the ground of the painting, some are in the sky of the painting.  This gives us an image of impossible space.

Renaissance perspective is meant to recreate the world accurately, setting the viewer at peace that what he is seeing is correct and familiar.  De Chirico's perspective is meant to recreate the world inaccurately, making the viewer uneasy.  His paintings have a sense of space, a real, defined sense of space, but it is also a sense of uneasy space, uncertain space, in fact, impossible space.  I think de Chirico is a wonderful example of what Kirchner is saying when he says a painter "creates new appearances of things."  I think it is the role of the artist not only to "copy" what we see, but challenge what we see, to present us with a new and interesting way to look at the world.

Cubism and Gestalt

This is a painting by cubist artist Georges Braque, entitled Violin and Candlestick. When first looking at this piece, there is a definite tension between understanding it for how it realistically looks, and then extracting some sort of intellectualized understanding of what it's intended to portray. This is a common theme in Gestalt analysis: how do I organize the components of this image? how does that understanding change when logic and reason are injected into the equation?

This painting represents the study of Gestalt simplicity in that it forces the viewer to reconsider what it is actually portraying. At first glance it looks like a bunch of forms arranged in a relatively well balanced way through the usage of colors and different shapes. However, the viewer is given a set through the name of the piece. By calling this piece "violin and candlestick" the viewer must now "find" the violin and candlestick, and contextualize the background to appropriately suit a scene where one may see a violin and a candlestick. This stream of consciousness that the viewer must go through when analyzing this painting is a good example of an artist composing simple forms in such a way that a sophisticated understanding is necessary. 

Moholy-Nagy's Balance Study (1924) reconstructed in 1967 is an example of an exploration of Gestalt principles. You can see Moholy-Nagy's interest in balance and basic line through his use of the circular and rectangular shapes. Something that I also noticed was the negative space within the circles on the top and the bottom of the figure. That space must be considered in the balance as well. Each piece is contributing to the balance of the object as a whole.

The Bright Side

This piece caught my attention because of its use of shape and color, and how they work together to create form. This artwork conveys weight-- the "Weimar," despite its weight, is balancing on top of this intricate structure. Interestingly enough, this structure seems to be quite unbalanced-- leaning to the right, in fact. I would assume that the Klee did this on purpose to indicate the instability of "Weimar."

The background is blue, and all spaces in between the structure that are blue indicate free space. Similarly, all shapes that touch a shape of the same color are connected; the red triangles form to make a red hourglass shape. I assume that all of the different colored pieces are separate.

When you convert the image to greyscale, the blue and yellow become hard to distinguish between. This makes the figure-ground distinction more difficult, which can make the structure appear different.

This is Paul Klee's "Head of Man, Going Senile," and I think it is a great example of Gestalt ideas.  As Behrens said, "a whole is not simply the sum of its parts, but a synergistic 'whole effect,' or gestalt."  Looking at this painting, we see clear parts.  We see clear shapes, some of them recognizable geometric shapes, like the two red circles and the different colored squares.  But this painting is not simply a combination of circles and squares.  The shapes interact with each other, as does the color, and creates an image, a "whole effect," a "gestalt."  Many of the things Arnheim has discussed are illustrated in this painting, and play a part in creating the "gestalt."  It is the differences in color that create the shapes because the different colors next to each other have created contours.  While the painting is not exactly symmetrical, I would say it has a sense of balance because there is an equal weight distribution on both sides.  The head tilts to our right, but, as you can see, the "body" of the man is smaller on the right than the left in order to compensate, thus balancing the picture out.  Also, what plays a huge part in "reading" this picture is our past visual experience.  As Arnheim says, "Every visual experience is embedded in a context of space and time" (48).  Just as we can recognize figure 19 in the chapter on shape as a face, we recognize this image as a face, because of our familiarity with the human face.  Also, the title of the painting plays a part in the process, just as our interpretation of the Picasso painting put up is influenced once we learn it is a man playing an accordian.  Figure 21 in the chapter on shape can be seen as diagonal lines with two white triangles in the upper left and lower right corners, but once we are told it is a giraffe passing through a window, our view of the image changes.  In the same way, the title to this painting influences the way we see it.

Mapping the Gestalt

Jasper Johns, heralded as the first pop artist, relied heavily on the viewer’s cultural knowledge to convey the full meaning of his artwork. Without utilizing the Gestalt top-down processing Johns’ painting Map would appear nothing but somewhat regularly shaped splotches of color. But by drawing on my outside knowledge I realize it’s actually a map of the United States. This is initially difficult to make out partly because the outlines are not sharply defined. The undefined shapes that make up the states are not clear enough for immediate recognition and their ambiguity encourages me to draw on my visual memory. Arnheim points out that this process “is a matter of the relative strength of the stimulus structure as compared with the structural strength of the pertinent [memory] traces”(39). Johns also does not provide any center of balance so the painting appears restless. As a result our eyes have no place to rest so we also feel agitated.

Gestalt and The Stage

The stage was another medium for which to express Gestalt ideas. From 1921 to 1929 the Bauhaus theater became “a meeting point of the metaphysical.” Actors wore colorful, geometric body masks and used movement and sound to convey their intentions. Although it was looked down upon by many of their members, it took Gestalt ideas to a new level. Here is an image by Schawinsky that depicts what the theater may have been like.

Gestalt, Abstraction, Figure & Ground

Paul Klee. Fire in the Evening. 1929

This Painting by Paul Klee encompasses many of the key features of Gestalt that we have discussed thus far: a dynamic interaction of colors and contours, a unified and balanced composition, and an interchanging dimensional relationship between figure and ground. While the title and the colors are reminiscent of a sunset, the painting is very much abstract. The abstraction nevertheless captures the essence of the referent without needing to portray it explicitly. As a formal engagement with color, form, depth and composition the painting is extremely interesting as well. The careful juxtapositions of color in bands of varying width creates an ambiguous sense of depth. Here we see that the borders/contrast between the colors and the contours give the perception of figure and ground. This practice is a clear application of Arnheim's discussion of our changing perception of colors based on their surroundings. The composition also strongly reflects the ideas in the diagrams and descriptions of Gestalt principles taught in Klee's classroom: " Klee showed his students how to experiment with overlapping figures. If two different line drawings are laid over each other they are perceived as two transparent figures until, in a specific figuration, they are perceived as one whole or one Gestalt." (Van Campen 133)

Also this quote is nice for describing the Gestalt and our perception of it. "So smoothly are they blended into a whole of great overall simplicity, so organically is the compositional pattern derived from the subject and the pictorial medium, that we seem to see simple nature at the same time that we marvel at the intelligence of the interpretation it conveys." (Arnheim, 156)

Kandinsky and Itten

This image, Blue by Wassily Kandinsky 1927, is a good example of what Arnheim meant when he wrote, "like Mondrian and Kandinsky, he can work with completely nonmimetic shapes, which reflect human experience by pure visual expression and spatial relations." (Arnheim 145) My brain worked with the large blue sphere in a couple of ways. The first was as a planet in an outer space realm of galactic blue. The tiny red sphere could be a planet further away in this galaxy. Another way to look at this painting is the blue sphere is a small marble on a large ink splot and the red dot is an image of a lazer point being shined on the ink. Either way I view the painting, my mind seems to use the Gestault to come up with these ideas. In both instances the blue background, either viewed as space or ink splot, is what Arnheim would call "a Gestault" (68).

This work, Kunst der Farbe, by Johannes Itten evokes Arnheim's explanation of simplicity, leveling and the whole. (66, 67) It is possible that Itten had this in mind when he painted his many Kunsts der Farbes. The simplicity of the square shapes gives power to the two colors used in this work. Itten was a color theorist at the Bauhaus and wrote The Art of Color. I also think about Arnheim's explanation on "levels of abstraction". While I am not sure I fully understand what he meant when he wrote, "when by some circumstance the mind is freed from its usual allegiance to the complexities of nature, it will organize shapes in accordance with the tendencies that govern its own functioning. We have much evidence that the principal tendency at work here is that toward simplest structure, i.e., toward the most regular, symmetrical, geometrical shape attainable under the circumstances." (145) I get the feeling that Itten's work speaks to this idea.

Cubism and Artistic Imagination

With the onset of the Cubist movement, the viewer was forced to look beyond the disjointed viewpoints and peculiar rendering of the flat planes in order to see the image that lied beneath. Prior to this radical movement artists were much more undemanding of the spectator because they provided them with a straight-forward view of their subject matter. Cubism required people to train their minds to perceive everyday objects amid a haze of shapes and varying perspectives. Take Picasso’s “The Accordionist” done in 1912, for example. At first glance it appears to be a jumble of cacophonous forms with no accordion player in sight. It is only after one stares at it long enough that the outline of the man starts to become visible. In my modern art lecture the professor told us about a quote that Picasso’s art collector, Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler said of the Cubist movement. He said that the viewer has to do work in order to comprehend a cubist piece or else they will not see anything past the surface. During my group conference for the same class, the subject of primitivism was also a major point of discussion and I think it ties into Arnheim’s chapter on Form very nicely. We defined “primitive” as not detailed, simple, natural, unrefined, abstract and primary. Artists like Gougouin and Picasso had a fascination with primitive cultures and the artwork they produced and even had collections of their own that included masks, etc. This inspired them to take a similar approach and incorporate these aspects into their own work. I personally find it ironic, however, that Cubism was influenced by something so basic and rudimentary because to me, when I look at a cubist work my eyes feel strained from the complexity of form.
I was also intrigued by Arnheim’s discussion on artistic imagination. He described it as “finding new form for old content” or a “fresh conception of an old subject.” The part that resonated with me the most was when he wrote, “There is more imagination in the way Titian paints a human hand than in hundreds of surrealist nightmares depicted in a dull, conventional manner.” (142) This is something I have never considered before because my obvious instinct would be to convince myself that one of Dali’s fanciful, dreamlike paintings was much more imaginative than any single body part portrayed in a new way. Do you think there is truth to what Arnheim said or do you think that one is simply a more overt form of imagination while the other is a more abstract way of looking at it? The topic of surrealism brings me to my final point. Figure 111 done by the schizophrenic, Friedrich Schroder, a man who spent most of his adult life in mental hospitals and prisons, has some very surrealist qualities to it. Because of his mental illness the way in which he expressed himself artistically was different from that of an emotionally healthy person. His lines were rigid and symmetrical, depth was virtually eliminated and shapes were “devoid of their organic complexity and imperfection.” This occurs when someone who’s mind is “empty or concentrated on some other train of thought” still has their sense of visual organization that is telling their eyes and hands what to do. I guess the aesthetic similarities between schizophrenic art and surrealism makes me wonder how much imagination actually went in to Dali’s work for instance. If it physically looks so much like work done by a man who’s mind is said to be “empty” then how can it really be that imaginative? My uncle on my mother's side is schizophrenic and my grandfather on my father's side opened Gateway's mental hospital in Los Angeles, so I am curious to look into this topic futher and share what I find with everybody in class.

Impossibles

Arnheim writes about the cultural history of perspective and foreshortening in two dimensional representations of three-dimensional space. He writes about such representation as a paradox, whereby there are “appropriate and inappropriate ways of reading pictorial representations of space, and that the proper way is determined in each case by the style of a given period or developmental stage (134).” This painting, Impossibles, by Josef Albers plays with the viewer’s tendency to read depth, even when such a reading would be physically impossible. The viewer, based on a cultural familiarity with perspective, interprets this painting as two three-dimensonal cylinders even though the cylinders show contradictory and impossible points of view. It took me a long time to visualize this painting in two-dimensions without imposing depth; the left cylinder emphasizing circles and the right emphasizing ovals. Note the way that Albers uses larger shapes in the top half of the painting in order to balance the bottom-heavy effect.

Science/Art, Sensory, Kinesthetics, Culture

Arnheim writes that the mind “organizes shapes in accordance with the tendencies that govern its functioning. We have much evidence that the principal tendency at work here is that toward simplest structure (145).” Arnheim’s writing makes more sense to me as our class work fleshes out the connection between Gestalt principles and the underlying biological and physiological properties of vision. Wertheimer’s demonstration of the Phi phenomenon was really an “A-ha!” moment for me. That just shows how a visual experience can profoundly illustrate an abstract principle, perhaps in a way that language cannot.
Elizabeth has been stressing the point that science and art illustrate different ways to systematically examine human processes. Von Campen elaborates by writing about the common history of abstract art and experimental science. The science of art theory places what I interpreted as an essentialist conception of the artist’s pure perception of aesthetics. Yet, it seems to me that artists and scientists merely do deliberately what all humans do instinctively. Both scientists and artists use practical applications to systematically organize the world. Oliver Sacks case study of Mr. I certainly shows that an artist may have a different or enhanced perception of the world. Yet that experience is based on memory, experience, associations, and expectations, not innate perception. I find this a far more convincing theory than simply that artists possess “pure visibility.”
The concept of tension in art, posed by Arnheim last week, came up again in this week’s readings. Von Campen quotes Kandinsky stating, “composition is nothing other than the logically precise organization of those living forces encapsulated within elements in the guise of tensions.” Arnheim really contextualized tension and energy fields as having aesthetic, dramatic and psychological meaning. He seems to encompass both Kandinsky and Lipp’s theories.
I was a bit confused about how Lipps and Kandinsky’s theories differ on perception. Our current understanding of neural processing involves multiple, interactive pathways. How does this understanding of visual processing complicate the idea of the two-step process consisting of sensory registration and mental construction of forms? Does the two-step perception theory concept coincide at all with the “what” and “where” processing systems? It seems to me that sensory and mental processing do seem to coincide, on a very simplified level, with the distinct primitive and cortical pathways of visual information.
Arnheim makes a distinction between kinesthetic and visual awareness, again building on the idea of the body’s centrality in visual perception. Some of the work I read last semester in The Feeling Brain class emphasized the importance of listening to signals from with the body for cognitive and emotional tasks. Arnheim’s discussionof kinesthetics, in the context of visal processing, is interesting considering the large amount of work being done on the prevalence of sensory disorders among children. The work done in this area evidences the range of humans experience through their bodies and the effect of sensory processing for learning, cognition, etc. In essence, we are all over and understimulated to a certain extent. We have a range of varying proprioceptive and vestibular difficulties. Sensory awareness I just being more widely recognized as a huge part of self, learning and perception.
Behrens raises an interesting point about the Gestalt neglect of cultural or linguistic meaning. He writes that visual perception was isolated and trivialized. However, I thought that Arnheim’s discussion gives a lot of credence to how graphic arts traditions influence perception. Certainly his interest is in the universals of visual perception, but this theory encompasses cultural and individual differences. The illusionistic doctrine shows that the conventions of perspective are one cultural model, among many, that represents the three-dimensional world in two-dimensions. I wonder if others read Arnheim in a similar way or if I am imposing my post-structural theories onto his work. He also proposes that artists and cultural conventions of art represent the world in vastly different ways because they have different goals. I see this more and more as I examine children’s art from the Gestalt perspective. In self-portraiture each child adopts different conventions depending on what concepts, emotions or characteristics they want to emphasize. As Arnheim writes, different art “expresses a way of living, of being a person” and must also fulfill “the purpose of the drawing.” Those purposes are certainly culturally and linguistically determined.

"The Bright Side."

While browsing through the Bauhaus archive site, I was particularly attracted to this postcard circa 1923 by Paul Klee, called "The Bright Side." I found it fascinating because it contained what I observed as elements with different levels of abstraction, which related to what we have learned about Gestalt principles in accordingly various ways.


At first glance it - like many of the Bauhaus works we have seen - appears to be a configuration of different colored shapes and lines. Triangles, squares, and circles in yellow, red, and white stand out against a light blue background. Under closer inspection, aspects of the image begin to arrange themselves into discernible figures. We may achieve recognition in respect to the top third of the picture first, because it appears to be the least abstracted aspect. Here, Klee departs from the limitations he imposes upon himself in the rest of the picture to only use triangles, squares, and circles in favor of more complex forms.

What emerges from our perception of this rectangular-like shape appears to be a building or temple, with the double blue rectangles in its center representing the doors, the yellow lozenge shape at its top representing the roof, and the the words "WEIMAR" at its top and "BAUHAUS" below indicating its identity as a structure related to the Bauhaus School in Weimar, and perhaps even the Bauhaus School itself.

That this portion of Klee's postcard is less abstracted guides our attempt to decode the rest of the picture. As I studied them, various interlocked shapes below the building began to fuse into something like a stacked tower on top of which it rested. An interpretation that dispenses with the traditionally Western desire to see objects depicted with perspectival realism could find, in place of the tower, a long pathway leading up to the building's front door, with the variously colored shapes standing in for different colored stones that one might find in an old-fashioned street.

The high level of abstraction in this part of Klee's picture allows us to manipulate it quite freely, seeing it alternately as a pathway and a tower, while still being able to mentally reduce it to its most basic, abstract elements. It takes more work to reduce the building, which Arnheim would identify as possessing the essential structural skeleton that allows our minds to quickly process and understand it, despite the fact that it does not realistically resemble any building that we know of.

A more complete abstraction of this aspect of the image may be obtained by turning the whole thing upside down. Seen in this way, the structural skeleton of the building becomes invisible and the words surrounding it illegible; thus we can't see it as anything but a purely abstract collection of shapes.

"Why Should Artists Strive For Balance?"

I was most interested in Arnheim's discussion of balance and the human mind. As human's we strive for balance. Human's want to place the subject in time and space. We seek organization. Arnheim comments that in order for an artist's statement within a work to be "unambiguous," the artist must strive to balance and stabilize the various visual forces that are present in the work. An artist must present something balanced in order for in to be perceived properly? Balance is desired in all aspects of life; physical balance and mental balance. "Balance remains the final goal of any wish to be fulfilled, any task to be accomplished, any problem to be solved."(Arnheim, 37) Stress or tension is placed on the system when things are not at balance. This is an interesting way to think about the idea of balance in art. In relation to Freud's "pleasure principal," when one is presented with something unpleasant or the thought/memory of something unpleasant one will do whatever necessary to alleviate that discomfort or tension. Similarly, when looking a piece of art human's will do all that they can to organize the visual information that they are receiving. Both the artist; in making the work and the viewer of the work are participating in attempt to reduce tension, organize, and find equilibrium. Is the universe's desired state a stabilized one? Why would humans strive as they do to equalize things if that were the case? Arnheim says, we are "waging an uphill battle against the universal law of entropy." Why do we strive as we do? Why is balance so important to us? I once read somewhere that the most symmetrical faces are considered to be the most beautiful, but I suppose that that could lead to a whole other discussion on aesthetics and perception of beauty. 

Something in the reading that also stuck out for me was the discussion about the visual experience and it's relationship to the physiological. Each visual stimuli has its own "physiological counterpart." In order to have the full visual experience there must be an interaction between all the parts of the visual system. There are different forces at work as well. How does the viewer perceive these forces; pushes and pulls? They are inherent in the visual patterns of the object being perceived. 

I enjoyed the discussion of "Madame Cezanne in a Yellow Chair." Perception is highly affected by use of light, color and the subject's focus.  Each aspect of the painting could be unbalanced individually, but all together they give the painting a balanced structure. 

The Steps of Visual Perception

The notion that there are steps to perception, an action that feels like a seamless process, intrigued me. In Arnheim’s first two chapters on balance and shape he is continually returning to this idea that perception is indeed separated into parts. As a Gestalt psychologist, however, he also believes that the whole of perception is different than just the sum of these visual and intellectual steps.

One of the most interesting divisions Arnheim makes is the difference between a perceptual operation and intellectual operation. He asserts that many things are not a “product of intellectual abstraction but a direct and more elementary experience” (pg 35). In other words we see a triangle and are able to distinguish the “triangularity” of it before we can intellectualize that it is a triangle. Or as Arnheim puts it “the young child sees ‘doggishness’ before he is able to distinguish one dog from another” (pg 35).

After the initial perceptual operation we begin the subjective intellectual operation. In chapter two Arnheim discusses the impact of memory on this part of perception. When we perceive something it is compared against our vast past visual knowledge. An example of this is when we see someone who we don’t know or have just met for the first time but they strike us as looking like someone we know. We are trying to fit their facial patterns into a familiar schema. Also, in ambiguous situations of balance or shape this intellectual processing must come into play.

But we need both to form a comprehensive whole. While these various stages of perception are occurring forces, both psychological and physiological, are acting on the brain. I thought this was particularly interesting. I’ve never thought of there being actual physical forces at work in the brain mainly because I don’t feel them at work when I perceive something.

After reading these first two chapters I understand why Arnheim approaches them first in his book and I feel that perhaps reading these before delving into color would have helped solidify my understanding of perception.

As an artist and designer I’ve explored the properties of Balance and Shape that Arnheim explains in these chapters almost subconsciously. Like any artist, I’ve intuitively known, to a certain extent, what was “right” or “wrong” in the composition of my work. But I had never thought about it in terms of psychology and visual perception. It was always a matter of creating an image that was visually accessible---not necessarily a harmonious or appealing image but one that the viewer could take in naturally. Until this reading, I never knew of any psychological explanations behind an artist’s or viewer’s desire for clear, visually palatable works of art.

I immediately related to Arnheim's explanations of our visual sense of balance, weight and symmetry. He's laid out visual challenges in their simplest form that artistS and designers are constantly running into. How does one place the black disk in the correct part of the square so that it is centered or off-centered enough to make sense to the viewer? Where do you place the doors and windows in the wall of a house so that your statement as the designer is clear? I'm not advocating for strictly formulaic, symmetrical art and design. But aesthetic choices, whatever they may be, must be made clear to the viewer for the piece as a whole to be accessible and effective. As Arnheim put it, this lack of clarity "makes the visual statement unclear and interferes with the observer's perceptual judgement"( page 14).

We run into the same esthetic challenge on page 22 in figure 7b. In this image, "The proportions are based on differences so small that they leave the eye uncertain whether it is contemplating inequality, symmetry or asymmetry, square or rectangle." This uncertainty, unless it is part of the designer's statement, is a prohibitive distraction that viewers have a hard time moving beyond.

I think some of the other visual functions explained in these chapters feed into this notion of visual accessibility as well. On page 67 Arnheim describes our tendencies to “level” and/or “sharpen” what we see. He compares classicism to expressionism and briefly describes how the former appeals to our capacity to level and the latter to our capacity to sharpen or heighten the tension. The two styles are radically different but the aesthetic choices and their visual and psychological effect are clear.

I don’t mean to suggest that certain types of art or certain styles are “right” or “wrong.”I also don’t think that artists and designers should shy away from subtly and nuances. But I think one of Arnheim’s points is that a work of art, no matter the content, or style or subject or medium, will sink in better on a strictly visual level, if it displays clear esthetic choices. Our brain does not want to see ambiguously balanced, or ambiguously ordered or ambiguously complex images and I think artists intuitively don’t want to make such images.

The Part and the Whole

I found one of the most interesting elements of this weeks reading in Arnheim’s discussion of balance and the interactions of part and whole. Arnheim says: “Whatever happens at any one place is determined by the interaction between the parts and the whole”. As we discussed last week, the juxtaposition of certain colours will alter how we perceive them. This is however, is not limited to the perceptive neurological responses that we discussed when focusing on color, or even to Arnheim’s examples involving the balance of shapes. As Arnheim points out: every visual experience is embedded in a context of space and time- not only by neighbouring objects in space, but events that precede it in time as well as the wishes and fears of the observer. I found this extremely interesting alongside the more physiological readings of the past weeks. It seems very important to look at both of these angles in order to get a full understanding of how complex our perceptive system is. It is amazing how the brain can, in a flash, integrate the high and low level perception into an understanding of one’s surroundings.
Visual agnosia, or the inability to grasp a pattern as a whole, was an interesting example of how the brain can be missing certain parts of this delicate equation, with an unimaginable result. I have consistently found these discussion of the various deficiencies with their multiple sources and results very intriguing.
I find Arnheim’s explanations extremely thought provoking, but somewhat lacking in the description of the more subjective processes. Granted, it is much more difficult to taxonomically define more subjective processes. My discomfort however, probably arises from my lack of experience in the field of psychology and my background in politics, aesthetics and economics. In these fields I have developed an understanding of the world that perceives an individual’s subjective reality as the effects of man-made structures and institutions. These structures arise out of historical processes and are maintained by certain assumptions that are embedded culturally and transmitted through dominant paradigms. Thus I have a bit of trouble simply viewing perception in such an objective and categorical frame work.