When Art and Illusion was published in 1960, it was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. In an obituary appearing in Art in American shortly after Gombrich's death in 2001, critics Stephanie Cash and David Ebony provide a retrospective of Gombrich's work. They hail Art and Illusion as Gombrich's "most influential volume." They also note that Gombrich "rejected the notion that artistic change was the result of a collective mind or 'spirit of the age.' Instead Gombrich preferred to focus on how individual artists dealt with specific technical problems."

The importance of a book can often be determined by the amount of critical response it generates over the years, and by this standard, Art and Illusion has demonstrated its ongoing influence from the time of its publication to the present day. Moreover, the intellectual heft of those scholars who respond to a book also increases a book's prestige...