The Psychology of Art (BOOK)

“The psychology of art” is the work of Lev Vygotsky , containing an analysis of the laws of aesthetic perception.

The book was completed and defended as a dissertation in 1925. In the same year, an agreement was signed for publication, but the book did not come out then. Its first edition was carried out in 1965, and the 2nd edition in 1968 was supplemented by an extended commentary by Vyach. Su Ivanova . In the fifth edition (1997), censorship exemptions made during the Soviet era were restored (references to Trotsky , etc.). For the 2001 edition of Vyach. Su Ivanov added his comment.

Vygotsky himself wrote about his book:

I studied not fables, not tragedies, and even less this fable and this tragedy. I studied in them that which forms the basis of all art — the nature and mechanism of the aesthetic reaction. I relied on the common elements of form and material that are inherent in all art. ... not an inductive study of a certain set of facts, but an analysis of the processes in its essence . ^[one]