Ernst Gombrich

I defend a 'twofoldness' thesis as to the inseparability of the perception of a picture and the perception of its subject matter, making use of a recently developed 'inter-pretive' theory of pictorial representation, according to which a picture is represented by its physical vehicle, so that a picture is itself part of the representational content of the vehicle—which picture in turn interpretively represents its subject matter. I also show how Richard Wollheim's own twofoldness thesis, along with related views of his, might be vindicated by reinterpretation along similar lines, and conclude by showing that Ernst Gombrich too may be protected from some standard criticisms of his views—which views are also consistent with those of Wollheim as thus reinterpreted.

The paper is the contribution approach to interpretations of Ernst Gombrich's contribution to the understanding of modern fine art. The basis of the paper stems out from knowledge of domestic and foreign interpretations of Gombrich's art history concept (Bakoš, Mikš, Kesner, Hříbek, Elkins etc.). The main hypothesis of the paper is idea that Gombrich's posthumously published work The Preference for the Primitive (2002) is, in spite of legitimate critiques on the part of contemporary art historians, not solely contribution to the primitivism phenomenon, but also to the understanding of modern art by its own historical perspective.

The Seminar at Hamburg Warburg-Haus is the seventh stage of a traveling itinerary among Venice (I. II. 2014, 2015), Hamburg (III. 2015); Pisa (IV. 2016), Barcelona (V. 2017), Cortona (VI. 2017). It will focus on the relationship between Ernst Gombrich and Aby Warburg, related to a specific subject: the troubled editorial story of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne.
 
In October 1929, at the time of his death, Aby Warburg left unfinished the extraordinary project of the Bilderatlas, whose outcoming for the publisher Teubner had to be imminent. In 1939, Giorgio Pasquali wrote that the Atlas was “ready for publication”, and that the edition of the work would change the history of studies and the dissemination way of humanities studies.
 
As we know, Warburg's great project was suspended for two reasons: the death of its ‘director’, and the contemporary historical events (the Warburg Institute's London emigration because of the Nazi Party's rise to power in Germany).
In 1937, Ernst Gombrich, who had just joined the Warburg's circle, in the event of the 70th birthday of Max Warburg, prepared a private edition of the Mnemosyne Atlas: the Geburtstagsatlas für Max M. Warburg. The operation, arranged as a private gift, had started at the prompting by Gertrud Bing, or by Max himself, or by anyone from the family who was persisting to believe in the possibility of a publishing outcome of the "Mnemosyne enterprise". Preserved in a unique, typewritten copy in the Archive of the Warburg Institute in London, the Gombrich's Geburtstagsatlas, remained for decades in oblivion, and is still unpublished.
 
The Gombrich's modus operandi is very clear-cut: he selects 24 panels (out of the 63 of the latest version of the Bilderatlas of 1929); removes many images from each of the panels; layouts the surviving images on a white background, in a well-balanced and hierarchical order, by modifying original formats and space relations; each of the 24 panels is furnished with a brief but condensed explanation of its main topics. Furthermore, at the beginning of his Atlas’ version, Gombrich puts forward a synthetic introduction; while having available the Einleitung to Mnemosyne that the author himself had wrote in 1929, Gombrich dissociated from the Warburg’s approach, both in a conceptual and formal sense.
 
Studying the Gombrich's Geburtstagatlas allows to enlight the premises of his theoretical reflections on Warburg, that then will flow into the famous, and seminal, book: Aby Warburg. An Intellectual Biography (London, 1970).
A comparison between the Introduction of Gombrich and the Warburg's Einleitung was the theme of the Seminar held in Cortona, in June 2017. On the occasion of the Hamburg meeting, the Seminario Mnemosyne team will present the research so far done on the topic. The outcomings of the research are going to be published in the issue no. 151 of Engramma (November / December 2017).
 
In particular:
• The German text with a translation into Italian of the Gombrich's Introduction to the Geburtstagsatlas;
• A digital edition of the original text preserved at The Warburg Institute London;
• Notes on the lexicon Gombrich’s text, from which the different thought patterns can come out, and thus a first comparison between the Introduction by Gombrich and the Einleitung by Warburg;
• An essay by Victoria Cirlot, Zwischenraum / Denkraum: oscilaciones terminologique en las Introductions at the Atlas de Aby Warburg (1929) and Ernst Gombrich (1937), already published in Engramma no. 150, on the idea of ‘Zwischenraum’, fundamental to Warburg, and which Gombrich omits to mention, and to reflect about.

Ernst H. Gombrich criticized abstract painting with several remarks scattered around his wide oeuvre. I argue that his view of abstract paintings is coherent with the account of pictorial representation he put forward in Art and Illusion, show some limits of such view, and maintain that, although several of Gombrich’s criticisms of abstract painting should be rejected, some of his remarks are insightful and worthy of consideration.