Reflections on teaching art history in art schools paper given, 4th January, 1966

With the creation of the Dip. A. D., formal teaching of art history became mandated in the Uk’s art schools. In a talk to university heads of art history, who would be required to train the required art historians, Gombrich addressed the problem of what they should teach. Far from advocating the common university curriculum, he recommended drawing upon local traditions of art and craft practices. While suggesting that students should have a basic awareness of art history’s historical map, if they should become needed to teach the subject, ‘I should try to investigate with them what it was like to be an artist in the past, what tasks he had to perform and in what concrete contexts the works of art took shape which we still admire.

Sobre la interpretación de la obra de arte. El qué, el porqué y el cómo

El noviembre del 2001 fallecía en Londres Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001); pocos días antes le habíamos enviado el presente artículo para su aprobación. Su contribución se convierte ahora en homenaje y recuerdo para el último maestro de toda una gran generación de estudiosos del arte, entre los que cabría incluir a Erwin Panofsky, Rudolf Wittkower o Nikolaus Pevsner. El texto, hasta ahora inédito, corresponde a una intervención del profesor Gombrich en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad Complutense, el 30 de enero de 1992, en la víspera de su nombramiento como Doctor Honoris Causa. Con esta intervención se clausuraba un seminario sobre su obra y sus ideas, organizado por el profesor Valeriano Bozal en el Departamento de Historia del Arte Contemporáneo, en el que habían intervenido distintos especialistas en historiografía del arte y en la obra de Gombrich. Tras formular las tres preguntas que pueden definir las tareas que han ocupado a los estudiosos del arte ––el qué, el porqué y el cómo––, Gombrich describe la que ha sido su principal tarea y preocupación durante toda su vida académica: la pregunta sobre el porqué de una obra de arte, y muy especialmente, la de por qué a lo largo de la historia, durante distintas épocas, estilos y lugares, se ha representado la realidad de maneras completamente distintas

To think or to do: the impact of assessment and locomotion orientation on the Michelangelo phenomenon

This work examines how individual differences in assessment and locomotion shape goal pursuits in ongoing relationships. The Michelangelo phenomenon describes the role that close partners play in affirming versus disaffirming one another's pursuit of the ideal self. Using data from a longitudinal study of ideal goal pursuits among newly committed couples, we examined whether the action orientation that characterizes locomotion creates an optimal environment in which to give and receive affirmation, whereas the evaluative orientation that characterizes assessment creates a suboptimal environment for giving and receiving affirmation. Consistent with hypotheses, locomotion is positively associated with partner affirmation, movement toward the ideal self, and couple wellbeing, whereas parallel associations with assessment are negative. We also explore the behavioral mechanisms that may account for such associations

Drawings as representations of children's conceptions

Drawings are often used to get an idea of children's conceptions. Doing so takes for granted an unambiguous relation between conceptions and their representations in drawings. This study was undertaken to gain knowledge of the relation between children's conceptions and their representation of these conceptions in drawings. A theory of contextualization was the basis for finding out how children related their contextualization of conceptions in conceptual frameworks to their contextualization of drawings in pictorial convention. Eighteen children were interviewed in a semi-structured method while they were drawing the Earth. Audio-recorded interviews, drawings and notes were analysed to find the cognitive and cultural intentions behind the drawings. Also, even children who demonstrated alternative conceptions of the Earth in the interviews still followed cultural conventions in their drawings. Thus, these alternative conceptions could not be deduced from the drawings. The results indicate that children's drawings can be used to grasp children's conceptions only by considering the meaning the children themselves give to their own drawings