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The 2016 issue of the journal World 3 of OCAT Institute is centered on the subject of “Open Iconology.”
As an art-historical research methodology devoted to analyzing the mechanisms of meaning in the work of art, iconology has been initiated, systemized, and critically reassessed by Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky, and E. H. Gombrich respectively. Warburg and other members of the Hamburg School channeled art history toward a humanist discipline by basing their investigations on the outlook of cultural history. Panofsky cemented the initial aspiration of the older generation through a systematic development of its methodological potentials. Gombrich opened iconology to broader scientific perspectives through his critical engagement with the web of ideas, images, and intellectual currents from which iconology emerged.
Today, various disciplines have benefited from this openness: philosophy, literature, religious studies, psychology, political science, and visual and cultural studies, as well as the divergent currents of research falling under “new art history.” Under this light, World 3 “Open Iconology” aims to comb through the development of iconology, explore its significance and possibilities in relation to contemporary art-historical research, and promote an open as well as critical attitude toward research.
The articles for this issue include:
1. Philippe-Alain Michaud’s “Mnemosyne, History of Art and the Institution of the Scene”
[French] “Mnemosyne, l’histoire de l’art et l’institution de la scène”
2. Uwe Fleckner’s “Without Words: Aby Warburg’s Image Montage between Scientific Atlas and Artistic Experiment”
[German] “Ohne Worte: Aby Warburgs Bildkomparatistik zwischen wissenschaftlichem Atlas und kunstpublizistischem Experiment”
3. Fan Baiding’s “On Certain Theoretical Sources of Studies in Iconology by Erwin Panofsky”
4. Wenyi Qian’s “Let the Picture have its Word: Foucault and the Metapicture in the 1990s”
5. Georges Didi-Huberman’s “In the Light-footed Steps of the Servant (The Knowledge of Images, Eccentric Knowledge)”
[French] “Au pas léger de la servante (Savoir des images, savoir excentrique)”
6. Fan Jingzhong’s “Preface to Classics of the History of Art”
