ICONOCLASH: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art

by Bruno Latour (Editor), Peter Weibel (Editor)

This book, which accompanies a major exhibition at the Center for New Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany, invokes three disparate realms in which images have assumed the role of cultural weapons. Monotheistic religions, scientific theories, and contemporary arts have struggled with the contradictory urge to produce and also destroy images and emblems. Moving beyond the image wars, "ICONOCLASH" shows that image destruction has always coexisted with a cascade of image production, visible in traditional Christian images as well as in scientific laboratories and the various experiments of contemporary art, music, cinema, and architecture.While iconoclasts have struggled against icon worshippers, another history of "iconophily" has always been at work. Investigating this alternative to the Western obsession with image worship and destruction allows useful comparisons with other cultures, in which images play a very different role. "ICONOCLASH" offers a variety of experiments on how to "suspend" the iconoclastic gesture and to renew the movement of images against any freeze-framing.The book includes major works by Art & Language, Willi Baumeister, Christian Boltanski, Daniel Buren, Lucas Cranach, Max Dean, Marcel Duchamp, Albrecht Durer, Lucio Fontana, Francisco Goya, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Young Hay, Arata Isozaki, Asger Jorn, Martin Kippenberger, Imi Knoebel, Komar & Melamid, Joseph Kosuth, Gordon Matta-Clark, Tracey Moffat, Nam June Paik, Sigmar Polke, Stephen Prina, Man Ray, Sophie Ristelhueber, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and many others.

Genres: Philosophy, Art

700 pages, Paperback

First published July 7, 2002

About the author

Bruno Latour, a philosopher and anthropologist, is the author of Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, Our Modern Cult of the Factish Gods, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, and many other books. He curated the ZKM exhibits ICONOCLASH and Making Things Public and coedited the accompanying catalogs, both published by the MIT Press.

Reviews

[Alix · Rating 4 out of 5]

When an image is destroyed, a vacuum is created; when we close our eyes after seeing an image, there remains an after effect. If an idol or sacred statue needs to be destroyed to show that it is without power, that it is meaningless, what is the meaning of its power over the destroyer?

Despite some problematic areas, this was an important, certainly ambitious, work. I suspect some of the issues I had with it were in part due to translation factors. When it’s good, it’s very, very good, and when it’s bad, it can be awkward and fragmented.

For those essays written with an academic audience in mind, a common problem arises in effective linking of ideas. A reader does not need to have expertise in all disciplines, to understand every aspect of an essay, in order to learn enough to go figure out what one does not yet understand. The issue is when authors do not employ clear links between suppositions, showing how they moved from point A to point B. It occasionally reads as if some parts have been inadvertently left out of the equation. We can all be guilty of sins of omission: it’s easier to write for colleagues than for the public as so much (terminology, history, current critiques) can be assumed; this why a hardline editor is necessary, to make sure the finished essay is a stand-alone piece that is fully supported by its own progressive logic.

I do recommend making good use of the source materials as the endnotes can be quite helpful.

Two great quotes:

William Pietz — Iconoclasm is at once the crime and its absolution, but only if nothing remains. But something always remains.

Peter Galison — We cannot ever speak (or paint, or calculate) without metaphysical abstraction. At the same time the abstract is never completely so; even in the coldest reaches of mathematical physics we will always (borrowing from Luther), find the image of our face in still water. Not abstract against the concrete, but rather shifting historical realizations of concrete-abstraction or abstract-concreteness.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

thanks for the rec, Nick

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not find this work as provocative as many of his earlier books.