ICONICITY
On Iconicity
by Dan Lansberry
Iconicity, which most immediately refers to the iconic properties of an image in the general sense, can have a powerful impact on the way we view and experience images around us. In the strictest sense, iconicity organizes our aesthetic sensations for us, as is the case with a pure icon. A crucifix, a photograph of George W. Bush, a smile, a torso, or even a brush stroke can take on iconic resonances in certain cultural contexts. But pure icons are uncommon to any artistic movement based in iconoclastic sensibilities, take modernism, for example. In our own time, it is most likely the case that a given image has something iconic about it, and the vagueness of this suggestion should be taken to heart. For instance, the attitude of a photograph, a statue, or a painting limits and conditions our own attitudes as viewers (sensation as experience often registers in the form of a specific attitude: horror, piety, and reverie are only examples). Icons, like anything else, cannot really operate without this conditional interaction of attitudes or aspects, or the affective rhythm of that interaction. And historically, in the case of icons, the attitude of the image is (at least initially) the more powerful one—molding sense into sensibility, as was the case with Byzantine iconography and iconoclasm. Iconicity is one source of the rhythm of sensation that grounds aesthetic experience. Iconicity can also be dangerous. Taken unchecked it may only cultivate fundamentally conservative experiences, since by itself it mainly reinscribes the same aesthetic dynamics through which it operates. This is only avoided if “iconicity” maintains a dynamic relation to the stifling capacities icon, rather than recirculating the problematic according to its own logic. The difference between these two versions of “iconicity” is the line between derivative recapitulation and active reconsideration. It’s a mistake then to ‘let go’ and fall into a fondness that by now only grounds the market. We need not rid ourselves of icons, but instead consider how they shape experience, often against all else that sensation has to offer.
by Dan Lansberry
Iconicity, which most immediately refers to the iconic properties of an image in the general sense, can have a powerful impact on the way we view and experience images around us. In the strictest sense, iconicity organizes our aesthetic sensations for us, as is the case with a pure icon. A crucifix, a photograph of George W. Bush, a smile, a torso, or even a brush stroke can take on iconic resonances in certain cultural contexts. But pure icons are uncommon to any artistic movement based in iconoclastic sensibilities, take modernism, for example. In our own time, it is most likely the case that a given image has something iconic about it, and the vagueness of this suggestion should be taken to heart. For instance, the attitude of a photograph, a statue, or a painting limits and conditions our own attitudes as viewers (sensation as experience often registers in the form of a specific attitude: horror, piety, and reverie are only examples). Icons, like anything else, cannot really operate without this conditional interaction of attitudes or aspects, or the affective rhythm of that interaction. And historically, in the case of icons, the attitude of the image is (at least initially) the more powerful one—molding sense into sensibility, as was the case with Byzantine iconography and iconoclasm. Iconicity is one source of the rhythm of sensation that grounds aesthetic experience. Iconicity can also be dangerous. Taken unchecked it may only cultivate fundamentally conservative experiences, since by itself it mainly reinscribes the same aesthetic dynamics through which it operates. This is only avoided if “iconicity” maintains a dynamic relation to the stifling capacities icon, rather than recirculating the problematic according to its own logic. The difference between these two versions of “iconicity” is the line between derivative recapitulation and active reconsideration. It’s a mistake then to ‘let go’ and fall into a fondness that by now only grounds the market. We need not rid ourselves of icons, but instead consider how they shape experience, often against all else that sensation has to offer.
