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COURSE DESCRIPTION

Ever since Gombrich’s Art and Illusion and Goodman’s Languages of Art, the theory of images has been a lively and growing subject. And yet in all the many publications in the field, only a handful mention an approach which has been important in art history for centuries – iconography, ‘that branch of the history of art which concerns itself with the subject matter or meaning of works of art’, as Erwin Panofsky put it. There are good reasons for this: much recent work has been devoted to theories of resemblance, rather than what images can be taken to mean. And at the same time, iconography has seemed like a limited phenomenon. Panofsky, whose ‘Iconography and Iconology’ is still the most widely read statement of iconographic theory, argued that landscapes, still lifes and genre paintings did not have iconographical meanings. For him, iconography was a matter of decoding the attributes, stories and allegories of traditional art. So to those interested in images per se rather than high art, iconography has looked like a topic they can afford to ignore.

This lecture course will argue that images of all sorts, including photographs, can be said to have meanings, and that Panofsky was wrong to limit the scope of iconography. It will also try to show that the ways in which images acquire meanings vary, and require the careful analysis that linguists and philosophers are used to applying to language. Rather than confining itself to traditional attributes, stories and allegories, it will be concerned with works from around the world, including ancestor figures from Africa and Oceania, idols from Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, European altarpieces and histories, and modern photographs and advertisements.

The course is open to anyone with an interest in the subject. There are no pre-requisites, and there will be no formal preparation.

Reading lists will be made available to registered students.

COURSE TUTOR

Paul Taylor is Curator of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection. His book How Images Mean, on which the course is based, will appear with Paul Holberton Publishing in the autumn.


COURSE SCHEDULE

The course will be taught across five x two hour classes. After an introductory lecture devoted to basic terms, the course will go on to examine four principal kinds of ‘iconographic device’, the mechanism by which meaning comes to be attached to images: designation, attributes, narrative and likeness. Each session will have time for discussion.

ONLINE VIA ZOOM

Monday to Friday, 15 - 19 July 2024
3.00pm-5.00pm [British Summer Time]
Total = 10 hours


COURSE FEES

  • £130: Standard
  • £115: Warburg staff & fellows/external students/unwaged
  • £80: SAS & LAHP-funded students
  • £65: Warburg students


BOOKING NOW OPEN

THE BURSARY APPLICATION PROCESS IS NOW CLOSED. IF YOU HAVE SUBMITTED AN APPLICATION WE WILL CONTACT YOU WITH THE OUTCOME IN THE WEEK BEGINNING 3RD JUNE.



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