The Birth of a Methodology
One of the most important art historians of the 20th century, Erwin Panofsky, introduced “Iconology” as a way we approach and understand art, history, even our contemporary world. Art history is a young humanistic discipline, and at the beginning of the 20th century, art historians tried to find objective relations, to find regularities, to define the subject of art history as such, and more objective methods for research. The difficulty of examining and studying, even defining art, made art historians try to find either “measurable” or all-encompassing theories and methods that will help search for the objective “truth” behind art, history, or both. Panofsky’s methodology aimed to encompass a wide knowledge of humanistic disciplines, and many art methods before his – from formalistic to those thinking of “zeitgeist” when addressing art. The methodology he presented in his book “Studies in Iconology” (1939) and further explained in his other works such as “Meaning in the Visual Arts” (1957), is a three-partite system that, in Panofsky’s view, is a way we naturally approach an artwork, thus is the most natural way to approach it from a scientific perspective.
The First Layer: Seeing What's There
The first layer we see is the artwork’s physical look, including both the materiality of it (materials used, the brushstrokes, the subtle lines in paper a printmaking machine makes), and what is presented (a woman; a dog; a landscape). If we approach Monet’s “Water Lilies” series, we can see oil paintings; we can also see his short brush strokes, what colors dominate, and what is presented: water flowers floating. The first layer of “reading” an artwork is our first encounter with it, just looking and deciphering how is artwork in front of us made, and what basic elements we instantly recognize; it seems like the most natural and easiest thing to do. In a praxis, and given that the visual studies and education systems in many countries do not exist – those basic expectations stop many people from even wanting to go to the museums. If, at this first step we cannot understand how something was made and what we see, the museum becomes an enclosed structure understandable only for people professionally involved with art.
Breaking Down Barriers: Making Art Accessible
Many studies have shown that people are indeed “scared” of museums, not being able to “read” art. Bourdieu, in particular, insisted that people who believe that it is enough to “just look” at artworks are talking from the position of a person knowledgeable in art, therefore, from the elitist position of a few who find the museum world comfortable. As we are all aware museums do not have innumerable workers who can and always have the time available for visitors, artificial intelligence can help with the question of arts availability to everyone. Gaudio’s application is built as a personalized tool that, based on Panofsky’s principles, helps people understand art and bridge the gap between museums and visitors. Instead of reading labels (that are very short in description) or waiting for exhibitions to gain deeper insights on specific topics, the visitor that uses Gaudio can get much information on artwork in front of him, from basic layer to more complex layers, and according to visitor’s needs. The application does help communicate art materials, specific strokes, sizes, and can help read figures presented in artworks. It also helps us recognize the formal values of an artwork (for example, “open” and “closed” forms of an artwork, which can, through the search for a meaning, aim at giving possible clues for artistic intentions, and even unconsciousness), and simple images (sometimes even the “simplest” tasks as recognizing presented species of a plant, like water lilies, pose a problem). This kind of “basic” analysis is called “pre-iconographical analysis”, and its corrective measure – the information needed to be evaluated before judging the artwork, as suggested by Panofsky, is the “history of style”. It is easy to recognize objects and elements that changed little during history, but how to recognize medical instruments presented in, for example, medieval frescoes, that we no longer use? When Gaudio uses “history of style” as its corrective measure, it can recognize objects from history drawing from its curated database, and present them to visitors (even showing the history of the instrument’s evolution, in this specific case; what scholars before believed it was). Very few visitors are knowledgeable enough to recognize objects from history (that now belong to history), but thanks to Gaudio’s guides, one is actively learning while taking a museum tour.
The Second Layer: Communicating Historical Meanings
The second “layer” of Panofsky’s analysis is called “iconography”, which typically means deciphering visual symbols we usually meet in Ancient, Medieval, or Early modern art. At this phase, knowledge gained through the first layer of understanding art is now being connected to the layer that is not focused on what we see in front of us, but on how specific artwork was seen and what it meant in the time it belonged to. How was a certain medieval artwork read in medieval times?
When we approach the art of ancient times, we often find it visually exciting but can’t reach its meaning. For example, when we encounter Andrei Rublev’s “The Hospitality of Abraham” (c. 1410 or 1425), we only see three seated figures with circles around their heads. Knowing iconography, which is the step we are now looking at, means that we recognize those circles present halos and that halos stand for being a saint. However, the misleading title helps little with understanding. Is one of the people presented, Abraham? Why are they all looking the same? Knowing iconography will tell us that three persons that sit, looking alike and angelic, represent God’s three faces in the Orthodox church (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost). There is no Abraham in the image; the title is a reference to the event from the Old Testament. In Masaccio’s “Holy Trinity” (c. 1425) from about the same time, we see the Father with white hair and beard, the Son as Jesus, and the Holy Ghost as a Dove, which is the typical Western Christian way of representing God; its tripartite nature differs one from each other, which is not the case with Eastern Christianity views. While many visitors could easily recognize what is close to them, they fail to recognize different versions of Christian medieval art from the same period, but from different cultures; there are, also, many ways in which Trinity is presented even within the same cultural milieu. Panofsky’s corrective measures here are the “types”, which means knowing all variations on a theme, how specific themes and concepts were presented by objects and events, which means a lot of museums and literature time, possible only for professionals. Gaudio’s application does help with that, taking off the burden of a need to “know all” before meeting the work itself.
AI Connecting Across Time and Culture
Gaudio does not only memorize and recall different versions of representations, different emotions, or atmospheres presented in artworks, but to connect distant depictions that spoke of the same theme. The visitor who encounters the Greek Orthodox icon of Saint Nicolas could use the application to find other versions on the same topic, learning either of different iconographies of Saint Nicolas through history or in different parts of the world. Using AI, one can even find how and when the popular saint started to be connected to Santa, bringing us back to our time. The AI of Gaudio gives not only information about that specific work but makes a study of a case when asked to do so, according to visitor’s interests and expectations.
The Third Layer: Understanding Cultural Context
The third part of Panofsky’s analysis called the “Iconology” is, in a way, digging deeper for a meaning. In Panofsky’s tripartite layer methodology, we can say we go from time present (pre-iconography) to time past (iconography), to understanding the past (iconology). Even if we realize that, for example, three people sitting in Rublev’s work present Trinity, we still don’t know why the artists used that specific visual language. For an iconographic analysis, we need to be very knowledgeable of ancient text, languages, and many other works of art from different epochs, but for Iconology, we need to understand the place of this artwork in the medieval world. For that, we need to understand the medieval world itself, which is a very complex task: we need to dedicate time and space to explore art from ancient times, and, in a way, to make a synthesis of everything we saw and read; to think through it. So, one would need to be an art historian, interested in a specific period, and one with much knowledge besides that of art and history.
That is an almost impossible task for a regular museum visitor who still wants to understand art, but thanks to artificial intelligence it can be accessible to all. The deeper meaning of Trinity, in the Orthodox Church, and as opposed to Western types of Trinity, lay in Orthodox “preference” for symbolic presentations of Theological text, which is, by extension, caused by more “spiritual” and even mystical Orthodox Christianity. The Omnipresent and Omnipotent nature of a God (Father), insists not to be presented as an Old man (therefore, as someone who gets old, someone who is influenced by Time). Presenting three partite God with three equal figures also pronounces the “equal” meaning of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the equal strengths of three sides of God, which plays an important part in the Orthodox Church. Western Christianity tends to show Biblical texts and learnings more literary, less symbolic, and it places more emphasis on the distinct roles of the persons of the Trinity in salvation history, such as the Father as Creator, the Son as Redeemer, and the Spirit as Sanctifier, therefore such differences in visual representations.
Both liturgical and biblical text and the praxis of Medieval Christianity, even specific events in Medieval history (like schisms), or specific personal views on art – shape the way art looks and speaks to us. On an Iconological level, gaining insight into all this information is to connect artwork to its original place (in history and geography), to understand it. Panofsky’s corrective measure here is “history of cultural symptoms or symbols”, which stands for a manner in which general human preoccupation is expressed by specific themes and concepts.
Bridging Past and Present
In the fast world we live in now, almost 100 years after Panofsky’s comprehensive study widely used in art history, there is even less time and space for these kinds of “detailed” preparations for art encounters, even for art students and professionals. Why bother with it anyway? There are many other approaches to art now, and Panofsky’s approach is a bit at odds with modern art and seems impossible to use for contemporary art. Art historians tend to say that Panofsky’s approach is outdated, as they fail to see many ways they actively use it.
The basic structure behind Panofsky’s approach is “how – what – why”, the same questions many art historians still ask when encountering art. His methodology stands behind every approach that tends to understand art as something other than its physical (“pure”) being. That “behind”, or the meaning of art, be it historical insights, various aspects of psychological insights, social art history, personal history of an artist, etc. is what art history still insists on. In openly displaying the methodology behind the learning with Gaudio, we tend to honor and re-purpose the basic thinking behind the work of Erwin Panofsky.
The structure of the method is not difficult to understand. Once familiar with the methodology, each person can easily follow it; the only problem is the wide space that needs to be filled with different aspects of knowledge. While Panofsky’s approach included “Synthetic intuition”, Artificial Intelligence can bring to us “Synthetic knowledge”, which, of course, still needs to be supervised by museum professionals. One can choose what layer, what kind of information, and what kind of connection it wants to make and see from art. We are happy to live in an era when the complex world of artwork, thanks to Gaudio, is finally becoming available and understandable to all.
Sources
1. Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. Oxford University Press, 1939.
2. Panofsky, Erwin. Meaning in the Visual Arts. Doubleday, 1957.
3. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Alain Darbel. The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public. Translated by Caroline Beattie and Nick Merriman, Polity Press, 1991.
