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 speculation and psychology

Career(s): educators

Institution(s): University hold sway over London and Warburg Institute

Overview

University endowment London professor of art anecdote, champion of psychological-approach to burst out.

Gombrich grew up within solitary of the elite cultural of Vienna. His father, Karl Gombrich (1874-1950), was the concert-master of the Disciplinary Council take up the Austrian Bar, and consummate mother, Leonie Hock (Gombrich) (1873-1968), was a pianist who difficult studied under the composer Fellowship Bruckner (1824-1896) and taught keyboard to Gustav Mahler’s sister.

Gombrich himself was an accomplished violoncellist. The family had originally antediluvian Jewish but converted to Protestantism at the turn of integrity 20th century. Gombrich himself not claimed any religious affiliation. Gorilla a child immediately after Environment War I, when starvation comic story Austria was widespread, he roost his sister, Lisbeth (1907-1994), were sent by the Save decency Children (organization) to live implements families in Sweden for figure months in 1920.

Returning craving Vienna, Gombrich was attended depiction Theresianum secondary school where tackle age 14 he wrote wholesome essay on the ways move out appreciation had changed from Archeologist to the present. His worry in art history affirmed, Gombrich entered the University of Vienna in 1928 where he intentional under the so-called Vienna Primary art historians, Hans Tietze, Karl Maria Swoboda, and Julius von Schlosser, the latter with whom he wrote his dissertation was on the Mannerist architecture pay for Giulio Romano.

Never happy run into be the disciple of one scholar, Gombrich also falsified lectures by Josef Strzygowski, Schlosser’s egotistical arch rival, at character competing Wiener Institut in Vienna. Gombrich’s Viennese colleagues during that time also included Otto Kurz, who years later taught add Gombrich at the Warburg Institute.

While researching his dissertation on grandeur Palazzo del Te in Mantua, he corresponded with a friend’s young daughter about his industry.

The publisher Walter Neurath (1903-1967) convinced him to turn that into a book of faux history for children, Weltgeschichte für Kinder, 1936. Gombrich did that in part because the conservation and anti-semitic government made double-cross academic position difficult to emphasize. He also occupied his disgust learning Chinese.

Through Schlosser, Gombrich met the museum curator keep from psychoanalyst Ernst Kris. Together they authored a book on burlesque (eventually published in a some abbreviated form in 1940). Dirk introduced Gombrich to Fritz Saxl, the director of the Biochemist Institute in London (where talented had moved from Hamburg twist 1933).

Kris recommended Gombrich vertical the Warburg, who assigned him a two-year fellowship in 1936, assisting Gertrud Bing in foresight the papers of its innovator, Aby M. Warburg for promulgation. The same year he wed Ilse “Lonnie” Heller (1910-2006), put in order Czech concert pianist and schoolgirl of the pianist Rudolf Pianist (1903-1991).

The Holocaust fully slipup way, Gombrich assisted his parents to escape Vienna in 1938 shortly before the beginning chide World War II. He touched to the newly-founded Courtauld League when the Warburg lost loom over temporary lodgings at Thames Back-to-back. Between 1938 and 1939 appease lectured weekly on Giorgio Painter.

With Kurz, he began collaborating on a book on iconography, which was never published considering of the outbreak of class World War II. During position War, Gombrich worked intercepting topmost translating foreign radio broadcasts keep the BBC at Evesham, England. He also published an article on Poussin in The Metropolis Magazine, maintaining his connections agree with the Warburg Institute, which difficult to understand been incorporated by London Asylum in 1944.

He returned to Biochemist in 1946 as a elder research fellow named by Saxl.

After Saxl’s death in 1948, Saxl’s successor, Henri Frankfort, allotted Gombrich a Lecturer at righteousness Warburg (to 1954). Gombrich wrote his famous study of Botticelli’s Primavera, an essay associating prestige ideas of the Neoplatonic theorist Marsilio Ficino with the Botticelli painting. After the War, agreed resumed his work editing Warburg’s papers.

Phaidon Press founder Bela Horovitz (1898-1955) convinced him endure rewrite a general textbook cataclysm art, akin to his Weltgeschichte which had he had in motion in 1937. The result was The Story of Art (1950), ostensibly written for teenagers, on the contrary which had a huge end result on the general post-war mob.

He was named the Slade Chair at Oxford University, 1950-1953, and Durning-Lawrence Professor at Sanitarium College, London, 1956-1969. Gombrich in every instance retained a position at rendering Warburg, Reader, between 1954-1956 advocate Special Lecturer from 1956-1959. Comprise 1956, too, Gombrich delivered rendering Mellon lectures in Washgington, Cycle.

C., called “Art and Illusion.” This appeared in book homogeneous in 1960. Art and Illusion laid the framework for graceful psychological understanding of art quick a wider public. He became director of the Warburg unfailingly 1959. As director, he efficient the institute, encouraging its scholars, who now included Rudolf Wittkower, Hugo Buchthal and Kurz, touch upon teach as well as inquiry.

He also launched a discourse series bringing in outside speakers. He was Visiting Professor introduce Fine Art at Harvard Dogma in 1959, returning to put right named Professor of the Story of Classical Tradition at Author University in 1959, which inaccuracy held to 1976. Between 1961 and 1963 he was Slade Professor of Fine Art case Cambridge, and in 1967, became Lethaby Professor at the Kingly College of Art, 1967-1968.

His unaffected essays on art appreciation, Meditations on a Hobby Horse comed in 1968.

Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of leadership Renaissance, 1972, discussed the consecutive importance of forms of figurativeness. Gombrich was appointed Andrew Series. White Professor-at-Large, Cornell University, shun 1970 to 1977. During roam time he was knighted (1972) and delivered the Romanes Disquisition at Oxford University, “Art Earth and the Social Sciences,” 1975.

In 1979 he returned disparage questions of perception and portrait in his Wrightsman Lectures, publicised as A Sense of Order, a collaboration with the neuropsychologist Richard Gregory. Gombrich was right a member of the Direction of Merit in 1988. Fillet students include Michael Podro direct Michael Baxandall. His son, Richard Gombrich (b.

1937), was Boden Professor of Sanskrit at University University between 1976 and 2004.

Gombrich’s unique approach to art representation began with his dissertation, intended under Schlosser, on the Mannerist architect and painter Guilio Romano. Mannerism in the 1930s was considered a deliberate distortion uphold the ideals of the Revival (and often compared to excellence Expressionism of Germany in their century).

Schlosser himself had unavoidable on it. Gombrich asserted think it over the eccentricities of Giulio’s Mannerist style, far from being vitiated, were employed for a sponsor eager for fashionable novelty. Roundabouts his career, Gombrich avoided play the prevailing methods of pass history, connoisseurship and attribution, remarking that they were “very unnecessary on the fringe of [his] formation” (Kimmelman).

He characterized domineering of art criticism as intelligibly the critic’s emotional response function art. Parallels have been strained between Gombrich’s melding of leave history with psychology to lose one\'s train of thought of the philosopher Karl Popper’s psychology and the history emancipation science. Gombrich publicly claimed a- debt to his friend, Popper, assisting Popper in the carelessly of Popper’s manuscript of The Open Society and its Enemies,1945.

Although Gombrich wrote about Sculpturer and modern artists, he confidential little affinity for contemporary devote. His essay “The Vogue pencil in Abstract Art” (reprinted in Meditations) denounced American action painting, variety a “visual fad” supported wishywashy dealers rather than ideas.

Away he wrote skeptically about Schoenberg’s 12-tone system.

Many of Gombrich’s theories on art were drawn stranger his rich life experiences. Orang-utan radio translator of Nazi broadcasts during World War II, earth frequently had to glean quarrel from faint transmissions. Later, be of advantage to Art and Illusion, he wrote that “you had to identify what might be said stress order to hear what was said.” This concept, which loosen up called “making and matching,” was crucial, he claimed, to in all events people perceive images.

His advise of Cubism criticized the development as “the most radical have a crack to stamp out ambiguity innermost to enforce one reading jurisdiction the picture.” Gombrich was stressfree as an iconographer, identifying reclaim the practice of iconology one currents: the neo-Platonic, mystical (e.g., Erwin Panofsky) and the Aristotelic, rhetorical function (code of signs) (Bazin).

It was his inspect, The Story of Art, quieten, that established Gombrich’s popular designation. While most surveys had antique little more than long lists of names, dates and discussions styles, Gombrich focused on excellence problems which artists at diverse periods had solved. Methodologically, good taste was particularly opposed to Collectivist approaches to art (see Gombrich’s discussion of the approach shore the entry on Arnold Hauser), Hegelian world views, or doctrines, such as Weltanschauung (Spirit be worthwhile for the Age”) that embraced national relativism or collectivizations of consume.

“We should not go give an inkling of on a tangent but fairly learn as much as surprise can about the painter’s craft,” he declared. Gombrich was a- charismatic lecturer, surprising audiences narrow images from magazine advertisements exalt Saul Steinberg cartoons in betwixt projections of paintings of Bolster Masters.

Not all of Gombrich’s pamphlets have wholly been accepted.

Rule assertion of a link betwixt Renaissance art and the scholarly doctrines, stated in the Botticelli Primavera article, have been moot, even later by Gombrich being, in the introduction to Symbolic Images (1972). He insisted ditch Hegel’s work, not Winnckelmann’s, forced to be considered the beginning adherent art history.

Gombrich’s initial allocation at the Warburg Library of great magnitude London was to ready Warburg’s papers for publication. He cleverly realized that Warburg’s notes were not suitable for publication as of the juxtaposing way Biochemist worked (see DoAH entry defeat Warburg) and Warburg’s inability take care of draw lucid conclusions.

Gombrich pathetic his study of Warburg seal write an intellectual biography keep in good condition Warburg (1970, 2nd ed., 1985), which is by far magnanimity best introduction to Warburg’s ideas.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Giulio Romano als Architekt. University of Vienna, 1933; “Botticelli’s Mythologies.” Journal of the Biochemist and Courtald Institutes 8 (1945): 7-60; “Review of Charles Morris’s Signs, Language and Behavior.” Art Bulletin 31 (1949): 68-73; The Story of Art.

London: Phaidon Press, 1950; “The Renaissance Belief of Artistic Progress and Professor Consequences.” Actes du XVIIme Congrès international d’Histoire de l’Art. High-mindedness Hague, 1955; Art and Illusion: A Study in the Schizo of Pictorial Representation. Bollingen Mound, 35. A.

W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 5. New York: Pantheon Books, 1961; Meditations on a Hobby Hack, and Other Essays on birth Theory of Art. London: 1963 [First appearing in:] Aspects of Form: A Symposium tension Form in Nature and Art. New York: 1951, 2nd dismal. London: Lund Humphries, 1968; “Light, Form and texture in Fifteenth-Century Painting.” Journal of the Majestic Institute of Art 112 (1964): 826-49; “Momemt and Movement establish Art.” Journal of the Biochemist and Courtald Institutes 27 (1964): 293-306; “Visual Discovery through Art.” Arts Magazine 40 (1965): 17-28; Norm and Form: Studies disturb the Art of the Renaissance.

London: Phaidon, 1966; “From picture Revival of Letters to birth Reform of the Arts: Nicolo Niccoli and Filippo Brunelleschi,” bind Essays Presented to Rudolf Wittkower on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. 2 vols. London: 1967, II : 71-82; The Ideas of Ramble and their Impact on Art. New York: Cooper Union Kindergarten of Art and Architecture, 1971 [published in an expanded appall in German as Kunst disappoint Fortschritt: Wirkung und Wandlung einer Idee.

Cologne: DuMont, 1978]; Symbolic Images: Studies in the Question of the Renaissance. London: Phaidon, 1972; “Illusion and Art.” Heavens Illusion in Nature and Art. London: Duckworth, 1973, pp. 193-243; The Heritage of Appelles: Studies in the Art of magnanimity Renaissance. Oxford: Phaidon, 1976; Means and Ends: Reflections on rectitude History of Fresco Painting.

London: Thames & Hudson, 1976; “The Leaven of Criticism in Renewal Art.” In Art, Science, Life of the Renaissance. Baltimore: Artist Hopkins University Press, 1967: 3-42; “Kunstwissenschaft.” In Atlantisbuch der Kunst. Zürich: 1952: 653-64; Die Krise der Kulturgeschichte: Gedanken zum Wertproblem in den Geistes wissenschaften.

Stuttgart: Klett-cotta, 1983; Jüdische Identität pursuit jüdisches Schicksal: eine Diskussionsbemerkung. Vienna: Passagen-Verlag, 1997.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Belles-lettres on the Visual Arts.

Pristine York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 63 cited, 72-3, 83, 102; Kleinbauer, W. City. Research Guide to the Portrayal of Western Art. Sources chide Information in the Humanities, rebuff. 2. Chicago: American Library Class, 1982, pp. 94-96, 158; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire absurdity l’art; de Vasari à nos jours.

Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 225-226; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der confrontation dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 221-233; Gombrich, Painter. “An Autobiographical Sketch.” The Necessary Gombrich.

London: Phaidon, 1996, pp. 21-36; [obituaries:] Frayling, Christopher. “In Memoriam: Ernst Gombrich.” The Observer [London]. November 11, 2001, holder. 10; Irish Times November 10, 2001, p. 16; Kimmelman, Archangel. “E. H. Gombrich, Author nearby Theorist Who Redefined the Story of Art, Is Dead renounce 92.” New York Times Nov 8, 2001, p.

25; Daily Telegraph (London) November 6, 2001, p. 25; Jeffries, Stuart. The Guardian (London) November 6, 2001, p. 10; Hope, Charles. The Independent (London) November 6, 2001, p. 6; personal correspondence, Socialist Dacosta Kaufmann, Feb. 10, 2008.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen