From Detroit Red to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, the man best known as Malcolm X restlessly redefined himself throughout a controversial life. His transformations have appeared repeatedly in books, photographs, paintings, and films, while his murder set in motion a series of tugs-of-war among journalists, biographers, artists, and his ideological champions over the interpretation of his cultural meaning. This book marks the first systematic examination of the images generated by this iconic cultural figure--images readily found on everything from T-shirts and hip-hop (...) album covers to coffee mugs. Graeme Abernethy captures both the multiplicity and global import of a person who has been framed as both villain and hero, cast by mainstream media during his lifetime as "the most feared man in American history," and elevated at his death as a heroic emblem of African American identity. As Abernethy shows, the resulting iconography of Malcolm X has shifted as profoundly as the American racial landscape itself. Abernethy explores Malcolm's visual prominence in the eras of civil rights, Black Power, and hip-hop. He analyzes this enigmatic figure's representation across a variety of media from 1960s magazines to urban murals, tracking the evolution of Malcolm's iconography from his autobiography and its radical milieu through the appearance of Spike Lee's 1992 biopic and beyond. Its remarkable gallery of illustrations includes reproductions of iconic photographs by Richard Avedon, Eve Arnold, Gordon Parks, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and John Launois. Abernethy reveals that Malcolm X himself was keenly aware of the power of imagery to redefine identity and worked tirelessly to shape how he was represented to the public. His theoretical grasp of what he termed "the science of imagery" enabled him both to analyze the role of representation in ideological control as well as to exploit his own image in the interests of black empowerment. This provocative work marks a startling shift from the biographical focus that has dominated Malcolm X studies, providing an up-to-date--and comprehensively illustrated--account of Malcolm's cultural afterlife, and addressing his iconography in relation to images of other major African American figures, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Kanye West, and Barack Obama. Analyzing the competing interpretations behind so many images, Abernethy reveals what our lasting obsession with Malcolm X says about American culture over the last five decades. (shrink)

Through the prism of iconography, we may be able to better understand Vecchietta's stylistic choices towards the end of his career. His last known bronze sculpture, a gaunt and pathetic Christ, executed in 1476, is widely agreed to represent the Risen Christ. Today, the sculpture stands atop the high altar of the Santissima Annunziata, the Hospital Church in Siena, but this was neither its original nor intended location. In fact, the figure was meant to be part of a larger (...) ensemble which, together, constituted Vecchietta's funerary chapel. This article demonstrates unequivocally that the present setting of the statue has fostered an iconographical misunderstanding: naturally, the subject of the statue is Christ; but he represents the Man of Sorrows, not the Risen Christ. An exploration of the significance of the iconography of the Man of Sorrows in mid-fifteenth-century Siena, and its possible antecedents, reveals connections especially with Northern European artefacts circulating in central Italy at the time. The result of these findings is to set Vecchietta's sculpture free from previous preconceptions, shedding new light on a famous artwork and triggering new questions about the artist who made it. (shrink)

Quatro painéis de muito boa pintura, representando aspectos da vida e martírios dos Santos Mártires de Lisboa, Veríssimo, Máxima e Júlia, estão patentes no Museu Carlos Machado, em Ponta Delgada, nos Açores.Obras nunca estudadas antes de 2001, embora referenciadas documentalmente já no século XIX, permaneceram em colecções particulares até aos anos sessenta do século XX, quando foram doadas ao museu açoriano, onde se encontram em bom estado de conservação. Nunca dali saíram, a não ser um dos painéis para a XVII (...) Exposição Europeia de Arte, Cultura e Ciência (núcleo da Casa dos Bicos) e outro painel, em 1992, para uma exposição em Génova. As obras, de relativamente pequenas dimensões, são muito ricas em aspectos iconográficos e de caracterização de ambientes. Datáveis da década de 30 do século XVI, têm sido atribuídas ao pintor Garcia Fernandes e, mais recentemente, a Cristóvão de Utreque, um dos mestres que foi referenciado como eventual colaborador dos chamados Mestres de Ferreirim: Cristóvão de Figueiredo, Gregório Lopes e Garcia Fernandes.Muito interessante, no entanto, é a iconografia das paisagens urbanas de duas das pinturas, mas a vida e os martírios dos santos não acompanham o que se conhecia da literatura do tempo. (shrink)

The Early Iconography of Avalokiteśvara. L’Iconographie ancienne d’Avalokiteśvara. By Gérard Fussman and Anna Maria Quagliotti. Publications de l’Institut de Civilisation Indienne, Collège de France, fasc. 80. Paris: Diffusion de Boccard, 2012. Pp. 152, 21 plates.

O mais divulgado modelo iconográfico mariano da época contemporânea, presente em quase todos os templos católicos do mundo, nasceu em Portugal na sequência das Aparições de Fátima de 1917. Não teria o conhecido desenvolvimento sem que no processo cultual interviesse a disciplina escultórica que logo em 1920 faria cristalizar, através do escopro de um santeiro, a imagem de Nossa Senhora do Rosário de Fátima. O estudo do tipo, do arquétipo e dos subtipos da Virgem de Fátima, primeiramente produzidos em oficinais (...) trabalhos de santeiros e, em fase posterior, interpretados por artistas, permite entender os contornos do nascimento de uma realidade imagética, isto é, de uma iconografia ex nihilo e o seu, necessariamente, tardio desenvolvimento estético. (shrink)

Visual culture has normalized systemic and institutional cruelty toward animals in North America through an iconography of oppression. Certain kinds of images that sanitize and celebrate the consumption of animal bodies through our contemporary food systems are constantly repeated through marketing channels. In doing so, they help us to avoid addressing the very ethical questions at the heart of these practices. In contrast to this, a number of contemporary artists have relied on visual culture to disrupt this pattern of (...) representation and to challenge the status quo. The following discussion explores some recent attempts to reimagine human–animal relationships in nonspeciesist terms through imagery and artistic practice. (shrink)

Graças ao singular prestígio de que gozava o Portugal quatrocentista na Europa de então, era lógico que as filhas e parentes próximas dos nossos reis fossem pretendidas como esposas de infantes e de príncipes estrangeiros; não seria excepção D. Joana, filha de D. Afonso V e irmã de D. João II. Os seus traços fisionómicos estão patentes na pintura guardada no Museu Nacional de Aveiro, que talvez se possa datar de 1471, ou pouco antes; de um autor anónimo, obedeceu aos (...) princípios da escola do pintor Nuno Gonçalves. Nos séculos XVI e XVII, surgiram diversas figurações pictóricas que representam a princesa vestida com o hábito dominicano.Como seria de prever, logo após a beatificação (1693), em Aveiro surgiu a lembrança de que fosse esculpida em madeira uma imagem de Santa Joana para o culto litúrgico. Posteriormente, ao lado de muitas publicações biográficas, multiplicaram-se as representações de Santa Joana, mesmo além-fronteiras. Refiro especialmente as duas que estão patentes em Roma na igreja de Santo António dos Portugueses.Para abreviar este esboço, detenho-me nos últimos decénios da centúria novecentista. Sobretudo a partir de 1938, deparamos com dezenas e dezenas de representações da Princesa Santa Joana, em diferentes materiais e processos, devidas sobretudo à concepção e à arte de aveirenses; até há barcos moliceiros a vogar na ria, que a ostentam garbosamente nas proas. Para finalizar, refiro uma das estátuas que se erguem no perímetro da cidade de Aveiro; trata-se daquela que se encontra no largo fronteiro à Sé e ao antigo Mosteiro de Jesus, inaugurada em 2002. O seu escultor, Helder Bandarra, exprimiu-a com determinação, perseverança e decisão para viver e anunciar Jesus Cristo. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 21 Heft: 2 Seiten: 419-447.

This paper examines some aspects of the cultural codes implied in the iconography of St Nicholas (Santa Claus). The argument posits the iconography of St Nicholas as a vessel for capturing meanings and accumulating them in the construction of public culture. The discussion begins from the earliest developments of the Christian era and proceeds to contemporary depictions (imagology). The study is conducted on the basis of a representative selection of renditions of Saint Nicholas, including 350 pictures of medieval (...) representations (Western and Eastern Christianity), folk extensions and secular representations and it is theoretically grounded in the Tartu School of semiotics. (shrink)

This paper examines some aspects of the cultural codes implied in the iconography of St Nicholas (Santa Claus). The argument posits the iconography of St Nicholas as a vessel for capturing meanings and accumulating them in the construction of public culture. The discussion begins from the earliest developments of the Christian era and proceeds to contemporary depictions (imagology). The study is conducted on the basis of a representative selection of renditions of Saint Nicholas, including 350 pictures of medieval (...) representations (Western and Eastern Christianity), folk extensions and secular representations and it is theoretically grounded in the Tartu School of semiotics. (shrink)

Cette contribution analyse les déclinaisons du thème iconographique de la parabole des dix vierges dans des estampes produites entre les xvie et xviie siècles aux Pays-Bas. Issues d’un processus culturel complexe de production et réception, ces artefacts culturels constituent un exemple significatif de la mise en œuvre d’un discours moralisateur de nature confessionnelle au service de la transformation du système de valeurs d’une population urbaine caractérisée par des changements significatifs dans les structures économiques et sociales de la modernité, dans lesquelles (...) les hommes et les femmes ne cessent de négocier leurs relations et leurs rôles sociaux. L’opposition symbolique entre l’image positive des femmes qui travaillent et celle négative des femmes qui dansent qui émerge de l’analyse, permet d’éclairer la complexité de l’articulation entre les représentations sociales de la danse et du genre que cette opposition implique et produit. (shrink)

The Vida de Santa Oria is the most problematic of Gonzalo de Berceo's works. There is disagreement about its textual integrity, and important elements of its structure are imperfectly understood. The intent of this article is to demonstrate Berceo's use of literary and iconographic material prominent in the thirteenth-century monastic culture of San Millán de la Cogolla to construct a moral and eschatological definition of the contemplative life. The Vida de Santa Oria renders Christian eschatology through an elaborate symbolic structure, (...) circumscribed physically and spiritually by the cloister walls of San Millán, where Berceo, a secular priest, served as notary of one of the abbots. The economy of Berceo's communicative method is no small part of the excellence of his poem; his artistic self-cloistering mirrors the existential condition of his hagiographic subject. It derives from a conscious and complex choice, rather than from any limitation of his intellectual horizons. (shrink)