Gombrich and the adage of Bruckner’s 7th Symphony

A book by Ernst Gombrich is always a box of surprises. It opens it triggers, in a way, the release of a genius-not the genius of the lamp in the history of Aladino, but the genius of the great Viennese art historian, who, page after page, will enchant us with his ideas; their creative and unexpected arguments; their ingenious comparisons; your immense and glowing knowledge; its way of communicating accessible and generous.

Beside me I have his most influential (though not the most popular) work: Art & Illusion, in Portuguese Art and Illusion – A Study on Psychology of Pictorial Representation. The title may seem technical or specialized, but just start flipping through it to jump to what extent Gombrich was a heterodox academic.

Let’s look at some of the illustrations that accompany the text: a diagram with symbols used in travel guides; a set of Chinese characters; a New Yorker Cartoon; an Italian religious painting of 1285; two landscapes of John Constable (19th century); a poster of 1953; An English Tapestry of the 11th century; Orthodox icons; Fresh Pompeii; abstract pictures; Renaissance prints; optical illusion exercises; And even a drawing made by a nine -year -old child…

I believe it no longer takes to show the scope of your intellect. Born in Vienna in 1909, within a family of Jews converted to Protestantism, Ernst had a solid school and academic background. He entered the University of Vienna in 1928, and there he studied History of Art and Archeology. He handed his doctoral thesis in 1933, the year Hitler seized power. The rise of Nazism did not increase anything good and in January 1936 the young academic went to the Warburg Institute in London, then directed by the Viennense Fritz Saxl. It had a two -year bag. In 1938, even before the Annexation by Nazi Germany, he got his parents to leave Austria.

During the Gombrich war, he worked for the BBC to decipher German radio emissions. Six years. But it was not lost time. We could say that for a mind like yours, ‘nothing is lost, everything becomes transformed.’

« Some of the broadcasts that most interested us were almost inaudible, and became an art, or even a sport, to interpret the few speech sounds that were all we really had in the wax cylinders in which these broadcasts were recorded, » tells us about art and illusion. “It was then that we learned to what extent our knowledge and expectations influence our hearing. You need to know what can be said to hear what has been said. More precisely, to select, from the knowledge of possibilities we have, certain combinations of words and try to fit them into the noises we hear.

This question interested him because the baggage of « our knowledge and expectations » is decisive in appreciating a work of art. In a way, we have to evaluate and understand the general context to realize that this green brush is a tree and that the gray spot with a little orange color on top is a house. Without the collaboration between the author and the viewer there is no illusion, which is like who says: art cannot produce his magic.

In Gombrich’s case the luggage was immense. It is said that it was enough to hear the adage of Bruckner’s 7th symphony before a news to realize that Hitler had died. Thanks to its culture and insight, Churchill was the first to know. Or rather the second.