Forever meandering . . .

Today is the birthday of Rudolf Arnheim (July 15, 1904 – June 9, 2007), author, psychologist, philosopher and critic. He is best known for his work Art and Visual Perception, which has been translated into 14 languages, and is one of the most widely read and influential art books of the twentieth century.

"Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Appparently it does not matter to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit." - Rudolf Arnheim

"Good art theory must smell of the studio, although its language should differ from the household talk of painters and sculptors." - Rudolf Arnheim

"Any line drawn on a sheet of paper, the simplest form modeled from a piece of clay, is like a rock thrown into a pond. It upsets repose, it mobilizes space. Seeing is the perception of action." - Rudolf Arnheim

"As 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. Memory does return in time, but the suspicion remains that in the end dying will consist in simply forgetting to live." - Rudolf Arnheim

Trivia bit: Rudolf Arnheim lived to be 102.

Arnheim image source (1)