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,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. but also in history (e.g. Carlo Ginzburg, who called it "splendid"Ginzburg, Carlo. "From Aby Warburg to E.H. Gombrich." In Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, 47. Baltimore: JHU Press, 1989.), aesthetics (e.g. Nelson Goodman's Languages of ArtN. Goodman: Languages of Art, Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1976.), semiotics (Umberto Eco's Theory of SemioticsU. Eco: Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington, 1976, pp.204–05.), 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
Further reading Woodfield, Richard. Gombrich on Art and Psychology. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996. 271 pp. . Trapp, J.B. E.H. Gombrich: A Bibliography. London, Phaidon 2000. 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.
External links Google Books