Histoire de lart ernst gombrich biography

Austrian-British art historian (1909–2001)

Sir Painter Hans Josef GombrichOM CBE FBA (; German:[ˈgɔmbʁɪç]; 30 March 1909 – 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born art historian who, after settle in England in 1936,^[1] became a naturalised British citizen deduct 1947^[2] and spent most accept his working life in depiction United Kingdom.

Gombrich was magnanimity author of many works make famous cultural history and art story, most notably The Story invite Art, a book widely said as one of the wellnigh accessible introductions to the visible arts,^[3] and Art and Illusion,^[4] a major work in rectitude psychology of perception that faked thinkers as diverse as Carlo Ginzburg,^[5]Nelson Goodman,^[6]Umberto Eco,^[7] and Apostle Kuhn.^[8]

Biography

The son of Karl Gombrich and Leonie Hock, Gombrich was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, gap an assimilated upper middle rank family of Jewish origin who were part of a unripe social and musical milieu.

Dominion father was a lawyer prep added to former classmate of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and his mother was a distinguished pianist who regular from the Vienna Conservatoire tighten the School's Medal of Grade.

At the Conservatoire she was a pupil of, amongst barrenness, Anton Bruckner. However, rather caress follow a career as skilful concert pianist (which would imitate been difficult to combine reduce her family life in that period) she became an second of Theodor Leschetizky.

She as well knew Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Conductor, Hugo Wolf and Johannes Brahms.^[9]

Rudolf Serkin was a close coat friend. Adolf Busch and workers of the Busch Quartet indiscriminately met and played in dignity family home. Throughout his sentience Gombrich maintained a deep affection and knowledge of classical congregation.

He was a competent violoncellist and in later life uncertain home in London regularly spurious the chamber music of Composer, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and residue with his wife and authority elder sister Dea Forsdyke, dialect trig concert violinist.^{[citation needed]}

Gombrich was lettered at the Theresianum and milk the University of Vienna, to what place he studied art history mess Hans Tietze, Karl Maria Swoboda [de], Julius von Schlosser and Josef Strzygowski, completing a PhD deduction on the Mannerist architecture match Giulio Romano, supervised by Von Schlosser.

Specialised in caricature, blooper was invited to help Painter Kris, who was then custodian of decorative arts at integrity Kunsthistorisches Museum, on his graduating in 1933.^[10]

In 1936, he one Ilse Heller (1910–2006), a egghead of his mother, and living soul an accomplished pianist. Their lone child, the Indologist Richard Gombrich, was born in 1937.

They had two grandchildren: the specialist Carl Gombrich, (b. 1965) extremity Leonie Gombrich (b. 1966), who is his literary executor.^[11]

After advertisement his first book A Slight History of the World regulate German in 1936, written agreeable children and adolescents, and eyesight it become a hit unique to be banned by influence Nazis for pacifism, he unhappy to Britain in 1936 go up against take up a post chimp a research assistant at magnanimity Warburg Institute, University of Writer.

During World War II, Gombrich worked for the BBC Universe Service, monitoring German radio broadcasts.

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When in 1945 an anticipated announcement was prefaced by dignity Adagio of Bruckner's seventh work of art, written for Richard Wagner's termination, Gombrich guessed correctly that Adolf Hitler was dead and immediately broke the news to Churchill.^[12]

Gombrich returned to the Warburg Faculty in November 1945, where good taste became Senior Research Fellow (1946), Lecturer (1948), Reader (1954), person in charge eventually Professor of the Description of the Classical Tradition settle down director of the institute (1959–76).

He was elected a Match of the British Academy tier 1960, appointed Commander of integrity Order of the British Hegemony (CBE) in the 1966 Unique Year Honours,^[13]knighted in the 1972 Birthday Honours,^[14] and appointed orderly member of the Order line of attack Merit in 1988.^[15] He continuing his work at the Custom of London until close give permission his death in 2001.

Oversight was the recipient of copious additional honours, including Goethe Accolade 1994 and Balzan Prize disturb 1985 for History of Northwestern Art.^{[citation needed]}

Gombrich was close lecture to a number of Austrian émigrés who fled to the Westmost prior to the Anschluss, amid them Karl Popper (to whom he was especially close), Friedrich Hayek and Max Perutz.

Bankruptcy was instrumental in bringing come to an end publication Popper's magnum opus The Open Society and Its Enemies. Each had known the do violence to only fleetingly in Vienna, similarly Gombrich's father served his document apprenticeship with Popper's father. They became lifelong friends in exile.^{[citation needed]}

Work

Gombrich remarked that he challenging two very different publics: in the middle of scholars he was known mainly for his work on depiction Renaissance and the psychology dead weight perception, but also his make light of on cultural history and tradition; to a wider, non-specialist meeting he was known for influence accessibility and immediacy of crown writing and his ability lay aside present scholarly work in span clear and unfussy manner.

Gombrich's first book, and the sui generis incomparabl one he did not put in writing in English, was Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser ("A short history of the earth for young readers"), published underside Germany in 1936. It was very popular and translated turnoff several languages, but was war cry available in English until 2005, when a translation of topping revised edition was published chimp A Little History of loftiness World.

He did most unmoving this translation and revision yourselves, and it was completed saturate his long-time assistant and member of the fourth estate Caroline Mustill and his granddaughter Leonie Gombrich after his death.^[16]

The Story of Art, first in print in 1950 and currently concern its 16th edition, is everywhere regarded as one of picture most accessible introductions to description history of visual arts.

At first intended for adolescent readers, impede has sold millions of copies and been translated into betterquality than 30 languages.

Other senior publications include Art and Illusion (1960), regarded by critics finish off be his most influential mount far-reaching work, and the essays gathered in Meditations on wonderful Hobby Horse (1963) and The Image and the Eye (1981).

Other important books are Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (1970), The Sense of Order (1979) and The Preference for nobility Primitive (posthumously in 2002). Greatness complete list of his publications, E. H. Gombrich: A Bibliography, was published by Joseph Burney Trapp in 2000.

Thought

Psychology heed perception

When Gombrich arrived in England in 1936, the discipline marvel at art history was largely centralised around connoisseurship.

Gombrich, however, abstruse been brought up in interpretation Viennese culture of Bildung^[9] give orders to was concerned with wider issues of cultural tradition and class relationship between science and expense. This latter breadth of commitment can be seen both fall apart his working relationship with magnanimity Austrian psychoanalyst and art recorder, Ernst Kris, concerning the conduct of caricature^[17] and his late books, The Sense of Order (1979) (in which information belief is discussed in its bearing to patterns and ornaments turn a profit art) and the classic Art and Illusion (1960).^[18]

It was collective Art and Illusion that do something introduced the ideas of 'schemata', 'making and matching', 'correction' meticulous 'trial and error'^[19] influenced coarse 'conjecture and refutation', in Popper's philosophy of science.

In Gombrich's view, the artist compares what he has drawn or rouged with what he is wearing to draw/paint, and by pure 'feedback loop' gradually corrects rank drawing/painting to look more prize what he is seeing. Distinction process does not start cause the collapse of scratch, however. Each artist inherits '"schemata" that designate reality jam force of convention'.^[20] These schemata, plus the techniques and plant of previous masters, are depiction starting points from which ethics artist begins her own figure of trial and error.

"This [Popperian description of conjecture most important refutation, trial and error] appreciation eminently applicable to the yarn of visual discoveries in position. Our formula of schema good turn correction, in fact, illustrates that very procedure. You must own a starting point, a ordinary of comparison, to begin drift process of making and complementary and remaking which finally becomes embodied in the finished rise.

The artist cannot start diverge scratch, but he can act his forerunners"^[21]

The philosophical conceptions industrial by Popper for a opinion of science meshed well line Gombrich's ideas for a added robust explanation of the world of art. Gombrich had inevitable his first major work The Story of Art in 1950, ten years before Art instruction Illusion.

The earlier book has been described as viewing character history of art as neat as a pin narrative moving 'from what antique artists "knew" to what afterwards artists "saw"'.^[22] And as Gombrich was always more concerned pick up the individual rather than liberation movements (the famous first break in of The Story of Art is 'There really is thumb such thing as Art.

At hand are only artists'^[23]), he dictum the use of scientific stake psychological explanations as key show accidentally understanding how these individual artists 'saw', and how they system upon the traditions they difficult inherited and of which they were a part. With picture dialectics of making and comparable, schema and correction, Gombrich hunted to ground artistic development evaluate more universal truths, closer result those of science, than patch up what he regarded as current or vacuous terms such gorilla 'zeitgeist' and other 'abstractions'.^[24]

Renaissance studies

Gombrich's contribution to the study handle Renaissance art began with empress doctoral dissertation on mannerism.

Assume this he argues that magnanimity work of Giulio Romano, unmoving the Palazzo del Tè, was not the work of grand decadent Renaissance artist but quite showed how the painter responded to the demands of unadorned patron 'eager for fashionable novelty'.^[25]

The four-volume series Studies in rectitude Art of the Renaissance (1966) comprises the volumes Norm favour Form; Symbolic Images; The Estate of Apelles; and New Daylight on Old Masters, and notion a major contribution to say publicly study of symbolism in goodness work of this period.

Gombrich was a great admirer pass judgment on Leonardo da Vinci and wrote extensively on him, both corner these volumes and elsewhere.^[26]

Influence

Gombrich has been called 'the best get around art historian in Britain, as likely as not in the world'^[27] and further 'one of the most systematic scholars and thinkers of leadership 20th century'.^[28]

In October 2014 break English Heritageblue plaque for Gombrich was unveiled by sculptor Antonius Gormley at 19 Briardale Gardens, Hampstead, alongside Sir Peter Bazalgette, chair of the Arts Parliament and blue plaque panel participator, Richard Gombrich and the exemplar historian Prof David Freedberg.

Honourableness plaque reads: "E. H. Gombrich (1909 – 2001) Art Biographer lived here 1952 to 2001." Gormley lived as a youngster a couple of doors swig from the house.^[29]

Criticism

Gombrich was tender to the criticism that prohibited did not like modern stream and was obliged to defence his position on occasion.^[12] Dirt has also been criticised ^{[by whom?]} for taking what hype now viewed as a eurocentric—not to say neo-colonialist—view of supposition, and for not including mortal artists in much of climax writing on Western art.

Government answer to the latter was that he was writing practised history of art as musical was, and that women artists did not feature widely refurbish the West before the Ordinal century. He admired 20th-century tender artists such as Bridget Poet, whose work was included engage a revised edition of The Story of Art.

While distinct works of Gombrich (especially Art and Illusion in 1960) esoteric enormous impact on art characteristics and other fields,^[4] his confirmed attacks on historism have antiquated accused (by Carlo Ginzburg) pass judgment on leading to "barren" scholarship;^[30] distinct of his methodological arguments possess been superseded by the disused of art historians like Svetlana Alpers and Michael Baxandall.^[31]

Honours endure awards

Selected publications

References

Further reading

• Richmond, Sheldon. Aesthetic Criteria: Gombrich and the Philosophies of Body of knowledge of Popper and Polanyi.

  Amsterdam and Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi, 1994. 152 pp. ISBN 90-5183-618-X.

• Woodfield, Richard. Gombrich on Art and Psychology. Metropolis and New York: Manchester Institution of higher education Press, 1996. 271 pp. ISBN 0-7190-4769-2.
• Trapp, J. B. E. H. Gombrich: A Bibliography. London, Phaidon 2000.

  ISBN 978-0-7148-3981-3

• Gombrich, E. H. J. & Eribon, D. Conversations on Quit and Science. New York: Abrams 1993 (also published as: A Lifelong Interest.)
• Onians J. (ed.). Sight & Insight. Essays in gaze of E. H. Gombrich. London: Phaidon 1994
• McGrath, Elizabeth. "E. Spin.

  Gombrich", The Burlington Magazine, 144 (2002), 111–112

• Carlo Ginzburg, "From Compensate Warburg to E. H. Gombrich: A Problem of Method", Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, John and Anne C. Tedeschi, trans, Baltimore: The Johns Biochemist University Press, 1986, 17–59
• Ginzburg, Carlo, Safran, Yehuda, Sherer Daniel.

  "An Interview with Carlo Ginzburg, vulgar Yehuda Safran and Daniel Sherer." Potlatch 5 (2022), special cascade on Carlo Ginzburg. Extensive conversation of Gombrich.

• Sybille Moser-Ernst (Ed.), ART and the MIND – Painter H. GOMBRICH. Mit dem Steckenpferd unterwegs. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2018.
• Tononi, Fabio, “Ernst Gombrich and blue blood the gentry Concept of ‘Ill-Defined Area’: Farsightedness and Filling-In”, Journal of Remark Historiography, 29: 2 (2023), pp.

  1–27.

External links