 First edition | |
| Author | Ernst Gombrich |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Art history |
| Publisher | Pantheon Books (Bollingen series) |
Publication date | 1960 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 443pp. |
| ISBN | 0691097852 |
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,[1] but also in history (e.g. Carlo Ginzburg, who called it "splendid"[2]), aesthetics (e.g. Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art[3]), semiotics (Umberto Eco's Theory of Semiotics[4]), 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.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Ginzburg, Carlo. "From Aby Warburg to E.H. Gombrich." In Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, 47. Baltimore: JHU Press, 1989.
- ^ N. Goodman: Languages of Art, Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1976.
- ^ U. Eco: Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington, 1976, pp.204–05.