DEBATES IN VISUAL STUDIES

THE MEDIALITY OF CULTURE,

Cultural Iconology and Visual Studies

György E. Szönyi
INFORMATION - SIGNS - LANGUAGE
‚ The elementary units of information exchange are signs.
‚ Information exchange is as ancient as human consciousness.
‚ Its examination is inseparable from the study of signs (semiotics).
‚ How can we produce signs?
‚ Signs have a physical body: medium.
‚ The interpretation of the media is inseparable from the search for meaning,
or the study of the pragmatics of the usage of signs.

Ernst CASSIRER:
“Man is a symbol making animal.”
WHAT IS CULTURE?
Culture is a symbolic system and a social activity.

Clifford GEERTZ:
"Culture is the ensemble of stories we tell ourselves about
ourselves".
‚ "Stories": textuality, narrativity and fictionality.
‚ "Tell about ourselves": self-reflexivity and self-representation.
‚ "Tell [the stories] to ourselves": interpretive community.

Cultural representation is a social practice by which the interpretive

community represents its own culture.
Culture is a social practice of multimedial,self-reflexive, and narrative
representations by the help of which a community constructs, interprets, and
operates its own identity. – And OTHERING!

DISCOURSES OF CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS

Art, religion, customs, law, science, medicine, world picture,
education -– all of these have a historical dimension!
THE MEDIALITY
OF CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS
How can we tell stories?
In words, pictures, gestures, music, dance, opera, film.
The concept of Gesamtkunst R. Wagner).
The concept of ut pictura poesis.
The concepts of multimediality and intermediality.
MULTIMEDIAL REPRESENTATIONS:
The Emblem
Theater, Opera
Film
Computer
THE STUDY OF CULTURE
IS INTERDISCIPLINARY
History, historiography
Anthropology
Cultural/intellectual history
Art history
Semiotics

If culture in its
entirety is cultural
representation, how Aby Warburg
do we differentiate Erwin Panofsky
artistic
representation from Ernst Gombrich
other forms of W. J. T. Mitchell
symbolization?
Hans Belting
Umberto Eco
WHAT IS A SYMBOL?
Charles Saunders Peirce, "Symbols represent their objects independently
of any resemblance or any real connection, because dispositions or
factitious habits of their interpreters insure their being so understood."

The most perfect symbolic system is the language: “TABLE”.

Cultural symbols, however work in a more complex way than linguistic

symbols. Cultural symbols carry additional meaning(s) which, according to
Umberto Eco, require “overcoding”.
‚ The arm of a man.
‚ The arm of a clock.
‚ “He was the arm of the ruler
with an iron fist.”
Iconographic symbols: “presuppose a familiarity with specific
themes or concepts as transmitted through literary sources,
whether acquired by purposeful reading or by oral tradition”
(Erwin Panofsky).
CONTENT ANALYSIS
Panofsky:
“We can experience either
ourselves or looking at others that
a successful content analysis helps
not only the historical deciphering
of an artwork but it also contributes
to the aesthetical experience. I do
not want to suggest that it definitely
strengthens it, but at least partially
enriches and elucidates”.

Cultural representations are at the same time the representations of cultural

traditions, and the decoding of these requires iconographic analysis. In the
so-called “Western culture” these representations are largely based on the
Greco-Roman and the Judeo-Christian traditions, their myths, stories,
symbols and images.
CULTURE-BASED REPRESENTATIONS
Odysseus –
James Joyce, Ulysses

Mars
Iustitia
REPRESENTING CULTURAL TRADITIONS
Imagology Imagology studies an important aspect of
cultural representations: ways of cultural
identity-formation by looking at self-
representation and “othering” of ethnic or
national communities.

Marianne

Uncle Sam
REPRESENTING CULTURAL TRADITIONS
Imagology: The Puszta (= Hungary) Stefan Jaeger
C19

Julius Muhr
Illustrations from 1857
Paget's Hung. Travels, 1855
REPRESENTING CULTURAL TRADITIONS
Imagology: The Puli
THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION
ICONOCLASM
Iconoclasm highlights the connection between physical and
mental images. The iconoclasts want to eliminate images in
the collective imagination, but they have access only to their
media. – The violence against physical images served to
extinguish mental images. – Control over the public media
was a guiding principle in the prohibition of images.
ICONOPHILIA / FETISHISM
Fetish: an object empowered with supernatural
power or qualities. Ritualistic objexts or images
can also become fetish-like = iconophilia. It is a
religious attitude which can also be transferred to
secular representations.
ICONICITY: IS THE IMAGE TRANSPARENT
REPRESENTATION?
To put it simply, the question is whether images can be seen as icons, as
unmediated, transparent, “innocent” sources of information. Many think that as
opposed to symbolic speaking, pictures are always truthful and can be understood
without language competency or dictionary - this is why documentary pictures, such
as the photographs of dead birds after an oil spillage catastrophe or the tortured
prisoners of Abu Graib, are so powerful. – But is this so obvious?
SEEING IS BELIEVING "Our attitude towards the image
is bound up with our whole idea about the universe"
(Ernst Gombrich).

Native American and

Pict warriors

John White, 1585, 1590

NEW WORLD PEOPLE THROUGH THE
EUROPEAN GAZE James Cook: Tahiti dancer
(John Webber’s original watercolor, 1777)

Allegorical representation of
America in a Polish
Baroque abbey
(1680s) 19th-century version
of the original
documentation

Courtesy of Ildiko Kristof

IMAGES OF HISTORY
All the world’s a stage,
And all men and women merely players.
Shakespeare, 1598
Providentia

Fama bona
Fama mala

Magistra vitae

Experientia
Veritas

Testis Temporum
Nuncius Vetustatis
Lux Veritatis
The importance of Vita Memoriae
cultural memory
contrasted with Mors
history. Oblivio

Walter Raleigh, 1614