Far from announcing a defect, Schlagman’s note about the lacunae underscores a parallel story of art that Gombrich chose to tell with illustrations alone, almost as a series of visual footnotes to the written narrative. I would like to count myself among the ‘very astute’, but, alas, I was only astute enough to read the preface and would not have otherwise noticed the missing pictures. ‘Only the very astute reader may notice that the small illustration “sign-offs” that the author used previously at the end of each chapter, but did not refer to in his story, are missing from this edition, as in this layout they would have served no purpose.’ ‘The text itself remains identical to that of the 16th edition and all of the images illustrated there are included here,’ writes Schlagman. In it, he reminds the reader about a peculiarity in Gombrich’s initial presentation his subtle attempt, perhaps, to challenge the traditional subordination of illustrations to text in art-historical studies. Since the great art historian passed away in 2001, Schlagman penned the preface for the pocket edition. For the first time, the story of art is being told by words without the pictures that animate them.īut the real novelty is revealed by Phaidon publisher Richard Schlagman, who worked closely on earlier editions with Gombrich himself. Reducing the size forced Phaidon to make a bold change in the layout: separating the text from the illustrations, which are now grouped together in the latter half of the book.

The most striking feature of this latest edition, from 2006, is the book’s size, which has been reduced from the familiar, large-format paperback to a portable pocket-book.

The publisher, Phaidon, has been reviving The Story of Art since its debut in 1950 (to date, there have been 16 editions and 39 reprints). Gombrich’s classic, The Story of Art, has been floating around for a while.

The story of art by h gombrich