Arnheim, Gestalt and Art

Ian Verstegen - Arnheim, Gestalt and Art: A Psychological Theory. Springer-Verlag Wien, 2005. 189 lk

See raamat võiks Rolandile meeldida väga. Mitte ainult selle pärast, et see räägib kunstist ja Rudolf Arnheim on saksa rahvusest psühholoog, kes põgenes Hitleri võimu eest maalt (kõigepealt Rooma ja siis New Yorki) ja avaldas mitu mõjukad inglisekeelset raamatut. Ian Verstegen on selgelt väga Arnheimlik mõtleja. Raamatus sissejuhatuses on ta tänulik, et tema naine lubas Arnheimi enda ellu (umbes nagu kristlased võtavad Jeesust vastu oma ellu).
Igatahes, raamat on hea. Lühike, kergesti loetav ja samas puudutab väga paljusid minule olulisi teemasid. Võrdleb Arnheimi gestaltpsühholoogilist lähenemist teiste suurte mõttevooludega e tsiteerib nii Peircei kui ka Saussured. "Arnheim, Gestalt and Art" üritab võtta kokku Arnheimi elutööd ja moodustada sellest mõistuspärast tervikut. Just selle laiaulatuslikkuse tõttu olen siia kopipasteerinud rohkesti katkendeid. Samuti tahan siia üles tähendada sõnad, mida kohtan esimest korda või mille tähendust ma enne ei teadnud.

anisotropy - The degree to which this property is exhibited
convexity - kumerus
canopied - covered overhead with (or as if with) a canopy
paunchy - kõhukas
admix - To mingle with something else; to mix
exigencies - (esmatarbe)vahendid
tetrachord - In music a tetrachord is any set of four different pitch classes
propitiously - soodsalt, soodsates tingimustes
paragon - täiuseideaal, musterkuju, kroon
graphology - grafoloogia (käekirja uurimine)
kinesthesia - Sensation or perception of motion
promontory - A high point of land extending into a body of water, headland; cliff
orthogenesis - A series of similar mutations in successive generations, producing evolutionary change
extraneous - väline, kõrvaline, mittepuutuv
incessent - third-person plural future active indicative of incessō (I assault, assail or attack)
dotard - vanamoodne, (vanadusest) nõdrameelne
cloistered - eraldatud

According to Gestalt thinking, the world and the human mind both share principles of ordering. It is not a matter of imposing order on nature or escaping in our minds an irrational outer world, rather, the ways our minds work is precisely due to the principles that order nature. This thinking is evident in the work on ‘physical gestalts’ by Arnheim's other teacher Wolfgang Köhler (1920; Arnheim, 1998).

‘Pantomimic’ is intended to capture both real (‘absolute’) movement, in which a single body is observed in continuous space, and ‘edited’ movement, made possible by the technology of film, video and animation. Of absolute movement, we have dance and acting, and both interact with the format of the stage. Similarly, edited action has the frame of the film to work with.

In his essay, "Emotion and feeling in psychology and art" (1966), Arnheim is always careful (as I was above) to use the rationalist term affect that is found in Descartes and Spinoza. ‘Emotion’ was left as a subsidary level of excitement pertaining to the rational basis of affect. Arnheim's reforms have not been followed in general psychological theory where the term ‘emotion’ retains its popularity, however, they are particularly apropos in artistic studies because when we view art, we do not experience genuine emotions.

Language, for example, seems to be somewhere between music and vision in terms of abstraction. It is characteristic of Arnheim’s thinking that the notion of a symbol is completely perceptual and he dispenses completely with any kind of logical semiotic classification. Anticipating Peirce’s discussions of icons, Arnheim responds that images are pictures "to the extent to which they portray things located at a lower level of abstractness than they are themselves" (p. 137). This is his solution to long-standing semiotic difficulties relating to sign, icon and index. It is not based on arbitrary criteria but rather levels of perceptual abstraction; symbols are of a higher level of abstraction, and pictures a lower level of abstraction, than the thought they represent.

The body as a format has its own balancing center. According to Arnheim (1966), this has been intuitively located at the solar plexus. Ultimately, however, this is a matter of style. Historically distinct styles emphasize the upper part of the body and the pelvic area as stylistic poles. La Meri divides Western and Eastern dance along this dichotomy: "The occidental dances from the waist down; the oriental from the waist up" (1964).

Meter refers to (1) the regular time divisions of the beat and (2) the groups into which these beats are organized. More mundanely, music is notated and understood as structured after a meter. We say this piece is in two-four time, three-four time, six-eight time, etc., meaning it has two beats per measure in quarter notes.
The beat arose with polyphony and the need to coordinate multiple voices in time. Arnheim (1974) compares the measured beat to the implicit coordinates of the vertical and horizontal in painting, not literally present but always implicitly so. The deviation of a syncopated tone, in fact, can induce the regular beat in the same way that an off-center element can strengthen the frame in a visual composition. Just as in measured poetry hardly ever is the strict beat adhered to.
What then is rhythm? Rhythm in measured music is time pattern related to a beat. “The wave is the meter; rhythm arises from the different arrangements of the tones on the waves” (p. 172). Following upon his definition of melody as motion in the dynamic field of the tones, he likewise calls rhythm “motion in the dynamic field of meter” (p. 174).

While Chomsky steered structuralism in one direction, other structuralists steered the theory in the other direction. The fallacy of linguistic determinism lies in positing that naming can either genetically or logically proceed earlier than perceptual discrimination. Characteristic of this thinking is a story that Arnheim takes from Herder (1969, p. 238). According to Herder, a primitive man comes across a lamb, which he has never seen before. He is unable conceptually to represent it, until at last it bleats. The man cries - ‘Ah! You are the bleating one!’ – and it remains with him. Arnheim has called any theory that makes this mistake – whether it is found in Herder, Humboldt, Cassirer, Sapir or Whorf – the “ m y t h of the bleating lamb” (1966).
Today the notion persists in Roland Barthes’ and others poststructuralist notion of language. Barthes emphasizes the socalled ‘coded’ nature of language, which according to him makes it particularly subject to cultural variation. Arnheim (1986) writes that, “Ironically, not even a verbal message is coded, only the means of conveying it. Words are discontinuous signs, reasonably well standardized, but the message they transmit consists in the image that induced the sender to verbalize and is resurrected by the words in the mind of the recipient...What comes across when a person hears ‘Fire! Fire!’ neither consists of two verbal units nor conveys a standardized image” (p. 112).

Kokkuvõttes üpris meeldiv lugemine. Arnheim õppis omal ajal psühholoogia kõrval ka kunsti ja muusikat (nende kahe valdkonna ristumispaigas on muidugi film, mistõttu wikipedias on tema valdkonnaks määratud filmiteoreetika), mistõttu tema kirjutised tunduvad vähemasti selle raamatu põhhjal olevat maru huvitavad.