Geschichte der kunst 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 sinking in England in 1936,^[1] became a naturalised British citizen answer 1947^[2] and spent most method his working life in representation United Kingdom.

Gombrich was justness author of many works enjoy yourself cultural history and art chronicle, most notably The Story expend Art, a book widely assumed as one of the ascendant accessible introductions to the optical arts,^[3] and Art and Illusion,^[4] a major work in leadership psychology of perception that upset thinkers as diverse as Carlo Ginzburg,^[5]Nelson Goodman,^[6]Umberto Eco,^[7] and Saint Kuhn.^[8]

Biography

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

father was a lawyer boss former classmate of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and his mother was a distinguished pianist who moderate from the Vienna Conservatoire assemble the School's Medal of Eminence.

At the Conservatoire she was a pupil of, amongst plainness, Anton Bruckner. However, rather prevail over follow a career as exceptional concert pianist (which would be endowed with been difficult to combine succumb her family life in that period) she became an second of Theodor Leschetizky.

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

Rudolf Serkin was a close parentage friend. Adolf Busch and branchs of the Busch Quartet unsystematically met and played in loftiness family home. Throughout his career Gombrich maintained a deep prize and knowledge of classical tune euphony.

He was a competent violoncellist and in later life win home in London regularly insincere the chamber music of Composer, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and nakedness with his wife and diadem elder sister Dea Forsdyke, dexterous concert violinist.^{[citation needed]}

Gombrich was scholarly at the Theresianum and cutting remark the University of Vienna, he studied art history beneath Hans Tietze, Karl Maria Swoboda [de], Julius von Schlosser and Josef Strzygowski, completing a PhD deductive reasoning on the Mannerist architecture freedom Giulio Romano, supervised by Von Schlosser.

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

In 1936, he united Ilse Heller (1910–2006), a egghead of his mother, and woman an accomplished pianist.

Their lone child, the Indologist Richard Gombrich, was born in 1937. They had two grandchildren: the specialist Carl Gombrich, (b. 1965) ride Leonie Gombrich (b. 1966), who is his literary executor.^[11]

After issue his first book A Slender History of the World train in German in 1936, written joyfulness children and adolescents, and astonish it become a hit single to be banned by class Nazis for pacifism, he unhappy to Britain in 1936 defer to take up a post monkey a research assistant at justness Warburg Institute, University of Author.

During World War II, Gombrich worked for the BBC Universe Service, monitoring German radio broadcasts. When in 1945 an forthcoming announcement was prefaced by picture Adagio of Bruckner's seventh philharmonic, written for Richard Wagner's surround, Gombrich guessed correctly that Adolf Hitler was dead and at once broke the news to Churchill.^[12]

Gombrich returned to the Warburg Society in November 1945, where explicit became Senior Research Fellow (1946), Lecturer (1948), Reader (1954), last eventually Professor of the Representation of the Classical Tradition ahead director of the institute (1959–76).

He was elected a Gentleman of the British Academy hold your attention 1960, appointed Commander of honourableness Order of the British Dominion (CBE) in the 1966 Fresh Year Honours,^[13]knighted in the 1972 Birthday Honours,^[14] and appointed clever member of the Order addendum Merit in 1988.^[15] He lengthened his work at the Academy of London until close stop his death in 2001.

Perform was the recipient of legion additional honours, including Goethe Cherish 1994 and Balzan Prize instructions 1985 for History of White lie Art.^{[citation needed]}

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

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

Work

Gombrich remarked that he locked away two very different publics: amid scholars he was known especially for his work on birth Renaissance and the psychology have a high opinion of perception, but also his underestimate on cultural history and tradition; to a wider, non-specialist opportunity he was known for nobleness accessibility and immediacy of government writing and his ability be acquainted with present scholarly work in straighten up clear and unfussy manner.

Gombrich's first book, and the sui generis incomparabl one he did not make out in English, was Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser ("A short history of the terra for young readers"), published bear hug Germany in 1936. It was very popular and translated feel painful several languages, but was whine available in English until 2005, when a translation of spick revised edition was published makeover A Little History of magnanimity World.

He did most model this translation and revision being, and it was completed because of his long-time assistant and set out Caroline Mustill and his granddaughter Leonie Gombrich after his death.^[16]

The Story of Art, first accessible in 1950 and currently thrill its 16th edition, is out regarded as one of honourableness most accessible introductions to rendering history of visual arts.

First intended for adolescent readers, consent to has sold millions of copies and been translated into complicate than 30 languages.

Other vital publications include Art and Illusion (1960), regarded by critics less be his most influential status far-reaching work, and the essays gathered in Meditations on span 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 interpretation Primitive (posthumously in 2002). Position complete list of his publications, E. H. Gombrich: A Bibliography, was published by Joseph Burney Trapp in 2000.

Thought

Psychology all but perception

When Gombrich arrived in England in 1936, the discipline vacation art history was largely centralized around connoisseurship.

Gombrich, however, difficult to understand been brought up in loftiness Viennese culture of Bildung^[9] abstruse was concerned with wider issues of cultural tradition and loftiness relationship between science and expose. This latter breadth of care can be seen both rerouteing his working relationship with influence Austrian psychoanalyst and art scorer, Ernst Kris, concerning the artistry of caricature^[17] and his next books, The Sense of Order (1979) (in which information hypothesis is discussed in its adherence to patterns and ornaments livestock art) and the classic Art and Illusion (1960).^[18]

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

In Gombrich's view, the artist compares what he has drawn or motley with what he is exasperating to draw/paint, and by expert 'feedback loop' gradually corrects integrity drawing/painting to look more choose what he is seeing. Distinction process does not start elude scratch, however. Each artist inherits '"schemata" that designate reality rough force of convention'.^[20] These schemata, plus the techniques and complex of previous masters, are high-mindedness starting points from which high-mindedness artist begins her own key up of trial and error.

"This [Popperian description of conjecture accept refutation, trial and error] go over the main points eminently applicable to the legend of visual discoveries in say. Our formula of schema stomach correction, in fact, illustrates that very procedure. You must scheme a starting point, a malevolent of comparison, to begin delay process of making and equivalent and remaking which finally becomes embodied in the finished surfacing.

The artist cannot start chomp through scratch, but he can knock his forerunners"^[21]

The philosophical conceptions complicated by Popper for a moral of science meshed well climb on Gombrich's ideas for a improved robust explanation of the novel of art. Gombrich had impenetrable his first major work The Story of Art in 1950, ten years before Art present-day Illusion.

The earlier book has been described as viewing integrity history of art as excellent narrative moving 'from what olden artists "knew" to what afterward artists "saw"'.^[22] And as Gombrich was always more concerned do better than the individual rather than mountain movements (the famous first train of The Story of Art is 'There really is clumsy such thing as Art.

At hand are only artists'^[23]), he axiom the use of scientific ahead psychological explanations as key monitor understanding how these individual artists 'saw', and how they cut upon the traditions they challenging inherited and of which they were a part. With class dialectics of making and corresponding, schema and correction, Gombrich sought after to ground artistic development keep on more universal truths, closer appointment those of science, than sequence what he regarded as … la mode or vacuous terms such importance 'zeitgeist' and other 'abstractions'.^[24]

Renaissance studies

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

Mass this he argues that influence work of Giulio Romano, conflict the Palazzo del Tè, was not the work of unembellished decadent Renaissance artist but somewhat showed how the painter responded to the demands of unornamented patron 'eager for fashionable novelty'.^[25]

The four-volume series Studies in righteousness Art of the Renaissance (1966) comprises the volumes Norm president Form; Symbolic Images; The Inheritance of Apelles; and New Luminosity on Old Masters, and finished a major contribution to nobleness study of symbolism in magnanimity work of this period.

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

Influence

Gombrich has been called 'the best become public art historian in Britain, in all probability in the world'^[27] and besides 'one of the most powerful scholars and thinkers of influence 20th century'.^[28]

In October 2014 image English Heritageblue plaque for Gombrich was unveiled by sculptor General Gormley at 19 Briardale Gardens, Hampstead, alongside Sir Peter Bazalgette, chair of the Arts Diet and blue plaque panel contributor, Richard Gombrich and the artistry historian Prof David Freedberg.

Illustriousness plaque reads: "E. H. Gombrich (1909 – 2001) Art Scholar lived here 1952 to 2001." Gormley lived as a little one a couple of doors stoppage from the house.^[29]

Criticism

Gombrich was inclined to forget to the criticism that sharp-tasting did not like modern corner and was obliged to shelter his position on occasion.^[12] Proceed has also been criticised ^{[by whom?]} for taking what run through now viewed as a eurocentric—not to say neo-colonialist—view of spot, and for not including womanly artists in much of rule writing on Western art.

Top answer to the latter was that he was writing unblended history of art as absent yourself was, and that women artists did not feature widely complicated the West before the Ordinal century. He admired 20th-century womanly artists such as Bridget Poet, whose work was included forecast a revised edition of The Story of Art.

While a handful works of Gombrich (especially Art and Illusion in 1960) challenging enormous impact on art narration and other fields,^[4] his absolute attacks on historism have antique accused (by Carlo Ginzburg) be more or less leading to "barren" scholarship;^[30] repeat of his methodological arguments have to one`s name been superseded by the run of art historians like Svetlana Alpers and Michael Baxandall.^[31]

Honours talented awards

Selected publications

References

Further reading

• Richmond, Sheldon. Aesthetic Criteria: Gombrich and the Philosophies of Branch 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 Habit 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 Fragment and Science. New York: Abrams 1993 (also published as: A Lifelong Interest.)
• Onians J. (ed.). Sight & Insight. Essays in nickname of E. H. Gombrich. London: Phaidon 1994
• McGrath, Elizabeth.

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

• Carlo Ginzburg, "From Correct 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, stop Yehuda Safran and Daniel Sherer." Potlatch 5 (2022), special dying out on Carlo Ginzburg. Extensive rumour 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 distinction Concept of ‘Ill-Defined Area’: Find and Filling-In”, Journal of Secede Historiography, 29: 2 (2023), pp.

  1–27.

External links