Arts & Activities: The Story of Art: Pocket Edition

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The Story of Art: Pocket Edition

Jerome J. Hausman

THE STORY OF ART: Pocket Edition (2006; $19.95), by E.H. Gombrich. Phaidon Press, Inc.

I chuckle in remembering the publication of "big-little books" in the 1930s. Many children's classics were published in an abbreviated, small format: Treasure Island, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and so on. Now, at long last, we have one of the "classics" of art history!

Phaidon Press had commissioned Gombrich during World War II to write a history of art for young people. The result is a seminal work; it is one of the most accessible introductions to the history of the visual arts. There have been 16 editions of the book prior to the publication of this pocket edition.

The book's Introduction, "On Art and Artists," provides a useful starting point for discussions at the middle and high-school levels. Gombrich's starting point for his first chapter puts it pretty well: "We do not know how art began any more than we know how language started. If we take art to mean such activities as building temples and houses, making pictures and sculptures, or weaving patterns, there is no people in all the world without art."

Starting with the cave paintings at Lascaux, then discussing the art of Egypt, Greece, Rome and Byzantium, Islam and China, the Medieval and Renaissance periods, and the roots and flowering of Modernism, Gombrich tells a marvelous story. It's all very compact in this edition!