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Art, Design and Gestalt Theory HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Art, Design and Gestalt Theory RoyR Behrens ABSTRACT iiG estalt psychology began in Germany in of specific elements. Clearly, ar- 1910. While traveling by train on vacation, a 30-year-old gued Ehrenfels, if a melody and Gestaltpsychology Czech-born psychologist named Max Wertheimer was seized the notes that comprise it are so wasfounded in 1910 by an idea when he saw at a railroad then a whole is not threeGerman psycholo- by flashing lights crossing independent, Max Kurt that resembled a theater He off the sum of its but a gists, Wertheimer, lights encircling marquee. got simply parts, Koffkaand Wolfgang K6hler. the train in Frankfurt am Main, where he bought a motion synergistic "whole effect," or ge- Theauthor discusses ge- picture toy called a "zoetrope" (Fig. 1). When a strip of pic- stalt [2]. Likewise, Wertheimer stalttheory's influence on tures is placed inside and viewed through the slits in a zoet- concluded, the effect of apparent modernart and design, de- scribesits resemblance to a succession of stationary pictures appear to be a single, movement is generated not so rope, Japanese-inspiredtheories moving picture. In his hotel room, Wertheimer made his own much by its individual elements as of aestheticsand finds evi- picture strips, consisting not of identifiable objects, but of by their dynamic interrelation. denceof a mutual,if lim- simple abstract lines, ranging from vertical to horizontal. By Wertheimer remained in ited,interest between the these elements, he was able to the condi- Frankfurt for more than 5 gestaltpsychologists and varying investigate years. certainartists. tions that contribute to the illusion of motion pictures, an ef- He continued his research of ap- fect that is technically known as "apparent movement" [1]. parent movement at the Psycho- Years earlier, Wertheimer had studied in Prague with an logical Institute, where he used a Austrian philosopher named Christian von Ehrenfels, who sophisticated projector called a "tachistoscope" that enabled had published a paper in 1890 entitled "On Gestalt Qualities" him to flash shapes on the screen successively for precise in- in which he pointed out that a melody is still recognizable crements of time. He recruited as subjects two younger psy- when played in different keys, even though none of the notes chologists, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler. After gathering are the same, and that abstract form attributes such as data for more than a year, he shared the results with his col- "squareness"or "angularity"can be conveyed by a wide range leagues, then published his findings in 1912 in a paper titled "Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement" [3]. This was the first important event in the history of gestalt psy- a movement that from the work of Fig. 1. Engraving of a zoetrope, a motion picture toy invented in En- chology, grew subsequent gland before 1850 by W.G. Horner. This is the toy that Wertheimer its prodigious triumvirate:Wertheimer, Koffka and Kohler. bought when he left the train at Frankfurt am Main in 1910. The three founding gestalt psychologists were separated by World War I, then reunited in 1920, when Kohler became Di- rector of the Psychological Institute at the University of Ber- lin, where Wertheimer was already a faculty member. While maintaining contact with Koffka, who continued to teach near Frankfurt, Wertheimer and Kohler established a gradu- ate program, located in the abandoned Imperial Palace, and began a research journal called PsychologischeForschung (Psy- chological Investigation). For the most part, the students did not learn by attending lectures but by actually conducting re- search using fellow students as subjects and by preparing ar- ticles for publication. The success of the method is evidenced by the number of teachers and students at the Institute whose names are now familiar in psychology, including Rudolf Arnheim, Kurt Lewin, Wolfgang Metzger, Hans Wallach, Bluma Zeigarnik, Tamara Dembo, Karl Duncker, Maria Ovsiankina, Herta Kopfermann and Kurt Gottschaldt [4]. Koffka left Europe for the United States in 1924; Wertheimer in 1933. By the early 1930s, the Psychological In- stitute had begun to erode. When the National Socialists h came to in their immediate fr- power 1933, among menacing acts was the dismissal of Jewish university professors, from Roy R. Behrens, (artist, writer, teacher), 2022 X Avenue, Dysart, IA 52224-9767, U.S.A. E-mail: <[email protected]>. ? 1998 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 299-303, 1998 299 This content downloaded on Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:15:51 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions sented with discarded materials (wire mesh, cardboard, newspapers, match- boxes, phonograph needles and razor blades) and instructed to basteln-to im- provise or "rig up" something. It is said that this method was influenced by Friedrich Froebel's pedagogy of "educa- tion through play" (in part because Johannes Itten, who started the founda- tions course, was a Froebel-trained el- ementary school teacher), especially the celebrated Froebel "gifts" (cited by Frank Lloyd Wright as pivotal in his early education), which were sets of wooden blocks, presented in sequence to chil- dren between the ages of 2 months and 6 years, that could be rearranged in a vari- ety of configurations [11]. This is also surprisingly similar to ge- stalt psychologist Duncker's "functional Fig. 2. World War I American ship camouflage, intended to confuse the aim of German U- fixedness" experiments, published in boat torpedo gunners (circa 1918). That perceptual grouping tendencies are inborn and 1935, in which subjects were asked to universal is suggested by the cross-cultural effectiveness of camouflage, which reliably improvise solutions to various problems works the "laws" that the In by subverting gestalt psychologists postulated. high-similarity, using seemingly inappropriate materi- or and their are so similar as to be in- blending, camouflage, objects surroundings nearly als. In one, for the was In or as in this the continu- example, subject distinguishable. high-difference, dazzle, camouflage, example, shown a table with a of common ity of a shape is interrupted by a surface design of unrelated, contrasting elements. (Photo variety items on a nail and courtesy of National Archives and Record Service) it, including cord, weight scattered among them, and asked to construct a pendulum. Most Nobel Prize scientists to graduate assis- of lectures about gestalt theory by Count solved the problem by using the weight tants. Rumored as being in sympathy Karlfried von Diirckheim, a visiting psy- as a hammer to pound the nail into the with "the Jew Wertheimer," Kohler pub- chologist from the University of Leipzig, wall, tying the cord to the weight and licly condemned anti-Semitism and pro- in the winter of 1930-1931 [9]. suspending the improvised pendulum tested the dismissals in a Berlin newspa- Albers's curiosity about gestalt theory from the nail. But that solution oc- per article, the last such article allowed may be significant because he is now curred less readily to other subjects if, under the Nazis. To his surprise, he was commonly credited with a resurgence of during instructions, the weight was de- not arrested, but the intimidation interest in "simultaneous contrast," scribed as a "pendulum weight" and al- mounted, and in 1935, he too emigrated which von Dirckheim discussed in his ready tied to the cord. In such instances, to the United States [5]. lectures. Recognized and used by artists None of the gestalt psychologists were for centuries, the effect was described artists, much less designers, but early on scientifically in 1839 by a French chem- Fig. 3. Ryan McAdam, trademark for a hy- there were of a mutual interest be- ist, Michel-Eugene Chevreul, who essen- pothetical restaurant called Dada Cafe signs The tween the two In for found that a color to (1996). gestalt psychologists described disciplines. 1927, tially may appear the effects of the innate Rudolf often when moved similarity grouping, example, gestalt psychologist change, dramatically, tendency to constellate or to see as belong- from one to another. A Arnheim visited the Dessau Bauhaus, background ing together elements that look alike. An- then published an article in Die swatch of red, for example, may exhibit ticipating that tendency, the designer of Weltbiihnepraising the honesty and clar- one intensity on a green background, this logo has set up deliberate visual the recurrent use of circular ity of its building design [6]. Soon after, another on orange. As a result of this rhymes by Kurt Lewin commissioned Pe- there is no answer to shapes, s-shaped scallops and several thick- gestaltist phenomenon, easy nesses of line. ter Behrens (teacher of Bauhaus the question "What is the true appear- founder Walter Gropius) to design his ance of a color?" Simultaneous contrast home in Berlin, but, after a disagree- anticipated holism, in the sense that ment, Bauhaus furniture designer gestaltists are likely to say that all such Marcel Breuer was asked to complete appearances of a color are legitimate, the interior [7]. In 1929, Kohler de- because we always experience percep- clined a Bauhaus invitation to lecture tual wholes, not isolated parts. We never because of a scheduling conflict, so his see figures (or swatches) alone, only dy- student Karl Duncker spoke instead. In namic "figure-ground" relationships the audience was the painter Paul Klee, [10]. who had known about Wertheimer's re- Of equal interest is Albers's
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