Eye-Conographs

Abstract

Icons are pictorial images that are eye-cons: they provide distillations of objects or ideas into simple pictorial shapes. They create the impression of representing that what cannot be presented. Iconography can refer to representations of people, and it has been applied to visual artists and scientists: their portraits are often reproduced in histories of art and science. Until the nineteenth century, artists were mostly represented in pigment (paintings) and scientists on paper (engravings). After the birth of photography, both have been captured by the camera and more recently manipulated by computer. Eye-conographs are ‘perceptual portraits’ of artists and scientists; they combine facial features with the styles and phenomena with which the artists and scientists are associated.