The volume comprises a selection of papers presented at the 5th Postgraduate International Conference organized by the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of ...Venice (Venice, 4-6 October 2023): A Driving Force. On the Rhetoric of Images and Power. In the introduction to his well-known The Power of Images (1989), David Freedberg claims not only that images hold power over us, but they are also, inevitably, related to ‘power’ itself. Art is therefore a powerful and non-neutral tool. Its forms and expressions influence and manipulate the realm of the real. Throughout human history, the artist’s creative power gave form, substance, and meaning to otherwise inert matter. This process turned the artist into a demiurge. Furthermore, once images are given their final form, they circulate and live a life of their own. The 5th Postgraduate International Conference was aimed at investigating the rhetorical nature of the intersection between image and power. In 1979 Yuri Lotman claimed that “rhetoric” is the displacement of the structural principles of a given semiotic sphere into another semiotic sphere. The Tartu semiologist’s approach implies that the “correlation with different semiotic systems gives rise to a rhetorical situation in which a powerful source of elaboration of new meanings is contained”. In exploring these meanings from a multidisciplinary perspective, this volume investigates two main themes: the power of the image, as an autonomous device, endowed with a pervasive and persuasive character; the image as a form for representing power which addresses questions concerning the sense of authority, and its negation, namely a sense of dissidence and counter-narrations.
While large red stone figurines and pipes were occasionally discovered by early investigators, only recently were they recovered in secure archaeological context demonstrating them to be ...twelfth-century Cahokian productions geologically sourced to unique flint clay sources near St. Louis. A subset of these are female figures associated with fertility and renewal motifs. Examination of these female figures demonstrates that while they reference similar mythic beings, the figures hold very different positions in local religious and social infrastructure. At Cahokia they are part of a formalized religious cult that is key to that polity's assent while outside of Greater Cahokia, e.g., in the Caddo region, they appear as mortuary inclusions indicating they were inalienable possessions of certain individuals. Furthermore it can be proposed that these outlying figures, transformed to pipes, might have been part of medicine bundles maintained by female bundle keepers involved in curing. The archaeological evidence makes apparent that such religious objects cannot be simply glossed over in terms of their iconic homogeneity or ethnohistoric analogies but must be interpreted in terms of their roles in which they were embedded within the religious, social, and political life of local societies.
Rosello has considered the documentary film at different points in its history to evaluate how its rhetorical tools have shaped the reconstruction of the past at three specific moments in its formal ...evolution. While acknowledging the particularities of the expressive devices used in each film analyzed here, the modulation of meaning and the consolidation of memory in each specific period are all based on documentary principles. As has always been the case in the documentary genre, in the realm of representation, neutrality, objectivity and impartiality are referential illusions. In every discourse, there is a subject of the enunciation who speaks while silencing, who shows while concealing. Both the cinematic frame and the iconography of memory are direct heirs to the behavior of this subject.
Summary
More than fifty years after the discovery of the first remains from Pozo Moro, new research has begun to question the arrangement, until now agreed upon, of the tower‐shaped monument. The ...recent paper by García Cardiel and Olmos (2021) employs iconography to sketch the possibility that the reliefs and sculptures encountered in said necropolis do not belong to a single monument, but two or more. In this paper we delve into this possibility by studying a fragment of architectural moulding from Pozo Moro, which allows us to conclude the possible existence of a pillar‐stele datable between 425–300 BC, when the necropolis was at its floruit. To reach this conclusion special attention is paid to Iberian architectural ornaments, a subject seldom yet studied.
Based on the analysis of the decorative program of an Etruscan amphora dating from the first quarter of the 5th century BC, preserved in Würzburg, which includes an unpublished representation of an ...episode of the Iliad in which Aphrodite comes to shield her son Aeneas from the gazes and blows of his enemies, one can wonder about the modalities of reception of the Homeric story and in particular on the attention paid to the members of the Trojan camp.The introduction of Homeric themes—from the Odyssey but also from the Cyprian Songs and the Iliad—is noticeable very early in Etruria in the figurative arts. It manifests itself through a selection of characters and episodes which have points in common with the visual imagination developed elsewhere on other Etruscan productions and through other subjects: warlike exploits, symbolism of human sacrifice, lineage value.It is thus interesting to note that the figures of Hector, Aeneas or Paris, warrior, hero, prince and Trojan herdsman have a particular echo that should be considered within a system of aristocratic values specific to the Etruscan elites, conditioning the local control.
This study aims to bring forth two iconographic contexts whichrelate to the issue of the primacy of Rome. The first one dwells upon theevidence taken from Byzantium and the Balkans, while the second ...follows thisline of investigation into the Romanian Post-Byzantine heritage. The cult ofSaint Peter was strong enough in Byzantium as to prevent any refutation of hisprimacy, even during the harshest quarrels with Rome. This could explain thepresence of Roman Popes (most frequently of St. Sylvester) in the procession ofsaintly bishops depicted in Moldavian apses at the end of the 15th c. and in the16th c., but equally in Wallachian iconographic programs from the 16th and 17thc. This phenomenon might hint at a claim to the plenitude of the apostolictradition for the local Church, but also at a polemical anti-Latin discourse,which makes use of papal iconic portraits in contexts with strong ecclesiasticimprint.
The article analyses the representation of the painter Menchu Gal (1918-2008) in the press during early francoism (1939-1959). Through the analysis of different examples, we study what was the ...position of women in that artistic system, the importance that their representativeness had in this fact, as well as the different strategies developed, in this case by Gal, to negotiate the position of "woman artist".
Classical historical and art studies in the context of the development of modern humanities are frequently synthesised with research on visual culture and social art history, forming a broad ...discourse on the study of the culture of a particular era, country, or community. This optics is taken as the basis for this study, wherein such a fundamental philosophical concept as the attitude towards death is considered from the standpoint of art history iconographic and cultural studies to identify worldviews and ideology in the development of visual narratives that cover and represent them. In this dimension, illuminated manuscripts are the research subject and object where, through the synthesis of text and image, the ability to semiotically read images and decode the symbolic content of cultural categories opens up wide interpretative possibilities for the researcher. The purpose of this study is to outline the wide variability of iconographic typologies associated with the theme of death in the late medieval European culture of the Latin West and to cover the features of the connection of visual culture with the system of worldview representations based on symbolism rooted in religion, folklore, and court aristocratic culture. The proposed study uses an interdisciplinary scientific approach and an art history approach. The research is based on the methods of stylistic and formal analysis, semiotics, and hermeneutics. The typological approach allowed identifying groups of images united by identical semantics of image interpretation, joint compositional and plot solutions designed to accessibly decode their semantics. First, the ontological and metaphysical foundations of the perception of death as a phenomenon in the philosophical and anthropological dimension in culture in general, and in western European culture in particular, are defined and characterised. In the context of the analysis of the features of the symbolic and iconographic interpretation of images of death in the visual culture of illumination of the 13th-15th centuries, groups of images are identified, united by identical semantics of interpretation of these images, joint compositional and plot solutions designed to accessibly decode their semantics, namely the imagery of the death of saints and clergy, imagery of the death of monarchs, the death of soldiers, noble chivalry, the death of fallen in battle, the death of women, imagery of suicides, as well as imagery of violent death, murder. This study covers a wide range of potential recipients in modern humanitarianism and can be useful for historians, medievalists, art historians, anthropologists, and cultural scientists.
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