DOI article:
Holly, Michael Ann: Iconology’s shadow
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.59426#0098
SUMMARY
Michael Ann Holly
ICONOLOGY’S SHADOW
This essay discusses two concurrent intellectual initiatives
in the mid-twentieth century Well-known in European
and American art history is iconology - the study of‘me-
aning’ in works of art - and in particular the work of Pa-
nofsky and his legacy At around the same time, especial-
ly in literature and philosophy in Germany and France,
phenomenology appeared on the scene. Husserl, Heideg-
ger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, among others, encouraged
a focus on ‘poetic entanglement’ or embodied experien-
ce’. The experience of a work of art and not its analysis is
what of primary importance for these thinkers. Contrast-
ing these two systems of thought can be revealing not only
in terms of twentieth-century intellectual history but as
combative precursors to trends in early twenty-first ‘obje-
ct theory’ or ‘affect studies’ in the evolution of the histo-
ry of art. What one ‘method’ deliberately omits, the other
provocatively explores. It often comes down to a distin-
ction between representation and presentation.
Michael Ann Holly
ICONOLOGY’S SHADOW
This essay discusses two concurrent intellectual initiatives
in the mid-twentieth century Well-known in European
and American art history is iconology - the study of‘me-
aning’ in works of art - and in particular the work of Pa-
nofsky and his legacy At around the same time, especial-
ly in literature and philosophy in Germany and France,
phenomenology appeared on the scene. Husserl, Heideg-
ger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, among others, encouraged
a focus on ‘poetic entanglement’ or embodied experien-
ce’. The experience of a work of art and not its analysis is
what of primary importance for these thinkers. Contrast-
ing these two systems of thought can be revealing not only
in terms of twentieth-century intellectual history but as
combative precursors to trends in early twenty-first ‘obje-
ct theory’ or ‘affect studies’ in the evolution of the histo-
ry of art. What one ‘method’ deliberately omits, the other
provocatively explores. It often comes down to a distin-
ction between representation and presentation.