The Polemics of Visual Thinking:

Gestalt Psychology 2

Our interest in the visual nature of the world and our dialogues with and about it remain fragmented, and in such an unstructured state, it is near impossible to impart a coherent visual langauge along with the verbal and written one we are so forcefully educated in.

The space for exploration provided by the amporphous quality of visual language in our culture is a necessity for an artist invested in creating a personal symbolic language. Indeed, this is the only appropriate space for it, since that should be the end result as opposed to the beginning point, particularly in education. The use of "pure shapes" as described by Arnheim, as a set visual language, should be but the beginning. In is my opinion that all areas of learning from math to dance could benefit from an infusion of not simply imagery - but of a realization, and corresponding visual representation, of the inherent visual components of every academic subject that is considered crucial.

In the words of Allan Paivio in Imagery and Verbal Processes:"This is one of the classical behaviorist arguments - imagery is subjective and inferential, words are objective and manageable." (Paivio: p.5) There is a great deal to struggle against, not only interns of what prejuidices exisit in our culture, but what scholars on the subject have stated as irrefutable fact. The movement towards an incorporation of the visual, or even the recogniton of the current use of imagery, will require a strong sense of individual purpose, and a reliance on inner truth, whether it be visual or verbal.