Available for the first time in English, An Introduction to Iconography explains the ways that artists use references and allusions to create meaning. The book presents the historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of iconography and ICONCLASS, the comprehensive iconographical indexing system developed by Henri van de Waal. It gives particular emphasis to the history of iconography, personification, allegory, and symbols, and the literary sources that inform iconographic readings, and includes annotated bibliographies of books and journal articles from around the world that are associated with iconographic research. The author of numerous articles and a four-volume reference work on Italian prints, Roelof van Straten is currently working on an iconographic index covering the prints of Goltzius and his school.
This volume assesses how current approaches to iconology and iconography break new ground in understanding the signification and reception of medieval images, both in their own time and in the modern world. Framed by critical essays that apply explicitly historiographical and sociopolitical perspectives to key moments in the evolution of the field, the volume’s case studies focus on how iconographic meaning is shaped by factors such as medieval modes of dialectical thought, the problem of representing time, the movement of the viewer in space, the fragmentation and injury of both image and subject, and the complex strategy of comparing distant cultural paradigms. The contributions are linked by a commitment to understanding how medieval images made meaning; to highlighting the heuristic value of new perspectives and methods in exploring the work of the image in both the Middle Ages and our own time; and to recognizing how subtle entanglements between scholarship and society can provoke mutual and unexpected transformations in both. Collectively, the essays demonstrate the expansiveness, flexibility, and dynamism of iconographic studies as a scholarly field that is still heartily engaged in the challenge of its own remaking. Along with the volume editors, the contributors include Madeline H. Caviness, Beatrice Kitzinger, Aden Kumler, Christopher R. Lakey, Glenn Peers, Jennifer Purtle, and Elizabeth Sears.
As art historians draw increasingly from such cognate fields as literary theory and anthropology for new modes of inquiry, scholars in fields as diverse as music and the history of medicine are turning to images in art as sources of information for their respective disciplines. Focusing on the role of iconography in this cross-fertilization, these papers examine how students of the Middle Ages and Renaissance search for meaning in the subject matter of works of art. Art historians as well as scholars from other disciplines provide a broad spectrum of approaches to icongraphic research and to the methodological and theoretical issues involved. These papers were presented at a conference sponsored by the Index of Christian Art in Princeton in 1990. The contributers to this volume are Howard Mayer Brown, Michael Camille, John V. Fleming, Craig Harbison, Michael Ann Holly, Wolfgang Kemp, Herbert L. Kessler, V. A. Kolve, Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Irving Lavin, Henry Maguire, Keith Moxey, Ynez Viole O'Neill, H. Colin Slim, and Richard C. Trexler.
A fully updated and comprehensive companion to Romanesque and Gothic art history This definitive reference brings together cutting-edge scholarship devoted to the Romanesque and Gothic traditions in Northern Europe and provides a clear analytical survey of what is happening in this major area of Western art history. The volume comprises original theoretical, historical, and historiographic essays written by renowned and emergent scholars who discuss the vibrancy of medieval art from both thematic and sub-disciplinary perspectives. Part of the Blackwell Companions to Art History, A Companion to Medieval Art, Second Edition features an international and ambitious range of contributions covering reception, formalism, Gregory the Great, pilgrimage art, gender, patronage, marginalized images, the concept of spolia, manuscript illumination, stained glass, Cistercian architecture, art of the crusader states, and more. Newly revised edition of a highly successful companion, including 11 new articles Comprehensive coverage ranging from vision, materiality, and the artist through to architecture, sculpture, and painting Contains full-color illustrations throughout, plus notes on the book’s many distinguished contributors A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, Second Edition is an exciting and varied study that provides essential reading for students and teachers of Medieval art.
From Detroit Red to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, the man best known as Malcolm X restlessly redefined himself throughout a controversial life. His transformations have appeared repeatedly in books, photographs, paintings, and films, while his murder set in motion a series of tugs-of-war among journalists, biographers, artists, and his ideological champions over the interpretation of his cultural meaning. This book marks the first systematic examination of the images generated by this iconic cultural figure—images readily found on everything from T-shirts and hip-hop album covers to coffee mugs. Graeme Abernethy captures both the multiplicity and global import of a person who has been framed as both villain and hero, cast by mainstream media during his lifetime as “the most feared man in American history,” and elevated at his death as a heroic emblem of African American identity. As Abernethy shows, the resulting iconography of Malcolm X has shifted as profoundly as the American racial landscape itself. Abernethy explores Malcolm’s visual prominence in the eras of civil rights, Black Power, and hip-hop. He analyzes this enigmatic figure’s representation across a variety of media from 1960s magazines to urban murals, tracking the evolution of Malcolm’s iconography from his autobiography and its radical milieu through the appearance of Spike Lee’s 1992 biopic and beyond. Its remarkable gallery of illustrations includes reproductions of iconic photographs by Richard Avedon, Eve Arnold, Gordon Parks, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and John Launois. Abernethy reveals that Malcolm X himself was keenly aware of the power of imagery to redefine identity and worked tirelessly to shape how he was represented to the public. His theoretical grasp of what he termed “the science of imagery” enabled him both to analyze the role of representation in ideological control as well as to exploit his own image in the interests of black empowerment. This provocative work marks a startling shift from the biographical focus that has dominated Malcolm X studies, providing an up-to-date—and comprehensively illustrated—account of Malcolm’s cultural afterlife, and addressing his iconography in relation to images of other major African American figures, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Kanye West, and Barack Obama. Analyzing the competing interpretations behind so many images, Abernethy reveals what our lasting obsession with Malcolm X says about American culture over the last five decades.
What does the study of iconography entail for scholars active today? How does it intersect with the broad array of methodological and theoretical approaches now at the disposal of art historians? Should we still dare to use the term "iconography" to describe such work? The seven essays collected here argue that we should. Their authors set out to evaluate the continuing relevance of iconographic studies to current art-historical scholarship by exploring the fluidity of iconography itself over broad spans of time, place, and culture. These wide-ranging case studies take a diversity of approaches as they track the transformation of medieval images and their meanings along their respective paths, exploring how medieval iconographies remained stable or changed; how images were reconceived in response to new contexts, ideas, or viewerships; and how modern thinking about medieval images--including the application or rejection of traditional methodologies--has shaped our understanding of what they signify. These essays demonstrate that iconographic work still holds a critical place within the rapidly evolving discipline of art history as well as within the many other disciplines that increasingly prioritize the study of images. This inaugural volume in the series Signa: Papers of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University demonstrates the importance of keeping matters of image and meaning--regardless of whether we use the word "iconography"--at the center of modern inquiry into medieval visual literature. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Kirk Ambrose, Charles Barber, Catherine Fernandez, Elina Gertsman, Jacqueline E. Jung, Dale Kinney, and D. Fairchild Ruggles.
