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Gombrich and Wind: rituals and misteries in art criticism iconology as didactics and poetics
Abstract
Iconology as practice of interpretation can be infl uenced by images in return. This happens when material (a work of art) has a pronounced rhetoric program, i. e. is particurlarly spectator-oriented, so the spectator is seen as target of educating or enlightening. This is typical for Renaissance artistic practice. Here one can see the main aspect of infl uencing the spectator — archaic sacredness, modernized with the help of Christian reiterated interpretation. E. Gombrich fi nds the way of neutralizing this Прот. Стефан Ванеян. Гомбрих и Винд: ритуалы и мистерии в науке об искусстве... infl uence on the spectator, stressing in the scientifi c text as it is possibilities of critical but fully conventional building of interpretation. This may resemble some sacral rituals though rather scientifi c as they impose restrictions on fantasy and put the content of interpretation within the limits of verifi able communication. E. Wind, in turn, criticises G’s methodological program, stressing that any contact with archaic sacredness, even though in it’s visual reproduction, is a revival of the mysterial essence of this kind of images.The only solution is discovering in a scientifi c text its poetic functions that support the activity and, as a result, independence of the spectator-interpreter.
Keywords
iconology, hermeneutics, problem of verifi cation, Renaissance, neopla- tonism, archaic sacredness, science as communication and ritual, mysterial character of visual contacts with an
References
1. Wind E. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, New Haven, 1958.