Ernst Gombrich's Politics of Art History: Exile, Cold War and "The Story of Art"

Author(s): Vardan Azatyan

Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 33, No. 2 (2010), pp. 129-141
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40856511
Accessed: 15-06-2016 15:17 UTC

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1 . Ernst Gombrich, The Story of Art, pocket
edition (Phaidon Press: London, New York,
2006).
2. Ernst Gombrich, A Lifelong Interest:
Conversations on Art and Science with Didier Eribon
(Thames and Hudson: London, 1993), pp. 64-5.
3. Gombrich, A Lifelong Interest, p. 65.
4. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies,
2 vols (Routledge: New York, [1945] 2003).
5. Ernst Gombrich, 'Personal Recollections of
the Publication of The Open Society , in Ian Charles
Jarvie and Sandra Pralong (eds), Popper's Open
Society after Fifty Years: The Continuing Relevance of
Karl Popper (Routledge: London, New York,
1999), p. 18.
6. Malahi Haim Hacohen, Karl Popper - The
rormative Years, 1902-1945: Politics and Philosophy
in Interwar Vienna (Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge, 2000), p. 451.
7. Malahi Haim. Hacohen, 'Dilemmas of
Cosmopolitanism: Karl Popper, Jewish Identity,
and "Central European Culture'", The Journal of
Modern History, vol. 71, no. 1, March 1999,
p. 109.
8. Hacohen, Karl Popper, p. 457.
9. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism
(Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, [1957] 1961),
p. iv.
10. Ernst Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship'
(1957), in Meditations on A Hobby Horse, and other
Essays on the Theory of Art (Chicago University
Press: Chicago, [1963] 1985), p. 107.
1 1 . Herbert Marcuse, 'Karl Popper and the
Problem of Historical Laws' (1959), in From
Luther to Popper (Verso: London, 1983), p. 194.
12. Marcuse, 'Karl Popper', p. 193.
© The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
doi: 10. 1093/oxartj/kcqOl 2
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Ernst Gombrich's Politics of Art History: Exile,
Cold War and The Story of Art
Vardan Azatyan
In 2006, Ernst Gombrich's best-seller The Story of Art, first published in 1950,
became available as a pocket edition. This may well mark the highest point of
popularisation and commercialisation of an art history survey text to date.
However, this phenomenon should not be explained only by the demands of
the book market, but rather by the ideals of scholarship underlying the book.
Clearly, it was Gombrich's intention to write a popular book. In the event, it
made its author into a celebrity, something he apparently enjoyed.
Moreover, it was this popular book's tremendous success that boosted the
professional career of a poor Austrian-Jewish emigre scholar in post-war
Anglo-American academia.
In its goal of reaching a popular readership, The Story of Art had a striking
similarity with another continuing best- seller, The Open Society and Its Enemies
authored by his long-term friend, and another Austrian-Jewish emigre, Karl
Popper. According to Gombrich himself, one of the initial titles for this work
was 'A Social Philosophy for Everyman', and Popper 'preferred a good trade
publisher to an academic press, so that his message would reach the "common
person"'.6 First published in 1945, The Open Society had consequences for
Popper's subsequent career, which were similiar to those of The Story of Art for
Gombrich's: it transformed Popper 'from an unknown Viennese philosopher
into a founder of Atlantic "Cold War" Liberalism' . Broadly, both books shared
the same message well captured in Gombrich's description of what he learnt
from reading the manuscript of The Open Society: there is no history, only a
plurality of constructed histories, an idea that belied Gombrich's commitment
to progress.
Both Popper and Gombrich drew a direct connection between actual political
violence and belief in progress, which they denominated historicism. This was
apparent in Popper's dedication to The Poverty of Historicism: 'In the memory of
the countless men, women and children of all creeds or nations or races who fell
victims to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical
Destiny' . Remarkably, the victims here were not those of political action but
of belief. Similarly, Gombrich lamented: 'I wish it could be shown that it
was power that perverted learning and not learning that perverted power'.
Both statements imply the politicisation of the theoretical itself. On the one
hand, as Herbert Marcuse observed, this entailed the problem of misplaced
abstractness which marked a conservative withdrawal from theoretically
facing the complex political and economic conditions of learning. On the
other, this withdrawal was compensated by treating learning as power: ideas,
thus, could actually victimise. The domain of ideas became an arena for
conservative political struggle, because of the stipulated 'connection between
methodological and political totalitarianism'. Both books, therefore, should
OXFORD ART JOURNAL 33.2 2010 127-141
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Vardan Azatyan

be considered as intellectual weapons of these authors in their war of ideas

against 'totalitarian philosophies'.
Another Austrian- Jewish emigre in Britain, the conservative neoliberal 13. Ernst Gombrich, 'The Logic of Vanity Fair:
political economist Friedrich von Hayek, also 'persistently argued that the Alternatives to Historicism in the Study of
battle for ideas was key'. The manifesto of The Mont Pèlerin Society, Fashions, Style and Taste' (1965), in Ideals and
Idols: Essays on Values in History and in Art (Phaidon
Hayek's cold- war initiative to fight all forms of state planning, announced the
Press: Oxford, 1979), p. 60.
need for 'Methods of combating the misuse of history for the furtherance of
creeds hostile to liberty'. Being among the founders of the Society in 14. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism
(Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2005), p. 21.
1947, this was surely Popper's front of struggle. But there was more to this.
Given the differences between Hayek's neoliberalism and Popper's 'reform 15. Mont Pèlerin Society, 'Getting Together'
(1947), in Gregory Schneider (ed.), Conservatism
liberalism', Hayek actually played an important role in shaping Popper's
in America since 1930 (New York University Press:
critique of historicism. Against the conception of a totalising history New York, London, 2003), p. 67.
governed by general laws, Popper suggested the plurality of particular
16. Hacohen, Karl Popper, p. 450.
historical situations constituted by the logic specific to those situations. The
latter, in turn, were perceived as determined by tradition-bound individual 17. For Popper and economic methodologies, see
Thomas A. Boy Ian and Paschal F. O 'Gorman
interests and institutional frameworks. All in all, this was an extension of
(eds), Popper and Economic Methodology:
'marginal utility theory', a central neoliberal economic principle developed Contemporary Challenges (Routledge: London,
in the Austrian School of Political Economy whose most prominent New York, 2008).

representative was Hayek himself. Unsurprisingly then, Hayek was 18. Hacohen, Karl Popper, pp. 449-62. On this
instrumental in the publication of both The Poverty and The Open Society. The occasion, Popper even remarked that Gombrich
latter, by the way, got published by the combined efforts of Hayek and and Hayek had saved his life. Popper, Unended
Gombrich. Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (Open Court:
La Salle, 1976), p. 120.
Gombrich's The Story of Art took shape at around the same time as the
19. Gombrich, A Lifelong Interest, pp. 166-67.
formation of The Mont Pèlerin Society and was animated by the same
anti-historicist agenda on the art-historical front. Though Gombrich 20. Gombrich's emotional attachment to Popper

christened 'Popperian' the idea of 'the logic of situation' and admits he
touched on it in the introduction to The Story of Art, he was well aware that
it was an economic principle. But this was not a matter of falsification;
rather it revealed the complexity of the issue. Gombrich's use of neoliberal
economic methodology was a 'second-hand' use, as it was already processed
through Popper's Critical Rationalism and underlined by Popper's as well as
Gombrich's own unease with Hayek's neoliberalism. Additionally, it
also played its role: 'Popper has been much
attacked and some of his important ideas have also
been adopted by others without acknowledgment,
which naturally hurt him a good deal. So
I decided that I should stress my debt to Popper
whenever I can'. Gombrich, A Lifelong Interest,
p. 123.
21. Gombrich, A Lifelong Interest, pp. 39-40.

matched well with a specifically art-historical method developed in the 22. Ernst Gombrich, 'Obituary - Julius von
Viennese School of Art History by Gombrich's beloved teacher, Julius von Schlosser', The Burlington Magazine for
Schlosser. Connoisseurs, vol. 74, no. 431, February 1939,
pp. 98-9.
In 1939, three years after his immigration to Britain, Gombrich published the
obituary for Schlosser who died in the year of the Anschluss - the annexation of 23. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', p. 110.

Austria into Greater Germany by Hitler. This was the point when the death of 24. Ernst Gombrich, 'Austria Later Awarded Me
the teacher - the embodiment of the traditions of Viennese art history for All Sorts of Orders. . . ', in Peter Weibl and
Friedrich Stadler (eds), Vertreibung der Vernunft:
Gombrich - and the end of Austria as an independent political entity
The Cultural Exodus from Austria (Locker: Wien,
coincided, thus 'objectively' stipulating a connection between the 1993), p. 337.
methodological and the political. This was the actual end of a discourse/
place he left behind. From that moment on, Gombrich's art-historical work
can be seen as explicitly engaged in the exilic work of mourning to ' fight
against myth, which blurs and distorts the memory of great masters'.
Thus, theoretical work was hyper-activated, as it was to supplement the lost
homeland for the displaced: 'There was and there always will be something
called the "Republic of Scholars". We scientists or scholars, res publica
litterarum, stick together and our home is our work. I do not feel myself an
Englishman. I feel myself to be exactly what I am: a Central European who
works in England'. Thus, scholarship was made a preservation territory of
the vanished Central European traditions Gombrich as a member of the
Republic of Scholars aimed at reincarnating in England.

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25. Ernst Gombrich, 'An Autobiographical
Sketch', in Richard Woodfield (ed.), The Essential
Gombrich (Phaidon Press: London, 1996), p. 31.
26. Gombrich, 'Obituary - Julius von
Schlosser', p. 99.
27. The infamous conflict in the Vienna school of
art history between individualist Schlosser and
Josef Strzygowski whom Gombrich dubbed as
'rabble rouser' played a decisive role in
Gombrich's formation as an art historian.
Gombrich, 'An Autobiographical Sketch', p. 24;
Gombrich, A Lifelong Interest, pp. 37-8.
28. David Carrier, 'Deep Innovation and Mere
Eccentricity: Six Case Studies of Innovation in Art
History', in Elizabeth Mansfield (ed.), Art History
and Its Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline
(Routledge: London, New York, 2002), p. 123.
29. Jonathan Harris, The New Art History: A
Critical Introduction (Routledge: London,
New York, 2001), p. 37.
30. Jan-Werner Müller, 'Fear and Freedom: On
"Cold War Liberalism"', European Journal of
Political Theory, vol. 7, no. 1, January 2008,
pp. 45-64.
31. Müller, 'Fear and Freedom', p. 48.
32. Müller, 'Fear and Freedom', pp. 47-8.
33. Marcuse, 'Karl Popper', p. 193.
34. Müller, 'Fear and Freedom', p. 58.
35. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', p. 107.
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Ernst Gombrich's Politics of Art History
Gombrich's obituary for Schlosser gives a clue to what specifically needed to
be restated in England in art-historical terms. This was Schlosser 's conception of
the history of style, which appeared to Gombrich as a humanistic light to be
kept burning in 'those overshadowed years'. Of this Gombrich wrote:
'research into the formation and change of styles was, however, to him only
the propylon to a genuine history of art, dealing with the creative individuals
and not with the language of the many'. And he perceived Schlosser 's
individualist theory of style as the 'genuine history of art1 as opposed to the
'the language of the many'.27 From this point on, the individualist critique of
holist and historicist theories of style became Gombrich's art history's
ideological task. Along the lines of Popper's political philosophy, one may
well describe this as a contrast between 'liberalism' and 'totalitarianism'.
But, is it possible to be more specific in describing Gombrich's art history in
political terms? Available accounts in this regard are too general - 'a liberal',
a defender of the 'humanism of western liberal-democratic society' . What
these descriptions fail to capture is a complex mechanism of exilic mourning
that underpins Gombrich's battle of ideas against 'totalitarian philosophies'.
Jean- Werner Müller 's account of what he calls 'cold-war liberalism' can be
helpful here as it captures some of the crucial nuances underpinning
Gombrich's art history. ° Among the latter are the equation of the political
with the epistemological, a strategy Müller coins 'politics of knowledge'.
According to Müller, cold-war liberalism is also underlined by a type of fear
based on the 'memory of past humiliation, past cruelty, and exile'. Thus,
to describe a particular sensibility informing cold-war liberalism, Müller
proposes the term 'liberalism of fear' which he characterises as:
A skeptical liberalism concerned primarily with avoiding the worst, rather than achieving
the best. It was concerned with fear in two senses: it was a minimal or negative
liberalism, or, as others have put it, a 'liberalism without illusions' that was fearful of
ambitious programmes advanced by those who felt absolutely certain in their
convictions and sure about their political prescriptions. But it also was based on the
insight that many political evils and pathologies ultimately originated in fear itself:
Popper, for instance, spoke of the typical 'fear of admitting to ourselves that the
responsibility for our ethical decisions is entirely ours and cannot be shifted to anybody
else'. This kind of fear was then said to be crucial in motivating the plunge into
totalitarian ideology.32
The liberalism of fear, thus, advocated an ethically based piecemeal approach,
which resonated in 'a world dominated by political passions' . The same is true
for the ideological motivations behind Gombrich's art history. In 1957, the year
of the publication of the book edition of Popper's The Poverty, Gombrich
delivered an inaugural lecture at University College London, entitled 'Art
and Scholarship', which could be described as an art-historical manifesto of
cold- war liberalism:
It would be more comforting, in a way, to think that the streams of adulterated
scholarship that poured and pour from the presses of totalitarian countries were and
are just the product of fear - fear of starvation, fear of torture even - from which
none of us would be free in similar situations. But I think, in thus exonerating our
colleagues, past and present, we are in danger of making too light our own
responsibility as scholars.35
In order not to plunge into the totalitarianism of 'adulterated scholarship',
Gombrich pleaded for fearlessness in admitting one's individual responsibility
as a scholar even though in a different political situation. But, obviously, it
OXFORD ART JOURNAL 33.2 2010 131
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Vardan Azatyan

was the British academic bourgeois public sphere that made it possible for
Gombrich to be free from 'similar situations' and feel himself a member of a
republic of scholars, a luxury of which scholars in the Soviet Union were
deprived. Interestingly, Müller claims that for cold- war liberals Britain and
particularly England, 'animated by gentle traditions', was simply the name of
the open society. In this light it is not at all 'too fanciful' as Jas Eisner puts
it, 'to see England - in the fading twilight of empire - as particularly
attractive to the Austro- Hungarian emigré tradition (London as Vienna on
the Thames)'.
36. Müller, 'Fear and Freedom', p. 54. This
highly reductive vision of England was also shared
by Hayek. Having in mind England he claimed
that 'Paradoxically as it may appear, it is probably
true that a successful free society will always in a
large measure be a tradition-bound society' .
Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (The University
of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1960), p. 61.

Gombrich 's cold- war liberal battle of ideas thus had its beginnings in the 37. Jas Eisner, 'The Birth of Late Antiquity:
1930s, the decade of the rise of totalitarian regimes and of exile. Riegl and Strzygowski in 1901', Art History, vol.
25, no. 3, June 2002, p. 379 (n. 81).
Immediately after 1945, as the Cold War was beginning, Gombrich started
to work on The Story of Art. This was his initial grand project of redefining 38. Gombrich, 'An Autobiographical Sketch',
style against its historicist misuses: 'Style became one of my worries, one of p. 34.

my problems, because the idea that style is simply the expression of an age
seemed to me not only to say very little, but to be rather vacuous in every
respect' . Gombrich 's attempts to develop an alternative conception of style
encapsulate the ways he was engaged in the construction of a discursive
homeland through the fusion of academic art-historical methodologies with
methodologies taken from Popper's political philosophy and philosophy of
science as well as neoliberal political economy. The triangulation of Popper's
Critical Rationalism and political philosophy, Schlosser 's individualist
particularism, and the methodologies of the Austrian School of political
economy constitute the framework in which one should situate Gombrich 's
politics of art history. Thus, I hope to show that Gombrich was a politically
conscious conservative scholar: art-historical practice for him was and had to
be animated by a strong sense of political awareness and ethical responsibility
as it was always already engaged in ideological battles.
What follows is a reading of a selection of Gombrich's texts on the theory and
39. I discuss Gombrich's art history in the early
cold- war context in my 'Cold- War Twins:
Mikhail Alpatov's A Universal History of Arts and
Ernst Gombrich's The Story of Art', Human Affairs,
vol. 19, no. 3, September 2009, pp. 289-96.
40. As Dan Karlholm rightly observes, 'We seem
to lack a practice for distinguishing between a
Hegelian, in the sense of disciple (not just
student), to which the German word most often
refers, and the more implicit sense, prevalent in
Anglo-American discourse. In the latter, Hegelian
can refer to almost any kind of phenomenon
which betrays an idealist, holist, evolutionist or
"historicist" notion of history. Ernst Gombrich
bears partial responsibility for this diluted
terminological practice within the field of art
history. . . ', in Dan Karlholm, Art of Illusion: The
Representation of Art History in Nineteenth- Century

methodology of art history, designed to show this triangulation and the process Germany and Beyond (Peter Lang: Bern, 2006),
p. 23 (n. 21).
of politicising the theoretical against the politically committed scholarship of
totalitarian regimes. I also discuss Gombrich's concerns about 'situational 41. Popper, The Open Society, vol. 2, p. 24.

analysis', which reveal the theoretical limits of both Gombrich's and Popper's 42. Ernst Gombrich, 'The Father of Art
positions and in a larger sense expose the dilemmas of cold-war liberalism History' , A Reading of the Lectures on Aesthetics of

from within. I will then return to The Story of Art, in order to discuss one of G. W F. Hegel (1770-1831)' in Tributes:
Interpreters of Our Cultural Tradition (Phaidon Press:
its important, but apparently ignored, aspects which helps point up its
Oxford, 1984), pp. 51-69.
cold- war liberal implications and to a degree explains its enduring success.
Finally, I indicate that it was because of the cold-war implications of
Gombrich's art history that during Gorbachev's Perestroika and especially
after the collapse of the USSR his art history, in parallel with the theories of
Popper and Hayek, gathered definite momentum in Russia as part of the
larger processes of de-sovietisation.

Two Frontal Attacks

Enjoying the tremendous success of The Story of Art, in the early 1950s
Gombrich fully entered into the cold- war battle of ideas against the major
historicist creed, Hegelianism.40 Popper called Hegel the father of modern
historicism and totalitarianism; Gombrich, in turn, named Hegel the father
of art history.42 Accordingly, a 'blood relationship' was drawn between
totalitarianism and art history which made it possible for Gombrich to apply
the political critique of totalitarianism to art history. This especially broke
out with his negative reviews of Arnold Hauser 's Social History of Art and

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43. Gombrich, 'Social History of Art' (1953), in
Meditations, pp. 86-94; Gombrich, 'André
Malraux and the Crisis of Expressionism' (1954),
in Meditations, pp. 78-85.
44. Gombrich, 'Preface' (1963) in Meditations,
p. viii. This largely matches with a specifically
cold- war configuration of the liberalism of 'vital
center' positioned between the vicious poles of
'Fascist right' and 'Communist left'. Cf. Arthur
Schlesinger, The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom
(Transaction Publishers: New Brunswick,
London, [1949] 1998).
45. Gombrich, 'André Malraux', p. 79.
46. Gombrich, 'The Social History of Art',
p. 93.
47. Gombrich, 'André Malraux', p. 79.
48. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', p. 118.
49. Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in
the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Phaidon:
London, [1960] 1977), pp. ix, 23-4.
Interestingly the Austrian School of political
economy also has been called the 'psychological
school of thought in economies'. Bruce Caldwell,
Hayek's Challenge: an Intellectual Biography of
F. A. Hayek (The University of Chicago Press:
Chicago, London, 2004), p. 112.
50. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', p. 107.
51. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', pp. 109-
10.
52. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', p. 110.
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Ernst Gombrich's Politics of Art History
André Malraux 's Voices of Silence. On this occasion, Gombrich commented: 'If
Mr. Hauser thus afforded me the opportunity of defining my attitude towards
the "Hegelian left" M. Malraux now represents the "Hegelian right" . . . '.
Gombrich believed that the history of the visual arts 'during this hectic
post-war period' was considered on the continent 'as the shortest route to
the mentality of civilization'. Styles, thus, 'express' collective entities
determining the history of civilization, be it class situation, in the case of
Hauser, or the spirit of an age, in the case of Malraux. Gombrich accused
both authors of discrediting the science of history which instead of pursuing
the 'past for its own sake' created a myth, a 'notion which has proved so
fateful and fatal to our time'. As a consequence of the cold- war liberal
'politics of knowledge', art historians were criticised as somehow complicit
in political violence of the 1930s. This was almost as serious an ideological
critique of art history as the critique of the intellectuals in totalitarian
regimes against whom Gombrich was fighting.
But the alternative understanding of style was not yet articulated and
grounded in theoretical terms, something Gombrich was concerned with in
'Art and Scholarship'. Written while Gombrich was working on his seminal
Art and Illusion, this lecture encapsulated the main ideological and
methodological concerns of that book; Gombrich's effort to test his
individualist and particularistic approach to style 'against psychological
evidence'. Predictably, in Art and Illusion, Gombrich credited Hayek's and
Popper's contributions to psychology as the basis for his anti-historicist
conception of style. Ideologically informed by cold- war liberalism,
Gombrich's prescriptions in 'Art and Scholarship' started to intertwine with
the principles of Austrian neoliberalism.
Outlining the Alternative
In 'Art and Scholarship' before going deeper into the art-historical problems of
style, Gombrich situated his position in an ideological framework. Clearly, his
theory of style was a politically conscious art-historical theory, as it was
conceived as an alternative to the two poles of 'perverted learning' - the
explosive of Marxist and Leninist and the Nazi myth. Again, it is in a
moralising rhetoric premised on this crude and undifferentiated
understanding of Marxism and National Socialism that Gombrich addressed
the issue of style. And in order to define the tasks of the 'real' art historian,
Gombrich reactivated the memory of one of the 'great masters', Vasari: 'The
real historian, Vasari claims, will pronounce judgments which are the soul of
history; he will discriminate the good from the better and the better from
the best and, most of all, he will investigate the causes and roots of styles, le
cause radici delle maniere'. For Gombrich, art history was an evaluative
etymology of styles especially relevant in 'those days of fragmentation' . There
was thus an implicit tension between the present in which the art historian
worked and the past which he or she invoked. The cold- war battle of ideas
was underlined by this mnemonic tension.
Apparently, what Gombrich suggested was not a neutral alternative to
politically engaged art history. To make this clear, Gombrich spoke against
the supposed aloofness of scholarship as against the committed status of science:
While we preach to the scientist to heed the consequences of his work, we believe and
make others believe, that we just indulge in a harmless game because it is fun or
because such leisurely indulgence produces wisdom where science only produces
OXFORD ART JOURNAL 33.2 2010 133
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Vardan Azatyan

gadgets. I see no evidence of that. But I hope we may tell the young that in trying to
preserve and recover the memories of the past events, to use Ranke's famous words,
'as they actually happened', we maintain and extend the dykes of reason in an area
which is particularly vulnerable to the springtides of myth.53 53. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', pp. 107-
08.

Another structural tension implied in Gombrich's art history, thus, was a 54. Popper, 'The Poverty', p. 1.
positivist tension between reason and myth. Both Gombrich and Popper had
55. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', p. 114.
a strong sympathy towards the methodologies of the natural sciences. For
instance, Popper declared that the social sciences need a shift equivalent to 56. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', p. 107.

the revolution Galileo made in the natural sciences if they want to advance. 57. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', p. 107.
Unsurprisingly, Gombrich literally repeated the same for art history: 'I think 58. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', p. 117.
if we are ever to have a more promising science of the causes and roots of
59. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', p. 117.
style, we shall have to catch up with the Galileian revolution'. Nonetheless,
Gombrich acknowledged: 'The really important
Gombrich saw art history as a specific science, a science of memory: 'The thing that I learned from him [Popper] was the
scholar is the guardian of memories'. As such the art historian appeared as methodological principle, that you can refute a

a mnemonic agent whose task is to construct and guard a story every theory but never prove one' . Gombrich, A Lifelong
Interest, p. 123.
community insists must be told about its own past. The Story of Art can be
interpreted as such a founding story for Gombrich's republic of scholars. 60. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', p. 119.

In this light, it comes as no surprise that such a vital task should be fulfilled by
a prudent scholarship that is politically conscious and ethically responsible.
Accordingly, Gombrich claimed that even though there is a need for an
exhaustive theory of style, there cannot be such a thing and that one 'may
find this a discouraging conclusion'. However, in obviously Popperian mode
and in the spirit of the 'liberalism of fear' he continued: 'The more
I become aware of our profound ignorance in this field, the more exciting do
I find it. Even to frame the right questions would seem to me eminently
worthwhile'. But this claim for an art history 'without illusions' was an
extremely militant one. Plunged into another illusion, the secularist myth of
Enlightenment, it saw itself as almost literally engaged in a witch-hunt of the
spirits of time, race, class, and so on.

The more we exorcize those spirits which still haunt the history of art, the more we
learn to look at the individual and particular work of art as the work of skilled hands
and great minds in response to concrete demands, the more will we teach authority
that what the artist needs is not more myth or more propaganda, but simply more
opportunities, opportunities for experiments, for trial and error, which alone can lead to
the emergence of those skills which can meet the ever changing challenge of here and
now.60

Gombrich's alternative to the Hegelian style was thus to bring the work of the
artist down from ideological utopianism and ground it in a practical realm of
'concrete demands', 'trial and error', and 'opportunities'. On the one hand,
this was in tune with Popper's scientific methodology and political
philosophy, but on the other, with the belief in a neoliberal economy in
which individuals should be provided with equal competitive opportunities if
they are to reach their purposes freely. As such, Gombrich's prescriptions are
at the crossing of Popper's Critical Rationalism and the Austrian School of
political economy.

Popper and Gombrich to Austrian Neoliberalism

Methodologically, the marginal utility theory encapsulates the main principles of

the Austrian School of Political Economy. According to Hayek, it is the School's
founder Carl Menger's individualist understanding of value that 'gave the new

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61. Hayek, 'Carl Menger', Economica, vol. 1, no.
4, November 1934, p. 399.
62. Caldwell, Hayek's Challenge, p. 25.
63. At the root of Austrian neoliberalism there
was a strong anti-Marxist reaction, see Eugen
Böhm-Bawerk, 'Karl Marx and the Close of His
System' (1896), in Paul M. Sweezy (ed.), Karl
Marx and the Close of His System and Böhm-Bawerk's
Criticism of Marx (Augustus M. Kelley: New York,
1949), pp. 3-118.
64. For the discussion of these principles in
Menger and their further elaboration by Hayek,
see Caldwell, Hayek's Challenge, pp. 17ff.
65. Thomas A. Boylan, 'Challenging Popperian
Rationality: Wittgenstein and Quine
Reconsidered' , in Popper and Economic Methodology,
p. 59.
66. Popper, Unended Quest, pp. 117-18.
67. Sheldon Richmond, Aesthetic Criteria:
Gombrich and the Philosophies of Science of Popper and
Polanyi (Rodopi: Amsterdam, Atlanta, 1994),
p. 10. Actually Richmond somewhat simplifies
the zero method, since it not only implies that the
works of art are the outcome of rational actions
but that artists' actions can be explained rationally
according to the logic of the situation in which
these actions are performed. In fact the so-called
zero method and situational logic are not clearly
differentiated either by Popper or Gombrich: they
almost always overlap. For the problematic status
of zero method in Popper's thought, see Calvin
Hayes, Popper, Hayek, and the Open Society
(Routledge: London, New York, 2009), p. lOlff.
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Ernst Gombrich's Politics of Art History
school its special character'. Underlying marginal utility theory is the belief
that 'subjective valuations placed by individuals on things that they believe
will satisfy their needs are the origins of all economic activity'. These
valuations, in turn, depend on the quantity of available goods: the less you
have of what you need the most, the more valuable it is. This is a theory
that defines the value of goods not by the cost of their production, as
assumed in Marxist theory, but by supply and demand relations, in other
words, marketability.
Marginal utility theory entails and is constituted by other important and
interrelated principles that taken together constitute the methodological
apparatus of Austrian neoliberalism, especially in its later developments,
namely: methodological individualism (individuals are the final points for
explaining social and economic phenomena), situational logic (individual
evaluations are made within the logic of the situation formed in given
supply-demand relations), institutional approach (rational individual actions
issue in unintended results that are important in the formation of social
institutions), and traditionalism (individual actions themselves are part of the
traditions of a civilization in which they take place). All these principles
were advanced by Hayek in the cold-war context as remedies against
socialist, especially Marxist, theories of society and economy and were thus
viewed as politically urgent. Interestingly, as Thomas A. Boylan points out:
Popper's contribution to the methodology of the social sciences was centered on the
rationality principle and its role within the framework of his situational analysis. This
was critically influenced by what Popper perceived as the method of the most advanced
theoretical social science, economics. Hayek was clearly a pivotal presence in this,
since Popper, on his own admission, 'was particularly impressed by Hayek's formulation
that economics is the "logic of choice"'. This led Popper to his formulation of the 'logic
of the situations'.65
Popper himself openly stated that his 'zero method' of analysing the logic of
situations was but an introduction of marginal utility theory into the social
sciences:
The method of situational analysis, which I first added to The Poverty in 1938, and
later explained a little more fully in Chapter 14 of The Open Society, was developed
from what I had previously called the 'zero method'. The main point here was an
attempt to generalize the method of economic theory (marginal utility theory) so as to
become applicable to the other theoretical social sciences. In my later formulations,
this method consists of constructing a model of the social situation, including
especially the institutional situation, in which an agent is acting, in such a manner as
to explain the rationality (the zero character) of his action. Such models, then, are the
testable hypothesis of the social sciences; and those models that are 'singular', more
especially, are the (in principle testable) singular hypothesis of history.66 (Popper's
emphasis)
Ironically, the three methodological aspects of Popper's influence on Gombrich
outlined by Sheldon Richmond were actually neoliberal economic methods
Popper himself borrowed from Hayek and critically elaborated: '(1) We
should assume that works of art are the outcome of rational actions (the
zero-method). (2) The task of art history should be to explain individual
works of art as the work of individual artists with individual aims
(methodological individualism). (3) We should assume that the problems of
the artist, and his style and techniques are part of traditions (situational
logic)'.6 We can say then that Gombrich's antitoxins to historicist and holist
theories of style are neoliberal economic methods processed through
OXFORD ART JOURNAL 33.2 2010 135
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Vardan Azatyan

Popper's social methodology and yoked to Schlosser 's individualism. This

combination of different currents of thought in Gombrich was not, however,
unproblematic. The main problem had to do with a possible loss of 68. Hacohen, Karl Popper, pp. 449-50.
unchangeable and objective criteria for explaining stylistic changes if the
69. 'The Logic of Vanity Fair' was written in
latter are seen as by definition engaged in the 'ever changing challenge of
1 965 on the occasion of Popper's knighthood, but
here and now'. One can interpret this as a methodological consequence of an was first published only in 1 974 when Gombrich
ideological divergence between Gombrich 's and Popper's humanist himself had already been knighted for two years.

progressivism and Hayek's market fundamentalism:

70. Gombrich, 'The Logic of Vanity Fair', p. 60.

He [Gombrich] and Popper felt that Hayek, an established conservative academic, 71. Gombrich, 'The Logic of Vanity Fair', p. 60.
belonged to different social and political circles than their own. But Hayek ended up
influencing the direction of Popper's political philosophy. Popper wrote The Open
Society as a non-Marxist socialist, impatient with laissez-faire, but he published it,
nearly three years later, as a welfare liberal sensitive to libertarian concerns. In
between, in 1943-4, he read Hayek's methodological essays and The Road to Serfdom.
His political shift was not radical, but it was noticeable, and it became pronounced in
post war years. Hayek convinced him that both socialism and the enthusiasm for
scientific planning could undermine liberty, and he lost some confidence in his
progressivism.68

Popper's libertarian shift had consequences for Gombrich both in terms of his
adoption of neoliberal economic methods as alternatives to historicism and the
unease he felt towards them. This was made an object of methodological
discussion by Gombrich after the publication of Art and Illusion, in an essay
not accidentally dedicated to Popper, <The Logic of Vanity Fair: Alternatives
to Historicism in the Study of Fashions, Style and Taste'.

Marginal Utility Theory of Art History and Its Discontents

'The Logic of Vanity Fair' was Gombrich 's attempt to go beyond the negativist
approach of only criticising historicism, towards a positive approach of providing
alternatives. This, to an extent, was a move from the 'liberalism of fear' to
Popper's 'modelling' approach, in itself informed by the marginal utility
theory. Remarkably, in the opening lines of the text, Gombrich situated his
position vis-à-vis Popper's critique of historicism that he first heard at
Hayek's seminar when he had just arrived in Britain:

In the spring of 1936 I attended the meeting of Prof, von Hayek's London Seminar in
which Karl Popper (not yet Sir Karl) presented the arguments which he later published
under the title The Poverty of Historicism. This deadly analysis of all forms of social
determinism derived its urgency from the menace of totalitarian philosophies which
nobody at that time could forget for a moment. But it also had a bearing on my own
field, the history of art and civilization.70

Once again, along the lines of the 'politics of knowledge', Gombrich invoked
the menace of totalitarian philosophies and their mnemonic urgency. He then
pointed to the bearing of Popper's political philosophy on his art history and
Hayek's London Seminar as its specific context. This triangulation of Popper's
political critique of historicism, Hayek, and exilic memory was set as a
background for his narrative to come. Gombrich then smoothly wove this
background with a specifically art-historical problem of contextual references
to the works of art he was concerned with back in Vienna: 'From my
student days in Vienna I had shared this concern, but I had become
increasingly skeptical of the solutions offered by Neo- Hegelian
Geistesgeschichte and Neo-Marxist Sociologism'. Thus, rather reductively,

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72. Gombrich, 'The Logic of Vanity Fair',
pp. 60-1.
73. Cited in Gombrich, 'The Logic of Vanity
Fair', p. 61.
74. Cited in Gombrich, 'The Logic of Vanity
Fair', p. 61.
75. Perhaps, the most orthodox use of neoliberal
economic methods by Gombrich can be found in
his 'Supply and Demand in the Evolution of
Styles: The Example of International Gothic', in
E. Fox Keller and others (ed.), Three Cultures:
Fifteen Lectures on the Confrontation of Academic
Cultures (Universitaire Pers Rotterdam: Haugue,
1989), pp. 127-72.
76. Gombrich, 'The Logic of Vanity Fair', p. 75.
It needs to be mentioned that here Gombrich only
readdressed more explicitly the argument he had
proposed back in 1956 in 'The Vogue of Abstract
Art', in Meditations, pp. 143-50.
77. Gombrich, 'The Logic of Vanity Fair', p. 76.
78. Gombrich, A Lifelong Interest, p. 164.
79. 'Style' was first published in International
Encyclopedia of Social Science, vol. 15 (Free Press:
New York, 1968), pp. 352-61. It was reprinted
in Donald Preziosi (ed.), Art of Art History: a
Critical Anthology (Oxford University Press:
Oxford; New York, 1998), pp. 150-63. One can
read this essay as a confrontation with Meyer
Schapiro's 'Style' which Preziosi reprinted side by
side with Gombrich 's 'Style' in this first edition of
his anthology. Meyer Schapiro, 'Style', in Theory
and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist, and Society
(George Braziller: New York, 1994), pp. 51-
102.
80. Gombrich, 'Style', in Preziosi, 'Art of Art
History', p. 161.
81. Gombrich, 'Style', p. 161.
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Ernst Gombrich 's Politics of Art History
Gombrich identified the 'totalitarian philosophies' in the methodologies of art
history in the prewar Continent and called for an alternative: 'Today after thirty
years, it is perhaps less the "poverty of historicism" that needs pointing out, than
the need for an alternative'.
Gombrich quoted two passages from The Poverty and The Open Society to
illustrate the kind of alternative he had in mind. The first, which he had
already used in Art and Illusion, clarified Popper's 'modelling' approach:
We need studies, based on methodological individualism, of the social institutions
through which ideas may spread and captivate individuals ... our individualistic and
institutional ist models of such collective entities as nations, or governments, or
markets, will have to be supplemented by models of political situations as well as of
social movements such as scientific and industrial progress.73
And in order to specify Popper's idea, Gombrich presented the second
quotation which is nothing but Popper's example to illustrate the marginal
utility theory: 'If a man wishes to buy a house, we can safely assume that he
does not wish to raise the market price of houses. But the very fact that he
appears on the market as a buyer will tend to raise the market price'. In
fact, this passage is from The Open Society's fourteenth chapter where, as
Popper acknowledged, he generalised the marginal utility theory to make it
applicable to the social sciences as a whole. Gombrich consciously applied
Popper's elaborations of neoliberal economic methodology to art history as
an alternative to historicism. This is most obvious in the second part of the
essay characteristically entitled 'Competition and Inflation'.
Here Gombrich's discussion of situational logic smoothly brought him to
what he called 'polarising issues', the theme of the third part of 'The Logic
of Vanity Fair'. By polarising issues Gombrich meant the extra-artistic
factors, most importantly political interests, that polarise art world. This
subject, to be sure, resonated with the polarising rhetoric of the cold war.
So much so that Gombrich chose the cold-war cultural confrontation
between abstract art and Socialist Realism as the most relevant example of
polarising issues: 'The most conspicuous polarising issue in contemporary
painting is a case in point'. Arguing that artists cannot get out of this
polarisation, however much they may want to, Gombrich claimed that 'by
and large, we find that the geographical distribution of the most vocal
partisans pro and con abstract art coincides with the cold- war frontiers'.
This also referred to art historians as they too are 'influenced by fashions' .
In his essay 'Style', one can already see Gombrich situating his own quest for an
alternative theory of style in the cold- war context. Drawing on what he called
the 'change of front' characteristic of the bipolar world, Gombrich again
brought up the example of abstract art. Accordingly, after being hailed in
revolutionary Russia, it was then repressed by Stalinism which made it
possible 'for abstract to be used as a subsidiary weapon of the cold war, in
which it now has come to stand for freedom of expression'. Gombrich
believed that in such circumstances there are always political stakes involved
in the work of an art historian and that there are two lessons the art
historian should learn from this. First, is the '"feedback" character of social
theories': being caught up in the cold- war dialectic of confrontation, critics,
and politicians in the West also 'encourage a political interpretation of
stylistic changes'. The second lesson is that one cannot avoid this dilemma:
'Once an issue has been raised in this form, once a badge has been adopted
and the flag hoisted, it becomes hard, if not impossible, to ignore the social
OXFORD ART JOURNAL 33.2 2010 137
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Vardan Azatyan

aspect'. However, Gombrich saw this as a dangerous and negative situation

that needed to be addressed in order to ' underline the responsibility' of
interpreting style. Thus, in Gombrich 's hand the example of the cold war 82. Gombrich, 'Style', p. 162.
functioned as a moral reminder.
83. Gombrich, 'Style', p. 162.
But the political stakes involved in polarising issues, to an extent undermined
the pluralism implied in situational analysis. From Gombrich 's discussion of 84. Gombrich, 'The Logic of Vanity Fair', p. 92.

these issues in <The Logic of Vanity Fair', it came out that economically 85. Popper, 'Gombrich on Situational Logic and
defined competitive situations are inseparably connected to polarising political Periods and Fashion in Art', in Paul A. Schilpp
(ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Popper (Open Court:
and /or technological issues that are often decisive in determining the choices
La Salle, 1974), p. 1177.
of individual agents and thus the very logic of situation. Additionally, in
86. Popper, 'Gombrich on Situational Logic',
order to tackle determinist methodologies, the proponent of situational
p. 1178. For 'Art and Self- Transcendence', see
analysis is in danger of encouraging success-oriented opportunism, something Ideals and Idols, pp. 123-30.
that was implied in Gombrich 's proposal in 'Art and Scholarship' to provide
87. Popper, 'Gombrich on Situational Logic',
artists 'simply more opportunities'. It is with this dilemma that Gombrich p. 1177.
concluded 'The Logic of Vanity Fair' and invited Popper to respond:
88. Cited in Gombrich, 'Art and
Self-Transcendence', p. 125.
I certainly would not want them [the results he proposed] to provide ammunition for
those who talk of the 'inevitability' of any particular development in modern art, nor 89. Cited in Thomas A. Boylan and Paschal
would I want to cheer the trimmers and opportunist on their way to success. I would F. O 'Gorman, 'Popper, Economic Methodology
therefore not have ventured to draw such dangerous conclusions from the flimsy and Contemporary Philosophy of Science', in
premises of Vanity Fair if I did not hope that they may provoke Sir Karl Popper to a Popper and Economic Methodology, p. 23.

critical reaction that will restore the independence of art from social pressures and
90. Popper, 'Gombrich on Situational Logic',
vindicate the objectivity of its values.84 p. 1176.

91. Popper, 'Gombrich on Situational Logic',

As Gombrich first of all owed the situational analysis to Popper, naturally the p. 1177.
latter became the addressee of his concerns. But even though this was 'a 92. Popper, 'Gombrich on Situational Logic',
most formidable challenge' for Popper, he nonetheless contended that p. 1176.
'Gombrich is not wholly serious in his last paragraph'. And apparently not
93. Popper, 'Gombrich on Situational Logic',
to hurt Gombrich, Popper partly based his answer on Gombrich 's own text, p. 1177.
'Art and Self-Transcendence' as it 'contains what I now suspect he wanted
94. Popper, 'Gombrich on Situational Logic',
me to say in reply to his contribution to the present volume' . With all the p. 1177.
theoretical considerations contained in Popper's reply, it was evidently
intended to encourage Gombrich not to lose optimism in fighting 'arrogant
and clever stupidities of historicism, and of modernism'.
While elaborating on Gombrich 's challenge, Popper brought in his
conception of World 3, which is neither the world of things or facts
(World 1), nor the world of subjective feelings (World 2), but the world
of 'objective contents of thought'. What was especially important for
Popper in World 3 in this regard was that it could empower the individual to
transcend the self by 'taking the work itself, and the standards which it
represents, as more significant than our own feelings and ambitions'. As
such World 3 has 'its own non arbitrary domain of autonomy'. Art for
Popper is a World 3 phenomenon and together with Gombrich he believed
that artists are engaged in the process of problem solving posed by the
medium and traditions of art itself, which is nothing but the constellation of
'great old standards'.
But, this conservative perspective, in which the contemporary art world
appeared as debilitating and bound to decline, did not meet Gombrich 's
challenge as it 'transcended' the problem of polarising issues. And Popper
admitted that 'we cannot "restore the independence of art" or free it of
"social pressures'". Instead, Popper's prescription was the same ethically
informed cold-war liberal plea for minimal action that Gombrich found
outdated in post-war context:

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 Ernst Gombrich's Politics of Art History

But as long as we can fight them with good reasons, there is no need for despair. We
may succeed in showing that these mistaken intellectualist theories of art, both that of
art as the expression of the age and that of art as self-expression, are intellectually
95. Popper, 'Gombrich on Situational Logic', empty; and we can hope that there will arise again young artists . . . gifted and sane
p. 1180. enough to be deaf to the preaching of their fashionable teachers and critics.95

96. Müller, 'Fear and Freedom', p. 59.

This was a strategy of 'moral-political psychologizing' so characteristic of
97. Michael Ann Holly, 'Mourning and Method' ,
cold- war liberalism. It shifted the heart of the problem from the logic of
The Art Bulletin, vol. 84, no. 4, December 2002,
p. 660.
the situation to the moral position of an agent who should be able to
understand this logic and fight it in a battle of ideas. Gombrich apparently
98. Gombrich, 'An Autobiographical Sketch',
p. 30.
expected Popper to say more than this, but Popper only reaffirmed the
'guardian of memories' status of scholars whose task was but to show the
99. Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship', p. 112.
poverty of historicism.
100. Gombrich, 'An Autobiographical Sketch',
p. 21.

101. Gombrich, 'Obituary -Julius von Schlosser',

Schlosser's 'Afterlife' and the Politics of Writing
p. 99.
According to Gombrich and Popper, scholarship also belonged to the World 3.
The scholar was positioned in the schism within contemporaneity and acted as
its conservative critic. Conscious anachronism, thus, became a moral-political
imperative and an exilic strategy fulfilling the work of mourning which
'validates death in the present while preserving the life of the past'. Most
importantly this had to be the past of one's own scholarly traditions, whose
autonomy and integrity should be preserved in order not to become literally
homeless. Therefore, any art-historical use of non art-historical method, such
as situational analysis, should not transgress one's own academic discourse
but keep alive and improve its 'great old standards'. For Gombrich, these
were of course the traditions of Viennese School of Art History and
specifically Schlosser's art history:

My development therefore, intellectually moved away from the approach I had learned
from Max Dvorak [history of art as the history of Spirit]. This move was certainly
encouraged by Schlosser, although he would never have said a word against a former
colleague. ... He was really steeped in the past and disliked any stereotypes of this
kind, without specifically condemning them.98

In the face of the menace of totalitarian philosophies and the cold- war battle of
ideas, Gombrich in fact did condemn 'stereotypes of this kind'. Being merged
with Popper's Critical Rationalism and political philosophy, as well as
neoliberal economic methodologies, Schlosser's art-historical individualism
acquired a moral-political urgency during the cold war. In 1957, in 'Art and
Scholarship', Gombrich stated that even though his sympathies were divided in
his student years, now he believed that 'Schlosser's mellow scepticism was
justified' .
It seems indicative that Gombrich wrote of himself as a scholar almost exactly
what he had written about Schlosser: 'The only strange and astonishing fact
about my long life is that in a period which was full of dangers, of horrors
which were grim indeed, I managed by and large to lead what is known as
the life of cloistered scholar'.100 While this was almost the first line with
which Gombrich started his autobiography, in 1939, still young, he
concluded Schlosser's obituary in the following way: 'In times like ours he
chose to be an "anachronism" in the very best sense of the word'. Thus, it
is as if his own life as a scholar was the 'afterlife' of his teacher and the
Viennese traditions he left behind. The Story of Art inspired by the 'Household
Gods' of Vienna is the first major outcome of this exilic strategy of

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Vardan Azatyan

mourning: 'though the book was written in England and in English, the context
is still that of the Vienna of my youth' .
Since the rise of the New Art History, The Story of Art has been criticised for 102. E. H. Gombrich, 'Old Masters and Other
formalism, patriarchalism, and eurocentrism as well as defended by Household Gods', in The Essential Gombrich, p. 37.
sympathetic commentators. But perhaps the most important aspect of The
103. Bradford Collins, 'Review - History of
Story of Art, which explains its ideological motivations and enduring success, Art; The Story of Art', Art Journal, vol. 48, no. 1 ,
is apparently ignored. I mean the very first precondition Gombrich set before Spring 1989, pp. 92-3, 95.
himself in its preface: to write in the plainest language possible.1 The 104. Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon:
clarity of language was not a matter of a simple writing technique but rather Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art's Histories

a moral-political imperative that, firstly, would insure the unaltered 'afterlife' (Routledge: London, New York, 1999), p. 5.

of the past traditions, and secondly, would be a decisive weapon in the cold- 105. James Elkins, Stories of Art (Routledge:
war battle of ideas against totalitarian art histories that contemporise the past New York, London, 2002), pp. 57-65.
to satisfy the present. Not surprisingly, Gombrich criticised both Hauser and 106. Richard Woodfield, 'Gombrich's Story of
Malraux for using what he saw as scientific jargon. Thus, it is a moral Art', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 36, no.

responsibility of an art historian to discuss the history of art plainly in 3, July 1996, pp. 313-16.

opposition to 'those who misuse "scientific" language not to enlighten but to 107. Gombrich, The Story of Art (Phaidon Press:
impress the reader, who are "talking down" to us - from the clouds'. London, New York, 1995), p. 8.

Interestingly, the clarity standard referred not only to the use of language, 108. Gombrich, 'The Social History of Art',
but also to die language used: English was seen as an alternative to what was p. 91; 'André Malraux', p. 80.
perceived as the obscurity of German art-historical writing. Discussing Erwin 109. Gombrich, The Story of Art, p. 8.
Panofsky's immigration to the USA, Gombrich noted that Panofsky:
110. Gombrich, 'Obituary - Erwin Panofsky',
'dissociates himself from the "unnecessary recondite and downright The Burlington Magazine, vol. 110, no. 783, June
imprecise" language in German art-historical writing. He had meanwhile 1968, p. 359.
learned to present these complexities lucidly and correctly in his adopted
111. See Gombrich, 'Preface' to Meditations,
language'. One can see this as a linguistic dimension of their geographic p. ix; Popper, The Open Society, vol. 2, p. 296
immigration. (n. 50).
The plea for the clarity of theoretical language was also of a piece with 112. Cited in Jeremy Shearmur, The Political
Gombrich 's and Popper's positivist inclination for bringing humanities closer Thought of Karl Popper (Routledge: London,
to the ideals of preciseness in sciences, so strong in the traditions of British New York, 1996), p. 5.

liberal political philosophy. Popper was perfectly clear about the 113. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom was first
immediate moral-political stakes involved in the task of a scientist to keep his published in Russian in 1991 . The Open Society and

or her language clear: The Poverty were correspondingly published in

1992 and 1993.

This, I believe, is one of the greatest and most urgent responsibilities of scientists. It
may be the greatest. For this task is closely linked with the survival of an open society
and of democracy. An open society (that is, a society based on ideas of not merely
tolerating dissenting opinions but respecting them) and democracy (that is, a form of
government devoted to the protection of an open society) cannot flourish if science
becomes the exclusive possession of a closed set of specialists.112

The enduring success of both The Story of Art and The Open Society is to be
explained by precisely this urge to popularise the ideals of the 'open society'
in the cold- war battle of ideas. The Story of Art should be considered as
Gombrich 's most important contribution to this battle.

On the Other Side of the Iron Curtain

The cold- war battle of ideas also had consequences after the collapse of the
former Soviet Union. Immediately after the fall of the USSR, Popper's and
Hayek's seminal works were published in Russian. The activities of
numerous branches of the Open Society Institute in ex- Soviet republics were
instrumental in spreading the ideas of individual freedom and the open
society as compelling antitoxins to Soviet Marxism. Since Gorbachev's
Perestoika, Gombrich 's art history was also gathering momentum there.

140 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 33.2 2010

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114. V N. Grashchenkov, 'Ernst Gombrikh -
istorik i teoretik iskusstva, issledovatel i skeptik' ,
Sovetskoe iskusstvoznanie, no. 25, 1989,
pp. 268-74.
115. E. Kh. Gombrikh, Istoria iskusstva (AST:
Moscow, 1998). Interestingly, the translator of the
book, Valentina Kriuchkova, wrote a sympathetic
review of Gombrich's Art and Illusion back in 1 984
where she claimed that Gombrich's traditionalism
and defense of illusionism were valuable for Soviet
Marxist art history. V A. Kriuchkova, 'Problema
izobrazhenia v trudakh Ernsta Gombrikha' ,
Problema nasledia v teorii iskusstva (Iskusstvo:
Moscow, 1984), pp. 235-67.
116. Viacheslav Shestakov, 'Venskaya shkola
istorii iskusstva: genezis i sovremennost' ,
Iskusstvoznanie, no. 2, 2001, pp. 543-52.
117. Ernst Gombrikh, 'Mifologii Bottichelli.
Isledovania neoplatonicheskogo simvolizma',
Iskusstvoznanie, no. 2, 2002, p. 155. The
translation from Russian is mine.
118. Viacheslav Shestakov, Intellektualnaia
biografia Ernsta Gombrikha (RGGU: Moscow,
2006).
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Ernst Gombrich's Politics of Art History
Those aspects of Gombrich's art history that ran counter to Soviet Marxism
were particularly attractive to former Soviet- Russian art historians, namely
value pluralism, scepticism and Gombrich's intellectual friendship with
Popper. In 1998, The Story of Art was published in Russian. This
enthusiasm for Gombrich's art history in Russia peaked in the early 2000s
with the publications of Soviet- Russian art historian Viachislav Shestakov.
Shestakov provided a vignette that can give us some remarkable insight into
the cold-war stakes involved in Gombrich's art history inside the former
Soviet Union:
The attempts to publish E. Gombrich's books failed over the course of many years, as
they were countered by a hidden, but persistent unwillingness of the authorities to
provide the Soviet reader access to his works. I personally had to write reports
repeatedly to the Presidium of the Academy of Fine Arts of USSR with the proposal to
choose Gombrich as an honorary academician or to invite him to Moscow, for which I
had Gombrich's agreement. But I came to negative results.117
Given this art-historical enthusiasm for Gombrich in post-Soviet Russia, it is
not by chance that the first ever intellectual biography of Gombrich is now
available in Russian and authored by Shestakov himself. Published in
'post-cold war' Russia in 2006, it nicely coincided with the publication of
the pocket edition of The Story of Art in the 'post- cold war' West.
/ am indebted to Tsovinar Rostomyan, Lusine Chergeshtyan, Arevik Grigoryan and
Angela Harutyunyan without whose help this article would have been impossible to
write. I thank Meruzhan Harutyunyan for introducing me to the ideas of the
Austrian School of political economy as well as Andrew Hemingway for his valuable
comments on an early version of this text.
OXFORD ART JOURNAL 33.2 2010 141
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