A groundbreaking account of perception and art, from one of the
twentieth century's most important art historians
E. H. Gombrich is widely considered to be one of the most influential
art historians of the twentieth century, and Art and Illusion is
generally agreed to be his most important book. Bridging science and the
humanities, this classic work examines the history and psychology of
pictorial representation in light of modern theories of information and
learning in visual perception. Searching for a rational explanation of
the changing styles of art, Gombrich reexamines ideas about the
imitation of nature and the function of tradition. In testing his
arguments, he ranges over the history of art, from the ancient Greeks,
Leonardo, and Rembrandt to the impressionists and the cubists. But the
triumphant originality of Art and Illusion is that Gombrich is less
concerned with the artists than with the psychological experience of the
viewers of their work.