Transdisciplinary Approaches to
Visual Cultures
DU1904 Seminar
Lecturer: Adrien Palladino
adrien.palladino@phil.muni.cz
450842@mail.muni.cz
History of Art
History
Sociology
Politics
Philology
Palaeography
Epigraphy
Philosophy
Aesthetics
Theory of the Arts
Theology
Psychoanalysis
Archaeology
Ethnography
Anthropology
Conservation and Restoration
Music, Theatre, Dance
Informatics
Botany, Zoology, Geology, Medicine
Astronomy, Physics,
Chemistry, Mathematics
Religious studies
History as the « mirror of human life »
« to clarify the causes and sources of each style
as well as the rise and fall of the arts »
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768)
Giovanni Morelli (1816–1891)
Bernard Berenson
(1865–1959)
Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776–1788
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
(photo by Julia Margaret
Cameron)
Auguste Comte (1798–1857)
Illustration from The Mismeasure of Man by
Josiah Clark Nott and George Robins Gliddon,
using a descending hierarchy from white
‘civilised’ man to chimpanzee to prove a
polygenist race theory, 1854.
Grandville, 1844: From Apollo to the frog
Alois Riegl (1858–1905}
Aby Warburg (1866–1929)
Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968)
Iconography / Iconology
“Australian bushman would be unable to recognize a
subject of a Last Supper, to him it would only convey
the idea of an excited dinner party “
1939
INTRODUCTION TO AN "ICONOGRAPHY OF MEDIAEVAL
ARCHITECTURE"
By Richard Krautheimer
Since the Renaissance it has become customary to consider architecture asbeing determined by "commodity, firmness and delight" or, to use a less
Wottonian terminology, by function, construction, and design. To view
architectural problems from these angles and from them alone, has become
something like a fundamental tenet of architectural history. Yet the validity
of such a view appears rather doubtful where mediaeval architecture is
concerned.' Obviously there can be no doubt that problems of construction,
design and function, and of the integration of these elements, were of fundamental
importance to mediaeval as well as to later architects. Yet it would
seem that these essentials of architecture as laid down by Sir Henry Wotton,
and before him by Leone Battista Alberti, were differently emphasized and
that in addition to them other elements played a vital part in the mediaeval
conception of architecture. As a matter of fact, no mediaeval source ever
stresses the design of an edifice or its construction, apart from the material
which has been used. On the other hand the practical or liturgical functions
are always taken into consideration; they lead on to questions of the religious
significance of an edifice and these two groups together seem to stand in the
centre of mediaeval architectural thought. Not once, it will be remembered,
does Suger refer to the revolutionary problems of vaulting and design in his
new building at St. Denis. Evidently the design of an edifice or for that matter
the construction were not within the realm of theoretical discussion. On the
other hand the religious implications of a building were uppermost in the
minds of its contemporaries. Time and again Suger discusses the dedications
of altars to certain Saints. Questions of the symbolical significance of the layout
or of the parts of a structure are prominent; questions of its dedication to
a particular Saint, and of the relation of its shape to a specific dedication or
to a specific religious-not necessarily liturgical-purpose. The 'content' of
architecture seems to have been among the more important problems of
mediaeval architectural theory; perhaps indeed it was its most important
problem. The total of these questions would form the subject of an iconography
of architecture. Such an approach would merely return to an old
tradition which as recently as a century ago was still present in the minds of
archaeologists of art ;2 it is during the last fifty years only that this has apThis
article is based on a brief paper read
to the meeting of the College Art Association
held in Chicago in January 1941. I want to
thank my wife, Mrs. Trude KrautheimerHess
for her continuous collaboration in preparing
and writing this essay.
1 Throughout this paper the term "Middle
Ages" will be used so as to cover the whole
period from the 4th to the end of the 12th
century.
2 J. Ciampini, Vetera Monimenta ..., Rome,
1690-99; J. Bingham, The Antiquities of the
Christian Church, London, I708-22; J. Britton,
Architectural Antiquities, London, 1807; J.
Kreuser, Der christliche Kirchenbau2, Regensburg,
I86o-6 I; Otte, Handbuch der kirchlichen
Kunstarchdologie des deutschen Mittelalters5, Leipzig,
1883-85. A very few ecclesiastical
archaeologists have continued this century-old
tradition to the present day; the most
prominent among them are: J. Sauer,
Symbolik des Kirchengebdudes, Freiburg, I924
and F. J. Doelger, Antike und Christentum,
Miinster, 1929 ff.
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Richard Krautheimer (1897–1994)
1964
Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559 /
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945)
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
1907 Wilhelm Worringer (1881–1965)
Edvard Munch, Despair, oil on canvas, 1894
Munch-museet, Oslo
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Did Christ not appear
to you?, 1918, woodcut, 320 x 742 mm /
Yale University Art Gallery, 1941.675
Kunst-Geschichte // Bild-Wissenschaft
Art as a category
Historicist paradigm
Bild – Image as a ahistorical or transhistorical phenomenon
Science as umbrella term à interdisciplinarity
In English most often rendered as: visual culture/media studies
1998
Fm. 8.11/3. 'IIand face' design 1.
Sourre: Von den Stcincn, i. rn,
illus. 136/5
183
Pre;. 8.11/4. 'Hand face' design z: each eye can
be read as a face, one single etlla, or as one
e/uu containing another. Source: Von den
Stcincn, i. rn, illus. 136/6
hoata/ipu transformation is shown in Fig. 8.u/1. This ipu motif, bisected horizontally,
immediately transforms into ma,ta hoMa. Usually, ipu are surrounded
by a motif, papua, which is a reduplicated derivative of the 'nose' element in
mata hoata (cf. Fig. 8.10/2). Although the motif-name ipu does not refer to
eyes, ipu are frequently placed so as to make this identity palpable (e.g. the
unique tapa mask shown in Fig. 8.11/2).
Next, I turn to the family of 'face' designs other than mata hoata which feature
circular eyes. A common site for the placement of this category of designs
was on the hands, the backs of which were protected by 'faces' composed of a
variety of elements. Fig. 8.11/3 shows such a 'hand face'. It will be seen that
Style and Culture 185
FtG. 8.11/6. Langsdorff's 1813 engra\'ing of young warrior with eye and face designs. Source:
Langsdorff 1813-14
Image
Medium Body
2001
Intradisciplinary: working within a single discipline.
Crossdisciplinary: viewing one discipline from the perspective of another.
Multidisciplinary: people from different disciplines working together, each
drawing on their disciplinary knowledge.
Interdisciplinary: integrating knowledge and methods from different
disciplines, using a real synthesis of approaches.
Transdisciplinary: creating a unity of intellectual frameworks beyond the
disciplinary perspectives.
History of Art
History
Sociology
Politics
Philology
Palaeography
Epigraphy
Philosophy
Aesthetics
Theory of the Arts
Theology
Psychoanalysis
Archaeology
Ethnography
Anthropology
Conservation and Restoration
Music, Theatre, Dance
Informatics
Botany, Zoology, Geology, Medicine
Astronomy, Physics,
Chemistry, Mathematics
Religious studies