Full Title: Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation Author: Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich (1909–2001) First Published: 1960 (based on the 1956 A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts) Significance: Widely regarded as one of the most influential works on art theory and the psychology of perception in the 20th century. Core Thesis: "Making Comes Before Matching" Gombrich challenges the traditional idea that artists simply "copy" what they see. Instead, he argues that visual perception is an active process of expectation, hypothesis, and correction . The artist does not paint what they see; they see what they paint.