A Study Of Rudolf Arnheim's Psychological Theory Of Aesthetic Intuition

Rudolf Arnheim is a famous Gestalt psychologist and esthetician in modern western history of aesthetics.During his over seventy-year academic life,he made great contributions to many fields such as aesthetic,psychology in art,art education and the media field.In 1980 s,the significant status of Rudolf Arnheim triggered the interest of Chinese scholars.With the boom of third upsurge of aesthetic,a number of works by Rudolf were introduced into China.His theory kept pace with,the German esthetician and psychologist Fechner's way of studying the aesthetic phenomenon through the method of experimental psychology.Rudolf makes deep research on aesthetic phenomenon by deducting aesthetic practice and using psychological basis of Gestalt,thus pioneering the path which combines critical philosophy of inference and psychological methods of analyzing phenomenon and experiences for the development modern western aesthetics.In the study of Arnheim's aesthetic theory fruitful results are gained in China especially on aesthetic perception,art structure and creative thinking.However,it is still lacking in systematic study of Arnheim's theoretical system of aesthetic intuition.Given this,this dissertation would illustrate the main sections and psychological theory of aesthetic appreciation of Arnheim based on Art and Visual perception,Visual Thinking,New Essays on the Psychology of Art.Besides the preface,the dissertation could be divided into three parts.The first part mainly studies the function of visual perception in aesthetic activities and the activity patterns and main sectors of visual perception in aesthetic intuition.Through the research of visual perception activities,Arnheim reveals that visual perception shares the same function with thinking by criticizing traditional concept of visual perception.Eyesight is the only approach to see the outside world.From traditional perspective,visual perception could only gets emotional experience while understanding of the matter could only be handled by brain.Arnheim reinterprets the function of visual perception in cognitive activities and further shows the problem-solving ability of visual perception itself.From the basic level,visual perception could achieve great understanding of the whole thing by grasping the distinctive features,and it also could adjust eyeball itself to recognize the shape of things that are difficult to identify.From a higher level,visual perception owns the ability of modifying intuitive style of things,which is called the Gestalt tendency.Depending on this ability,visual perception could reorganize the unstable forms and remodel the state of matter which can be easily recognized.By analyzing the Gestalt tendency of visual perception,Arnheim further reveals that the artwork itself obeys the same organizations and disciplines Furthermore,Arnheim illustrates how visual perception achieves the results of sensing aesthetic feeling of the art and how aesthetic emotion comes into being by taking advantage of theories in Gestalt psychology like mechanics,field,and heterogeneous isomorphism.The second part mainly studies the image of visual perception in aesthetic activities.By studying the approach of the visual perception and the occurrence mechanism in the aesthetic perception,Arnheim further establishes the position of image in aesthetic activities.Rudolf Arnheim come to the conclusion in the visual perception studies that the connection between visual perception and thinking is done by images.And all the thinking activities include images.From ancient Greece to modern times,image is a significant part in the aesthetics field.Rudolf Arnheim found the drawbacks of the relevant theories in the studying of Gestalt psychology.Rudolf Arnheim thinks that since Democritus school,"image" is always considered to be a counterpart of the observed objects generated in psychology.It is a complete copy of the observed objects.But Rudolf Arnheim found that it is not the fact by studying the organizing ability of the visual perception.Image is produced by visual perception abstraction in the appearance of things.It is not a true complete copy for things,but a visual perception to grasp the essence structure of things.Image has three functions in mind,"painting","symbol" and "mark".The three functions respectively represent the perceptual image of three kinds of abstraction in the mind from high to low degree.Arnhaim,combining with the different degree of abstract thinking activity,further reveals the function and role of the imagery in the creative thinking.The third part studies the germinal mechanism of "imagery",namely visual perception ability of "abstract".It has its profound historical reasons for why Arnhaim to demonstrate the image production by "abstract".Western aesthetics in the 20 th century from Wilhelm Worringer,many school explicate their study of "abstract".On the basis of the critical inheritance of other schools' s aesthetic abstract theory and scientific abstract theory,Arnhaim put forward his own abstract methods.In Visual Thinking,Arnhaim criticized the other school's conception of antagonizing the two terms "abstract" and "specific" with each other,and stressed that the abstract activity is not done through "generalization".Through the analysis of visual perception capacity,he creatively revealed the law of directly proceeding "abstract" through visual perception in the things from appearance,and made a unified interpretation for the perceptual knowledge and rational knowledge by revealing the law.On this basis,Arnehaim thinks that any rational activity needs to be based on the perceptual consciousness activity,and further reveals that the visual perception which can directly achieve the mastery of nature.Based on the above theories,Arnhaim criticized some drawbacks of aesthetic school that of art theory which equating "abstract" to the divorce from the essence.From the perspective of empirical experience and logical thought,Arnhaim's aesthetic intuition psychology theory illustrates that the intuition and the rational is a inseparable part of human perception activity.Arnhaim reveals that perception and thinking co-operate in human perception activity and point that the intuition is not a irrational unreliable method.He corrected the understanding of a strict separation between the perception and thinking,as well as viewing the consciousness as a lower activity than thinking since the ancient Greece.Through deep research in intuition,to a certain extent,Arnhaim eased the speculative differences of aesthetic experience and empirical aesthetics and has made the prominent contribution to promote the development of modern western aesthetics.