Ian Verstegen

Summary While the Gestaltists worked on music perception, lack of attention to poetic language is striking. Indeed, there was no “gestalt linguistics” until the term began to be used in the 1990s (Petitot, Wildgen, Brandt). True, the Vienna psychologist Karl Bühler wrote on language. However, his orientation was opposed to Berlin in ways that actually divide along the question of the immediacy of images (Berlin) and the act of judgment of language (Vienna). One could make the larger point that the original Gestaltists never dealt with symbolism, signs and semiotics. In the post-war years, Arnheim intended to write significantly on language but only produced his “Abstract Language and the Metaphor” (1948). Nevertheless, there was a good deal of analysis of language in poetry and literature such that one can say that a significant, in minor, bibliography exists on such media. This paper reviews discussions of language in the Gestalt school and the scattered observations on authors by figures like N. R. F. Maier, Fritz Heider, and others. The conclusion is that these psychologists specifically chose not to delve too much into the specificity of language, retrieving from poetic works general principles, perhaps in light of psychology as a “young science.”

Neuroscientific approaches to aesthetics have been almost uniformly disappointing. They are either shallow, unconvincing, or merely addenda to our knowledge of traditional psychology. Because the nature of the endeavor is to go beyond phenomenology, their weakness is evidenced in their tacit epistemology. They either presume some naïve realism with neural “tuning” or else a kind of parallelism where the nature of interaction is never explained. Most damningly such approaches can never explain the profundity of art. Just as a neuroscience requires a reification function, where holistic brain processes can genetically cause our perceptions, so too in neuroaesthetics we need a reification function. The benefit for art is that, as Arnheim outlined already in 1949, percept formation already explains expression and symbolism. Using examples, I will show how a neuroaesthetics has to go “all in” if it wishes to provide important insights into art.

Arnheim’s media theory is introduced amidst the uncertain context of the contemporary post-medium condition. After decades of suspicion of both medium and media systems, some robust theory of medium is needed. Nevertheless, those process-based accounts of medium introduced recently with the turn to “materialism” and “ontology,” and, influenced by Deleuze, do not directly address an affirmative account of medium, instead substituting partial systems intended to account for the determinacy of media in a half-hearted way. Against caricatures of traditional ontological theories as “essentialistic,” or defining fixed and eternal natures, it is argued that they are sufficiently rich to stake out a variety of commitments and to deal with the persistent aspects of media without erecting a rigid and reductive system. Indeed, the conflation of the possession of powers with their actualization confuses the description of a medium and the norm of its use.

A medial “composite” presumes separation, which has been taken for granted throughout this study through the category of the modality. Arnheim reflected on the problem of composites prominently in his essay, “A New Laocoön,” where he sought to reason through his disappointment with the talking film. The problem touches mostly temporal modalities, which are highly self-sufficient. As with the discussion of hybridism, temporal composites work by either making hierarchical relationships, or flouting them. Arnheim effectively formulates two “laws,” where one modality must be dominant and when temporal modalities are combined, each should be complete. These rules are for standard uses of media. Although spatial and temporal modalities can be combined, in general their combination is not an important theoretical point. After a brief discussion of spatial composites, which mostly touches on their hierarchical arrangement or its subversion, more discussion is given to the ways in which the three temporal modalities can be combined – what each gains, and based on their characteristics, what issues arise as to their successful combination. Finally, a case study of the contemporary graphic novel Batman, Dark Knight, is given.

Summary Is it possible to discover the critical realist foundations of Gestalt theory in Berlin comparative musicology (vergleichende Kunstwissenschaft) associated above all with Erich M. von Hornbostel? The balance of natural science explanation and phenomenal experience is a useful model for overcoming Eurocentrism in comparative ethnomusicology, relying both on third-person tools and indigenous music systems. This paper uses Gestalt critical realist epistemology and methodology and a portrayal of the strata making up the understanding of a musical act with chemico-physical, phenomenal and cultural components to create an “amphibian” ethnomusicology. Using this framework it is possible to understand Hornbostel and Sachs’ musical instrument classification system and Hornbostel’s account of “primitive” music as strata in a Gestalt explanatory system. The potential binding agent through the strata is isomorphism.

Rudolf Arnheim’s theory of perception has been used to challenge the highly influential account of synthetic Cubism as a sign-like process of Rosalind Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois. While the use of Arnheim’s idea of perceptual substitution works in a theoretical sense, it is less successful as a historical argument, because unlike Picasso’s art dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who is discussed by Bois, Arnheim’s ideas weren’t formulated until the 1950s. This article enriches the theoretical argument made on behalf of Arnheim by supplying the theory of Gustaf Britsch as a historical link that fed Arnheim’s later rigorous theory. Britsch articulated an early theory of perceptual substitution, a kind of Gestalt-perception, that is capable of accounting for the innovations of Synthetic Cubism.

Most contemporary approaches to meaning presume the limitation of semiotics (Didi-Huberman, Gumbrecht, Belting). The question of what kind of “semiotics” is required has not been asked. However, without some general science of meaning it is impossible to reform theory without committing past errors or ignoring progress. In the interest of reconnecting contemporary interests in “presence” to long-evolving needs, I review the ossification and decline of one theory of semiotics that serves as the tacit model rejected today. I return to problems of the nature of the sign – whether it is “digital” or “analog” and conceived as “communication” or merely “meaning.” I then reconstitute a workable visual cognitive semiotics based on phenomenological premises.

Summary This article stages a confrontation between latent nominalist attitudes about inherent expression in perception—physiognomy—and new affective modes. In a classic analysis, Gombrich warned of the lack of veridicality of physiognomic perception, a sentiment endorsed by postmodern theories. At the same time, affect theory affirms a level of directly available intensities. Using the example of Rudolf Arnheim, it can be seen that the two are really specular opposites of each other, each merely valorizing different poles of the affect-cognition scale. Arnheim’s Gestalt theory shows how immediate percepts can have a generic structure, which is differentiated with further acquaintance. Arnheim, however, shows how perception can never account for all the power of expressive seeing. Perception and cognition is always embedded in a social matrix. Using an example of racist antisemitic propaganda used by Gombrich, the political implications of Arnheim’s position are demonstrated.

Summary In this article the ethical systems of Risieri Frondizi and Maurice Mandelbaum, both decisively influenced by Wolfgang Köhler, are investigated for the first time. Each writer took different things from Köhler, Frondizi the idea of value as a Gestalt quality and Mandelbaum the idea of value as a felt demand. Their positions are highly complementary and Frondizi’s axiological approach enlightens the ontology of value whereas Mandelbaum’s phenomenological approach clarifies the nature of “requiredness” (Köhler) or “fittingness.”

This monograph presents a synthesis and reconstruction of Rudolf Arnheim’s theory of media. Combining both Arnheim’s well-known writings on film and radio with his later work on the psychology of art, the author presents a coherent approach to the problem of the nature of a medium, space and time, and the differentia between different media. The latent ontological commitments of Arnheim’s theories is drawn out by affirming Arnheim’s membership in the Brentano school of Austrian philosophy, which allows his theories to be clarified and strengthened, particularly with the metaphysical writings of Roman Ingarden. The resulting theory is relational, portraying essential medial differences with neutral criteria and allowing for a rigorous definition of a medium. The way in which a medium is based on the inherent dispositions of medial materials creates a highly appealing theory that is determinate without being deterministic. The theory is thus highly timely as people in media studies seek to address the determinate nature of media after the post-medium condition. The book will appeal to researchers and graduate students in cultural and media studies as well as architecture and design.

In order to remain on a metaphysical plane and resist physicalist notions of mediality, the idea of a “modality” is introduced, a supra-medial ideal form of aesthetic organization. With Arnheim’s help, Robert Sowers outlined three spatial modalities: the Picture, Sculpture and Architecture. A mixture of two modalities or one conceived in the mode of another is considered a hybrid. Arnheim spent a good bit of time discussing how modalities might differ, often by imagining each put to different uses (essentially the phenomenological method of imaginative variation). Spatial hybrids are all objects of vision and therefore require substantial differentiation, whereas temporal modalities are easier, owing to the fact that visual action, text and music are relatively distinct.

All medial objects, like works of art, are generally purely intentional objects. Nevertheless, different classes of such objects – film versus painting, literature versus radio – have ontological peculiarities that must be tracked. These peculiarities can be portrayed as variable forms of mediation. Mediation of reality is already effected through the eye and ear, which becomes a prototype of mediation in general. A first thought of mediation in terms of what Arnheim called Materialtheorie, a way of acknowledging how a material alters similar contents (a prefiguring of his idea of the “representational concept”). The best way to track medial difference is through “determinacy” (Ingarden) or “accident” (Arnheim). This refers technically to the number of real world determinacies that have been projected into the work. Classes of technologies considered today as “reproductive arts” are interesting because they routinely package and reproduce sets of determinacies. Determinacies are schematic guidelines for how media in general and individual medial works, in particular, may be interpreted.

The aim of this chapter is to prepare for a discussion of medial difference by first focusing on what all media share, outlining a series of categories that will be useful in discussing all media. In the following chapters, these categories are represented differentially once we begin comparing kinds of media. The first observation is that, ontologically, medial objects are instances of cultural objects generally. They are all purely intentional objects in Ingarden’s sense. In light of the variety of media – visual, aural, spatial, temporal – it is affirmed that space is ontogenetically prior in media. In an important essay, Arnheim introduced two kinds of images that can be applied to all media – the robin and the saint, the former a “likeness” and the latter a “self-image.” They coexist in any image or medial object and one represents the thing as self-sufficient and the other as referring externally. The way in which a sculpture of a naturalistic robin or an abstracted St. Francis in a garden have these two functions in different measure suggest differences in classes of media.

It has been my aim in this book to elaborate a rigorous ontological theory from Arnheim’s writings for its ample benefits in understanding our contemporary medial situation, marked by unprecedented technological dependence and richness. Against the charge of those like Mitchell who argue that insisting on real medial difference “tends…to reduce that knowledge to a set of abstract propositions about the period aesthetic,” I attempted to show in the preceding chapters the way in which a strong ontology of media form is necessary to understand completely – to characterize – the political-economic changes taking place.

After profiling the broad ontological distinctions separating the modalities and their basic distinctions, it is possible to clarify the ontology of the individual modalities. All of the six modalities have a determinate range of independence. Instead of stressing so much what separates the modalities, the following discussion is intended to look within each of them, apply the idea of the self-image and likeness, and integrate Ingardian ideas of ontological in/determinacy. In addition, technical media will be discussed, but only generically, to the degree that broad ontological distinctions can be made.

If points of indeterminacy are the most rigorous way of characterizing medial objects and classes of them, then the spatial and temporal arts are the most basic division between such classes. Returning to the idea of existential dependence in Chap. 2, one can note a distinct kind of dependence occurring in each class. In spatial arts, all views of a work are one-sidedly dependent on the work; none is privileged. In temporal works, each successive phase of the work is dependent on a prior phase. Using ontological rigor gives new support for Lessing’s ancient argument in the Laocoön, with which Arnheim was quite sympathetic. Phenomenological analysis of cases of spatial and temporal arts reveal this basic ontological division. In the narratological distinction between plot and subject, sequence is essential to temporal arts, unlike in the arts of painting, sculpture or architecture. Consequently, each class has wholesale differences in kinds of in/determinacy. Spatial arts excel at capturing determinacies of permanence and temporal arts supply the determinacies of change. Invoking Arnheim’s categories, spatial arts are more “self-images” than “likenesses.” Just because ontology prescribes basic features of a medial object does not mean that practices cannot go against their grain. A viewer versed in the Bible will dutifully follow the narrative sequence of Christ’s life in Brueghel’s painting.

Arnheim’s media theory is introduced amidst the uncertain context of the contemporary post-medium condition. After decades of suspicion of both medium and media systems, some robust theory of medium is needed. Nevertheless, those process-based accounts of medium introduced recently with the turn to “materialism” and “ontology,” and, influenced by Deleuze, do not directly address an affirmative account of medium, instead substituting partial systems intended to account for the determinacy of media in a half-hearted way. Against caricatures of traditional ontological theories as “essentialistic,” or defining fixed and eternal natures, it is argued that they are sufficiently rich to stake out a variety of commitments and to deal with the persistent aspects of media without erecting a rigid and reductive system. Indeed, the conflation of the possession of powers with their actualization confuses the description of a medium and the norm of its use.

This paper fills a gap in Flusser scholarship by conducting an initial comparison of Flusser with Rudolf Arnheim. After noting their similar approaches – open both to science and phenomenology – it looks closely at each theorist’s respective theory of photography. They differ in that Flusser believes that the photography as a technical apparatus is not objective. However, with some contextualization each can be seen to say complementary things. Reflecting on each theorist’s cautiously optimistic or pessimistic approach to evolving media, the paper concludes with thoughts on how they give helpful ideas on how to flesh out aspects of the other’s thought.

This essay connects the two critical realist ideas of underlabouring and meta-theory, making the argument that the process of underlabouring and making ‘disclosure and transformation of the deep categorical structures of science and theory’ is ideal for clarifying strata of theory and therefore points of agreement between different practitioners. Using the 1980s debates over feminism in art history, I show how two important interlocutors – T. J. Clark and Griselda Pollock – used Marxist meta-theory to establish a baseline on which their domain-specific concerns might diverge. A return to this sense of shared agreement and disagreement is urged.

Within cultural history there is a widespread eschewal of speculative reasoning. This article notes the complicity of the general postmodern avoidance of metanarratives with Anglo-Saxon empiricism and locates the major problem facing cultural history in postmodernism's conflation of trajectories and teleologies. Any discussion of the directionality of history is imputed to be a full-blown teleology. Using previous discussions from different fields, the difference between a teleology and trajectory is defended and, after clarifying certain confusions, it is argued that trajectories, as following the working of generative mechanisms, are necessary to theorize in order to make interesting progress within the field of cultural history.

This article revisits an earlier social scientific analysis of the thought of Rudolf Arnheim and E. H. Gombrich. Adding to the earlier analysis in terms of social ontology and historical development is an analysis of the sufficiency of perception to yield information about the world, both in ordinary and in artistic contexts. Gombrich held to an idea of perception as hypothesis testing, and it joins with Popper's philosophy in the deferred warrant of the perceptual image. Arnheim, instead, followed the Gestalt theorists to believe that each stage of perceptual experience was incorrigible according to the given conditions. Consequently, Arnheim felt confident addressing the essence of art, while Gombrich remained anti‐essentialist. Ultimately, Gombrich's Popperian empiricism attenuates realism, whereas Arnheim's gestaltism seeks to build a bridge between ordinary and scientific observation.

_ Source: _Volume 5, Issue 2, pp 323 - 343 The following article attempts to bring critical realism to bear on the changing nature of aesthetic value. Beginning with the transitive-intransitive distinction, it is advised that we withhold judgment on the possibility of aesthetic judgment, lest we commit the epistemic fallacy. Without hoping to attain a form of aesthetic value absolutism, a strategy of ‘eliminative realism’ is introduced, which seeks to remove false causes of apparent judgmental relativism. Then a rough sketch of the ontology of art works and art practices is made in order to provide sufficient complexity for the changing aspects of value from different points of view and assumptions. Finally, a case study is given, in the creation of a market of African slingshots in the 1908s, and the theory is tested. The article closes with a plea to take aesthetic value seriously, as a requirement of ideological discussion

Cognitive Iconology is a new theory of the relation of psychology to art. Instead of being an application of psychological principles, it is a methodologically aware account of psychology, art and the nature of explanation. Rather than fight over biology or culture, it shows how they must fit together. The term “cognitive iconology” is meant to mirror other disciplines like cognitive poetics and musicology but the fear that images must be somehow transparent to understanding is calmed by the stratified approach to explanation that is outlined. In the book, cognitive iconology is a theory of cognitive tendencies that contribute to but are not determinative of an artistic meaning. At the center of the book are three case studies: images depicted within images, basic corrections to architectural renderings in images, and murals and paintings seen from the side. In all cases, there is a primitive perceptual pull that contribute to but do not override larger cultural meaning. The book then moves beyond the confines of the image to behavior around the image, and then ends with the concluding question of why some images are harder to understand than others. Cognitive Iconology promises to be important because it moves beyond the turf battles typically fought in image studies. It argues for a sustainable practice of interpretation that can live with other disciplines. Ian Verstegen is an art writer and historian living in Philadelphia. He is the author of Arnheim, Gestalt and Art (2005) and A Realist Theory of Art History (2012)