Title:

Iconoclasts and Their Motives

Author(s):

Freedberg, David A.

Date:

1985

Type:

Books

Department:

Art History and Archaeology

Permanent URL:

http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:8612

Publisher:

Distributed in North America by A. Schram

Publisher Location:

Montclair, N.J.

Abstract:

This book aims to counteract the overall scholarly neglect of the phenomenon of iconoclasm. Rather than analyzing the history of anti-image movements, the author discerns broad commonalities in the motives of many disparate individual acts of iconoclasm. Beyond their role as attention-getting gestures, acts of iconoclasm depend on the power of the conflation of image and prototype; iconoclasts are either disturbed by this conflation and reject it by mutilating the sign, or exploit it to enable a form of resistance to the prototype. Most generally, iconoclasm reinforces the necessity of attending to the dialectical relationship between works of art and their beholders.

Subject(s):

Fine arts
Art history

Item views:

554

Metadata:

description

View | Download