A mile wide and one inch deep. That’s what I thought of Rudolf Arnheim’s essay Entropy and Art
Arnheim begins this short piece of writing with a textbook definition of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics as conceived of in Newtonian physics. All objects moving through time and space progress towards their end. That progression is irreversible. A rock is thrown through a window and the glass shatters into thousands of miniscule pieces; the action can not be reversed. The rock can not go back through the window sucking all the shards of glass back into their original position, once again forming a whole, undamaged piece of transparent glass inside a frame. Time can not go backwards. The dead can not come back to life. Everything moves in a continual stream towards death, decay, and dissolution. The disassociated elements will be recombined with other things to make new objects, but the original forms, once they are gone, are gone forever.
Along the way, everything strives towards its goal of maximum structure, a peak of orderliness. But matter is caught in the tension between anabolic forces, the release of energy to progress towards a state of organization, and catabolic forces like friction, decay, and aging. This is, in other words, order and chaos, or structure and entropy. The state of maximum equilibrium is the state of maximum entropy. The peak of progression is reached, the tension is reduced, then order begins to relax before decay and destruction take over. It’s the big quantum orgasm of material physics.
So far so good, says the high school student in his science class. But Arnheim isn’t talking about Newtonian physics. He is talking about information systems with specific reference to the CIA’s Norbert Weiner and his technocratic theory of cybernetics. But actually Arnheim isn’t even talking about systems theory here. He is lifting the theory of entropy even further out of its original context and inserting into semiotics, then transferring it into art theory which he describes as an information system of visual language. Got It? Good. He illustrates his points about order and chaos in art by all-too briefly referencing works by Jean Arp and Andy Warhol. The former to explain the presence of chance in artistic production, the latter to show the principle of order. We also get some brief mentions of gestalt psychology and Freud’s theory of the conflict between the pleasure principle and the death wish, eros and thanatos, order and entropy.
Arnheim spends a long time, constructing his theory in the first section, but then in the second section he takes an unexpected turn. Arnheim himself does not agree with the theory he has just proposed. His point is that structure does not progress to its simplest form, as stated in the first section. Rather it progresses towards greater and greater complexity. Yes, he built up his theory so he could just tear it all down. Then there is a little bit more, but not much, about art. End of discussion.
The first major issue I have with this essay is that Arnheim does not display a deep understanding of entropy or even of science itself. He probably knows more than what he is telling, but he doesn’t demonstrate it in any way. He doesn’t apply the second law of thermodynamics to anything that is actually dynamic. Instead he transfers it to art theory via semiotics via cybernetics without making any argument as to why such a transference is legitimate. He does what a lot of postmodern obscurantists do which is taking a scientific term out of context without understanding what it originally meant, and using it in some way that is completely untethered from its original purpose, often to dress up a rather plain idea in a baffling outfit of unnecessarily complex clothes, all for the sake of looking more intellectual than the writer really is. Alan Sokol and Noam Chomsky, I vindicate you.
Another big problem I have with this essay is that Arnheim makes very little effort to apply his theory to actual works of art. What little application he does use is sparse and anemic, looking more like an afterthought than an actual part of the discourse. It is like he revised his original essay and inserted some references to art so that it would be something more than a generic explanation of entropy, something that can easily be found in any elementary textbook on physics.
Finally, I should ask why all this writing about entropy is even necessary. If he wants to write about the conflict between form and content in art, or structure and chaos, or any other dichotomy you can think of, can’t he just say so using direct language? Or is that not artsy enough? After all, what he is discussing is nothing new in art theory. This is the age old distinction between the Dionysian and Apollonian that is an inexhaustible well of analytic guidelines and one that will probably last as long as we humans do.
There is one thing to appreciate in this book. The way the form and content in the essay’s organization mirror each other is effectively done. It occurred to me as I read the shorter, second section, where he argues that systems progress towards greater complexity rather than greater simplicity, that the process of moving along those lines is used as a template for the structure of the essay as a whole with the content of each sub-section corresponding to the developmental stages of his theory as it goes along. There isn’t anything original in this but by self-referencing his own theory in this way, he proves his point to a certain extent. Unfortunately, Arnheim applies his theory to his own theory more than he does to art. Is this mental masturbation? Increasing tensions build up to a state of maximum entropy when the tension relaxes and then everything moves to a state of dissolution and greater complexity. Le petit mort. There is no such thing as a reverse ejaculation.
Rudolf Arnheim seems like a smart guy though I can’t come to any definite conclusions about his ideas based on Entropy and Art, which says too much about entropy and not enough about art. As such, this essay comes off as pretentious pseudo-intellectualism. His other books look promising, if a bit dry and rigorous. He was known for applying scientific concepts of psychology and visual perception to art. Those books may have some merit. He was certainly interested in, and well-educated, in scientific disciplines. This book just falls to short of its potential to be of any real value in regards to art theory.
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