From the Image to the Painting - The Image within the Painting. Analysis of the Two Lines of Inquiry Suggested by Hubert Damisch for Iconology

Abstract

By comparing the semiology and the iconography led by Hubert Damisch in the early 1970s, to the Analytical Iconology theorized by the same author in the early 1990s, this paper intends to show the new paths opened up for studying iconology by a scholar who has, through such a comparison with new disciplines and constant criticism, derived the possibility of new directions for research to this field. In discussions on semiology we see the need to investigate the surplus of material that constitutes the specific nature of every pictorial image; the interest in the hypoiconic level of each painting on which Damisch speculates on the significance outside the concept, and where it seems possible to measure the contribution made by the author in developing the theories on iconic turn first theorized in the mid-1990s. The comparison with the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, the definition of picture developed by the latter and the figurability concept formulated by the first, constitute, differently, the veichle of an observation intended to open up the field of iconology of unconscious content, of an acceptance of the notion of mnesic survival, as well as a redefinition of the relationship between text and image that iconology places at the core of its research and which is made explicit by its very name.