The psychopathology of everyday art: a quantitative Study - World ...

This is not all, however, there is also an emotional reaction, especially to art, of
the kind described by Ralph Ross 50 , which,
Yields an experience of the kind we call aesthetic, an experience most of us
have in the presence of beauty, which gives deep satisfactions. Exactly
why we have these satisfactions has puzzled philosophers for centuries,
but it seems clear that they depend somehow on the qualities and
organization of a work of art including its meanings, not on meanings in
isolation.
Sensing and interpreting were seen to be only a part of the total process of
perception, varying with expectations, desires and emotional attitudes. Gestalt was
always a theoretical model and many of its wider precepts have since been challenged 51 .
Very few of Arnheim's hypotheses were ever subjected to experimental proof, partly
because most of the theory is untestable 52 .
Criticism of Gestalt theory began early in its development and continued 53 . The
main focus has been that the definition of a criterion for a true Gestalt is the
unpredictability of its effect from a knowledge of its parts and their relations. This idea
is important to this thesis, because it offers the explanation that a picture is more than
the sum of its constituents and so to the belief that pictures can only be assessed on a
50
Ralph Ross (1963) Symbol Systems and Civilisation , New York: Harcourt Brace.
51
For a quick summary of the criticism and experiments on the Gestalt position see James Hogg (1969),
Some Psychological Theories and the Visual Arts, in Hogg, ed., Psychology and the Visual Arts ,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, p.78-81.
52 J. Hogg (1969), op.cit. makes the point that to appeal for direct evidence in order to evaluate Arnheim's
work would be to miss the point that he has set out to establish a way of looking at the psychological
experience of art not a body of experimental detail.
53
But most attacks were on the theory of perception: E. Nagel (1952), Wholes, Sums and Organic Unities,
in D. Lerner, ed., Parts and Wholes: The Hayden Colloquium on Scientific Method and Concept , reprint
1963, London: Macmillan; B. Petermann (1932), The Gestalt Theory and the Problem of Configuration ,
London: Kegan Paul. Arnheim writes from an analytic perspective on art and adopts the Gestalt
assumption of inherent constructs which may be modified by training and experience.
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