Arnheim, Rudolf

Arnheim, Rudolf (1904–  ) art theorist, psychologist; born in Berlin, Germany. He studied at the University of Berlin, worked in Rome with the International Institute of Educational Films (1933–38), then taught at both the New School for Social Research and Sarah Lawrence College (1943–68), Harvard (1968–74), and the University of Michigan (1974). He taught film history but is most noted as a pioneering theorist of the psychology of the arts; among his influential books are Art as Visual Perception (1954, 1974); Toward a Psychology of Art (1966) and Entropy and Art (1971).