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In many contemporary societies we encounter iconoclasm breaking out with renewed violence. Iconoclastic actions against objects of visual material culture and testimonials of history act as dynamite in the public sphere. They are expressions of political, religious, national, and identity conflicts. Even the freedom of art is threatened by censorship and cancel culture. Based on case studies from different world regions, contemporary iconoclasms in art, media, and cultural heritage are critically analyzed from both a global and an interdisciplinary perspective. Divided into three sections, the book discusses attacks on monuments and memorials, idol disputes in museums and the visual arts, and forms of mediated iconoclasm in contemporary art.
Offering a series of case studies of recent media controversies, this collection draws on new perspectives in cultural studies to consider a wide variety of images. The book suggest how we might achieve a more subtle understanding of controversial images and negotiate the difficult terrain of the new media landscape.
The function of images in the major illustrated English poetic works from the Anglo-Saxon period to the early fifteenth century is the primary concern of this book. Hilmo argues that the illustrations have not been sufficiently understood because modern judgments about their artistic merit and fidelity to the literary texts have got in the way of a historical understanding of their function. The author here proves that artists took their work seriously because images represented an invisible order of reality, that they were familiar with the vernacular poems, and that they were innovative in adapting existing iconographies to guide the ethical reading process of their audience. To provide a theoretical basis for the understanding of early monuments, artefacts, and texts, she examines patristic opinions on image-making, supported by the most authoritative modern sources. Fresh emphasis is given to the iconic nature of medieval images from the time of the iconoclastic debates of the 8th and 9th centuries to the renewed anxiety of image-making at the time of the Lollard attacks on images. She offers an important revision of the reading of the Ruthwell Cross, which changes radically the interpretation of the Cross as a whole. Among the manuscripts examined here are the Caedmon, Auchinleck, Vernon, and Pearl manuscripts. Hilmo's thesis is not confined to overtly religious texts and images, but deals also with historical writing, such as Layamon's Brut, and with poetry designed ostensibly for entertainment, such as the Canterbury Tales. This study convincingly demonstrates how the visual and the verbal interactively manifest the real "text" of each illustrated literary work. The artistic elements place vernacular works within a larger iconographic framework in which human composition is seen to relate to the activities of the divine Author and Artificer.Whether iconic or anti-iconic in stance, images, by their nature, were a potent means of influencing the way an English author's words, accessible in the vernacular, were thought about and understood within the context of the theology of the Incarnation that informed them and governed their aesthetic of spiritual function. This is the first study to cover the range of illustrated English poems from the Anglo-Saxon period to the early 15th century.
Written by an international group of highly regarded scholars and rooted in the field of intermedial approaches to literary studies, this volume explores the complex aesthetic process of "picturing" in early modern English literature. The essays in this volume offer a comprehensive and varied picture of the relationship between visual and verbal in the early modern period, while also contributing to the understanding of the literary context in which Shakespeare wrote. Using different methodological approaches and taking into account a great variety of texts, including Elizabethan sonnet sequences, metaphysical poetry, famous as well as anonymous plays, and court masques, the book opens new perspectives on the literary modes of "picturing" and on the relationship between this creative act and the tense artistic, religious and political background of early modern Europe. The first section explores different modes of looking at works of art and their relation with technological innovations and religious controversies, while the chapters in the second part highlight the multifaceted connections between European visual arts and English literary production. The third section explores the functions performed by portraits on the page and the stage, delving into the complex question of the relationship between visual and verbal representation. Finally, the chapters in the fourth section re-appraise early modern reflections on the relationship between word and image and on their respective power in light of early-seventeenth-century visual culture, with particular reference to the masque genre.
In the year 726 C.E., the Byzantine emperor Leo III issued an edict declaring images to be idols, forbidden by Exodus, and ordering all such images in churches to be destroyed. Thus commenced the first wave of Byzantine iconoclasm, which ran its violent course until 787, when the underlying issues were temporarily resolved at the Second Council of Nicaea. In 815, a second great wave of iconoclasm was set off, only to end in 842 when the icons were restored to the churches of the East and the iconoclasts excommunicated. The iconoclast controversies have long been understood as marking major fissures between the Western and Eastern churches. Thomas F. X. Noble reveals that the lines of division were not so clear. It is traditionally maintained that the Carolingians in the 790s did not understand the basic issues involved in the Byzantine dispute. Noble contends that there was, in fact, a significant Carolingian controversy about visual art and, if its ties to Byzantine iconoclasm were tenuous, they were also complex and deeply rooted in central concerns of the Carolingian court. Furthermore, he asserts that the Carolingians made distinctive and original contributions to the whole debate over religious art. Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians is the first book to provide a comprehensive study of the Western response to Byzantine iconoclasm. By comparing art-texts with laws, letters, poems, and other sources, Noble reveals the power and magnitude of the key discourses of the Carolingian world during its most dynamic and creative decades.
This book is not a conventional political narrative of Carolingian history shaped by narrative sources, capitularies, and charter material. It is structured, instead, by numismatic, diplomatic, liturgical, and iconographic sources and deals with political signs, images, and fixed formulas in them as interconnected elements in a symbolic language that was used in the indirect negotiation and maintenance of Carolingian authority. Building on the comprehensive analysis of royal liturgy, intitulature, iconography, and graphic signs and responding to recent interpretations of early medieval politics, this book offers a fresh view of Carolingian political culture and of corresponding roles that royal/imperial courts, larger monasteries, and human agents played there.
The phenomenon of iconoclasm, expressed through hostile actions towards images, has occurred in many different cultures throughout history. The destruction and mutilation of images is often motivated by a blend of political and religious ideas and beliefs, and the distinction between various kinds of ’iconoclasms’ is not absolute. In order to explore further the long and varied history of iconoclasm the contributors to this volume consider iconoclastic reactions to various types of objects, both in the very recent and distant past. The majority focus on historical periods but also on history as a backdrop for image troubles of our own day. Development over time is a central question in the volume, and cross-cultural influences are also taken into consideration. This broad approach provides a useful comparative perspective both on earlier controversies over images and relevant issues today. In the multimedia era increased awareness of the possible consequences of the use of images is of utmost importance. ’Iconoclasm from Antiquity to Modernity’ approaches some of the problems related to the display of particular kinds of images in conflicted societies and the power to decide on the use of visual means of expression. It provides a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of the phenomenon of iconoclasm. Of interest to a wide group of scholars the contributors draw upon various sources and disciplines, including art history, cultural history, religion and archaeology, as well as making use of recent research from within social and political sciences and contemporary events. Whilst the texts are addressed primarily to those researching the Western world, the volume contains material which will also be of interest to students of the Middle East.