Clear thoughts, vivid narratives

The Story of Art

Gombrich by Fan Jingzhong translation

2008 Guangxi Fine Arts Publishing House

The Story of Art

By Gombrich

1950 Fayton Press

【Art Bookshelf】

As a classic book, The Story of Art has been translated into more than 30 languages for decades and disseminated worldwide, and its English, French, German and Spanish editions have sold nearly 7 million copies. And this best-selling miracle stems from the book's clear ideas and vivid narrative.

Gombrich's sole purpose in writing this book is to open the reader's eyes, to see the masterpiece of art with a fresh eye, and to understand the intention and process of his creation. We know that there is an irreplaceable nature between verbal description and image reproduction, which also affects art appreciation. Whether it is the aesthetic definition of truth, goodness, and beauty, or the stylistic concepts of abstraction and figuration, or the technical jargon such as lines, chiaroscuro, and block faces, they are all pale and powerless to talk about concrete works, and they cannot describe the mystery of the works at all. Art has its own vivid and subtle visual effects, and focusing on this effect is an artistic adventure that is more difficult and valuable than verbal talk. At the same time, putting aside the jargon barriers can leave a broader space for authors and readers to focus on important works, to understand the way artists see and represent the world, and to experience the various technical challenges they face.

The book begins with a quote: "There is no art in capital letters, only artists." The narrative purpose of the whole book is pointed out in one sentence: the kinetic energy of artistic development is not an abstract concept, but the artist and his creative intention. It was the changes in function and intent that gave rise to different forms of architecture, painting and sculpture, a thread that runs through Western art from ancient Egypt to the 20th century. The differences between the ages and even between artists are not due to differences in technical standards, but to changes in ideas and intentions. Thus, the book is by no means a story of artistic progress, but rather a subtly attributed to constantly changing ideas and intentions, thus explaining the reasons for the emergence of new works.

In writing this book, the author adopted the visual principle of either telling the works he had seen with his own eyes or about the works that could be displayed in the book. This naturally focuses on Western classics. All the non-Western arts mentioned in the book, such as Chinese painting and African sculpture, are in the service of clarifying the concept of the whole book by analogy. This practice, on the surface, is easily mistaken for "Eurocentrism". But the attentive reader will find that, in fact, on the contrary, it contains the deep meaning of world art. The author points out this meaning in the preface written for fan Jingzhong and Yang Chengkai's Chinese translation. The Eastern and Western regions are separated, but they have never hindered the mutual contact and reference of eastern and western culture and art. Viewing the history of Western art will undoubtedly help Chinese readers to better understand their own art from the differences between China and the West and their interactions, and the same is true for Westerners. When Hembrich was young, he struggled to learn Chinese, but soon discovered that a European who wanted to appreciate the delicacy of Chinese painting and calligraphy had to spend his life. The absence of non-Western art in The Story of Art is precisely out of his reverence for these arts. In fact, no art history can embrace global art, and no art historian can do that. The superficial limitations of "The Story of Art" make its story line clearer.

Another miracle embodied in this book is that it breaks down barriers between popular reading and academic works. The book was originally written for teenagers, but the author stresses that there is no reason to lower the standard of academic thought. Interested readers can compare it with its academic monograph "Art and Illusion", and it is not difficult to find the theoretical mutual verification relationship between the two. Clear, profound, vivid, witty, and interlocking, The Story of Art naturally transitions from one artist to another, echoing back and forth, in one breath, in a way that comes from homer's epic and Platonic traditions of philosophical dialogue. Gong's talent in this area has long been revealed in his debut novel" "A Small History of the World". These two popular books are called diptychs, they set backdrops and illustrates each other, introducing us in a vivid way to the past, present and future where history and art intertwine. The quality they share is vivid visuality.

We might as well take examples from similar books and compare them. Taking the description of El El Greco as an example, the popular American textbook "History of World Art" says that the figures in the picture "sit in an armchair ... The chair is inclined, which introduces a diagonal plane to the front and sides of the figure, thus enhancing the space around the figure. However, this is combined with a linear curved pattern arranged sequentially, each leading to the head, a series of teardrop-shaped rings to establish harmonious lines. The patterned leather background completes the design, so even the accompanying settings become an integral part of the scheme. And "The Story of Art", when talking about the painter, leads to El Greco from how Tintoretto broke through the traditional pattern of sketching precision and depicted religious subjects in a new way: "The Byzantine saints he used to see in his hometown are solemn, blunt, and far from the natural image... Not only did Tintoretto's art not surprise him, but it was fascinating... He was eager to take this gripping new way of portraying miracle stories. After a stint in Venice, he settled in remote Toledo, where he could avoid critics' demands for accurate sketching. In Spain at that time, the concept of medieval art still lingered, which explains why El Greco's art boldly despised natural shapes and colors, and even surpassed Tintoretto in its expression of exciting dramatic pictures..."

This description is neither the best part of The Gong's book nor can it be fully quoted due to the limitations of this article. But even so, it is a typical example of the basic feature of the book: the easy outlining of the characteristics of specific works while bringing out the atmosphere of the whole era. It is these characteristics that have made this book famous all over the world, guiding generations to explore the fascinating wonders of art.

(Author: Cao Yiqiang, Professor, School of Arts and Humanities, China Academy of Art)

Source: Guangming Daily