Image studies as taste studies?

A Historiographic (Re-)view on Image Immanentism in Boehm, Gadamer and Crowther

Sažetak

The paper discusses some rather well-known, but rarely discussed origins of
the current “immanentism” and “invitationalism” of the images by rooting
them in the discussion that is itself rooted in the very matter of aesthetics – the
matters of taste. The introductory remarks justify briefly the chosen historiographical
approach, supported by few first-hand insights into the “momentum”
of visual studies one decade ago. In the second chapter, a short paper
appeared only in German in 2008, “W.J.T. Mitchell und der iconic turn” von
Norbert Schneider (1945-2019) is recapitulated, in which the impression of
the implied harmony between “like-minded” scholars – W.J.T. Mitchell and
G. Boehm – has been deconstructed in a comparative analysis. Further on,
Schneider´s arguments are followed up in the third chapter, where Boehm´s
Ph.D.-supervisor Max Imdahl and doctorate-supervisor Gadamer (as well as
their predecessors Fiedler, Croce and Vico) are discussed in some depth, with
reference to what we have baptized as image-immanentism and the hermeneutic of pictures. In the fourth chapter, we criticize a more recent follower
of Gadamer´s position, whose aim was to support Gadamer´s theory of aesthetic
value as artistic value with the projected value of the “artistic image”.
Paul Crowther´s important point was to substantiate the claim of the artwork
being a “symbolically significant artifact” and hence the extraordinary character
of our experience of art and its value. Although Gadamer’s understanding
of representation as an ontological event brings with it a metaphysical,
Neoplatonist implication, Crowther turned this implication of point to an
ontological-existential one. The presented case in point is supposed to provide
an argument for deep historiographic connections between the current
immanentism of images and their roots in the continental thinking traditions.