DOI Artikel:
Holly, Michael Ann: Iconology’s shadow
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.59426#0094
Folia Historiae Artium
Seria Nowa, t. 19: 2021/PL ISSN 0071-6723
MICHAEL ANN HOLLY
The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
ICONOLOGY’S SHADOW*
For decades now - ever since I began writing Erwin Pan-
ofsky s intellectual biography - I have been both enchant-
ed with and bewildered by Panofsky s third level of inter-
pretation, iconology, or, as he first dubbed it, “iconogra-
phy turned interpretive”.* 1 The effort to discover “meaning”
or intrinsic content has long been the worthy goal of art
historians. If a work of art, by Panofsky s characterization,
is a “symptom of something else”,2 what is this something
else? Something half-unseen, nearly unspoken has always
been lurking round the edges of a work of art as it passes
through his three-tiered system of the pre-iconograph-
ic, the iconographie, the iconologica!. Yet hasn’t another
“something else” (perhaps even hinted at by Panofsky3)
been long eclipsed, an interpretive phantom that is now
urging the discipline of art history towards frontiers be-
yond those charted by iconology?
Consider phenomenology, a philosophical discourse
running alongside the mid-century practice of iconolo-
gy but rarely crossing its art historical path. If it crosses
it at all, it is as a shade, a shadow cast by another way of
knowing or, more precisely, as Georges Didi-Huberman
would say, a way of not-knowing.4 The fascination of late
with a number of new critical perspectives such as thing
theory, objecthood, new materiality, and animism have
* An earlier and smaller version of this argument was published as
‘Iconology and the Phenomenological Imagination, in Iconology
at the Crossroads, ed. M. Vicelja-Matijasic, Rijeka, 2014 (= IKON
7/2014), pp. 7-16.
1 E. Panofsky, ‘Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to
Renaissance Art’, in idem, Meaning in the Visual Arts, New York,
1955, P- 32; M.A. Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art His-
tory, Ithaca, 1984.
2 E. Panofsky, ‘Iconography and Iconology’, p. 31 (as in note 1).
3 See last endnote here (44).
4 G. Didi-Huberman, Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of
a Certain History of Art, trans, ƒ. Goodman, University Park, Pa.,
2005, p. xxvi.
step-by-step led me back to some suggestive writings by
mid-twentieth-century phenomenologists who once indi-
rectly mapped the path not taken in the not-quite-centu-
ry-old history of art, a discipline committed to finding,
as Panofsky put it, “meaning in the visual arts”. This es-
say strives to lend a certain shape and substance to this
earlier discourse as it shadows the evolution of Panofsky s
iconology.
No doubt iconology is the faith and foundation upon
which the Eurocentric field of art history rests. And in
a general sense both iconology and phenomenology offer
routes to understanding what is hidden and concealed in
works of art, but their perspectives are hardly congruent.
What one “method” deliberately omits, the other poeti-
cally explores. The hydraulics of this relationship is most
intriguing.
When Panofsky was thinking about perspective as
a neo-Kantian symbolic form in Hamburg,5 Edmund Hus-
serl in Freiberg was calling for a radical rethinking of con-
sciousness. When encountering an object in the world -
say a compelling work of art - he suggests a bracketing
out of all other demands on reflection. Reach towards,
direct attention to an object in the process of suspending
all expectations of what might be there discovered. Per-
ceiving something means extracting it from its surround
and dwelling with it in its pure sensuous specificity.6 In
an account of phenomenology in the stormy year of 1939
(when Panofsky was writing Studies in Iconology),7 Sartre
5 E. Panofsky, ‘Die Perspektive als ‘symbolische Form’, in Vorträge
der Bibliothek Warburg 1924-25, ed. F. Saxl, Leipzig-Berlin, 1927.
6 E. Husserl, Ideas l, trans. DO. Dahlstrom, Indianapolis, 2014,
p. 12, 4; J.-P. Sartre, ‘Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea of Hus-
serls Phenomenology, in idem, Situations I (1947), trans. J.P. Fell
(Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology, 1970, vol. 1, pp. 4-5).
7 E. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art
of the Renaissance, New York, 1962 (= Mary Flexner Lectures on
the Humanities 7).
Publikacja jest udostępniona na licencji Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL).
Seria Nowa, t. 19: 2021/PL ISSN 0071-6723
MICHAEL ANN HOLLY
The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
ICONOLOGY’S SHADOW*
For decades now - ever since I began writing Erwin Pan-
ofsky s intellectual biography - I have been both enchant-
ed with and bewildered by Panofsky s third level of inter-
pretation, iconology, or, as he first dubbed it, “iconogra-
phy turned interpretive”.* 1 The effort to discover “meaning”
or intrinsic content has long been the worthy goal of art
historians. If a work of art, by Panofsky s characterization,
is a “symptom of something else”,2 what is this something
else? Something half-unseen, nearly unspoken has always
been lurking round the edges of a work of art as it passes
through his three-tiered system of the pre-iconograph-
ic, the iconographie, the iconologica!. Yet hasn’t another
“something else” (perhaps even hinted at by Panofsky3)
been long eclipsed, an interpretive phantom that is now
urging the discipline of art history towards frontiers be-
yond those charted by iconology?
Consider phenomenology, a philosophical discourse
running alongside the mid-century practice of iconolo-
gy but rarely crossing its art historical path. If it crosses
it at all, it is as a shade, a shadow cast by another way of
knowing or, more precisely, as Georges Didi-Huberman
would say, a way of not-knowing.4 The fascination of late
with a number of new critical perspectives such as thing
theory, objecthood, new materiality, and animism have
* An earlier and smaller version of this argument was published as
‘Iconology and the Phenomenological Imagination, in Iconology
at the Crossroads, ed. M. Vicelja-Matijasic, Rijeka, 2014 (= IKON
7/2014), pp. 7-16.
1 E. Panofsky, ‘Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to
Renaissance Art’, in idem, Meaning in the Visual Arts, New York,
1955, P- 32; M.A. Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art His-
tory, Ithaca, 1984.
2 E. Panofsky, ‘Iconography and Iconology’, p. 31 (as in note 1).
3 See last endnote here (44).
4 G. Didi-Huberman, Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of
a Certain History of Art, trans, ƒ. Goodman, University Park, Pa.,
2005, p. xxvi.
step-by-step led me back to some suggestive writings by
mid-twentieth-century phenomenologists who once indi-
rectly mapped the path not taken in the not-quite-centu-
ry-old history of art, a discipline committed to finding,
as Panofsky put it, “meaning in the visual arts”. This es-
say strives to lend a certain shape and substance to this
earlier discourse as it shadows the evolution of Panofsky s
iconology.
No doubt iconology is the faith and foundation upon
which the Eurocentric field of art history rests. And in
a general sense both iconology and phenomenology offer
routes to understanding what is hidden and concealed in
works of art, but their perspectives are hardly congruent.
What one “method” deliberately omits, the other poeti-
cally explores. The hydraulics of this relationship is most
intriguing.
When Panofsky was thinking about perspective as
a neo-Kantian symbolic form in Hamburg,5 Edmund Hus-
serl in Freiberg was calling for a radical rethinking of con-
sciousness. When encountering an object in the world -
say a compelling work of art - he suggests a bracketing
out of all other demands on reflection. Reach towards,
direct attention to an object in the process of suspending
all expectations of what might be there discovered. Per-
ceiving something means extracting it from its surround
and dwelling with it in its pure sensuous specificity.6 In
an account of phenomenology in the stormy year of 1939
(when Panofsky was writing Studies in Iconology),7 Sartre
5 E. Panofsky, ‘Die Perspektive als ‘symbolische Form’, in Vorträge
der Bibliothek Warburg 1924-25, ed. F. Saxl, Leipzig-Berlin, 1927.
6 E. Husserl, Ideas l, trans. DO. Dahlstrom, Indianapolis, 2014,
p. 12, 4; J.-P. Sartre, ‘Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea of Hus-
serls Phenomenology, in idem, Situations I (1947), trans. J.P. Fell
(Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology, 1970, vol. 1, pp. 4-5).
7 E. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art
of the Renaissance, New York, 1962 (= Mary Flexner Lectures on
the Humanities 7).
Publikacja jest udostępniona na licencji Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL).