Rudolf Arnheim; Studied Art-Perception Links

Rudolf Arnheim, 102, a German-born psychologist and visual theorist whose writings influenced generations of thinkers about the relationship between art and perception, died June 9 at Glacier Hills retirement community in Ann Arbor, Mich. He had pneumonia.

Dr. Arnheim taught at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan and at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., from the 1940s to the 1960s. Afterward, he became a professor of the psychology of art at Harvard University and a visiting professor at the University of Michigan before his retirement in 1984.

In his best-remembered books -- "Art and Visual Perception" (1954), "Film as Art" (1957) and "Visual Thinking" (1969) -- he applied Gestalt theory, which analyzes how perception of the whole is greater than the sum of its interrelated parts. Among the "parts" he examined were the structures of an artwork's forms and colors and the emotional reaction that results.

"I consider art to be a means of perception, a means of cognition," he once said. "Perception makes it possible to structure reality and thus to attain knowledge. Art reveals to us the essence of things, the essence of our existence. That is its function."

He published hundreds of essays for the academic and popular press after he began working as a film critic in 1920s Weimar Germany. At a time when films were judged mostly as disposable, popular entertainment, he insisted that they could be compared favorably to the fine arts.

Dr. Arnheim admired the "artistic purity of expression" of silent film -- words, he said, "significantly limit the expression of the image." Yet one of his more-enduring essays, "The Film Critic of Tomorrow" (1935), satirized fellow critics bemoaning the end of the silent period.

Jim Hoberman, the chief film critic of the Village Voice in New York, said: "You couldn't be nostalgic for what was no longer fact. It's perfectly obvious to us now. But in context then, it was a powerful point in how the marketplace and technology will change things."

A well-regarded 1998 Hoberman essay called "The Film Critic of Tomorrow, Today," used many of Dr. Arnheim's arguments to critique modern reviewers who thought quality cinema, once again, had perished with the blockbuster adventure film. He said the original Arnheim essay remained fresh because there will always be people nostalgic for things that do not exist anymore.

Rudolf Julius Arnheim was born in Berlin on July 15, 1904. His father owned a piano factory.

At the University of Berlin, he received a doctorate in philosophy -- at the time, psychology was considered a branch of philosophy -- and studied with such Gestalt theorists as Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Kohler. He wrote his dissertation on expressiveness in human faces and handwriting.

After graduation in 1928, he joined the staff of the left-leaning culture journal Die Weltbuehne and covered music, architecture and cinema.

He also conducted interviews for German radio. He recalled having an unpleasant exchange over the air with actress and filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who reportedly told him: "As long as the Jews are film critics, I'll never have a success. But watch out, when Hitler takes the rudder everything will change."