Rudolf Arnheim (1904–2007)

This is a dense book, not an easy read, but a must for the advanced student of art or photography. The ability to do graphic analysis is critical to both those seriously producing images, and those considering/critiquing them. Arnheim was one of the first, and certainly one of the most informed to explicate the foundations of image graphics in the perceptual mechanisms of the mind.

Piccolo ma significativo episodio del percorso di ricerca di Arheim. Riflessioni puntuali sulla relazione tra ordine e disordine, puntualmente riferite ai principi del mondo dell fisica. Unico rammarico: i raffronti con il mondo dell'arte sono a conti fatti pochi.

This book presents a theory of film. The greater part is an adaptation of the book originally published in 1933, long out of print but still in demand because it raises fundamental questions that the intervening years have by no means answered. Arnheim's provocative thesis is that the peculiar virtues of film as art derive from an exploitation of limitations of the medium: the absence of sound, the absence of color, the lack of three-dimensional depth. Silent-film artists made virtues of show more these necessities and were on their way to developing a new and distinctive art form. Mechanical advancement has led to greater realism, and a corresponding loss in artistry. The four essays which make up the rest of the book are supplementary in nature. The final one discusses the general aesthetic rules for the combination of different media--word, image, and sound--and leads to an evaluation of the talking picture as a medium for artistic expression.--Adapted from back cover. show less

Testo di riferimento, monumentale ma chiaro, schematico, scorrevole. Ricco di esempi utili presi (anzi, "tolti", come dice il traduttore dell'edizione Feltrinelli) dalla storia dell'arte. Interessanti anche i frequenti parallelismi con la musica.