Culture, Theory and Critique Pictorial Versus Iconic Turn

This article was downloaded by: [University of Sydney] On: 09 February 2015, At: 03:13 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Culture, Theory and Critique Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rctc20 Pictorial versus Iconic Turn: Two Letters Gottfried Boehm & W. J. T. Mitchell Published online: 21 Dec 2009. To cite this article: Gottfried Boehm & W. J. T. Mitchell (2009) Pictorial versus Iconic Turn: Two Letters, Culture, Theory and Critique, 50:2-3, 103-121, DOI: 10.1080/14735780903240075 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14735780903240075 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions Culture, Theory & Critique, 2009, 50(2–3), 103–121 Pictorial versus Iconic Turn: Two Letters Gottfried Boehm and W. J. T. Mitchell TaylorRCTC_A_424181.sgm10.1080/14735780903240075Culture,1473-5784Original2009502-3000000July-NovemberGottfriedBoehmgottfried.boehm@unibas.ch and& TheoryArticle Francis (print)/1473-5776Francis & Critique 2009 (online) Antony Gormley, ORIGIN OF DRAWING IX, 2008, © the artist. Abstract In this exchange of letters, Gottfried Boehm and W. J. T. Mitchell explore the intellectual paths that brought them to simultaneously advocate an ‘iconic turn’ and a ‘pictorial turn’ respectively. They trace the emergence of the study of images through art history and philosophy and consider the diversity of images and the array of issues and ideas that come together under the topic of ‘iconology’ and ‘pictoriality’. On the way they discuss the use and treatment of images in the human and natural sciences, the history of aesthetic styles, the possibility of a physics of the image, the status of iconoclasm, and how the idea of a turn might equate to a paradigm shift in Western philosophical thinking. Dear Tom, Has the ‘science of images’ begun to write its own history much too early, before it knows what it is or what it can be? One could misunderstand Hans Belting’s Viennese Colloquium, which sought to take stock of the field, as such an attempt. There, however, the matter was one of unwritten and future books, rather than an observation on what had already been achieved. Never- theless, the ominous talk of the pictorial and/or iconic turn is nearly unavoid- able when we discuss our own work. Indeed, although the terms refer back to Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 03:13 09 February 2015 the beginning of the 1990s, they designate more generally the attempt to gauge the legitimacy of our own work in actu. It therefore seemed appropriate to direct questions at the two of us as the coiners of these terms – questions received with mixed feelings, given that there is no lack of ‘turns’; they belong to the jargon of the science and to its marketing. Although quickly proclaimed, it is yet to be determined how much this new kind of scientific questioning – whether related to materials or also to methods – is actually worth. The ‘turn’ vacillates between what Thomas S. Culture, Theory & Critique ISSN 1473-5784 Print/ISSN 1473-5776 online © 2009 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/14735780903240075 104 Gottfried Boehm and W. J. T. Mitchell Kuhn termed a ‘paradigm’ and the attitude of a rhetorical twist that recalls last fall’s fashions. Given this situation, it might prove useful to follow through on the request for information and to respond in two letters, from Basel to Chicago and back. I do not associate this undertaking in any way with quarrels over chronological priority, since at this point it is quite obvious that we agree, despite our differing intellectual presuppositions and scientific goals, with the assessment that the image question touches on the founda- tions of culture and poses quite novel demands on the field that are not to be haphazardly satisfied. For the ‘image’ is not simply some new topic, but relates much more to a different mode of thinking, one that has shown itself capable of clarifying and availing itself of the long-neglected cognitive possibilities that lie in non-verbal representation. À propos chronology: this epistolary exchange will also serve to show that we have operated with a very large degree of independence from one another, one that in the early years was sustained by mutual ignorance. Once I finally read your works and got to know you personally, I gained the impression that two wanderers in a forest had met, wanderers who had traversed the same, scarcely-known continent of pictorial phenomena and visuality, laying surveyor points here and there in order to open up the terrain for scientific discovery, before – as is apt to happen in this type of ‘Leatherstocking’ tale – going their own ways again. Luckily, we are not alone on this journey; other ‘pioneers’ have left behind their tracks, but the days of ‘pioneer’ work have long since passed: the fascination with new horizons has set many heads thinking in the meantime; it nurtures the talk of ‘theory’ or ‘science’ that can only prove itself through dialogic and interdisciplinary exchange. I The attempt to make progress on the subject of the ‘image’ was at first, i.e. in the late 1970s and early 1980s, very lonely work for me indeed; I will return to these beginnings with a few comments later on. After having achieved suffi- cient security, I attempted to break out of my isolation by compiling an anthology, Was ist ein Bild? (What is an Image?), that was finally published in 1994 by Fink Verlag in Munich. I had been working on the anthology since the Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 03:13 09 February 2015 late 1980s and it was initially planned as a volume of the ‘Edition Suhrkamp’ series, where it had already been scheduled to appear in 1991. I wanted to show that in philosophy especially, but also in works of modern art, a cryptic image debate was taking place that I hoped to interpret in order to lend validity to my own intentions. This debate comprised positions by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hans Jonas, Bernhard Waldenfels, Michael Polanyi, Max Imdahl and others.1 However, conceiving of the image as paradigm was not possible without outlining in one way or another its relation not only to language itself, but also to the dominant philosophical position. This position, incidentally, was 1 Contributions by Jacques Lacan, Meyer Schapiro and Kurt Bauch were also published from the older discussion. Pictorial versus Iconic Turn: Two Letters 105 shared in different ways by analytical as well as continental philosophy and had been termed the ‘linguistic turn’ by Richard Rorty in his reader of 1967. The linguistic turn seemed to undermine all attempts to make further progress with the image, unless one was attempting to show that images are themselves linguistic occurrences, or that they participate in a universal system of signs. This route (one that had been presaged by C. S. Peirce and Nelson Goodman, but also by French semiotics) was fascinating, but left me unconvinced in the end; less because Jacques Derrida had proffered his inter- esting criticism of ‘logocentrism’, under which an attempt like that of the linguistic turn to employ language as the ultimate verifier of knowledge could undoubtedly be subsumed. Rather, I was more concerned with the fissures in that position’s argument, which, although it ascribed everything to language, was not sufficiently able to establish the source from which language itself could derive the stability of a theoretical foundation. Was this source also rooted in language? Or could the origins be traced back to another – external – reference, one that allows for the fact that language is embedded in social, cultural, or anthropological processes? If so, it should be possible to demonstrate the inherent pictoriality of language, which Ernst Cassirer had earlier reflected upon in employing the concept of deixis (1964: 129). In the philosophy of the 20th century one finds repeated attempts at a ‘criticism’ of language, related to one another in the way that they locate the generation of meaning in acts of viewing (Husserl), in processes of existence (Heidegger), or in vague familial similarities of the concepts, which emerge

Load more