A PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CREATIVE EYE

SIMON HILL HonFRPS, RPS PRESIDENT & CHAIR OF TRUSTEES

With my contemporaries, as students of photography - first at Blackpool College of Art (1983-1985), then at St Martins School of Art (1989-90) and finally at the Open College of the Arts (2011-2015) - we studied seminal texts on how we ‘see’ as photographers, as artists and as human beings. For me, the psychology of ‘seeing’ was and remains an intensely fascinating subject and I would suggest that it should be so for all photographers, just as it is for all other visual artists. What better RPS Group is there for this to be explored, than in the Creative Eye?

At all three of my colleges, the most important text for the study of visual psychology was Art and Visual Perception (University of California Press 1954, revised 1974) by Rudolph Arnheim (1904-2007). Interestingly - and this only struck me when writing this article - the sub-title of Arnheim’s book is “A Psychology of the Creative Eye.” I wonder whether it was this sub-title that gave rise to the name of this RPS Group?

Arnheim was born in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century and was interested in art from a young age. He learned Gestalt psychology from Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler at the University of Berlin at a time when Albert Einstein and Max Planck were members of the faculty and at a time when Gestalt psychology was just beginning to emerge.

Art and Visual Perception by Rudolph Arnheim (University of California Press, 1954, revised version 1974); Gestalt Psychology by Wolfgang Köhler (Liveright / Mentor, 1947); Nikon EM with Nikon Series E 50mm f1/8 lens, released in 1979, the same year in which was published The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (Pan, 1979); and Psychonaut the first album released by Hoopy Frood (2004) … there is a connection, in fact two connections … but you’ll need to ask Steve Varman LRPS about that!

Gestalt psychology provides a theory that organisms (including humans) perceive entire patterns or configurations, not merely the individual components of those compositions. The core Gestalt principles - proximity, similarity, symmetry, periodicity, and continuity - and the further principles - closure, convexity, figure-ground articulation, common motion, past experience, common region and element connectedness - describe how visual scenarios are perceived in the context of the composite of objects and their environments.

Applying Gestalt principles to visual art, Arnheim’s work describes the visual processes that take place when people create or consume visual art, whatever the medium employed, and explains how we perceive and organise visual stimuli according to definite psychological laws. Consequently, Arnheim’s work should be essential reading

A tight grouping of three petals in a pool (Portugal 2019) demonstrating the Gestalt principle of ‘proximity’

(Copyright © Simon Hill HonFRPS) for all artists … and that most certainly includes photographers.

At the 1983 National Art Education Association Conference held in Detroit, a public conversation between David Pariser (Concordia University, Montreal) and Rudolph Arnheim sought to explore the origins of Arnheim’s work. The conversation revealed that Arnheim’s generative premise was that the meaning of life and of the world could be perceived in the patterns, shapes, and colours of the world. Maybe the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is not “42” after all; did Hitch Hiker’s Guide ‘Deep Thought’ get it wrong? Clearly, the answer should have been “patterns, shapes and colours.”

Arnheim believed that artists must study and understand patterns, shapes and colours, and discover what they mean, such that they can use the principles of Gestalt psychology - “visual thinking” - to influence their means of expression, whether that be in a painting, in a piece of graphic art or in a photograph. Arnheim explained that art is a way to help people understand the world, and a way to see how the world changes as perceived through our “creative eye”. He maintained that vision and perception are creative, active understanding, and that we organize our vision and perceptions into structures and form in order for us to understand them; the function of art is to show the ‘essence’ of something … something like the universe and our existence within it.

Arnheim argued that without order we wouldn’t understand anything and therefore concluded that the universe and our world is ordered just by being perceived. My earlier reference to The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams, Pan Books 1979) was therefore not entirely flippant. In The Original Hitch Hiker Radio Scripts (Douglas Adams, Geoffrey Perkins (ed), Pan Books 1985), the Narrator tells us that, “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory mentioned, which states that this has already happened.”

Whether or not we are conscious of the fact that every photograph we take is in some small way helping us to understand the world in which we live, the study and appreciation of Gestalt psychology will help us to become ever more proficient in our efforts to perceive and portray the meaning of life and the nature of the universe. If you haven’t already read it, I recommend Arnheim’s Art and Visual Perception … and, of course, Adams’ Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Perhaps somewhere between these two works we will indeed find the answer and it probably won’t be “42”.