Psychology of art
Encyclopedia
The psychology of art is an interdisciplinary field that studies the perception
, cognition
and characteristics of art and its production. For the use of art materials as a form of psychotherapy
, see art therapy
. The psychology of art is related to architectural psychology and environmental psychology
.
The work of Theodor Lipps
, a Munich-based research psychologist, played an important role in the early development of the concept of art psychology in the early decade of the twentieth century. His most important contribution in this respect was his attempt to theorize the question of Einfuehlung or "empathy
", a term that was to become a key element in many subsequent theories of art psychology.
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The general principles that guide most of the work in art psychology are
Art psychology developed in opposition to 19th century philosophical aesthetics
which approached art by first asking about beauty
and metaphysics
. For most art psychologists, beauty is culturally or socially contingent. Art psychology was, however, also developed initially in opposition to Husserlian phenomenology which made no normative judgments about meaning. Most branches of art psychology emphasize the primacy of consciousness
, but there are variants which engage the question of the subconscious
. Generally speaking, however, those interested in the psychology of art express an optimism about art and its meanings that moves them away from the concepts discussed by Freud
was Heinrich Wölfflin
(1864–1945), a Swiss art critic and historian, whose dissertation Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur (1886) attempted to show that architecture could be understood from a purely psychological (as opposed to a historical-progressivist) point of view.
Another important figure in the development of art psychology was Wilhelm Worringer
, who provided some of the earliest theoretical justification for expressionist art. The Psychology of Art (1925) by Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) is another classical work. Richard Müller-Freienfels was another important early theorist.
Numerous artists in the twentieth century began to be influenced by the psychological argument, including Naum Gabo
, Paul Klee
, Wassily Kandinsky
, and somewhat Josef Albers
and György Kepes
. The French adventurer and film theorist André Malraux
was also interested in the topic and wrote the book La Psychologie de l'Art
(1947-9) later revised and republished as The Voices of Silence.
and Herbert Read
), France (André Malraux
, Jean-Paul Weber, for example), and the US.
In the US, the philosophical premises of art psychology were strengthened - and given political valence - in the work of John Dewey
. His Art as Experience was published in 1934, and was the basis for significant revisions in teaching practices whether in the kindergarten or in the university. Manuel Barkan, head of the Arts Education School of Fine and Applied Arts at Ohio State University, and one of the many pedagoges influenced by the writings of Dewey, explains, for example, in his book, The Foundations of Art Education (1955), that the aesthetic education of children prepares the child for a life in a complex democracy. Dewey himself played a seminal role in setting up the program of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which became famous for its attempt to integrate art into the classroom experience.
The growth of art psychology between 1950 and 1970 also coincided with the expansion of art history and museum programs. The popularity of Gestalt psychology
in the 1950s added further weight to the discipline. The seminal work was Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (1951), that was co-authored by Fritz Perls
, Paul Goodman, and Ralph Hefferline. The writings of Rudolf Arnheim (born 1904) were also particularly influential during this period. His Toward a Psychology of Art (Berkeley: University of California Press) was published in 1966. Art therapy
drew on many of the lessons of art psychology and tried to implement them in the context of ego repair. Marketing
also began to draw on the lessons of art psychology in the layout of stores as well as in the placement and design of commercial goods.
Art psychology, generally speaking, was at odds with the principles of Freudian psychoanalysis
with many art psychologists critiquing, what they interpreted as, its reductivism. The writings of Carl Jung
, however, had a favorable reception among art psychologists given his optimistic portrayal of the role of art and his belief that the contents of the personal unconscious and, more particularly, the collective unconscious, could be accessed by art and other forms of cultural expression.
By the 1970s, the centrality of art psychology in academy began to wane. Artists became more interested in psychoanalysis
and feminism
, and architects in phenomenology
and the writings of Wittgenstein, Lyotard and Derrida. As for art and architectural historians, they critiqued psychology for being anti-contextual and culturally naive. Erwin Panofsky
, who had a tremendous impact on the shape of art history in the US, argued that historians should focus less on what is seen and more on what was thought. Today, psychology still plays an important role in art discourse, though mainly in the field of art appreciation.
Because of the growing interest in personality theory—especially in connection with the work of Isabel Briggs Myers and Katherine Briggs (developers of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
)http://www.myersbriggs.org/, contemporary theorists are investigating the relationship between personality type and art. Patricia Dinkelaker and John Fudjack have addressed the relationship between artists’ personality types and works of art; approaches to art as a reflection of functional preferences associated with personality type; and the function of art in society in light of personality theory.http://tap3x.net/EMBTI/j7readintro.html
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
, cognition
Cognition
In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...
and characteristics of art and its production. For the use of art materials as a form of psychotherapy
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...
, see art therapy
Art therapy
Because of its dual origins in art and psychotherapy, art therapy definitions vary. They commonly either lean more toward the ART art-making process as therapeutic in and of itself, "art as therapy," or focus on the psychotherapeutic transference process between the therapist and the client who...
. The psychology of art is related to architectural psychology and environmental psychology
Environmental psychology
Environmental psychology is an interdisciplinary field focused on the interplay between humans and their surroundings. The field defines the term environment broadly, encompassing natural environments, social settings, built environments, learning environments, and informational environments...
.
The work of Theodor Lipps
Theodor Lipps
Theodor Lipps was a German philosopher. Lipps was one of the most influential German university professors of his time, attracting many students from other countries. Lipps was very concerned with conceptions of art and the aesthetic, focusing much of his philosophy around such issues...
, a Munich-based research psychologist, played an important role in the early development of the concept of art psychology in the early decade of the twentieth century. His most important contribution in this respect was his attempt to theorize the question of Einfuehlung or "empathy
Empathy
Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings that are being experienced by another sapient or semi-sapient being. Someone may need to have a certain amount of empathy before they are able to feel compassion. The English word was coined in 1909 by E.B...
", a term that was to become a key element in many subsequent theories of art psychology.
Scope
In the narrow sense, there is no discipline "the psychology of art", for unlike other branches of psychology, with their numerous academies and research programs, there are few Psychology of Art programs in the universities. Nonetheless, the literature on the topic is extensive, given that the issues addressed by art psychology have attracted both professional psychologists as well as non-professionals; it has attracted those who write about the arts, including music and architecture, and those who produce it.The general principles that guide most of the work in art psychology are
- that art is perceptual and that it can thus be studied by asking questions about our perceptions.
- that art operates in a cultural continuum and that one can come to terms with the continuum through analysis of art.
- that the production of art is a meaningful enterprise and as such is an important avenue by which one comes to terms with human creativityCreativityCreativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
.
Art psychology developed in opposition to 19th century philosophical aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
which approached art by first asking about beauty
Beauty
Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture...
and metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
. For most art psychologists, beauty is culturally or socially contingent. Art psychology was, however, also developed initially in opposition to Husserlian phenomenology which made no normative judgments about meaning. Most branches of art psychology emphasize the primacy of consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
, but there are variants which engage the question of the subconscious
Subconscious
The term subconscious is used in many different contexts and has no single or precise definition. This greatly limits its significance as a definition-bearing concept, and in consequence the word tends to be avoided in academic and scientific settings....
. Generally speaking, however, those interested in the psychology of art express an optimism about art and its meanings that moves them away from the concepts discussed by Freud
1880-1950
One of the earliest to integrate psychology with art historyArt history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
was Heinrich Wölfflin
Heinrich Wölfflin
Heinrich Wölfflin was a famous Swiss art critic, whose objective classifying principles were influential in the development of formal analysis in the history of art during the 20th century. He taught at Basel, Berlin and Munich in the generation that raised German art history to pre-eminence...
(1864–1945), a Swiss art critic and historian, whose dissertation Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur (1886) attempted to show that architecture could be understood from a purely psychological (as opposed to a historical-progressivist) point of view.
Another important figure in the development of art psychology was Wilhelm Worringer
Wilhelm Worringer
Wilhelm Worringer was a German art historian. He is known in connection with expressionism. Through his influence on T. E. Hulme his ideas had an effect on early British modernism, especially vorticism....
, who provided some of the earliest theoretical justification for expressionist art. The Psychology of Art (1925) by Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) is another classical work. Richard Müller-Freienfels was another important early theorist.
Numerous artists in the twentieth century began to be influenced by the psychological argument, including Naum Gabo
Naum Gabo
Naum Gabo KBE, born Naum Neemia Pevsner was a prominent Russian sculptor in the Constructivism movement and a pioneer of Kinetic Art.-Early life:...
, Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
, Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
, and somewhat Josef Albers
Josef Albers
Josef Albers was a German-born American artist and educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the 20th century....
and György Kepes
György Kepes
György Kepes was a Hungarian-born painter, designer, educator and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus in Chicago...
. The French adventurer and film theorist André Malraux
André Malraux
André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...
was also interested in the topic and wrote the book La Psychologie de l'Art
La Psychologie de l'Art
La Psychologie de l'Art is a book written by the French adventurer and film theorist André Malraux. It contains thoughts on montage theory along with his Russian colleagues Eisenstein and Pudovkin....
(1947-9) later revised and republished as The Voices of Silence.
1950-present
Though the disciplinary foundations of art psychology were first developed in Germany, there were soon advocates, in psychology, the arts or in philosophy, pursuing their own variants in the USSR, England (Clive BellClive Bell
Arthur Clive Heward Bell was an English Art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group.- Origins :Clive Bell was born in East Shefford, Berkshire, in 1881...
and Herbert Read
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....
), France (André Malraux
André Malraux
André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...
, Jean-Paul Weber, for example), and the US.
In the US, the philosophical premises of art psychology were strengthened - and given political valence - in the work of John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
. His Art as Experience was published in 1934, and was the basis for significant revisions in teaching practices whether in the kindergarten or in the university. Manuel Barkan, head of the Arts Education School of Fine and Applied Arts at Ohio State University, and one of the many pedagoges influenced by the writings of Dewey, explains, for example, in his book, The Foundations of Art Education (1955), that the aesthetic education of children prepares the child for a life in a complex democracy. Dewey himself played a seminal role in setting up the program of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which became famous for its attempt to integrate art into the classroom experience.
The growth of art psychology between 1950 and 1970 also coincided with the expansion of art history and museum programs. The popularity of Gestalt psychology
Gestalt psychology
Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain of the Berlin School; the operational principle of gestalt psychology is that the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies...
in the 1950s added further weight to the discipline. The seminal work was Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (1951), that was co-authored by Fritz Perls
Fritz Perls
Friedrich Salomon Perls , better known as Fritz Perls, was a noted German-born psychiatrist and psychotherapist of Jewish descent....
, Paul Goodman, and Ralph Hefferline. The writings of Rudolf Arnheim (born 1904) were also particularly influential during this period. His Toward a Psychology of Art (Berkeley: University of California Press) was published in 1966. Art therapy
Art therapy
Because of its dual origins in art and psychotherapy, art therapy definitions vary. They commonly either lean more toward the ART art-making process as therapeutic in and of itself, "art as therapy," or focus on the psychotherapeutic transference process between the therapist and the client who...
drew on many of the lessons of art psychology and tried to implement them in the context of ego repair. Marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
also began to draw on the lessons of art psychology in the layout of stores as well as in the placement and design of commercial goods.
Art psychology, generally speaking, was at odds with the principles of Freudian psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
with many art psychologists critiquing, what they interpreted as, its reductivism. The writings of Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
, however, had a favorable reception among art psychologists given his optimistic portrayal of the role of art and his belief that the contents of the personal unconscious and, more particularly, the collective unconscious, could be accessed by art and other forms of cultural expression.
By the 1970s, the centrality of art psychology in academy began to wane. Artists became more interested in psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
and feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, and architects in phenomenology
Phenomenology (architecture)
Phenomenology is both a philosophical design current in contemporary architecture and a specific field of academic research, based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties....
and the writings of Wittgenstein, Lyotard and Derrida. As for art and architectural historians, they critiqued psychology for being anti-contextual and culturally naive. Erwin Panofsky
Erwin Panofsky
Erwin Panofsky was a German art historian, whose academic career was pursued mostly in the U.S. after the rise of the Nazi regime. Panofsky's work remains highly influential in the modern academic study of iconography...
, who had a tremendous impact on the shape of art history in the US, argued that historians should focus less on what is seen and more on what was thought. Today, psychology still plays an important role in art discourse, though mainly in the field of art appreciation.
Because of the growing interest in personality theory—especially in connection with the work of Isabel Briggs Myers and Katherine Briggs (developers of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions...
)http://www.myersbriggs.org/, contemporary theorists are investigating the relationship between personality type and art. Patricia Dinkelaker and John Fudjack have addressed the relationship between artists’ personality types and works of art; approaches to art as a reflection of functional preferences associated with personality type; and the function of art in society in light of personality theory.http://tap3x.net/EMBTI/j7readintro.html