scholarly journals An owl and a mirror: On Bosch’s visual motif’s meaning

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (1/4) ◽  
pp. 210-241
Author(s):  
Jelena Melnikova-Grigorjeva ◽  
Olga Bogdanova
Keyword(s):  
Text Analysis ◽  
Art History ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
History Of ◽  
Erwin Panofsky ◽  
Moscow School ◽  
Aby Warburg ◽  
Mutual Communication ◽  
Vast Range

Our main goal in this paper is to study one Hieronymus Bosch’s iconographic motif, an owl, considering the iconography, production of meaning and connotations. Pursuant to the comparative analysis of the variants of the formal model we intend to ascertain the meaning of Bosch’s “owl” motif. We supplement its pure visual legend throughout European art history with mythological and symbolic (mainly verbal) legend. Methodologically, we base the vast range of interpretations on the school of history of ideas (Aby Warburg, Ernst Gombrich, Erwin Panofsky, Francis Yates, Carlo Ginzburg) and the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics of culture and text analysis. The article concludes that the “owl” motif, including in the works of Bosch, conveys the semantic aura of the “blind sight” (“blind foresight”). This ideological concept is in turn included into the archaic concept of mutual communication between the worlds carried out by a mythological observer — shaman, trickster.

scholarly journals Introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (18 N.S.) ◽  
pp. vii-x
Author(s):  
Christopher Prescott
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Art History ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Cultural Goods ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
Heritage Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Oslo ◽  
The University

The articles in the present volume are the result of two workshops held at the Norwegian Institute in Rome that are both robustly disciplinary, but simultaneously raise issues beyond the disciplinary bounds of art history (into philosophy, history of ideas and history) and archaeology (into criminology, heritage studies and contemporary sociology and politics). The first was organised by DniR-researcher Mattia Biffis in October 2019, The Art of Truth: Providing Evidence in Early Modern Bologna. The second section is based on a digital workshop organised by DniR-researcher Samuel Hardy in collaboration with the Heritage Experience Initiative project at the University of Oslo in October 2020, Handling of Cultural Goods and Financing of Political Violence.   On cover:ANNIBALE CARRACCI (BOLOGNA 1560 - ROME 1609), An Allegory of Truth and Time c. 1584-1585. Oil on canvas | 130,0 x 169,6 cm. (support, canvas/panel/str external) | RCIN 404770Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021.

Diffusion – Disjunktion – Distanz

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-284
Author(s):  
Melis Avkiran
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Art History ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Hierarchical Order ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
History Of

"Diffusion – Disjunktion – Distanz Erwin Panofskys kulturmorphologische Grundierung oder Nachdenken über Renaissanceand Renascences (1944) Der vorliegende Beitrag skizziert den ersten Teil eines Forschungsentwurfs, in dessenZentrum Erwin Panofskys Artikel Renaissance and Renascences aus dem Jahr 1944steht. Die Analyse des Textes fokussiert Panofskys historische Formel des sog. ›Disjunktionsprinzips‹zur Antikenrezeption und beleuchtet das inliegende Verständniskultureller Prozesse und Zusammenhänge. Der Blick wird auf die kulturtheoretischenImplikationen gelenkt, die in Panofskys Formel enthalten sind. Diese impliziertnämlich eine grundsätzliche Mobilität antiker Kulturelemente. Mit Nähezum ethnologischen Modell der Diffusion wird ein kulturtheoretischer Zugangzu Panofskys Arbeit ermöglicht, der bisher ebenso wenig beachtet wie ideengeschichtlichkontextualisiert wurde. Dabei wird deutlich, dass kulturelle Tradierungsich anhand diffusionistischer Erklärungsmuster mit dem Ziel formiert, einehierarchische Ordnung europäischer (Kultur‑)Epochen am Beispiel der Antikenrezeptionzu postulieren. Der Ansatz zeigt das Potenzial, welches sich im Vergleichdominanter Strömungen der deutschen Ethnologie und der Kunstgeschichte imfrühen 20. Jahrhundert verbirgt. This article sketches the first part of a research project centred on Erwin Panofsky’s article»Renaissance and Renascences« from 1944. The analysis of the text focuses on Panofsky’shistorical formula of the so-called ›principle of disjunction‹ for the reception of antiquity andsheds light on the internal understanding of cultural processes and contexts. The view is directedto the cultural-theoretical implications contained in Panofsky’s formula. This implies afundamental mobility of classical cultural elements. The proximity to the ethnological modelof diffusion enables a cultural-theoretical approach to Panofsky’s work that has so far beenignored, nor has it been contextualized in terms of a history of ideas. It becomes clear thatcultural tradition is formed on the basis of diffusionist explanatory patterns with the aim ofpostulating a hierarchical order of European (cultural) epochs using the example of the receptionof antiquity. The approach shows the potential hidden in the comparison of dominantcurrents in German ethnology and art history in the early 20th century "

Aby Warburg and the Secularization of the Image

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Steinberg ◽  
Yaron Ezrahi
Keyword(s):  
Sudden Death ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Visual Studies ◽  
World Culture ◽  
Erwin Panofsky ◽  
The University ◽  
Aby Warburg

This chapter draws attention to the anthropological imagination of Aby Warburg, the great student of world culture and comparative mythology whose “Warburg Library,” founded in Hamburg, served as the meeting place for Weimar philosophers, historians, and cultural critics. Warburg determined the library's acquisitions from 1886 until his sudden death in October 1929. In December 1933 the library (approximately 60,000 books, plus slides, photographs, other materials, as well as the collective argument of the enterprise itself) was evacuated to London, to be linked as of 1937 to the University of London and fully incorporated into the university in 1944. The Warburg Institute's second-generation principal scholars, adherents, and administrators included Erwin Panofsky, Ernst Gombrich, Rudolf Wittkower, Edgar Wind, Frances Yates, and Anne Marie Meyer. In recent years, the methods and claims of visual culture and visual studies have embraced the legacy of Warburg's critique of formalist art history.

Zen and Material Culture

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
Zen Buddhism ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Multiple Audiences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Tea Ceremony ◽  
Economic Considerations ◽  
Vast Range

The stereotype of Zen Buddhism as a primarily minimalistic or even immaterial meditative tradition persists in the Euro-American cultural imagination. By contrast, this volume calls attention to the vast range of “stuff” in Zen by highlighting the material abundance and iconic range of the Sōtō, Rinzai, and Ōbaku sects in Japan. Chapters on beads, bowls, buildings, staffs, statues, rags, robes, and even retail commodities in America all shed new light on overlooked items of lay and monastic practice in both historical and contemporary perspectives. Nine authors from the cognate fields of art history and religious studies as well as the history of material culture analyze these “Zen matters” in all four senses of the phrase: the interdisciplinary study of Zen matters (objects and images) ultimately speaks to larger Zen matters (ideas, ideals) that matter (in the predicate sense) to both male and female practitioners, often because such matters (economic considerations) help to ensure the cultural and institutional survival of the tradition. Zen and Material Culture expands the study of Zen Buddhism, art history, and Japanese material/visual culture by examining the objects and images of everyday Zen practice, not just its texts, institutions, or elite masterpieces. As a result, this volume is aimed at multiple audiences whose interests lie at the intersection of Zen art, architecture, history, ritual, tea ceremony, women’s studies, and the fine line between Buddhist materiality and materialism.

scholarly journals What to do with the “Most Modern” Artworks? Erwin Panofsky and the Art History of Contemporary Art

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 38-49
Author(s):  
Flora Lysen
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art History ◽  
Cultural Distance ◽  
Renaissance Art ◽  
Art Objects ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
History Of ◽  
Erwin Panofsky ◽  
Historical Methods

In the 1930s, when the world-renowned Medieval and Renaissance art scholar Erwin Panofsky became acquainted with the New York contemporary art scene, he was challenged with the most difficult dilemma for art historians. How could Panofsky, who was firmly entrenched in the kunstwissenschaftliche study of art, use his historical methods for the scholarly research of contemporary art? Can art historians deal with the art objects of their own time? This urgent and still current question of how to think about “contemporaneity” in relation to art history is the main topic of this paper, which departs from Panofsky’s 1934 review of a book on modern art. In his review of James Johnson Sweeny’s book Plastic Redirections in 20th Century Painting, Panofsky’s praise for Sweeney’s scholarly “distance” from contemporary art developments in Europe is backed by a claim for America’s cultural distance, rather than a (historical) removal in time. Taking a closer look at Panofsky’s conflation of historical/temporal distance with geographical/cultural distance, this paper demonstrates a politically situated discourse on contemporaneity, in which Panofsky proposes the act of writing about the contemporary as a redemptive act, albeit, as this paper will demonstrate, without being able to follow his own scientific method. 

Aby Warburg

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adi Efal-Lautenschläger
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Visual Studies ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Visual Phenomena ◽  
History Of ◽  
Aby Warburg

One preliminary point which must be stated regarding Agamben’s relation to the art historian Abraham (‘Aby’) Moritz Warburg (1866–1929) is that this line of questioning is not reducible to problems regarding imagery or ‘visual’ art. Agamben says explicitly that ‘only the myopia of a psychologizing history of Art could have defined [Warburg’s art history] as a “science of the image”’ (ME 53). Although most scholarship on Warburg has indeed viewed the latter’s work as laying the foundations for image and visual studies, in Agamben’s account Warburg ushers the humanities towards another kind of inquiry, one having more to do with the concept of time than with any sort of imagery or visual phenomena. In this, Agamben’s reading of Warburg differs substantially from those of major art historians influenced by Warburg, such as Horst Bredekamp (Bildakt)1 or Georges Didi-Huberman (images malgré tout).2 In fact, Agamben’s reading of Warburg’s art historical inquiries can be elaborated as a fruitful critique of the recent ‘imagist’ turn in the history of art, viewing visual artworks as being primary and essentially ‘images’.

Comparative History of Images and Transcultural Imaginary

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-300
Author(s):  
Odeta Žukauskienė ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Medieval Art ◽  
Research Topics ◽  
Cultural Imaginary ◽  
History Of ◽  
Athanasius Kircher ◽  
Aby Warburg ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines Jurgis Baltušaitis’ writings and shows its connections with the works of Henri Focillon, Aby Warburg and Athanasius Kircher. Baltušaitis oriented his interdisciplinary analyses in art history and cultural studies. The essay aims to demonstrate the complexity and importance of Baltrušaitis’ ideas that are developed in the comparative research of medieval art history, depraved perspectives, aberrations and illusions. Those works are linked by the philosophy of image and imagination that stand at the crossroads between abstractness and concreteness, myth and history, reality and illusion, rational and irrational forces, the East and West. This article tries to shape Baltrušaitis’ legacy by offering an insight into his thinking which unites various research topics, typically excluded from positivistic studies. It reveals the underlying structures of cultural imaginary in which cross-cultural interactions take place. It argues for the revaluation of his oeuvre by attending to the theoretical concerns behind his historical research program.

scholarly journals A Tolnay–Panofsky-affér, avagy hűség az ifjúsághoz: A bécsi iskola, Max Dvořák és A Vasárnapi Kör

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-170
Author(s):  
Markója Csilla ◽  
Balázs Kata
Keyword(s):  
Great Degree ◽  
Art History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
American Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
Erwin Panofsky ◽  
The One ◽  
Gyorgy Lukacs ◽  
Scientific Arguments

The conflict between Charles de Tolnay and Erwin Panofsky that grew unprecedentedly acrimonious in the history of the discipline – the so-called Tolnay–Panofsky affair – was more than mere personal bickering. The documents clearly reveal that the “affair”, which basically affected financial and professional positions, was based on embarrassingly ordinary, occasionally petty-minded questions instead of scientific arguments, and led to a break of relationship probably in spring 1943, also directs the attention to the science political consequences of the hierarchic establishment of American science financing and academia in general in the interwar years and the 1940s, and to differences between European and American scholarship. It can be gleaned that Tolnay’s efforts to be allotted raised stipends (often by a great degree, as the documents unanimously testify) and a confirmed position led to the deterioration of his relationship with the Princeton IAS leaders and community – in spite of the fact that the former leader of the Institute Flexner took Tolnay’s side, at times with threats to Panofsky and Oppenheimer and accusing Panofsky of professional jealousy. Though Tolnay received raised scholarship up to 4000 dollars for three years, the institute decided to part with Tolnay in 1948. In the background of the affair, however, one may discover conflicts based on the diverging views on art history by Panofsky and Tolnay rooted far deeper, in the elementary influences of the Vienna School of Art History and Max Dvořák on the one hand, and of the Sunday Circle and György Lukács, on the other. The art philosophical aspects and methodological consequences of these dissenting concepts of art history may bear significance for the practitioners of the discipline today as well.

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