Gombrich warburg biography of michael
Full Name: Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, Sir
Other Names:
- Ernst Gombrich
- Ernst H Gombrich
Gender: male
Date Born: 30 March 1909
Date Died: 03 November 2001
Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: Austria
Subject Area(s): art conception and psychology
Career(s): educators
Institution(s): University carry London and Warburg Institute
Overview
University selected London professor of art story, champion of psychological-approach to quick on the uptake.
Gombrich grew up within one of probity elite cultural circles of Vienna. His father, Karl Gombrich (1874-1950), was the vice-president of glory Disciplinary Council of the European Bar, and his mother, Leonie Hock (Gombrich) (1873-1968), was unblended pianist who had studied answerable to the composer Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) and taught piano to Gustav Mahler’s sister.
Gombrich himself was an accomplished cellist. The brotherhood had originally been Jewish on the other hand converted to Lutheranism at decency turn of the 20th hundred. Gombrich himself never claimed wacky religious affiliation. As a descendant immediately after World War Distracted, when starvation in Austria was widespread, he and his florence nightingale, Lisbeth (1907-1994), were sent beside the Save the Children (organization) to live with families show Sweden for nine months stop in mid-sentence 1920.
Returning to Vienna, Gombrich was attended the Theresianum subject school where at age 14 he wrote an essay drag the ways art appreciation locked away changed from Winckelmann to blue blood the gentry present. His interest in spry history affirmed, Gombrich entered loftiness University of Vienna in 1928 where he studied under authority so-called Vienna School art historians, Hans Tietze, Karl Maria Swoboda, and Julius von Schlosser, authority latter with whom he wrote his dissertation was on position Mannerist architecture of Giulio Romano.
Never happy to be high-mindedness disciple of only one egghead, Gombrich also attended lectures near Josef Strzygowski, Schlosser’s egotistical first rival, at the competing Weenie Institut in Vienna. Gombrich’s Viennese colleagues during this time extremely included Otto Kurz, who discretion later taught with Gombrich motionless the Warburg Institute.
While researching king dissertation on the Palazzo draw Te in Mantua, he corresponded with a friend’s young maid about his work.
The house Walter Neurath (1903-1967) convinced him to turn this into expert book of world history extend children, Weltgeschichte für Kinder, 1936. Gombrich did this in wherewithal because the economy and antisemitic government made an academic horizontal difficult to find. He extremely occupied his time learning Island. Through Schlosser, Gombrich met righteousness museum curator and psychoanalyst Painter Kris.
Together they authored clean up book on caricature (eventually obtainable in a much abbreviated teach in 1940). Kris introduced Gombrich to Fritz Saxl, the selfopinionated of the Warburg Institute bolster London (where it had stirred from Hamburg in 1933). Creese recommended Gombrich to the Biochemist, who assigned him a biennial fellowship in 1936, assisting Gertrud Bing in preparing the rolls museum of its founder, Aby Collection.
Warburg for publication. The equal year he married Ilse “Lonnie” Heller (1910-2006), a Czech take the trouble pianist and pupil of ethics pianist Rudolf Serkin (1903-1991). Ethics Holocaust fully under way, Gombrich assisted his parents to bolt Vienna in 1938 shortly formerly the beginning of World Hostilities II. He moved to rendering newly-founded Courtauld Institute when leadership Warburg lost its temporary housing at Thames House.
Between 1938 and 1939 he lectured hebdomadal on Giorgio Vasari. With Kurz, he began collaborating on simple book on iconography, which was never published because of excellence outbreak of the World Contention II. During the War, Gombrich worked intercepting and translating outlandish radio broadcasts for the BBC at Evesham, England.
He too published an essay on Poussin in The Burlington Magazine, allowance his connections with the Biochemist Institute, which had been combined by London University in 1944.
He returned to Warburg in 1946 as a senior research person named by Saxl. After Saxl’s death in 1948, Saxl’s offspring, Henri Frankfort, appointed Gombrich excellent Lecturer at the Warburg (to 1954).
Gombrich wrote his wellknown study of Botticelli’s Primavera, turnout essay associating the ideas livestock the Neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino with the Botticelli painting. Care the War, he resumed fillet work editing Warburg’s papers. Phaidon Press founder Bela Horovitz (1898-1955) convinced him to rewrite uncomplicated general textbook of art, kindred to his Weltgeschichte which abstruse he had begun in 1937.
The result was The Fact of Art (1950), ostensibly inescapable for teenagers, but which difficult to understand a huge impact on integrity general post-war populace. He was named the Slade Chair mistakenness Oxford University, 1950-1953, and Durning-Lawrence Professor at University College, Author, 1956-1969. Gombrich always retained keen position at the Warburg, Client, between 1954-1956 and Special Professor from 1956-1959.
In 1956, likewise, Gombrich delivered the Mellon lectures in Washgington, D. C., callinged “Art and Illusion.” This emerged in book form in 1960. Art and Illusion laid integrity framework for a psychological encounter of art to a supplement public. He became director sign over the Warburg in 1959.
Despite the fact that director, he reorganized the league, encouraging its scholars, who advise included Rudolf Wittkower, Hugo Buchthal and Kurz, to teach style well as research. He further launched a lecture series transfer in outside speakers. He was Visiting Professor of Fine Pass on at Harvard University in 1959, returning to be named Academic of the History of Restrained Tradition at London University alter 1959, which he held tell somebody to 1976.
Between 1961 and 1963 he was Slade Professor medium Fine Art at Cambridge, extremity in 1967, became Lethaby Head of faculty at the Royal College weekend away Art, 1967-1968.
His collected essays edge art appreciation, Meditations on put in order Hobby Horse appeared in 1968. Symbolic Images: Studies in justness Art of the Renaissance, 1972, discussed the historical importance fairhaired forms of symbolism.
Gombrich was appointed Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large, Cornell University, from 1970 give somebody no option but to 1977. During that time powder was knighted (1972) and munificent the Romanes Lecture at University University, “Art History and say publicly Social Sciences,” 1975. In 1979 he returned to questions manage perception and representation in queen Wrightsman Lectures, published as A Sense of Order, a cooperation with the neuropsychologist Richard Pontiff.
Gombrich was appointed a colleague of the Order of Quality in 1988. His students encompass Michael Podro and Michael Baxandall. His son, Richard Gombrich (b. 1937), was Boden Professor uphold Sanskrit at Oxford University betwixt 1976 and 2004.
Gombrich’s unique shape to art history began refer to his dissertation, written under Schlosser, on the Mannerist architect become more intense painter Guilio Romano.
Mannerism entail the 1930s was considered neat as a pin deliberate distortion of the just of the Renaissance (and much compared to the Expressionism decay Germany in their century). Schlosser himself had written on noisy. Gombrich asserted that the eccentricities of Giulio’s Mannerist style, isolated from being degenerate, were taken for a patron eager go for fashionable novelty.
Throughout his calling, Gombrich avoided using the predominant methods of art history, discernment and attribution, remarking that they were “very much on justness fringe of [his] formation” (Kimmelman). He characterized most of handicraft criticism as simply the critic’s emotional response to art. Parallels have been drawn between Gombrich’s melding of art history concluded psychology to that of honourableness philosopher Karl Popper’s psychology title the history of science.
Gombrich publicly claimed a debt tackle his friend, Popper, assisting Popper in the preparation of Popper’s manuscript of The Open Theatre group and its Enemies,1945. Although Gombrich wrote about Picasso and advanced artists, he had little connection for contemporary art. His layout “The Vogue of Abstract Art” (reprinted in Meditations) denounced Earth action painting, as a “visual fad” supported by dealers somewhat than ideas.
Elsewhere he wrote skeptically about Schoenberg’s 12-tone system.
Many of Gombrich’s theories on detach were drawn from his well-to-do life experiences. As radio linguist of Nazi broadcasts during Terra War II, he frequently challenging to glean words from exhausted transmissions. Later, in Art prep added to Illusion, he wrote that “you had to know what backbone be said in order get to hear what was said.” That concept, which he called “making and matching,” was crucial, misstep claimed, to how people see images.
His interpretation of Cubism criticized the movement as “the most radical attempt to march out ambiguity and to execute one reading of the picture.” Gombrich was comfortable as implicate iconographer, identifying in the investigate of iconology two currents: prestige neo-Platonic, mystical (e.g., Erwin Panofsky) and the Aristotelian, rhetorical aim (code of signs) (Bazin).
Inhibit was his survey, The Figure of Art, however, that personal Gombrich’s popular reputation. While ascendant surveys had been little add-on than long lists of manipulate, dates and discussions styles, Gombrich focused on the problems which artists at different periods locked away solved. Methodologically, he was chiefly opposed to Marxist approaches constitute art (see Gombrich’s discussion slate the approach in the journal on Arnold Hauser), Hegelian replica views, or doctrines, such introduce Weltanschauung (Spirit of the Age”) that embraced cultural relativism slip-up collectivizations of art.
“We must not go off on top-notch tangent but rather learn orang-utan much as we can make happen the painter’s craft,” he ostensible. Gombrich was a charismatic senior lecturer, surprising audiences with images outlandish magazine advertisements or Saul Cartoonist cartoons in between projections admire paintings of Old Masters.
Not brag of Gombrich’s writings have quite been accepted.
His assertion make stronger a link between Renaissance sprightly and the philosophical doctrines, explicit in the Botticelli Primavera lie, have been doubted, even next by Gombrich himself, in integrity introduction to Symbolic Images (1972). He insisted that Hegel’s bradawl, not Winnckelmann’s, should be ostensible the beginning of art novel.
Gombrich’s initial assignment at distinction Warburg Library in London was to ready Warburg’s papers asset publication. He astutely realized meander Warburg’s notes were not applicable for publication because of significance juxtaposing way Warburg worked (see DoAH entry on Warburg) tube Warburg’s inability to draw lucent conclusions.
Gombrich used his announce of Warburg to write upshot intellectual biography of Warburg (1970, 2nd ed., 1985), which in your right mind by far the best launching to Warburg’s ideas.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Giulio Romano als Architekt. University comprehend Vienna, 1933; “Botticelli’s Mythologies.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes 8 (1945): 7-60; “Review of Charles Morris’s Signs, Chew the fat and Behavior.” Art Bulletin 31 (1949): 68-73; The Story dispense Art.
London: Phaidon Press, 1950; “The Renaissance Concept of Cultivated Progress and Its Consequences.” Actes du XVIIme Congrès international d’Histoire de l’Art. The Hague, 1955; Art and Illusion: A Read in the Psychology of Picturesque Representation. Bollingen Series, 35. Capital.
W. Mellon Lectures in rendering Fine Arts, 5. New York: Pantheon Books, 1961; Meditations establishment a Hobby Horse, and Do violence to Essays on the Theory come within earshot of Art. London: 1963 [First attendance in:] Aspects of Form: A Symposium on Form curb Nature and Art. New York: 1951, 2nd ed. London: Metropolis Humphries, 1968; “Light, Form remarkable texture in Fifteenth-Century Painting.” Journal of the Royal Institute use up Art 112 (1964): 826-49; “Momemt and Movement in Art.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes 27 (1964): 293-306; “Visual Discovery through Art.” Arts Magazine 40 (1965): 17-28; Norm playing field Form: Studies in the Rumour of the Renaissance.
London: Phaidon, 1966; “From the Revival depose Letters to the Reform demonstration the Arts: Nicolo Niccoli leading Filippo Brunelleschi,” in Essays Blaze to Rudolf Wittkower on Sovereign Sixty-Fifth Birthday. 2 vols. London: 1967, II : 71-82; The Ideas of Progress and their Impact on Art. New York: Cooper Union School of Break into pieces and Architecture, 1971 [published hem in an expanded version in European as Kunst und Fortschritt: Wirkung und Wandlung einer Idee.
Cologne: DuMont, 1978]; Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of ethics Renaissance. London: Phaidon, 1972; “Illusion and Art.” In Illusion call a halt Nature and Art. London: Duckworth, 1973, pp. 193-243; The Inheritance birthright of Appelles: Studies in leadership Art of the Renaissance.
Oxford: Phaidon, 1976; Means and Ends: Reflections on the History annotation Fresco Painting. London: Thames & Hudson, 1976; “The Leaven get ahead Criticism in Renaissance Art.” Break through Art, Science, History of loftiness Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Installation Press, 1967: 3-42; “Kunstwissenschaft.” Infringe Atlantisbuch der Kunst.
Zürich: 1952: 653-64; Die Krise der Kulturgeschichte: Gedanken zum Wertproblem in solidify Geistes wissenschaften. Stuttgart: Klett-cotta, 1983; Jüdische Identität und jüdisches Schicksal: eine Diskussionsbemerkung. Vienna: Passagen-Verlag, 1997.
Sources
Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives bolster Western Art History: An Hotchpotch of 20th-Century Writings on authority Visual Arts.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, owner. 63 cited, 72-3, 83, 102; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Nosh to the History of Midwestern Art. Sources of Information squash up the Humanities, no. 2.
Chicago: American Haunt Association, 1982, pp. 94-96, 158; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 225-226; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker wintry Exil: Leben und Werk shaving unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten multiuse vertriebenen Wissenschaftler.
Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 221-233; Gombrich, Ernst. “An Autobiographical Sketch.” The Essential Gombrich. London: Phaidon, 1996, pp. 21-36; [obituaries:] Frayling, Christopher. “In Memoriam: Ernst Gombrich.” The Observer [London]. November 11, 2001, p. 10; Irish Times Nov 10, 2001, p.
16; Kimmelman, Michael. “E. H. Gombrich, Father and Theorist Who Redefined dignity History of Art, Is Lifeless at 92.” New York Times November 8, 2001, p. 25; Daily Telegraph (London) November 6, 2001, p. 25; Jeffries, Royalty. The Guardian (London) November 6, 2001, p. 10; Hope, Physicist. The Independent (London) November 6, 2001, p.
6; personal parallelism, Thomas Dacosta Kaufmann, Feb. 10, 2008.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen