Name: Ernst Gombrich interview on "The Story of Art" (1995)
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The Story of Art by Sir Ernst Gombrich is now in its 16th edition.

It is unrivaled as an introduction to the subject of art, from the earliest cave paintings to the experimental art of today.

First published in 1950, it is the world's best-selling book on art, and it has been translated into 24 languages.

Gombrich, who served much of his career at the Warburg Institute in London, has written more than 20 books and won numerous awards, including the Goethe Prize for Achievement in Art and Culture.

And he is widely regarded as one of the greatest art historians of the second half of this century, and we are therefore very pleased to have him here.

This is an extraordinary book, as you well know, and as people have praised.

It came into being because I had once had the commission to write the history of the world for children, when I was still in Vienna as a young man.

I wrote this, which happened to be a great success, and I was asked now to write the history of art for children.

My reply was that the history of art isn't for children.

I said I could write it, but not for children.

And that is how this book roughly came into being, that I decided to make this attempt, and after a number of interruptions due to the war and other reasons,

Why do you think it's met with such acceptance?

I think, or I hope, it is because I don't try to give myself airs.

I don't try to make a mystery of things which are not a mystery, but I admit that there are mysteries which one needn't discuss because they are too obviously mysteries.

You also have said before, and correct me if I'm wrong, because the fact that it's said does not necessarily mean you said it, that the story of art makes a difference, that it is the story of art.

That is entirely true. I'm glad that you mentioned this.

The story in the sense that it is not just a chronicle of one thing after another.

There's a chronicle of fashion, for instance.

But the development of image-making is a story insofar as there is a story also behind the development of flying or other achievements of mankind insofar as people strove for certain aims and passed on their achievements to others.

And so there's a coherence in the story which one can tell as a chain of events which hangs together.

That seems to be what everybody seems to like so much about it.

What you have brought to bear is the connection and the unfolding story of art.

Modern art is an interesting point in this respect because my story, in a certain sense, is a story of the conflict between two opposing problems or methods of representing the world which, in a simplified form, you can say you draw what you know or you draw what you actually see.

And I explained that the Egyptians drew, in that sense, what they knew rather than what they saw in front of them and that this development went as far as Impressionism where the principle of what was called the innocent eye, really looking at what you actually see, triumphed.

This happened at the end of the 19th century and the problem of the coming of what was to happen afterwards represents really the story of our century.

So when you ask what about modern art, modern art is confronted with a certain break in that chain and the search for very different solutions.

I try to explain in the book that one of the reasons for this break was that, in a sense, the theory which was underlying Impressionism is a little too simple.

We can never completely separate what we know from what we see and therefore the whole idea broke down and I should have added, and I did add in a later page, that photography had a lot to do with this too.

So the search for alternatives, what an artist, an image maker, can do was on and it still goes on all the time.

I've never been a great or a minor collector.

First of all, I never had a lot of money.

Well, that's a start, but I know good collectors who didn't start with a lot of money.

That is true. I have no possessive instincts.

I'm very happy when I see a great painting in a great gallery or museum and I don't feel, oh, I wish I would own that.

I'm very happy that it's there where it is.

My father was a print collector and I own a number of pleasant prints and even quite valuable prints.

I wouldn't say that she was friends with Sigmund Freud.

What did she tell you about them and what was their...

She said that Sigmund Freud was the best teller of Jewish jokes she had ever encountered.

A man with a nervous tic and with great difficulties.

But she admired him very much as a person.

Did you grow up with a greater sense of music than painting?

Music played a central part in my family and in our house.

As the Nazis came to power in Germany and began to expand and went to London.

In a listening post of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

I listened for six years mainly to German propaganda broadcasts and translated them into English.

It was not a very thrilling work, but hard work.

And I learned a good deal of English in the process because if you have language lessons eight hours a day for six years, you have to learn it.

Were you the first person in London to know of Hitler's death?

Yes, so I always tell, and I'm pretty sure it's true.

What happened was that towards the very end of the war there was one of these announcements on the German wireless that stand by for an important announcement and it was pretty obvious that this had to do with Hitler.

And so I was called in as a more experienced listener and I had the idea that to make it as quickly as possible to pass on the news when it came,

Hitler abdicates, Hitler dead, Hitler surrenders, and so on and so forth.

Our Fuhrer has fallen in the struggle against Bolshevism,

I pointed to the right piece of paper and they quickly rang up Downing Street.

Was Churchill asleep? What time of day was it?

They played a slow movement from one of Bruckner's symphonies which Bruckner had written to commemorate the death of Wagner.

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Ernst Gombrich interview on "The Story of Art" (1995)

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