ART HISTORY A critical introduction to its methods MICHAEL HATT and CHARLOTTE KLONK i MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by PalgraveCopyright © Michael Hatt and Charlorte Klonk 2006 The right of Michael Hate and Charloue Klonk to be identified asthe author of this work thas been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Published by Manchester University Press (Oxford Road, Manchester mis gin, UK, and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, wv 10010, USA wwe: manchesteruniversitypress.costk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, nv 10010, USA. Distributed in Canada exclusively by ‘UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, ‘Vancouver, BC, Canada v6r 12 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Pablication Data is available ISBN 978 © 7190 6959 8 paperback First published 2006 meg == wa RTS “The publisher has no responsibilty for the pessstence or aceuracy of URLs for any externa or third-party internet websites referred a inthis book, aad does not guarantee that any content om such websites i, oF vwill remain, accurate oF appropriate. Priced in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, ChippenhamIconography—iconology: Erwin Panofsky HE ICONOGRAPHICAL—ICONOLOGICAL METHOD as practised by Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) between «1920 and 1968 was, with for- malism, one of the two most famous and influential approaches taken in twentieth-century art history. Iconography has often been seen as the antithesis of formalism; while the latter focuses on the morphology of forms, iconography focuses on themes and ideas. Yet concern with the subject matter or meaning of works of art is only one aspect of Panofsky’s approach. He also sought to ground his interpretations in a sound account of artistic form. Most ambitiously, he hoped to give interpretations of works of art that would show them to be symbolic expressions of the cultures within which they were created. Panofsky described his method as having three stages: first, a concern for the formal elements of art; second, the iconographical analysis of its subject matter; and third, an iconological analysis to show how the works under consideration formed part of the culture in which they had been produced. This may seem straightforward, but Panofsky’s method is informed by a crucial theoretical notion. While every artwork is specific to its culture he also sees every cultural expression asa characteristic articulation of certain essential tendencies of the human mind. The mind, for Panofsky, is both universal (it lies behind every cultural expression) and particular (chat is, it is articulated in a particular way in a particular historical context). He was thus giving his own answer to the hermeneutic problem: because the mind is both universal and particular, we can understand art objects as historically and culturally specific, and yet interpret them from another historical vantage point. Panofsky belonged to that generation of German-speaking art histo- rians who were students during the years that Riegl and Wolfilin published their seminal works. His great contribution to art history was to restore a conception of art which had been abandoned with the rejection of Hegel's theory: the idea that art is a particular kind of knowledge and, as such, can be related to other intellectual activities. Like Hegel, Panofsky’s guiding question was to ask what kind of relationship between the mind and the world was being expressed in the art of different times and different periods. Unlike Hegel, Panofsky did not think that this was determined by the power of some kind of universal spirit. Rather, art embodied different answers to an essentially irresolvable human problem, which found par-Ce AP Teonography—iconology: Panofsky 9 ticular articulation at different moments in history: namely, how the mind conceptualised the world. Unlike either Hegel or Riegl, Panofsky did not think of the progress of art as a process by which subjectivity increases and objectivity diminishes. Art was always there in order that what was subjective — the dimension that is human, conscious, and personal — could be objectified, and made independent and publicly available. This conviction became particularly forceful for Panofsky after the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933. Panofsky taught art history at the University of Hamburg from 1921 but by the early 1930s he also held a concurrent visiting professorship at New York University. This made it easier for him to emigrate to the USA than for many other Jews who were dismissed from their posts by the Nazis. He was appointed as a professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton in 1935, and remained there until his death in 1968. Panofsky’s method is bound up with his personal history in that, having witnessed the authoritarian aestheticisation of politics under the Nazis, he was adamant that art-historical work must withstand this ten- dency. It must resist, on the one hand, the danger of a subjectivistic psy- chological interpretation — which leads to a privatised and emotionalised conception of art — but also, on the other hand, that of a technocratic, stimulus—response picture according to which the artistic process is merely an effective way for certain politically desirable attitudes to be called forth. This political concern emerges clearly in an article published in 1940, defending history of art as a humanistic discipline: one that embodies values such as rationality and freedom while at the same time accepting human limitations, such as fallibility and frailty. From this’ he concludes, ‘two postulates result — responsibility and tolerance’ (Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts, 1970[ 1955], p- 24)- In the Anglo-American world of art history such a philosophical understanding of the discipline was, as Panofsky himself wrote in 1953, a novelty. In England, Panofsky noted, two radio speeches by art historians defending art history had been broadcast in 1952 under the title ‘An Un- English Activity To an English gentleman, Panofsky suggested, the art historian is apt to look like a fellow who compares and analyses the charms of his feminine acquaintances in public instead of making love to them in private or writing up their family trees’ (Panofsky, 1970[1955} p. 371)- In the USA in the 19308, however, Panofsky experienced the discipline as full of youthful adventurousness, uninhibited by the nationalistic pas- sions and narrow horizons of European art historians. The success of Panofsky’s method is no doubt to no small extent due to the fact that his intellectual ambitiousness fell on such fertile ground. During his time inArt history the USA Panoféky limited discussion of the philosophical basis of his work and for the first time turned his attention seriously to matters of technique. Yet his theoretical framework remained unchanged from that which he had developed during his early years in Germany. In bringing his own experiences and attitudes to the interpretation of art Panofsky is not exceptional. All critics and historians do this. But what is notable, though, is that he was prepared to acknowledge this. Indeed he considered it a virtue. Without a personal viewpoint, he argued, one would have no system of reference against which observations could make sense. Panofsky’s method developed in response to three key intellectual encounters which shaped the three stages of his iconographical—iconological approach. The first of these is the work of the formalists. At the age of 23, just a year after submitting his PhD thesis at the University of Freiburg, Panofsky challenged Wolfflin in print. Five years later he set out to adapt Riegl’s ideas to his own views regarding art and knowledge. In particular, Panofsky’s concern was to make clear that formal values are never content free. In the early 1920s, after his appointment at the University of Hamburg, he came into contact with the second and third of the important influences. There he met the scholar Fritz Saxl and the philosopher Ernst Cassirer, who were associated with Aby Warburg and his famous library. Aby Warburg (1866-1929) is also often identified as the founding father of the iconographic—iconological approach. His family’s fortune allowed him to pursue his art-historical research from his own private means, developing his library according to his own interests, and employing several research assistants. Warburg called his method ‘critical iconology’, central to which was the discovery and tracing of motifs through different cultures and visual forms (not restricted to so-called high art). Both the words ‘iconography’ and ‘iconology’ had already had a long history. Icono- logia was the name of a famous collection of emblems, published by Cesare Ripa in 1613. The word referred to the way that allegorical images were presented with explanatory texts elaborating their meanings. Later, iconog- raphy was used to refer to the way art historians would link motifs from a work of art to other art objects and to the textual sources available at the time. This is what the German art historian Anton Springer did in his Tconographical Studies published in 1860. Warburg and Panofsky followed Springer in his conviction that the elaboration of analogies between visual and literary motifs was fundamen- tal to connecting artworks with their culture. In contrast to Springer, however, they also believed that it is impossible to understand the signifi- cance of a picture's subject matter without knowing how it had been used before and after: rather than simply a comparison of sources at one his-