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Art and Illusion

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Art theory and history book Not to be confused with the album Art and Illusion by neo-progressive rock band Twelfth Night.
Art and Illusion
First edition
AuthorErnst Gombrich
LanguageEnglish
GenreArt history
PublisherPantheon Books (Bollingen series)
Publication date1960
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint
Pages443pp.
ISBN0691097852

Art and Illusion, A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, is a 1960 book of art theory and history by Ernst Gombrich, derived from the 1956 A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. The book had a wide impact in art history, but also in history (e.g. Carlo Ginzburg, who called it "splendid"), aesthetics (e.g. Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art), semiotics (Umberto Eco's Theory of Semiotics), and music psychology (Robert O. Gjerdingen's schema theory of Galant style music).

In Art and Illusion, Gombrich argues for the importance of "schemata" in analyzing works of art: he claims that artists can only learn to represent the external world by learning from previous artists, so representation is always done using stereotyped figures and methods.

References

  1. Shone, Richard and Stonard, John-Paul, eds. The Books That Shaped Art History: From Gombrich and Greenberg to Alpers and Krauss, chapter 9. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013.
  2. Ginzburg, Carlo. "From Aby Warburg to E.H. Gombrich." In Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, 47. Baltimore: JHU Press, 1989.
  3. N. Goodman: Languages of Art, Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1976.
  4. U. Eco: Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington, 1976, pp.204–05.

Further reading

  • Woodfield, Richard. Gombrich on Art and Psychology. Manchester and New York: Manchester University 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 Art and Science. New York: Abrams 1993 (also published as: A Lifelong Interest.)
  • Onians J. (ed.). Sight & Insight. Essays in honour of E.H. Gombrich. London: Phaidon 1994
  • McGrath, Elizabeth.‘E. H. Gombrich’, Burlington Magazine, 144 (2002), 111–12
  • Carlo Ginzburg, ‘From Aby Warburg to E.H. Gombrich: A Problem of Method’, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, John and Anne C. Tedeschi, trans, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, 17–59
  • Shone, Richard and Stonard, John-Paul, eds. The Books That Shaped Art History: From Gombrich and Greenberg to Alpers and Krauss. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013.
  • Tononi, Fabio, “Ernst Gombrich and the Concept of ‘Ill-Defined Area’: Perception and Filling-In”, Journal of Art Historiography, 29: 2 (2023), pp. 1–27.

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