{"id":400417,"date":"2002-09-15T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-09-15T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/?p=400417"},"modified":"2022-06-13T22:01:28","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T21:01:28","slug":"a-kepi-fordulatrol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/kepi-fordulat\/a-kepi-fordulatrol","title":{"rendered":"(Magyar) A k\u00e9pi fordulatr\u00f3l"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pictorial Turn<\/a><\/div>\r\n\t\t
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The Anglo-Saxon theory always liked animated stories, and it even produces them, when it can. In 1994 two\r\nprofessors, one in America and one in Switzerland, independently from each other, like the Nobel prize\r\nholders, discovered the pictorial turn of human sciences. W. J. T. Mitchell introduced the phrase\r\n"pictorial turn" [1]<\/sup><\/b><\/a>, while Gottfried Boehm used the\r\nexpression "ikonische Wendung", that is "iconic turn" [2]<\/sup>\r\n<\/b><\/a> in the scientific discourse dealing with pictures and texts. They both borrowed the rhetorical topos\r\nof turn from Richard Rorty, who created something really enduring in 1967 with his "linguistic\r\nturn". [3]<\/sup><\/b><\/a> According to Rorty ancient and medieval philosophy\r\ndealt with modern ideas, while the contemporary scene is mostly engaged in words. Rorty traced back the\r\ngenealogy of the linguistic turn through Derrida and Heidegger to Nietzsche, but he also very often referred\r\nto his other great favourite, Ludwig Wittgenstein.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Gottfried Boehm from Basle, a prominent personality of art history hermeneutics, interpreted the\r\nsignificance of the notions picture (Bild), image (Abbild), pictorialness Bildnis) and imagination\r\n(Einbildungskraft) first of all in the context of the German philosophic tradition (starting from Kant,\r\nthrough Nietzsche and Heidegger to Gadamer) and the work of Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty. Basically it can\r\nbe said that he articulated his own "ikonische Wendung" within Rorty’s linguistic turn, when he\r\nemphasised the dominance of pictures and metaphors inside the realm of the Logos and textuality. The main\r\nheroes of his story are Wittgenstein from the Philosophical Studies<\/i>, Nietzsche contemplating on non-\r\nmorally apprehended truth and falsehood and Heidegger with a world concept. Boehm’s writing is not about the\r\nclich\u00e9 that there are more and more pictures around us, but the author argues for attaching greater\r\nsignificance to pictorialness, which determines our epistemology.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

W. J. T. Mitchell, an academic from Chicago, editor of the high-ranking Critical Inquiry, questions the\r\nalmighty power of the linguistic turn and argues for the importance of a pictorial turn, an independent\r\npicture theory. According to him the pictorial turn is about that the pictures that surround us do not only\r\ntransform our world and identity, but also form them more and more. In this way pictures are playing a more\r\nand more important role in the construction of our social reality. As compared to this the structuralist and\r\npost-structuralist interpretations dealing with textual metaphors oppress pictures and want to rule them.\r\nMitchell argues for the necessity of a picture science and art history, which accepts the different nature of\r\npictures and does not want to interpret them on the model of works of literature, cultures, societies and the\r\nsubconscious. Mitchell demonstrates the signs of the pictorial turn in Pierce’s semiotics, Nelson Goodman’s\r\nanalytic art philosophy, Derrida’s criticism of logocentrism, the work of the Frankfurt School and Michel\r\nFoucault. He finds that the members of this multicoloured company were at least aware of the growing power of\r\npictures, and it can be definitely seen in Wittgenstein’s, Adorno’s or Foucault’s icono-phobia. For example\r\nAdorno regarded mass culture built on pictures as a means of profit orientated monopolistic capitalism and\r\npolitics, while Foucault found that the society of scenery was only a superficial phenomenon of modernity\r\ncharacterised by the microphysics of power.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

However, Mitchell tried to prove the occurrence of the pictorial turn not only on the basis of the\r\narguments of human science. Not only philosophers or sociologists can see its visible signs, but also everyday\r\npeople. In connection with the modern achievements of picture creation he calls our attention to Jonathan\r\nCrary’s imposing list: "synthetic holography, flight simulators, computer animation, robotic picture\r\nrecognition, beam tracking, satellite maps, motion detectors, virtual reality helmets, magnetic resonance\r\nspectrography." [4]<\/sup><\/b><\/a> Boom industries basically determining our\r\nlives, such as film production, medical science, military industry work with these picture-creating devices.\r\nThe totality of the pictorial turn can be really understood, if for example we think about the Gulf War, which\r\nwas directed as a media spectacle, and its robot aeroplanes, which also functioned as video cameras showing us\r\nthe object to be destroyed until the moment of explosion.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Once we are talking about pictures, Mitchell cannot disregard the precedents of art history. This Neo-\r\nKantian discipline, which is regarded to be incapable of revival by so many people, still created some sort of\r\na picture science called iconology. Mitchell thinks that on the foundations of this science put down by Erwin\r\nPanofsky critical iconology [5]<\/sup><\/b><\/a>, a valid picture theory could be\r\ncreated. Obviously to do this Panofsky should not be "roasted through Nietzsche’s grill" \u2013 as Donald\r\nPreziosi suggests [6]<\/sup><\/b><\/a> \u2013 according to today’s post-structuralist taste,\r\nbut Althusser’s theory of iconology and ideology should be crossed with each other. In connection with the\r\npictorial turn Mitchell also observes that Panofsky is not only a rigorous user of a text orientated picture\r\nanalysing method, but also a prophet of today’s visual culture research, who wrote a thick book on early Dutch\r\npainting as well as a study on cinema or on the radiator grill of Rolls-Royces.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Horst Bredekamp, art history professor at the university of Berlin also answers the actual challenges of\r\nthe pictorial turn and visual culture creating in a tone preserving the values of art history. Bredekamp\r\ndiscovers the possible foundations of historic picture science in the work of Aby Warburg \u2013 not only in\r\nMnemosyne, his famous unfinished picture atlas, but also in his studies on the propagandistic pamphlets of\r\nreformation and the stamps of the Weimar Republic [7]<\/sup><\/b><\/a>. It becomes\r\nclear from Bredekamp’s latest lecture (see the selections) that in the pictorial turn he perceives the\r\ndominance of post-structuralism. He finds that the inter-textuality of the new interpretations completely\r\nburies the picture and pictorialness under itself. We can also agree Bredekamp in that the simple unification\r\nof neuro-biology, information technology and art history does not result in an independent discipline. At the\r\nsame time it is another question that this is not what visual culture researchers are aiming at.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Keith Moxey, art historian at the university of Richester, one of the apostles of visual culture research,\r\nhas a completely different opinion about the intellectual field of the new inter-discipline emerging. He\r\nbelieves that post-structuralist theories, the social history of art, post-colonialist and feminist criticism\r\ncould support art history in extending its research field to popular culture and also in regarding its\r\ndiscipline as a part of the politically and rhetorically motivated, historically defined cultural production.\r\nIt is not new interpretations, new methods, new mediums or techniques that Moxey is missing from classical art\r\nhistory, but self-reflexivity.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

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[1]<\/b> W. J. T. Mitchell: The pictorial turn. In: Picture Theory. Essays on Verbal and Visual\r\nRepresentation<\/i>. Chicago, 1994. 11-35. The study was first published in the March 1992 issue of Artforum,\r\nso priority should be given to him.
[2]<\/b> Gottfried Boehm: Die Wiederkehr der Bilder. In: Was ist\r\nein Bild<\/i>. Hrsg: G. Boehm. M\u00fcnchen, 1994. 11-38.
[3]<\/b> Richard Rorty: The Linguistic Turn:\r\nRecent Essays in Philosophical Method<\/i>. Chicago, 1967.
[4]<\/b> Jonathan Crary: The observer\\’s\r\nmethods<\/i>. Budapest, 1999. 13. It is not only this list that makes Crary’s rather significant and\r\nsurprisingly readable book interesting. Crary’s book is about vision and its historical construction. Its\r\nbasic statement is that at the end of the 19th<\/sup> century on the different areas of knowledge and\r\nsocial practice the abstract subject was replaced by the embodied observer. Crary’s train of thought was first\r\nof all influenced by Foucault’s writings.
[5]<\/b> The foundations of critical iconology were put down\r\nby Mitchell in his book on Iconology: Image, text, ideology<\/i> (Chicago, 1986). In this book surprisingly\r\nhe did not analyse the work of Panofsky or Aby Warburg, but the work of Nelson Goodman, Gombrich, Lessing,\r\nEdmund Burke and Marx.
[6]<\/b> Donald Preziosi: Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science\r\n<\/i>. New Haven, 1989. 112. It also belongs to the anecdotal story that Preziosi, who was encouraging the\r\ndeconstruction of art history, did not really criticise Panofsky, who fell into the forgivable sin of\r\nlogocentrism, but Michael Ann Holly’s "structuralist" interpretation of Panofsky. See also: Michael\r\nAnn Holly: Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History<\/i>. Ithaca, 1984. In connection with the\r\nrenaissance of Panofsky’s work also see a later edition of Perspective study glossed by Christopher S. Wood\r\n(Cambridge, 1991) and the latest book of Keith Moxey: The Practice of Persuasion: Paradox and Power in Art\r\nHistory<\/i>. Ithaca, 2001.
[7]<\/b> Horst Bredekamp: Einbildungen. kritische berichte<\/i>, 2000\/1.\r\n36. <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Pictorial Turn On the margins of a lecture series   The Anglo-Saxon theory always liked animated stories, and it even produces them, when it can. In 1994 two professors, one in America and one in Switzerland, independently from each other, like the Nobel prize holders, discovered the pictorial turn of human sciences. W. J. T. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":630410,"parent":400225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tema"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400417"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2023749,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400417\/revisions\/2023749"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}