Just as a chemist "isolates" a substance from contaminations that distort his view of its nature and effects, so the work of art purifies significant appearance. It presents abstract themes in their generality, but not reduced to diagrams.
Rudolf ArnheimThe fundamental peculiarity of the photographic medium; the physical objects themselves print their image by means of the optical and chemical action of light.
Rudolf ArnheimAll perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention.
Rudolf ArnheimAs one gets older, it happens that in the morning one fails to remember the airplane trip to be taken in a few hours or the lecture scheduled for the afternoon.
Rudolf ArnheimFrom building a fire one can learn something about artistic composition. If you use only small kindling and large logs, the fire will quickly eat up the small pieces but will not become strong enough to attack the large ones. You must supply a scale of sizes from the smallest to the largest. The human eye also will not make its way into a painting or building unless a continuum of shapes leads from the small to the large, from the large to the small.
Rudolf Arnheim