Name Anton Ehrenzweig | ||
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Died 1966, London, United Kingdom Books The Hidden Order of Art: A Study in the Psychology of Artistic Imagination | ||
richard foreman
Anton Anthony Ehrenzweig (1908 – 5 December 1966) was an Austrian-born British theorist on modern art and modern music.
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Ehrenzweig was born into a Jewish family in Vienna with Czech and Galician roots. He was the son of Emma (née Bachrach) of Bohemia and Albert Rudolf Ehrenzweig, who was born in Vienna. His paternal grandfather and grandmother were from Lipník nad Bečvou in Moravia and Lemberg, Galicia (now Lviv, Ukraine), respectively.
He studied law, psychology and art in Austria and became a magistrate in 1936. Two years later, he fled Austria after the Anschluss with Germany in 1938 and settled in England. He abandoned his law career after arriving in London, and became a lecturer in Art Education at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His devoted his work to the study of the creative mind.
Ehrenzweig wrote The Psychoanalysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing (1953) and The Hidden Order of Art (1967). Ehrenzweig also published numerous journal articles. His ideas can be summarized as the discovery of the organizing role of the unconscious mind in any act of creativity and an analysis of the layered structure of the unconscious mind and of the dynamic mental processes which an artist undergoes in the creative act.
The Hidden Order of Art, published posthumously, has been in continuous publication since 1967, and is considered one of the three classics of art psychology, along with Rudolf Arnheim's Art and Visual Perception and Herschel Chipp's Theories of Modern Art.
Ehrenzweig wrote the introduction to the catalogue for an early show by Bridget RIley at London's Gallery One, May 1962. He also reviewed one of her exhibitions for "Art International" in February 1965. He died the following year in Hammersmith, London, of a sudden heart attack.
He was survived by his wife, Gerda Hiller, whom he married in 1942. They had one child.
Sir Herbert Read commented on Ehrenzweig's contribution following his death:
The Psychoanalysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing ... advanced an original theory of the part played by-unconscious modes of perception in the creation of the work of art. Essentially a merging of Freudian psycho-analysis and Gestalt psychology, this thesis established the importance of the interplay that takes place between our conscious and formal creation of images and our undisciplined perceptive imagination. The book combines a profound knowledge of modern psychology with an equally profound knowledge of all the arts, particularly painting and music. It has had a great influence in the explanation and justification of the extreme types of modem art, and has been a direct inspiration to many artists.