Iconographies of Power: The Politics and Poetics of Visual Representation

Description

Today the question of iconography has taken on a new and more general urgency. As a dominant cultural practice, iconography embraces the politics as well as the poetics of visual representation within their specific historical and cultural conditions. In its contemporary significance the question of iconography moreover reaches beyond disciplinary boundaries of conventional definitions and interpretations of the relation between words and images in a demand to critically compare and contrast their different iconographies as cultural practices of power. In their distinct arguments and from different perspectives, the essays collected in this volume are all similarly concerned with the iconographical power and poetics of the image, including a broad range of visual representations: prints and illustrations, painting, sculpture and concept art, documentary and art photography, film comedy and digital imagery. In all these instances, the image is looked at not as an exclusive and isolated phenomenon but, rather emphatically, as a visual and contextual event; as both the source and target of the collision and the collusion of word and image; as instances and symptoms of contemporary iconographic practice alike. With contributions by Winfried Fluck, Mario Klarer, Mick Gidley, Douglas Tallack, Heinz Ickstadt, Peter Schneck, Maren Stange, Hanne Loreck, Zsofia Ban, Susanne v. Falkenhausen, Deniz Gokturk, Wendy Steiner, Hanjo Berressem, Kaja Silverman, Michael Wetzel. BERNDT OSTENDORF Iconographies of Power: The Politics; -- ULLA HASELSTEIN and Poetics of Visual Representation -- PETER SCHNECK -- WINFRIED FLUCK Aesthetic Experience of the Image -- Looking Forward: 19th Century Projects -- MARIO KLARER Before Ornament was a Crime: -- Nineteenth Century Pattern Design -- MICK GIDLEY Edward S. Curtis' Photographs for The -- North American Indian: Texts and Contexts -- DOUGLAS TALLACK Painting the El: Visual Representations of the New York Elevated Railroad, 1890s-1930s -- Projecting Images: Modernist Iconologies -- HEINZ ICKSTADT A Literature of the Eye: The Image and the Moving Image in Moder American Literature -- PETER SCHNECK The Purity of Poverty: Walker Evans and Iconographic Autonomy -- MAREN STANGE "Not What We Seem": Image and Text in 12 Million Black Voices -- DENIZ GOKTORK Strangers in Disguise: Role Play Beyond Identity Politics in Anarchic Film Comedy -- Transfer/Images: Trauma, Memory, History -- KAJA SILVERMAN The Cure by Love -- HANJO BERESSEM Crash: ".. at an indeterminate moment, indeterminate places ..." -- ZSOFIA BAN The Translation of Art: Reinterpreting the Work of Joseph Kosuth -- Transgressive Visions: Bodies and Boundaries -- SUSANNE VON The Body of Abstraction: The -- FALKENHAUSEN Politics of Visual Representation in Postwar American Art -- MICHAEL WETZEL American Appropriationists and the Lolita Complex -- HANNE LORECK Cindy Sherman's Sex Pictures, Pornography, and the Real -- WENDY STEINER The Necessity of Pornography -- List of Contributors