DOI Artikel:
Holly, Michael Ann: Iconology’s shadow
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.59426#0096
95
delineated? In Gadamer ’s terms, “the work of art issues
a challenge which expects to be met. It requires an answer
[and certainly not an iconographie one!] - an answer that
can only be given by someone who accepts the challenge.
And that answer must be his own, and given actively, [...]
[for] the act of playing always requires a ‘playing along
with!”20 Such a sentiment would be anathema to Panof-
sky with his hard-won faith in historical distance, such
as when he attests that “to grasp reality we have to de-
tach ourselves from the present. [...] Not only will [the art
historian] collect and verify all the available factual infor-
mation as to medium, condition, age, authorship, desti-
nation, etc., but he will also compare the work with oth-
ers of its class, and will examine such writings as reflect
the aesthetic standards of its country and age, in order to
achieve a more objective’ appraisal of its quality”.21 To be
fair, I do want to point out that Panofsky (unlike so many
of his disciples) does put the word objective’, at least, in
quotation marks.
It is not so simple as a choice between historical expla-
nation and aesthetic understanding, two different concep-
tions of both time and history. As Gadamer puts it, “the
riddle that the problem of art sets us is precisely that of
contemporaneity of past and present. [...] we have to ask
ourselves what it is that maintains the continuity of art
and in what sense art represents an overcoming of time”.22
Does the work originate back there in the past or here now
before me? If every work is an encounter, an “increase in
being”, that profoundly affects those who are ensnared by
it, does its origin, as Heidegger might ask, not lie in the
now? If so, what happens to the contemporary viewer’s
sense of tradition, of what has come before? Phenomenol-
ogists would no doubt answer that “historical conscious-
ness and the new self-conscious reflection arising from it
combine with a claim that we cannot renounce: Namely,
the fact that everything we see stands before us and ad-
dresses us directly as if it showed us ourselves”.23
Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote more about visual art
and its effect on an embodied spectator than the other four
phenomenologists I have so far noted. His own hero was
Paul Cézanne, whose art he regarded as creating the world
anew. How did the painter accomplish this act of leger-
demain? “It is by lending his body to the world that the
artist changes the world into paintings”.24 To witness this
act of transubstantiation, he claims, “we must go back to
the working, actual body - not the body as a chunk of
space or a bundle of functions but that body which is an
20 H.-G. Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful, pp. 26, 23 (as in
note 14).
21 E. Panofsky, ‘The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline’,
pp. 17, 24 (as in note 16).
22 H.-G. Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful, p. 46 (as in note 14).
23 Ibidem, p. 11.
24 M. Merleau-Ponty, ‘Eye and Mind’, in idem, The Merleau-Pon-
ty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, ed. G.A. Johnson,
Evanston, Illinois, 1993, p. 123.
intertwining of vision and movement”.25 Phenomenol-
ogy, as the art of “radical reflection”, he says, offers both
a “promise” and a “problem”.26 In Merleau-Ponty’s “Eye
and Mind” of i960 (four years before Panofsky wrote his
last book, Tomb Sculpture), the very first sentence sets
the terms of the argument: “Science manipulates things
and gives up living in them”.27 Descartes, with his split be-
tween mind and body, had gotten it backwards. Having
a “thought” about everything denies the experience of the
body, immersed as it is in the world.
“After all, the world is around me, not in front of me”,
a premise that challenged both Cartesians and iconolo-
gists.28 Embodied experience, or entanglement, offers the
key to unlocking connectedness to other selves and things
in our perceived world. “In short, my body is not mere-
ly one object among all others, not a complex of sensi-
ble qualities among others. It is an object sensitive to all
others, which resonates for all sounds and vibrates for all
colors”.29 As an embodied subject, I am “geared into” and
“plunged”30 deeply into the texture of a natural and phe-
nomenal world that does not need me but nevertheless
gives me something in return.
Crossovers abound, between seeing and seen, between
object and subject, between mind and body, between ob-
jectivity and emotion, between visibility and the invisible.
Our bodies pirouette in dazzling circles, if only we have
the wit to pay attention to the dance. The world of things
in which we are immersed is made of the same “flesh”
(a kind of “voluminosity”)31 as we ourselves. According to
Merleau-Ponty, we are as enveloped in it as we are in the
air we breathe:
The eye lives in this texture as a man in his house. [...]
Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it
is one of them. It is caught in the fabric of the world, and
its cohesion is that of a thing. But because it moves itself
and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself.32
The human world and its objects never reveal all there
is to know, else the world would be one decidedly devoid
of wonder: “When I see an object”, Merleau-Ponty de-
clares, “I always feel that there is still some being beyond
what I currently see, and not merely more visible being.
[...] there is always a horizon of unseen or even invisible
things around my present vision”.33 To adopt a phenom-
enological attitude, I need question just what it is at which
25 Ibidem, p. 124.
26 Idem, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. D.A. Landes, London,
2012, p. xxi.
27 Idem, ‘Eye and Mind’, p. 121 (as in note 24).
28 Ibidem, p. 138.
29 Idem, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 245 (as in note 26).
30 Ibidem, p. xliv, 211.
31 Idem, ‘Eye and Mind’, p. 127,145 (as in note 24).
32 Ibidem, p. 127,125.
33 Idem, Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 224-225 (as in note 26).
delineated? In Gadamer ’s terms, “the work of art issues
a challenge which expects to be met. It requires an answer
[and certainly not an iconographie one!] - an answer that
can only be given by someone who accepts the challenge.
And that answer must be his own, and given actively, [...]
[for] the act of playing always requires a ‘playing along
with!”20 Such a sentiment would be anathema to Panof-
sky with his hard-won faith in historical distance, such
as when he attests that “to grasp reality we have to de-
tach ourselves from the present. [...] Not only will [the art
historian] collect and verify all the available factual infor-
mation as to medium, condition, age, authorship, desti-
nation, etc., but he will also compare the work with oth-
ers of its class, and will examine such writings as reflect
the aesthetic standards of its country and age, in order to
achieve a more objective’ appraisal of its quality”.21 To be
fair, I do want to point out that Panofsky (unlike so many
of his disciples) does put the word objective’, at least, in
quotation marks.
It is not so simple as a choice between historical expla-
nation and aesthetic understanding, two different concep-
tions of both time and history. As Gadamer puts it, “the
riddle that the problem of art sets us is precisely that of
contemporaneity of past and present. [...] we have to ask
ourselves what it is that maintains the continuity of art
and in what sense art represents an overcoming of time”.22
Does the work originate back there in the past or here now
before me? If every work is an encounter, an “increase in
being”, that profoundly affects those who are ensnared by
it, does its origin, as Heidegger might ask, not lie in the
now? If so, what happens to the contemporary viewer’s
sense of tradition, of what has come before? Phenomenol-
ogists would no doubt answer that “historical conscious-
ness and the new self-conscious reflection arising from it
combine with a claim that we cannot renounce: Namely,
the fact that everything we see stands before us and ad-
dresses us directly as if it showed us ourselves”.23
Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote more about visual art
and its effect on an embodied spectator than the other four
phenomenologists I have so far noted. His own hero was
Paul Cézanne, whose art he regarded as creating the world
anew. How did the painter accomplish this act of leger-
demain? “It is by lending his body to the world that the
artist changes the world into paintings”.24 To witness this
act of transubstantiation, he claims, “we must go back to
the working, actual body - not the body as a chunk of
space or a bundle of functions but that body which is an
20 H.-G. Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful, pp. 26, 23 (as in
note 14).
21 E. Panofsky, ‘The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline’,
pp. 17, 24 (as in note 16).
22 H.-G. Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful, p. 46 (as in note 14).
23 Ibidem, p. 11.
24 M. Merleau-Ponty, ‘Eye and Mind’, in idem, The Merleau-Pon-
ty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, ed. G.A. Johnson,
Evanston, Illinois, 1993, p. 123.
intertwining of vision and movement”.25 Phenomenol-
ogy, as the art of “radical reflection”, he says, offers both
a “promise” and a “problem”.26 In Merleau-Ponty’s “Eye
and Mind” of i960 (four years before Panofsky wrote his
last book, Tomb Sculpture), the very first sentence sets
the terms of the argument: “Science manipulates things
and gives up living in them”.27 Descartes, with his split be-
tween mind and body, had gotten it backwards. Having
a “thought” about everything denies the experience of the
body, immersed as it is in the world.
“After all, the world is around me, not in front of me”,
a premise that challenged both Cartesians and iconolo-
gists.28 Embodied experience, or entanglement, offers the
key to unlocking connectedness to other selves and things
in our perceived world. “In short, my body is not mere-
ly one object among all others, not a complex of sensi-
ble qualities among others. It is an object sensitive to all
others, which resonates for all sounds and vibrates for all
colors”.29 As an embodied subject, I am “geared into” and
“plunged”30 deeply into the texture of a natural and phe-
nomenal world that does not need me but nevertheless
gives me something in return.
Crossovers abound, between seeing and seen, between
object and subject, between mind and body, between ob-
jectivity and emotion, between visibility and the invisible.
Our bodies pirouette in dazzling circles, if only we have
the wit to pay attention to the dance. The world of things
in which we are immersed is made of the same “flesh”
(a kind of “voluminosity”)31 as we ourselves. According to
Merleau-Ponty, we are as enveloped in it as we are in the
air we breathe:
The eye lives in this texture as a man in his house. [...]
Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it
is one of them. It is caught in the fabric of the world, and
its cohesion is that of a thing. But because it moves itself
and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself.32
The human world and its objects never reveal all there
is to know, else the world would be one decidedly devoid
of wonder: “When I see an object”, Merleau-Ponty de-
clares, “I always feel that there is still some being beyond
what I currently see, and not merely more visible being.
[...] there is always a horizon of unseen or even invisible
things around my present vision”.33 To adopt a phenom-
enological attitude, I need question just what it is at which
25 Ibidem, p. 124.
26 Idem, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. D.A. Landes, London,
2012, p. xxi.
27 Idem, ‘Eye and Mind’, p. 121 (as in note 24).
28 Ibidem, p. 138.
29 Idem, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 245 (as in note 26).
30 Ibidem, p. xliv, 211.
31 Idem, ‘Eye and Mind’, p. 127,145 (as in note 24).
32 Ibidem, p. 127,125.
33 Idem, Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 224-225 (as in note 26).