Art
E.H. Gombrich Remembered (1909-2001)
For many of us, E.H. Gombrich was known as an author of the widely popular The Story of Art, which sold millions of copies and was translated into more than 20 languages. For some of us, he was also a writer on art theory, as in Art and Illusion (1960), as well as a recondite scholar of the Italian Renaissance in four invaluable volumes of essays: Norm and Form (1966), Symbolic Images (1972), The Heritage of Apelles (1976), and New Light on Old Masters (1986). His other works include a study of the psychology of the decorative, The Sense of Order (1979), Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (1970), and, finally, The Essential Gombrich (1966).
Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, son of a respected lawyer and a famous piano teacher, was born in Vienna in 1909. He studied art theory with Julius von Schlosser and Classical Archaeology with Emanuel Loewy at the University of Vienna. Under Schlosser, a somewhat skeptical scholar who insisted that his students work with original materials from the existing archives rather than adopting the new radical approach led by Max Dvorak, Gombrich did his dissertation on the architecture of Giulio Romano.
A few years after the University, besides having learned Chinese, worked on the history of caricature, and written a short children’s history of the world, Gombrich began his research at the Warburg (The Warburg Institute had moved to London from Hamburg in 1933), and when the war was over he also briefly worked as a radio monitor for the BBC. Eventually, under the guidance of Ernst Kris—a museum curator and a practicing psychoanalyst—Gombrich managed to publish The Story of Art. This publication led to a Slade Professorship in the History of Art at Oxford University and subsequently to the position of Director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition at the University of London, both positions he maintained until his retirement in 1976.
Like other great art historians of his generation, such as Erwin Panofsky and Meyer Schapiro, Gombrich’s lucid mind and vast erudition is exemplified in his contributions to the study of the Renaissance Iconography and the Theory of Art. But unlike some of them, Gombrich’s lesser commitment to Freudian analysis, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and Marxism resulted in a lack of interest in modern and contemporary art. Actually, there are a few notable exceptions, for he was an intimate friend of Oskar Kokoschka, Saul Steinberg, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Bridget Riley.
However, E.H. Gombrich’s dedication to the truth, and his moral and intellectual integrity, were invaluable to the increasing scholarly importance of art history. In 1966, he was awarded the C.B.E., was knighted in 1972, and in 1988, he was awarded the Order of Merit.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

Greg Marshall’s Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It
By Sara PolskyJUNE 2023 | Books
Greg Marshall was nearly thirty when he found out hed had cerebral palsy for his entire life. Told as a child that he had tight tendonsone of several phrases he would repeat when questioned about the way he movedin Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It, Marshall explores the winding road to becoming aware of his diagnosis.

Camille T. Dungys Soil: The Story of a Black Mothers Garden
By Victoria RichardsMAY 2023 | Books
The award winning poet makes a case for a collectivist mindset in which our environment is a space where all humans and non-humans alike serve a purpose.
Dog Story
By Chris ArpJUNE 2021 | Fiction
Our original fiction this month comes from Brooklyn writer Chris Arp. In Dog Story, a cantankerous father adopts a dog for his daughter. Crisp observation and introspective flashes reveal a chewed up character who wants a better world, but finds dark humor in the world he has.
The Story of No One From Sri Lanka
By Indrajit SamarajivaNOV 2022 | Field Notes
Sri Lanka is just an island of 21 million people, still colonized by capital, still culturally self-colonized, and thus our sufferings are not unique. We are all ultimately just leaves in the stream, and right now the water is churning.