| Abstract: | Presents an obituary for Rudolf Arnheim. That Rudi was going to become a psychologist was not preordained, let alone that he would become the most important psychologist of art of the 20th century. Indeed, his father was a manufacturer of pianos and the expectation was that Rudi would enter the family business. Recoiling at this preordination, Rudi attended the University of Berlin, where he studied philosophy, psychology, music, and art. He had the good fortune to work with Max Wertheimer, perhaps the most gifted and imaginative of the three founders of Gestalt psychology. Rudi's doctoral dissertation, submitted in 1928 when he was but 24, was an empirical study of what could be learned from handwriting analysis. Thus Rudi began a lifelong fascination with how one perceived the visual world and how the act of perception is infused with--and inseparable from--cognition and the making of meaning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
