Traditional Iconography Research Articles

Courthouse Iconography and Chayesian Judical Practice

This contribution to a symposium on Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis’s Representing Justice considers what courthouse imagery and design might be appropriate for “Chayesian” judicial practice. The imagery and design that Resnik and Curtis examine largely connotes traditional litigation - lawsuits that are bi-polar, retrospective, and self-contained. However, judicial practice is increasingly Chayesian - concerned with forward-looking efforts to coordinate multipolar problems with sprawling party structures. Traditional iconography is inadequate to Chayesian practice because it celebrates equilibrium and communicates information about cases one-by-one. By contrast, Chayesian intervention often induces productive disequilibrium and it can only be made transparent through expression that aggregates information across individual claims. I suggest that a promising source of inspiration for an iconography of Chayesian practice would be modern factory design in the style associated with the Toyota Production System. Toyota-style manufacturing has produced a self-conscious and sophisticated set of visual principles designed to express and implement the disequilibrating and aggregating features that the Toyota approach shares with Chayesian judicial practice.

"A Pretty Piece of Painting": Gauguin's "Arii Matamoe"

AbstractThe J. Paul Getty Museum's acquisition in 2008 of Paul Gauguin's Arii Matamoe (The Royal End), a key painting from the artist's first Tahitian sojourn of 1891 to 1893, offers an occasion for reconsidering this obscure, enigmatic work, whose fixation on decapitation starkly contrasts with the idyllic mood popularly associated with Gauguin's Tahitian paintings. This essay emphasizes the painting's dense and wide-ranging allusiveness, while proposing and critically evaluating potential avenues of interpretation. The painting is seen as the product both of Gauguin's freely imaginative engagement with Polynesian culture and history, as he had occasion to experience it in person and through second-hand literary and scholarly sources, and his continuing dialogue with traditional and contemporary European iconographies. More fundamentally, the work is presented as part of Gauguin's overriding project of self-mythologization, bringing to bear his obsessive concerns with degeneration, death, and renewal.

W poszukiwaniu sensu śmierci. O współczesnych zaświatach

his article is concerned with the meaning of death in representations of the other world in modern culture. The images of life after death, which are derived from religious traditions, are transformed as a result of the process of desacralization. Changes in the traditional iconography of the other world as well as its new representations in the media and popular culture (particularly in fi lms), can be discussed either in terms of saving the symbolic meaning of death or losing its importance in modern culture. Having studied certain examples, the author concludes that the search for the meaning of death inthe present is less connected with traditional or modern representations of the other worldthen with the human experience.

Motiv raja v Poslednji sodbi Fra Angelica

This article defines the possible sources for the unique depiction of paradise in the painting The Last Judgment by Fra Angelico. It defines the artist’s notion of paradise, which developed into a specific eschatological concept under the infl uence of apocalyptic writings during the Middle Ages, promising eternal blessedness to those that followed the steps of Christian moral values. Furthermore, an iconological analysis provides a possible explanation of the motif through the painting’s liturgical function. An extraordinarily rich theological, literary, and artistic tradition informed the artist’s conception of the Last Judgment. The doctrine and the iconographic features are supported by many passages from the apocalyptic sections of Bible, which, together with Dante’s intense visual imagery and various hymns, provided a source for the artist’s interpretation of the motif. Fra Angelico in general followed traditional iconography, but gave a unique depiction of paradise consisting of two parts: terrestrial paradise and Heavenly Jerusalem. In the early writings of the fathers of the Greek church, the notion of the third heaven can be found. It is the place of waiting for the righteous souls, but not the final destination. In the writings of Aquinas, the distinction between the earthly paradise and caelum empyreum is presented. Dante’s epic masterpiece also makes the same distinction. Earthly paradise is placed at the top of the mount of Purgatory, a reward for proper moral behavior. The unusual depiction of terrestrial paradise—in which the elliptical movement of dancing souls on fl owery meadows in a calm and serene composition, in which realism is strongly accentuated, is realized in the painting—has no visual parallel elsewhere. Because of its liturgical character, the painting carries the character of mystery far beyond the narrative function. Following the conventions of Byzantine-derived iconic art and based on Dominican knowledge, the painting is not an illustration of textual exegesis, but provides a field for exegetical inventions. Therefore it does not illustrate the succession of past events of Christian salvation history, but instead incorporates the events into the sacrament. As a liturgical art connected to liturgical action and the liturgical environment through the mass, it transports the audience into the mystical presence of God and engages them more deeply in the mystery of salvation. The liturgical presence therefore contains eschatological hope within, giving assurance of the world to come.

Moscow on the fashion map: between periphery and centre

This essay considers Moscow’s simultaneously peripheral and central position on the global fashion map. It is predicated on a study of imaginary Russian geographies presented in Vogue and other fashion media, advertisements and promotional activities by important fashion brands, as well as the promotional texts and visuals of several new Russian fashion designers. While these different players all contribute to shaping the imagery of Russian fashion today, their agendas and aesthetics differ. This essay identifies three main approaches within the field of the symbolic production of Russian fashion. Western fashion designers and fashion media mainly rely on Russian imperial sartorial heritage in their orientalizing approach to Russian fashion. Secondly, Russian Vogue perpetuates Moscow’s peripheral international fashion position either by passively transmitting derivative Western representations of Russianness, or by reconstructing its own high-fashion versions of traditional Russian decorative style. Finally, several young Russian fashion designers deconstruct both traditional Russian and socialist iconography, in a fundamentally new development for the country’s fashion scene.

Boys Will Be Boys: The Physiology of Childhood and the Apocryphal Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages

Intellectuals’ thinking about the nature of children in the high and late Middle Ages may have influenced the reception of centuries-old apocryphal infancy legends that portray Jesus acting like a real human child. As human beings undergoing physical and psychological development, children were thought to be emotionally unstable and rambunctious. While apocryphal portrayals of the boy Jesus may be compared to new naturalistic images of a smiling and playful Christ Child, they are also linked with the traditional iconography of Jesus as a stern little God. The divine child of the apocrypha who, besides engaging in play, displays his wisdom and power on numerous occasions and often causes the deaths of those around him clearly differs from the sentimental Child of late medieval devotional culture, who inspires affection and pathos.

The Fiery pool: the Maya and the mythic sea

Maya art and hieroglyphs constitute one of the world's most fascinating, visually striking, and complex systems of expression. Most scholarly interpretations of Maya art and culture have emphasized that this ancient civilization was oriented toward inland centers and preoccupied with the blood of royal lineage and ritual sacrifice. Drawing on recent archaeological discoveries and developments in deciphering Maya glyphs, this groundbreaking volume presents a revisionist reading that shifts the emphasis of interpretation to the mythic power of the sea as the basis of a larger, deeper cultural narrative and history for the Maya. Surrounded by the sea in all directions, the Maya viewed water as a source of both life and danger. Through the artworks presented-including acknowledged masterpieces and many never before exhibited in the United States-readers will gain a new appreciation for water's influence on Maya cosmology, its role in their interpretation of the supernatural, as well as its impact on Maya cross-cultural contacts, trading practices, and power dynamics. Essays by prominent scholars provide an interdisciplinary context for understanding Maya art as well as new interpretations of traditional iconography and symbolism. Accompanying a monumental exhibition comprising almost 100 artworks ranging from carved stone monuments to delicate jade sculptures, this compelling, richly illustrated publication will fundamentally transform the interpretation of Maya art.

EXCHANGE OF VALUES IN CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE IN POLAND SYMBOL IN THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

Poland is situated in the area of cultural and religious borderland, in the sphere of Latin and Greek-Slavonic influence. The Author reviews the past and present examples of the exchange of values in the Christian Churches, i.e. the Eastern (Orthodox and Uniate) and the Western (Roman Catholic and Protestant). They are portrayed through mutual conversion of temples, incorporation of traditional orthodox iconography in contemporary Roman Catholic churches as well as by adaptation of historic temples for their mutual ecumenical use. The values give testimony to the synthesis of art of both Christian Churches as well as to the return to their ecclesial unity. Santrauka Poland is situated in the area of cultural and religious borderland, in the sphere of Latin and Greek-Slavonic influence. The Author reviews the past and present examples of the exchange of values in the Christian Churches, i.e. the Eastern (Orthodox and Uniate) and the Western (Roman Catholic and Protestant). They are portrayed through mutual conversion of temples, incorporation of traditional orthodox iconography in contemporary Roman Catholic churches as well as by adaptation of historic temples for their mutual ecumenical use. The values give testimony to the synthesis of art of both Christian Churches as well as to the return to their ecclesial unity.

Bestiaries in Wood? Misericords, Animal Imagery and the Bestiary Tradition

Animal imagery on misericords has long since been a favourite topic for research and much work has been done and much progress has been made on the identification and classification of animal scenes. The actual interpretation of animal imagery on misericords is a different matter, however. When such imagery is deemed worthy of discussion this rarely progresses much beyond the inevitable references to the Physiologus and bestiary traditions with their moralised animal lore and well-developed animal iconography. In this paper I shall evaluate the various ways in which such animal imagery can be read and was likely to be read in later medieval times. The paper will concentrate on animal imagery found on British misericords, but its conclusions will be valid for the entire area where such imagery appears. It will be argued that even when traditional iconography is transferred to the misericords this does not mean that it is accompanied by its original (moralised) sense. This, it will be shown, not only holds true for bestiary imagery but also applies to other realms like that of the Roman de Renart. This inevitably has serious consequences for the moral interpretation of misericords, and I will consequently argue that we have to read this imagery differently.

The Body of Eve in Andrea Pisano's Creation Relief

Traceable to the tenth or eleventh century, the standard iconography of Eve created from Adam's side was not designed for naturalistically rendered figures. In the Creation of Eve (1334–37) from the campanile of Florence Cathedral, however, Andrea Pisano rendered the half-formed Eve in accordance with Aristotelian theories about the natural relation of body and soul then current among theologians and later assumed by art theorists. The naturalistic treatment of Eve's body necessitated subtle revisions to the traditional iconography, raised a key issue for Renaissance art, was significant for the civic program of the campanile, and embodied a common misogynist notion.

On the Dialogue of Values in Sacral Architecture and Art of the East and West

Abstract The author reviews the past and present examples of the diffusion of values in the Christian Churches, i.e., of the Eastern (Orthodox and Unite) and West (Roman Catholic and Protestant). They are portrayed through mutual conversion of temples, incorporation of traditional orthodox iconography in contemporary Roman Catholic churches as well as by adaptation of historic temples for their mutual ecumenical use. The values give testimony to the synthesis of art of both Christian Churches as well as to the return to their ecclesial unity. Apart from a retrospective look at contemporary, post-war buildings of this type the authors’ realizations are also introduced. These examples are representative for the architecture of cultural borderland which attempts to synthesize both the Western and Eastern Christian art.

Science, Religion, and the Cartographies of Complexity

May/June 2007 · Historically Speaking 15 Science, Religion, and the Cartographies of Complexity David N. Livingstone There is no surer guide to the territory of science and religion than John Hedley Brooke. He is a superlative cartographer . For several decades he has pioneered the way into this forbidding terrain and mapped its intricate topography with both subtlety and precision. His work has shaped my own endeavors at every scale. On the most trivial level he has furnished me with yet another alliterative term for a lecture aimed at general audiences on the historical relations between science and religion . To conflictand cooperation, social competition, and ideological continuity as ways of thinking about the encounter, I have been able to add complexity as by far the best way of getting a handle on the issues involved. At a different scale, he has infected me with what I would call the Brookean allergy to "isms." Brooke's emphasis on the need to disaggregate big concepts and comfortable labels—Baconianism, Newtonianism , Anglicanism, Darwinism, Inductivism, to name but a few—has secured at least one enthusiastic disciple. For these labels conceal as much as they reveal. Like the words "science" and "religion" themselves, such terms are what WB. Gallie famously called "essentially contested concepts"; they defy specification in terms of transcendent necessary and sufficient conditions.' Brooke is also the master of delicious irony. Time and time again in his many writings, readers are brought face to face with the unexpected, with what ought not to have happened, with individuals ending up on the wrong sides in debates. In this role, Brooke emerges as an iconoclast in the best sense, demythologizing the icons of science and religion alike. The champions of secular science and religious faith need to be made more aware of the kinds of stories he tells. The enthusiastic coterie of latter-day Darwinians intent on canonizing Darwin and Huxley , for example, need to acknowledge the racism and sexism that snake their way through evolution's most sacred texts. Darwin, for example, rejoiced that the Anglo-Saxons would "almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world" and happily called on the support of his eugenicallyobsessed cousin, Francis Galton, to insist that "if the prudent avoid marriage, whilst the reckless marry, the inferior members tend to supplant the better members of society."' For their part, latter-day creationists, forever complaining about the evils of Social Darwinism, need to be reminded that creationism has been a bulwark of racial prejudice and supremacist ideology. Louis Agassiz, for example, whose name frequently crops up in works of creationist apologetic, was convinced that the different races had each been specially created and displayed a distinctive hierarchy of moral and intellectual excelA fundamentalist cartoon on the cover of B. H. Shadduck's Puddle to Paradise, 1925. lence. And anti-Darwinian, conservative Presbyterians in the American South had no trouble securing biblical legitimacy for their belief that slavery and racial hierarchy were divinely sanctioned.' Attending to complexities of this sort casts new light on episodes that loom large in the traditional iconography of science-and-religion encounters. The Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee in 1 925 is a case in point. The formulaic portrayal of this affair as redneck resistance to enlightened science has no doubt served the needs of ideologues of various hues, but mostly at the expense of ignoring the fact that the textbook in question, George William Hunter's A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems (1914), appended to its popularization of evolution declarations insisting that Caucasians were the highest human type and that eugenic practices should be installed to wipe out what he called social "parasitism and its cost to society." Given these professions, it is hardly surprising that the "Great Commoner," William Jennings Bryan, Democratic candidate for the American presidency, would find the book obnoxious . Comfortable stereotype does not serve us well here at all. It is precisely the realization that history does not fit preconceived templates that has impelled Brooke to privilege complexity and contradiction over predictability and preconception. And indeed he is entirely right to disavow the suggestion that he is the father of a "complexity thesis." For complexity is not to...

Popular Science in early modern France: Abraham Bosse's Sight

Included in Abraham Bosse's Sight from the series of Five Senses that he etched during thc latcr 1630S is an image that may not seem particularly remarkable to anyone familiar with early modern history: among the various means of ‘seeing’ is a man looking through a telescope (figure 1). The most central and typical example of the technology underlying the ‘Scientific Revolution’, the telescope is especially closely associated with Galileo. And this is the connection suggested in the catalogue of the recent quatercentenary exhibition celebrating Bosse's birth: that his is an evocation of the theories of Galileo and his French followers Gassendi and Peiresc, an endorsement of the ‘new science’. I But if the approach that ultimately transformed the image of science involved technology, it was not technological in nature. The Galileans argued, rather, for a radically new understanding of the laws of physical science, a sea-change, a ‘paradigm shift’ or ‘epistemic break’ that resulted in what was arguably the greatest scientific controversy of the early modern period.’ Under attack in the Galilean system, moreover, was the preoccupation with sense experience originating with Aristotelian natural philosophy, embodied in many traditional representations of the Five Senses, and apparently acknowledged in the remainder of Sight with its rebus-like arrangement of figures and symbols. Thus, if the man with the telescope in Bosse's image is indeed an affirmation of Galileo's controversial discoveries, it would be such, paradoxically, within the framework of the traditional system that Galileo aimed to overturn. But is the evidence for a Galilean reading of Sight indeed compelling and if so is the above-mentioned interpretation the correct one? The broad context for these questions is the nature of the historical relationship between visual art and science that scholars have been investigating for at least half a century, with particular attention to the influence of Galilean astronomy. These studies, however, invariably have examined paintings made for a relatively homogeneous elite audience broadly familiar with philosophical (scientific) ideas as well as traditional art and iconography. Operating within an alternative print or commercial culture, Bosse would have been addressing a more diverse audience, with different educational backgrounds, opinions and expectations. And his prints — like seventeenth- century French prints more generally — have rarely been subjected to the in-depth analyses of paintings or been examined within the context of the burgeoning print culture in which they were produced. Bosse's prints, additionally, juxtapose image and text in surprising ways and are thereby of interest within the larger study of this interaction. A study of Bosse's Sight is worth undertaking, in sum, as a fascinating image in its own right, for holding out the possibility of opening a window onto a great and transformative moment in the social and cultural history of which print culture was an integral part, and as a contribution to word/image studies.

The Power of the Masquerade: Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios and the Construction of Femininity

This paper examines the construction of femininity in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, Pedro Almodóvar, 1988), exploring the application of contemporary gender and feminist theory to the film's representation of its female protagonists. Specifically, the paper focuses on Judith Butler's identification of gender as both constructed and performative, and on Mary Ann Doane's recuperation of the concept of the masquerade. As feminine excess exposes a gap between the self as subject and object, showing gender as a transitory performance, the very artificiality of female identity becomes a tool of potential resistance; Almodóvar's women, highly stylized and self-consciously manufactured, may reveal the masquerade's hidden power. This paper argues that by presenting complex female characters in a context of acknowledged artificiality, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown actually destabilizes patriarchal positioning, exposing the 'psychic excess' behind feminine performance; at the same time, the film's endorsement of traditional female iconography highlights the ambiguity of Almodóvar's discourse.

Charles Darwin in the Andes

Considering geological time as an important epistemological obstacle to the construction of ideas on biological evolution, a study was carried out on the so-called ‘Darwin Papers’. The conclusion was that Charles Darwin's excursion in the Andes during March–April 1835 was a crucial step in this regard. An expedition was carried out in March–April 2002, in the exactsame days of the year that Darwin had been there. The results of this expedition are described; these suggest a reappraisal of the traditional Darwin iconography and teaching strategies.

Le corps sans limites ou l’acéphalité : le personnage d’Acéphale, secret et équivoque, dans les oeuvres des artistes autour du Collège de Sociologie

Acephala inflict upon the body image the sacrificial amputation of the face and the disturbing presence of a headless figure. The character Acéphale, imagined by Georges Bataille and André Masson in 1936 in Spain and personified by this headless and vigorous creature, describes the universe of confusion and savagery that surrounds them. Acéphale, the emblem of the review established by Bataille, matches up with the Collège de Sociologie's queries from 1937 to 1939, as well as with the rites of a secret society. The artists linked to the Collège de Sociologie, André Masson, Taro Okamato, and Isabelle Waldberg, question the portrayal of a headless human body. Exhibiting an acéphale enables them to question political, sexual, and social identity and to doubt the image's status and traditional iconography. These artists and writers reveal the collapse of the figuration, wishing to show the ambiguous and “headless” part of art in order to celebrate desire, the myth of absence, and the baring of the human body.

Visualizing Madness

This article explores continuities between traditional iconographies of madness and images of mental illness mobilized by contemporary television program makers. In particular, it investigates how contrasting forms of British TV documentary visualize “dangerous” mental patients abroad in the community. In constructing the argument, particular attention is given to the role of documentary television in making visible the lives of schizophrenics vis-à-vis changing notions of psychiatric care in the community. By doing so, the article adopts an approach to public representations of madness/mental illness that takes account of documentary television as a cultural form with social responsibility. The article concludes by emphasizing television’s cultural importance as a visual medium capable of promoting or undermining mentally ill people’s symbolic presence within a community of citizens.

"When Ireland Was Still Under a Spell": The Poetry of Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill

In the Southern Review's 1995 special issue on contemporary Irish poetry and criticism, a recurring theme is the woman poet's continued efforts to focus attention on the place of women in Irish culture. That effort has often entailed rejecting the traditional iconography employed by male poets in favor of incorporating women as symbol—Mother Ireland, Queen Medbh, Grainne O'Malley, the Hag of Beare—and imaginatively restoring their presence to the Irish landscape. The Southern Review includes a "comhrá" or conversation featuring McGuckian and Ní Dhomhnaill, in which both discuss their relation to landscape, to language, and to the worldview of Irish mythology. McGuckian attempts to characterize the human relation to the natural world in the poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill:

Titian's three‐altar project in the Venetian church of San Salvador: strategies of self‐representation by members of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco

In the Venetian church of San Salvador there are two altarpieces by Titian, the Transfiguration and the Annunciation. A third altarpiece by him, a Crucifixion, was also planned, but never erected. Together they were supposed to display a christological programme. The paper argues that the three altarpieces were co‐ordinated by Titian and the patrons of the two side altars. These patrons were non‐noble merchants, involved like Titian in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Many members of this lay confraternity desired a tomb or an altar in San Salvador, an important church near the Rialto. A history of the commissions for these altars and tombs reveals how cittadini acted in an area traditionally dominated by patricians. Their strategy of adapting to Venetian traditions on the one hand, and of developing their own modes of representation on the other, is most evident in Titian's patrons. A closer examination of Titian's Annunciation demonstrates how the painter and the patron dealt with such a crucial theme for the myth of Venice. Titian affirmed the traditional iconography of the Annunziata, but provided it with highly innovative features: the open brushwork and the unusual physicality of the holy figures express the incarnation of the divine Word.

EINE UNBEKANNTE ARBEIT VON JOSEPH IGNAZ MILDORFER: DIE FRESKEN IM TURMZIMMER DES SCHLOSSES SÁRVÁR

Summary The ceiling fresco of the tower-room in Sárvár Castle follows with a few iconographic and compositional changes the fresco of Daniel Gran (1730) in the main hall of the Hofbibliothek (at present Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) in Vienna. The frescoes, in a bad condition and restored in 1960, were held to be works by Stefan Dorffmeister form the end of the 1760s. Mainly on the basis of its compositional qualities, the frescoes in Sárvár show many ressenblances with works by Joseph Ignaz Mildorfer, made in the 1750s and 1760s for Hungarian patrons, among them the ceiling of the Chapel in the Esterházy Castle in Pápa (1758), the dome-fresco of the Chapel (1964) and the ceiling in the main hall (1766/67) of the Palacee of Eszterháza. The closest relationship can be observed with the painted decoration of the state room of the Forgách Castle in Gács (Halič, Slovakia, early 1760s). The frescoes in S Sárvár can be dated according to the relationships of the owners before 1759, when the Castle belonged to Count Georg Szluha and his wife, Rosalie Sinzendorf (whose mother was a Countess Draskovich). The subject of the painting as well as the choice of the painter could be the result of the Szluha connection with the imperial court and also by the fact that his wife was related to Count Antal Grassalkovich. The latter was in contact with architects at the imperial court (N. Pacassi, J. N. Jadot), working with Mildorfer. The iconography of the tower-room represents a mixture of traditional iconography of libraries and of sale terrene, so its function as a private closet, a kind of Baroque studiolo can be supposed.