FROM GESTALT TO PATTERN IN POST-WAR AMERICAN AESTHETIC THEORY: THE WORKS OF RUDOLF ARNHEIM AND GYÖRGY KEPES

The following article is an inquiry into the aesthetic valences of the concept of pattern as informed both by Gestalt theory and information theoretical tendencies toward quantification. In the trail of its object, it evokes the historical context of the second half of the 20th century American artistic and technological culture and offers critical engagements with texts by its main interlocutors Rudolf Arnheim and György Kepes. While Arnheim is a second-generation Gestalt theorist whose responses to the rise of a digital paradigm are instructive, Kepes stands out for the way he seeks a rapprochement between science and art through visuality. The article demonstrates that both theorists grapple with the challenges issued by advances in computation and the epistemological implications of visions of data processing (even machine learning research) ascendant in their time. The article has a philosophical orientation in paying particular attention to matters of abstraction underlying patterns, the contrasts between analog and digital coding, quality and quantity, the temporality of pattern formation, and the dimension of subjectivity. Finally, in its departure from the interface Kepes’ work offers between science and art, the article contextualizes the question of pattern with reference to the history of science, by putting it in contact with influential treatments of objectivity in the discourse of Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, but more critically, in the work of Donna Haraway.