The Uses of Images: Studies in the Social Function of Art and Visual Communication

Gombrich, E. H.

ISBN 10: 0714836559 / ISBN 13: 9780714836553

Published by Phaidon, London, 1999

About this Item

304 pages with index and many B&W illustrations. Seller Inventory # 20640

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Uses of Images: Studies in the Social ...

Publisher: Phaidon, London

Publication Date: 1999

Binding: Hard Cover in Dust Jacket

Condition: Near Fine Plus

Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

Edition: First Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

In this new volume - the tenth in the series of his collected essays - Professor Gombrich returns to themes that have long preoccupied him in his study of visual imagery of all kinds. Central to these essays is a consuming interest in the functions of images, and how these functions - and the images - change over time.

In wide-ranging studies of both 'high' and 'low' art, from fresco painting, altar painting, the International Gothic Style and outdoor sculpture to doodles, pictorial instructions, caricature and political propaganda, Gombrich discusses the role of supply and demand, competition and display, the 'ecology' of images and the idea of 'feedback' in the interplay of means and ends, as developing skills in turn stimulate new demands. He explores further aaspects of the uses of images in his essays on the hanging of pictures and on the use (or misuse) of images as historical evidence.

About the Author:

Sir Ernst Gombrich was one of the greatest and least conventional art historians of his age, achieving fame and distinction in three separate spheres: as a scholar, as a popularizer of art, and as a pioneer of the application of the psychology of perception to the study of art. His best-known book, The Story of Art - first published 50 years ago and now in its sixteenth edition - is one of the most influential books ever written about art. His books further include The Sense of Order (1979) and The Preference for the Primitive (2002), as well as a total of 11 volumes of collected essays and reviews.

Gombrich was born in Vienna in 1909 and died in London in November 2001. He came to London in 1936 to work at the Warburg Institute, where he eventually became Director from 1959 until his retirement in 1976. He won numerous international honours, including a knighthood, the Order of Merit and the Goethe, Hegel and Erasmus prizes.

Gifted with a powerful mind and prodigious memory, he was also an outstanding communicator, with a clear and forceful prose style. His works are models of good art-historical writing, and reflect his humanism and his deep and abiding concern with the standards and values of our cultural heritage.