Abstract
As prehistoric cave paintings indicate, the image is one of the oldest human cultural techniques. It would appear to be found in all human cultures in various forms and plays a crucial role in many religions. But although it is ubiquitous, its forms and practices can change considerably from culture to culture. These differences should be taken into account when speaking about the image in global terms. Especially forms like the tattoo, calligraphy, and the mask are marginal in “western” culture but central to other traditions and cultures of the image.
My thanks to Anna Brus and Götz Bachmann for their valuable comments.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. Hans Jonas, Homo Pictor, and the Differentia of Man, in: Social Research, vol. 29, no. 2 (Summer 1962), pp. 201–220 and Jochen Venus, Basismedien: Bild, Klang, Text, Zahl, Geste, in: Jens Schröter (ed.), Handbuch Medienwissenschaft, Stuttgart: Metzler 2014, pp. 215–222.
- 2.
Cf., e.g., William J. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representations, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1994; Hans Belting, An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body, Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press 2011; Klaus Sachs-Hombach, Das Bild als kommunikatives Medium: Elemente einer allgemeinen Bildwissenschaft, Cologne: von Halem 2003.
- 3.
Cf. Stephan Günzel/Dieter Mersch (eds.), Bild: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, Stuttgart: Metzler 2014.
- 4.
Cf. Dieter Mersch, Bildbegriffe und ihre Etymologien, in Günzel/Mersch, Bild, op. cit., pp. 1–7.
- 5.
Cf. Stefan Majetschak, Bild und Sichtbarkeit: Überlegungen zu einem transdisziplinären Bildbegriff, in: Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, vol. 48, no. 1 (2003), p. 43. Interestingly, Majetschak does not include “flatness” in his definition of the image (though at the beginning of his text he mentions it a number of times)—a quality that is often included in other definitions of the image but that in light of sculpture is untenable (cf. Jens Schröter, 3D: History, Theory and Aesthetics of the Transplane Image, New York: Bloomsbury, 2014).
- 6.
Which does not mean that semiotic treatments of the image are vulgar per se; cf., for example, Roland Barthes, The Rhetoric of the Image, in: Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, New York: Hill and Wang 1977, pp. 32–51.
- 7.
Cf. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968, p. 127ff. The resemblance theory is defended, for example, by Jonas, Homo Pictor, op. cit., p. 203. With regard to Goodman, cf. Majetschak, Bild und Sichtbarkeit, op. cit., pp. 30–37.
- 8.
Cf. Lambert Wiesing, Artificial Presence: Philosophical Studies in Image Theory, translated by Nils F. Schott, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Cf. also Majetschak, Bild und Sichtbarkeit, op. cit., pp. 37–43.
- 9.
Cf. Ekkehard Kaemmerling (ed.), Bildende Kunst als Zeichensystem 1: Ikonographie und Ikonologie. Theorien, Entwicklung, Probleme, Cologne: Dumont, 1979.
- 10.
Cf. Umberto Eco, Mirrors, in: Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 1986, pp. 202–226.
- 11.
Cf., e.g., Vilém Flusser, Into the Universe of Technical Images, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011; Horst Bredekamp/Birgit Schneider/Vera Dünkel (eds.), The Technical Image: A History of Styles in Scientific Imagery, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
- 12.
Cf. Oliver Scholz, Bild, Darstellung, Zeichen: Philosophische Theorien bildhafter Darstellung, Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1991, pp. 25–31 and 70–72.
- 13.
Cf. Stefan Majetschak, Sichtvermerke: Über Unterschiede zwischen Kunst- und Gebrauchsbildern, in: Stefan Majetschak (ed.), Bild-Zeichen: Perspektiven einer Wissenschaft vom Bild, Munich: Fink, 2003, pp. 97–121.
- 14.
Cf. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994.
- 15.
A classic example of the attribution of a revelatory power to the image can be found in Martin Heidegger’s The Origin of the Work of Art, in: Martin Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002, pp. 1–56, particularly pp. 13–16.
- 16.
In his Foreword Die Wiederkehr der Bilder [The Return of Images], in: Gotttfried Boehm (Hrsg.), Was ist ein Bild?, München: Fink, 1994, 11–38), Boehm notes with “Blick auf außereuropäische Stammeskunst” (“regard to non-European tribal art”) that “Die ältere und außereuropäische Bildgeschichte besitzt einen Gestaltenreichtum, der hinter dem der Moderne keineswegs zurücksteht. An orientalischen Teppichen, japanischen Teeschalen, afrikanischen Sitzen, an Faustkeilen der fernsten Frühe des Menschen usw. Läßt sich bereits kritisch erproben, was Bilder sind und was sie determiniert” [“the older, non-European history of images possesses a formal richness that in no way lags behind that of modernity. Oriental carpets, Japanese tea bowls, African chairs, hand-axes from the dawn of humanity, and so on, already allow us to critically assess what images are and what determines their nature”] (p. 38). Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that this thesis is not followed up by a detailed discussion of non-European images over the course of the book, particularly since Boehm’s formulation raises a number of questions. Firstly, he only provides examples of non-European image types that are closely connected to functional objects, as though the “primitive” image had not succeeded in liberating itself from a decorative role. Secondly, he states that these examples “already” allow us to see what images are, which to a certain extent implies that non-European images are childlike, early forms of images. It is then not surprising when, a paragraph later, Boehm speaks of the “Erprobungen der Moderne” [“experiments of modernity,”] which have “unser Wissen von den Voraussetzungen, von der Flexibilität und der Wirkungsweise, z.B. der Malerei, der Zeichenkunst oder des skulpturalen Gestaltens erheblich erweitert” [“significantly expanded our knowledge of the preconditions, flexibility, and effects of, for example, painting, drawing, and sculpture.”] Yet, instead of placing non-European art and (European) modernity (Boehm’s examples include Cézanne and Matisse) on a developmental teleology (as appears to be the case here), they could be understood simply as different but equally valid forms.
- 17.
Iris Därmann, Fremde Monde der Vernunft: Die ethnologische Provokation der Philosophie, Munich: Fink, 2005, p. 38 and p. 39.
- 18.
Iris Därmann, Statt einer Einleitung, Plädoyer für eine Ethnologisierung der Kulturwissenschaft(en), in: Iris Därmann/Christoph Jamme (eds.), Kulturwissenschaften: Konzepte, Theorien, Autoren, Munich: Fink, 2007, p. 18.
- 19.
Fritz Kramer, The Red Fez: On Art and Possession in Africa, trans. Malcolm R. Green, London: Verso, 1993, p. 190 and passim.
- 20.
Cf. Heike Behrend, Rückkehr der gestohlenen Bilder: Ein Versuch über “wilde” Filmtheorien, in: Anthropos, vol. 85, no. 4/6 (1990), pp. 564–570.
- 21.
On the relation between ethnology and art history in this respect cf. Birgit Mersmann, Art History, and the Culture of the Image: A Manifesto for Global Art History, in: Hans G. Kippenberg/Birgit Mersmann (eds.), The Humanities Between Global Integration and Cultural Diversity, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016, pp. 70–76.
- 22.
Cf., e.g., Monica Juneja, Kunstgeschichte und kulturelle Differenz: Eine Einleitung, in: Kritische Berichte, vol. 40, no. 2 (2012), pp. 6–12, particularly p. 10, und James Elkins, Different Horizons for the Concept of the Image, in: Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, vol. 43, no. 1 (1998), pp. 29–46. On the question of global art history, cf. also James Elkins (ed.), Is Art History Global?, New York: Routledge, 2007.
- 23.
Cf. Hans Belting, Florence, and Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2011.
- 24.
Cf. Erhard Schüttpelz, Unter die Haut der Globalisierung: Die Veränderungen der Körpertechnik “Tätowieren” seit 1769, in: Tobias Nanz/Bernhard Siegert (eds.), Ex machina: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Kulturtechniken, Weimar: VDG, 2006, pp. 13–58.
- 25.
Cf., e.g., Birgit Mersmann, Schrift-, Pinsel-, Atemzug – Ostasiatische Schriftbildlichkeit zwischen Imagination und Inskription, in: Birgit Mersmann/Martin Schulz (eds.), Kulturen des Bildes, Munich: Fink, 2006, pp. 83–100, and Elkins, Different Concepts, op. cit., pp. 30–34. The centrality of the distinction between the image and writing in Western culture is evident, for example, in Exodus 32, which presents the conflict between the word of God, engraved on the stone tablets, and the idol—the golden calf around which the people of Israel dance.
- 26.
Cf., however, Hans Belting, Faces: Eine Geschichte des Gesichts, Munich: Beck, 2014, particularly. p. 119: “Die westliche Kultur hat seit der Antike keine Masken mehr hervorgebracht, mit denen sie sich identifiziert hätte” [“Since antiquity, Western culture has not produced any masks with which it has identified itself.”]
- 27.
Cf. Zoe Strother, Inventing Masks. Agency and History in the Art of the Central Pende, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998.
- 28.
In terms of which Heidegger characterizes the modern era as such; cf. The Age of the World Picture, in: Martin Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track, op. cit., pp. 57–85.
- 29.
Cf. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, The “Soul” of the Primitive, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1965, pp. 153–157. Cf. also Därmann, Fremde Monde der Vernunft, p. 38 and for a critical reading of Heidegger, pp. 489–511.
- 30.
One might, for example, read Roland Barthes’ notion of the “punctum” along such lines; cf. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, London: Vintage, 1993.
- 31.
Cf. Fritz Kramer, Geist, Bild, Realität, in: Miklós Szalay (ed.), Der Sinn des Schönen: Ästhetik, Soziologie und Geschichte der afrikanischen Kunst, Munich: Trickster, 1990, pp. 33–48, here p. 33: “In their overall conceptions of the mind, the image, and reality, African and European views do nonetheless seem to converge.”
- 32.
Cf. Brian Larkin, Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria, Durham/NC: Duke University Press, 2008.
- 33.
Iris Därmann, Fremde Monde der Vernunft, op. cit., pp. 487–488.
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Schröter, J. (2019). Image. In: Kühnhardt, L., Mayer, T. (eds) The Bonn Handbook of Globality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90382-8_11
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