Books like The psychology of visual art by George Mather

Art and Illusion explores the psychology of pictorial representation, tracing how visual perception theories illuminate the evolution of artistic styles from ancient Greece to modern avant-garde movements.

Vision and Art explores how biological visual processes shape the perception of painting, photography, and design, blending neuroscience with artistic technique to offer practical insights for artists and designers.

John Berger explores how perception shapes art, culture and everyday life, questioning why images affect us and how meaning evolves over time.

Rudolf Arnheim’s classic applies modern psychology to art, explaining how visual perception organizes and interprets artistic images. It offers a clear, readable guide for both psychologists and art lovers.

320 pages : 26 cm

"In this richly illustratcd book Oleg Grabar not only shares a veteran art historian's love for the sheer sensuality of Islamic ornamentation, but also uses this art to show how ornament in general enables a direct, immediate encounter between viewers and art objects from any culture and time period. Based on universal motifs, ornamentation occurs in many artistic traditions, although it seems to reach its most expressive, tangible, and unique form in the art of the Islamic world. Grabar analyzes early and medieval Islamic objects, ranging from recently discovered frontispieces in Yemen to tilework in the Alhambra, and compares them to Western examples, treating all pieces as testimony of the work, life, thought, and emotion experienced in one society. From this discussion ornament emerges as a consistent intermediary between viewers and artistic works throughout time." "Grabar defines ornaments as agents that are not logically necessary to the perception of a visual message but without which the process of understanding would be more difficult - they in fact often draw us into a work by strengthening the pleasure derived from looking at it. A major portion of this book explores four particularly influential forces on the development of ornament: writing (calligraphy), geometry, architecture, and nature. Throughout Grabar seeks to serve admirers of Islamic art as well as readers interested in the ways of perceiving and understanding the arts in general."--BOOK JACKET.