“The Chinese were the first people who did not think the making of pictures as a rather menial task, but who placed the painter on the same level as the inspired poet. The religions of the East taught that nothing was more important than the right kind of meditation… Religious art in China came to be employed… as an aid to the practice of meditation. Devout artists began to paint water and mountains in a spirit of reverence, not in order to teach any particular lesson, nor merely as decorations, but to provide material for deep thought. Their pictures on silk scrolls were kept in precious containers and only unrolled in quiet moments, to be looked at and pondered over as one might open a book of poetry and read and reread a beautiful verse…
“Chinese artists did not go out into the open, to sit down in front of some motif and sketch it. [T]hey travel[ed] and contemplate[d] the beauty of nature so as to capture the moods of the landscape. When they came home they would then try to recapture these moods by putting together their images of pine-trees, rocks and clouds much in the way a poet might string together a number of images which had come into his mind during a walk… The Chinese, therefore, consider it childish to look for details in pictures and then to compare them with the real world. They want, rather, to find in them the visible traces of the artist’s enthusiasm.”
Ernst H. Gombrich, “Chapter 7: Looking Eastwards,” The Story of Art, 15th edition
“Pope Gregory the Great… reminded the [Christians] who were against all paintings that many members of the Church could neither read nor write, and that, for the purpose of teaching them, these images were as useful as the pictures in a picture-book are for children, ‘Painting can do for the illiterate what writing does for those who can read,’ he said…
“But it is clear that the type of art which was thus admitted was of a rather restricted kind. If Gregory’s purpose was to be served, the story had to be told as clearly and simply as possible, and anything that might divert from this main and sacred aim should be omitted.
“At first glance, such a picture looks rather stiff and rigid. There is nothing of the mastery of movement and expression which was the pride of Greek art… If the picture looks rather primitive to us, it must be because the artist wanted to be simple. The Egyptian ideas about the importance of clarity had returned with great force because of the stress which the Church laid on clarity. But the forms which the artists used in this new attempt were not the simple forms of primitive art, but the developed forms of Greek painting. Thus Christian art of the Middle Ages became a curious mixture of primitive and sophisticated methods.”
Ernst H. Gombrich, “Chapter 6: A Parting of Ways,” The Story of Art, 15th edition
“Another new task which the Romans set the artists revived a custom which we know from the ancient Orient. They, too, wanted to proclaim their victories and to tell the stories of their campaigns. Trajan, for instance, erected a huge column to show a whole picture chronicle of his war and victories in Dacia (the modern Romania). There we see the Roman legionaries embarking, encamping and fighting. All the skill and achievements of centuries of Greek art were used in these feats of war reporting. But the importance which Romans attached to accurate rendering of all details, and to a clear narrative which would impress the feats of the campaign on the stay-at-homes, rather changed the character of art. The main aim was no longer that of harmony, beauty or dramatic expression. The Romans were a matter-of-fact people…”
Ernst H. Gombrich, “Chapter 5: World Conquerors,” The Story of Art, 15th edition
“The fact is probably that by this time, the period of Hellenism, art had largely lost its old connection with magic and religion. Artists became interested in the problems of their craft for its own sake, and the problem of how to represent such a dramatic contest [of Lacoön and the snakes] with all its movement, its expression and its tension, was just the type of task which would test an artist’s mettle.”
Ernst H. Gombrich, “Chapter 4: The Realm of Beauty,” The Story of Art, 15th edition
“Every Greek work from that great period [from 7th to 5th century B.C.] shows… wisdom and skill in the distribution of figures, but what the Greeks of the time valued even more was something else: the newfound freedom to represent the human body in any position or movement could be used to reflect the inner life of the figures represented. We hear from one of his disciples that this is what the great philosopher Socrates, who had himself been trained as a sculptor, urged artists to do. They should represent the ‘workings of the soul’ by accurately observing the way ‘feelings affected the body in action.’”
Ernst H. Gombrich, “Chapter 3: The Great Awakening,” The Story of Art, 15th edition
“[A] combination of geometric regularity and keen observation of nature is characteristic of all Egyptian art. We can study it best in the reliefs and paintings that adorned the wall of the tomb. The word ‘adorned,’ it is true, may hardly fit an art which was meant to be seen by no one but the dead man’s soul. In fact, these works were not meant to be enjoyed. They, too, were meant to ‘keep alive’…
“[L]ooking at them for the first time, one may find them rather bewildering. The reason is that the Egyptian painters had quite a different way from ours of representing real life. Perhaps this is connected to the different purpose their paintings had to serve. What mattered most was not prettiness but completeness. So they did not set out to sketch nature as it appeared to them from any fortuitous angle. They drew from memory, according to strict rules which ensured that everything that had to go into the picture would stand out in perfect clarity. Their method, in fact, resembled that of the map-makers than that of the painter…
“Everything had to be represented from its most characteristic angle… It must not be thought that Egyptian artists thought that human beings looked like that. They merely followed a rule which allowed them to include everything in the human form that they considered important. Perhaps this strict adherence to the rule had something to do with their magic purpose. For how could a man with his arm ‘foreshortened’ or ‘cut off’ bring or receive the required offerings to the dead?”
Ernst H. Gombrich, “Chapter 2: Art for Eternity,” The Story of Art, 15th edition
“[W]e are not likely to understand the art of the past if we are quite ignorant of the aims it had to serve. The further we go back in history, the more definite but also the more strange are the aims which art was supposed to serve… We call these people ‘primitive’ not because they are simpler than we are—their processes of thought are often more complicated than ours—but because they are closer to the state from which mankind once emerged. Their huts are there to shelter them from the rain, wind and sunshine and the spirits which produce them; images are made to protect them against other powers which are, to them, as real as the forces of nature. Pictures and statues, in other words, are used to work magic.
“Many of [these] artists’ works are meant to play a part in… strange rituals, and what matters then is not whether the sculpture or painting is beautiful by our standards, but whether it ‘works,’ that is to say, whether it can perform the required magic…
“[Many proofs] of tribal skill should warn us against the belief that their work looks odd because they cannot do any better. It is not their standard of craftsmanship which is different than ours, but their ideas. It is important to realize this from the outset, because the whole story of art is not a story of progress in technical proficiency, but a story of changing ideas and requirements.”
Ernst E. Gombrich, “Chapter 1: Strange Beginnings,” The Story of Art, 15th edition
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