Gombrich

Art and Illusion in Blutch’s Mitchum

by Nicolas Labarre

This article appeared on The Comics Grid

Volviendo a Gombrich: motivo y significado en la cerámica griega

by Fátima Díez-Platas

Richard Woodfield, ‘Ernst Gombrich: Iconology and the “linguistics of the image”’, Journal of Art Historiography, Number 5 December 2011

by Richard Woodfield

This paper considers the question of the relationship between Gombrich's analysis of the psychology of perceptual... more This paper considers the question of the relationship between Gombrich's analysis of the psychology of perceptual representation, as found in Art and Illusion, and his approach to iconological analysis, as found in Symbolic Images. Whilst he made use of Karl Buehler's Organonmodell der Sprache, he failed to apply it consistently. Consequently there is further work to be done on his projected contribution to the study of the linguistics of the image.

Discovery or invention? The difference between art and communication according to Ernst Gombrich

by Tiziana Migliore

(INGL) Journal of Art Historiography, The University of Birmingham, December, 2011, pp. 1-28
ISSN 2042-4752

Paper from the Colloquium I saperi di Ernst Gombrich: Teoria del visibile e analisi dell’arte, Venice, IUAV, Ca Badoer, 05-06/03/2009

This paper sets out to explore the boundaries between artworks and advertising works in line with the thinking of... more This paper sets out to explore the boundaries between artworks and advertising works in line with the thinking of Ernst Gombrich. His distinction between art and other forms of communication emphasises the importance of ‘discovery’ as opposed to mere ‘invention’. What are the symptoms of an artwork according to Gombrich? The difference with advertising is not ontological at all: anything that comes out of the artist’s top hat and is traded between dealers, gallery owners and collectors is art, whereas any graphic work produced for communication purposes and conveyed by the media is propaganda. Ultimately the most valid distinction lies in the modality and the internal dynamics of the artwork itself. By re-examining some examples provided by Gombrich – from the colour of light in John Constable to Giulio Romano’s Palazzo Te, from Raphael’s Madonna della sedia to Saul Steinberg’s work – this paper delves further into an issue not comprehensively dealt with by Gombrich and whose importance is still underestimated.

Encyclopedia entry on Gombrich

by Richard Woodfield

“Gombrich” in Stuart Brown (ed.) Thoemmes Continuum Dictionary of 20th C British Philosophers, Thoemmes Continuum: Bristol 2005, 332-5.

Richard Woodfield, 'Expression, Form and Kunstwissenschaft'

by Richard Woodfield

Published in Aesthetic Matters: Essays presented to Göran Sörbom on his 60th birthday ed. Lars-Olof Åhlberg and Tommie Zain, Uppsala University: Uppsala 1994, 154-163

Richard Woodfield, 'Gombrich's Story of Art'

by Richard Woodfield

The British Journal of Aesthetics, , 1996, 36 (3), 313-6

Richard Woodfield, 'Gombrich and Panofsky on Iconology'

by Richard Woodfield

International Yearbook of Aesthetics, 12, 2008, 151-164

Richard Woodfield, 'Representational Meaning'

by Richard Woodfield

Published in Iwony Lorenc (ed.), Odłamki, Pozbitych, Luster: rozprawy z filozofii kultury sztuki I etsetyki ofiarowane Pani Profesor Alicji Kuczyńskiej, Uniwersytet Warszawski: Wydzial Filozofii I Socjologii, 275-286

Richard Woodfield, 'Gombrich on the Renaissance: Period or Movement?'

by Richard Woodfield

Published in Poreia: A Festschrift for Professor Dionysis A. Zivas, Athens: National Technical University of Athens - School of Architecture, 2007, 617-625

Richard Woodfield, 'Peetz and Wollheim on Gombrich's Illusions: a note'

by Richard Woodfield

British Journal of Aesthetics 28(3) 1988, 278-80.

Richard Woodfield, 'Pictorial Experience'

by Richard Woodfield

Published in Ananta Ch. Sukla (ed) Art and Experience, Westport: Praeger 2003, 71-90

Richard Woodfield, 'Gombrich on Language and Meaning'

by Richard Woodfield

Published as a review of Gombrich's Tributes in the British Journal of Aesthetics 25(4) 1985, 389-93.

Richard Woodfield, 'Gombrich's 1955 Lecture to the British Psychological Society'

by Richard Woodfield

Published in in Paula Lizarraga (ed.) E.H. Gombrich: In memoriam, Pamplona: EUNSA (Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, S.A.) 2001, 167-184

Richard Woodfield, 'Gombrich, Formalism and the Description of Works of Art'

by Richard Woodfield

The British Journal of Aesthetics, 34 (2), 1994, 134-45

Richard Woodfield, Introduction to Gombrich on Art and Psychology

by Richard Woodfield

Published in Richard Woodfield (ed.), Gombrich on Art and Psychology, Manchester: MUP 1996

Richard Woodfield: Ernst Gombrich and the problem of being a Viennese art historian in London

by Richard Woodfield

Background material for a lecture that was given in Melbourne, August 13th, 2010. Modified 31.10.2010, 7.03.2011 and 28.12.2011

Gombrich’s fame as an art historian rested upon his popular book The Story of Art but he didn’t see himself as a... more Gombrich’s fame as an art historian rested upon his popular book The Story of Art but he didn’t see himself as a professional art historian. At the Warburg Institute, where he worked, he asserted his identity as a historian of Italian Renaissance culture and denied any attachment to academic art history. His publications take the form of a commentary on academic art historical practice, in the Viennese tradition of the Kunstgeschichtliche Anzeigen and Kritische Berichte. Many of the problems that he addressed originated in the milieu of Julius von Schlosser’s ‘Vienna School of Art History’. He was hostile to grand theories and master narratives and adopted a piecemeal approach to their critique. Although he wrote in a plain style, his thought was far from plain as it was embedded in a network of problems foreign to Anglophone scholarship. His work was profoundly alien to his English colleagues and frequently misunderstood.

A Brief History and Theory of Not Looking: Toward a Field Theory of the Audiovisual

by Martyn Woodward

During the 1960s, the constructivist approach to vision and visuality broke free from the dominant culturally and... more During the 1960s, the constructivist approach to vision and visuality broke free from the dominant culturally and historically relative models (as championed within Semiotics and Feminist theory) to involve the human agency of the body thus proposing a biological model of vision. The Biological framing of vision attempted to discard a culturally and historically relative model of vision in favour of models which involved the body as a site of meaning, thus bringing the body back into the framing of vision, taken away by the previous linguistic turn. Within this biological framework, it is the whole body that supports and maintains the spectacle of vision. However, within Ecological and Enactive approaches to perception, it is argued that perception is not embedded in or constrained by either the body or the surrounding world, but together in a reciprocal, emergent specification and selection. A biological model of vision then must move beyond the body or the environment to involve an enactive approach to vision, that neither privileges the body or the environment. This paper addresses the authors’ insight into the implications of an enacted cognition (and visions role within such a system) on traditional views of vision from constructivist, biological and phenomenological standpoint and its implications to the visual arts. It traces the conceptions of vision historically from a linguistically defined culturally relative model of the early 1960s, through a constructivist biological model of the late 1960s, which focussed on the body as the site of meaning, to Recent enacted models of perception, that privilege neither the body or the environment as a site of meaning. The Enacted model is unpacked and a model of perception in which the role of vision, and thus its very nature, is questioned and established.