Full Description
This volume explores a basic question in the historiography of art: the extent to which iconology was a homogenous research method in its own immutable right. By contributing to the rejection of the universalizing narrative, these case studies argue that there were many strands of iconology.
Methods that differed from the 'canonised' approach of Panofsky were proposed by Godefridus Johannes Hoogewerff and Hans Sedlmayr. Researchers affiliated with the Warburg Institute in London also chose to distance themselves from Panofsky's work. Poland, in turn, was the breeding ground for yet another distinct variety of iconology. In Communist Czechoslovakia there were attempts to develop a 'Marxist iconology'. This book, written by recognized experts in the field, examines these and other major strands of iconology, telling the tale of iconology's reception in the countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain. Attitudes there ranged from enthusiastic acceptance in Poland, to critical reception in the Soviet Union, to reinterpretation in Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic, and, finally, to outright rejection in Romania.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual studies, and historiography.
Chapters 8 and 15 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 international license
Contents
Part 1: Overview 1. Mapping Iconologies: Concepts and Contexts Part 2: Diverse Concepts of Iconology and Their Use in Western and Central Europe 2. Iconology or Iconography?: The Term Iconology in Erwin Panofsky's Research on Art 3. Iconology vs. Iconography: G. J. Hoogewerff's Seminal Distinctions 4. The Political Iconology of Ernst H. Kantorowicz 5. Flat Iconology: Metamorphoses of a Method in British Exile 6. Imperial Style and the Content of Architecture: Concepts of Architectural Iconography of the 1930s and 1940s, and Their Afterlife 7. Hans Sedlmayr's Structural Analysis of the Gothic Cathedral: An Iconological Study? 8. Zofia Ameisenowa, William S. Heckscher and 'The Genesis of Iconology' (Bonn 1964) 9. Erwin Panofsky, Hans Sedlmayr, Lech Kalinowski, and the Meanders of Iconology 10. Jan Białostocki: From Iconology to the Aesthetics of Image Part 3: (Marxist) Reinterpretation of Iconology Behind the Iron Curtain 11. Iconology Versus Iconography in the Soviet Art-Historical Discourse, 1960s-1980s 12. Sneaking In: Iconology and the Process of Renewal in Late Soviet Estonian Art History 13. The Prague School of Marxist Iconology 14. Helga Sciurie, Friedrich Möbius, and the Jena Arbeitskreis für Ikonologie und Ikonographie in the German Democratic Republic Part 4: Absence and Non-Acceptance of Iconology in Some Regions Behind the Iron Curtain 15. The Absence of Iconology in Romania: A Possible Answer 16. A Strange Place of 'Style' in Iconology: A Case Study from Southeastern Europe
