The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art

by Michael Camille

By examining the theme of idol-worship in medieval art, this book reveals the ideological basis of paintings, statues and manuscript illuminations that depict the worship of false gods in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. By showing that images of idolatry stood for those outside the Church - pagans, Muslims, Jews, heretics, homosexuals - Camille sheds light on how medieval society viewed both alien 'others' and itself. He links the abhorrence of worshipping false gods in images to an 'image-explosion' in the thirteenth century when the Christian Church was filled with cult statues, miracle-working relics, and 'real' representations in the Gothic style. In attempting to bring the Gothic image to life, Camille shows how images can teach us about attitudes and beliefs in a particular society.

Genres: Art, Medieval, Art History, History, Religion

441 pages, Paperback

First published October 27, 1989

Reviews

[Metod Zupan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The middle ages, as dark and boring as they might seem to some, are a period very relevant for us today and as such worth examining. Michael Camille applies post-structuralist analysis to image-making in this period and comes to the conclusion, that there is something very universal in our relationship with images, whether it be now or half a millennium ago. When studying Gothic art, one must remain objective and try to look at it, through the eyes of the society that created it, but by doing so, one often falls in to a trap of romanticizing it, I myself have been guilty of doing so. The author however does a marvelous job of articulating this tricky situation. How can we study the ideology of misrepresentation of the Other, if we ourselves, misrepresent discriminatory documents as art? The author is consistently transparent about this, which is one of the many lessons I took from this book. We take images of today and of the middle ages for granted, when we should remain critical of them. "We need to be aware of their beautiful but terrible tyranny" or as Donna Tartt put it: "Beauty is terror," so let's stop succumbing to it and remember that we have the power of reason to fight it.

[Thom Dunn]

Simply essential.