New Theories = Nove teorije

Image studies as taste studies?

Slavko Kaćunko — pet, 17 sij 2025 00:00:00 +0100

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.

From Neurons to Emotions

Kasper Laegring — pet, 17 sij 2025 00:00:00 +0100

In recent years, neuroaesthetics has made its way into art history. Most notably,
art historian David Freedberg and neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese have
promoted a theory based on the discovery of so-called mirror neurons. In
brief, it has been shown that a mirror neuron fires an electrical signal both
when a movement is performed by one’s own body and when the same movement
is observed in another body, in another individual. Gallese calls this
circuit embodied simulation, and Freedberg, either alone or in collaboration
with Gallese, has taken these results and simply identified this effect with
empathy. Building on the theory of embodied simulation, Freedberg has
generally contextualized artworks through a range of neuroscientific findings,
including Antonio Damasio’s as-if body loop and Paul Ekman’s theory of
linking basic emotions with specific facial expressions. Altogether, this paradigm
can be called simulation theory.
Freedberg’s resulting neuroaesthetic theory has some radical implications for
the analysis and interpretation of artworks, even for the practice of art history
itself. This article explores and challenges Freedberg’s assumptions and arguments,
which are sought to be refuted, partly by consulting phenomenology
and the history of emotions. In particular, his peculiar concept of empathy
is rejected, as it is limited to unconscious, pre-cognitive bodily automatism.
The article examines his selection of artworks and finds that the scope of
his theory makes it challenging to apply to modern and contemporary art. It
also takes issue with Freedberg’s atomistic style of analysis, where specific
body segments, forms of gestures, and facial expressions, as well as motifs of movement, are isolated from their compositional context and identified
as the meaning and message of the image itself. Similarly, the article faults
Freedberg’s dependence on Paul Ekman’s tautological attempts to locate a
set of basic emotions in the face, not observed but predefined.
The article then moves on to first provide an account of the promising results
generated by the intersection of art history and emotional history in recent
decades. It subsequently uncovers how Freedberg ignores these recent findings
and how the history of emotions challenges the neuroaesthetic perspective
on emotions in artworks, at least in the form represented by Freedberg
and Gallese.
The article goes on to discuss how Freedberg’s theory fails to distinguish
between art and reality or between art, kitsch, and propaganda. Avant-garde
concepts like estrangement and shock are introduced to demonstrate that
the application of Freedberg’s approach—his peculiar concept of empathy—
would lead to misinterpretations of the aesthetic message of avant-garde art.
Finally, the article argues that Freedberg’s neuroaesthetics lacks aesthetic
explanatory power and fundamentally deprives artworks of meaning. It also
returns to his concept of empathy, which is challenged through both emotional-
historical and neuroscientific approaches. Overall, the article concludes
that while the emergence of emotions as objects of study in art history and
aesthetics is a positive and promising correction to traditional ways of studying
artworks, Freedberg’s theory is of little assistance when explaining the
occurrence and function of empathy and emotions in aesthetic phenomena.

Die Macht der Filmischen Imagination bei Albrecht Dürer

Mirela Ramljak Purgar — pet, 17 sij 2025 00:00:00 +0100

The article explores the fundamental qualities of imagination in the works
of Albrecht Dürer, with a focus on a specific sheet from his cycle of illustrations
in the biblical Apocalypse series – the woodcut titled The Strong Angel.
Our analysis builds on the insights of media historian Jörg Jochen Berns,
who identified the presence of a “film before the film” in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance. This concept refers to an “inner film” that responds to
external stimuli – from the “outer film” – allowing the observers to immerse
themselves in holy images, particularly during prayer, through the stimulation
of their imagination.
In the context of the biblical Apocalypse, the Strong Angel is a metaphor for
vision; at the same time, it requires considerable imaginative power from the
artist (Dürer) to depict such a scene. An angel appears to St John, giving him
a book of visions that St John must “devour” to keep them hidden. For our
research, which involves interpreting this work through the medium of film,it was essential to highlight a key discovery in this illustration: the montage
process that interconnects the elements of The Strong Angel. This connection
is crucial for interpreting the Angel as a messenger from heaven, linking the
divine to the earthly, the sacred to the profane, and the corporeal (human
head) to the material (pillars).
We examined the imaginative potential in Dürer’s work through the perspective
of image theorist Ludwig Schwarte and interpreted Dürer’s art as imagination-
stimulated and produced by intuition, in which the observer actively
participates in the scene. Assuming that the inner film existed in the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance as a prayerful and visionary imagination manifest
in the given examples, we juxtaposed it with the measurement of sensory
stimuli, and thus with the physiognomic discovery of the early 19th century
as interpreted by Jonathan Crary.

Ikonički anarhizam i estetika ružnog

Vladimir Rismondo — pet, 17 sij 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Algorithms and Imagination

Nadja Gnamuš — pet, 17 sij 2025 00:00:00 +0100

In the territory of post-isms also visuality has been debated in terms of its post
condition, where it was essentially associated with the digital era in which
images have proliferated to the stage at which everything must be made into
an image and is consumed as an image. Such image and information overload
and constant alertness have produced a certain “visual extinction” and
invisibility, not only as a form of resistance to prevailing visual politics but
also as a perceptual and cognitive response to excessive exploitation of (mediated)
visuality. In contemporary visual culture the superficiality of the visible
superseds the concerns of pictorial and reduces imaginary and metaphoric
power underlying visual form.
Digital media culture has made a fundamental shift in our relation to the external
world, sensory perception and, most importantly, in our visual awareness
and understanding of images. The new phenomenology of the image
decisively altered looking practices, the relationship between the observer
and the observed and also cognitive and affective dimensions of images. The
image has transformed from representation into a fleeting and instant visual
event which is in the ongoing convergence of media no longer ocular-centric.
Automated processes of production marked by various image customization
tools, accelerated speed and immediacy by which images are produced and
distributed changed the concept of creativity and introduced »cut and paste«
as a paramount model of image-making.
Tech-aesthetics and cyber visuality not only change cultural and anthropological
role of images but also rearticulate the ontology of the image itself, its materiality and the way we experience images. Flusser claimed that whoever
is programmed by technical images lives and knows reality as a programmed
context. I examine how the algorithmic logic of the programmable (screen)
image affects other types of images, particularly focusing on aesthetic, phenomenal
and representational properties and distinctions between contingent
screen images and other, mainly art image-objects. I argue that egalitarian
approach towards images and accessible image-making technologies
impede our cognitive abilities to control and process images. This raises
further question of our capacity for critical reflection on visual systems and
image agency, specifically regarding complex connections between formal,
material and technical components and the construction of meaning. A
range of issues arising in this framework are to be tackled. Do rapid changes
in image technologies (assembling human and nonhuman elements) along
with AI make images self-contained and human intervention eventually dispensable?
What methods should we use in deciding which images should be
archived, interpreted and historicized? And last but not the least, how and if
do images in the era of visual commodification relate to imaginary and make
possible, as Deleuze woud say, “thinking in images” beyond the legible signs
and normative technologies?

Do we still believe in the power of images?

Krešimir Purgar — pet, 17 sij 2025 00:00:00 +0100

We cannot lose faith in what we never believed in

Žarko Paić — pet, 17 sij 2025 00:00:00 +0100