Pictorial versus Iconic Turn: Two Letters

Abstract

In this exchange of letters, Gottfried Boehm and W. J. T. Mitchell explore the intellectual paths that brought them to simultaneously advocate an ‘iconic turn’ and a ‘pictorial turn’ respectively. They trace the emergence of the study of images through art history and philosophy and consider the diversity of images and the array of issues and ideas that come together under the topic of ‘iconology’ and ‘pictoriality’. On the way they discuss the use and treatment of images in the human and natural sciences, the history of aesthetic styles, the possibility of a physics of the image, the status of iconoclasm, and how the idea of a turn might equate to a paradigm shift in Western philosophical thinking.