Publisher's Synopsis
In this new volume - the tenth in the series of his collected essays - Professor Gombrich returns to themes that have long preoccupied him in his study of visual imagery of all kinds. Central to these essays is a consuming interest in the functions of images, and how these functions - and the images - change over time.
In wide-ranging studies of both 'high' and 'low' art, from fresco painting, altar painting, the International Gothic Style and outdoor sculpture to doodles, pictorial instructions, caricature and political propaganda, Gombrich discusses the role of supply and demand, competition and display, the 'ecology' of images and the idea of 'feedback' in the interplay of means and ends, as developing skills in turn stimulate new demands. He explores further aaspects of the uses of images in his essays on the hanging of pictures and on the use (or misuse) of images as historical evidence.
