Perspective as Symbolic Form

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Contents 1 Symbolic Form 2 Among symbol, icon and picture 3 Perspective as Symbolic Form 4 Reform of the sciences 5 Commotion experience 6 Database as Symbolic Form 7 References

Symbolic Form

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Interview with Prof. Dr. K.J. Pazzini

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transcript of the video:
Q: What is the "symbolic form"?
A: The symbolic form derives from the circle around Warburg, namely from the philosopher Cassirer. For a long time it seemed to be a suitable term for a form that is not only the border of an object but that is seen in more abstract terms - almost similar to its later usage in the philosophy of structure.

The term contains several discourses and their ways of representation - or rather a momentum of homogeneity in the process of several discourses. I have to explain this in more detail. I understand discourse as a social connection. There is always the question of how a society can hold together this includes the individual as well as the concerning all society perspective. Therefore it needs symbolic approaches that bring something into contact and connect. I have understood it this way: perspective as symbolic form is an example in which very different discourses have something in common. The central perspective as symbolic form is such a good example because the invention of perspective has its origin in mathematics and geometry which in turn had the potential of transmitting into the process of the production of such depictions themselves. In other film clips we have seen that this has consequences for the constitution of the subject. It can now see from a chosen viewpoint. And it can refer to what can be perceived, sketched and recorded in a similar way at any place. Also in banking practice, such mathematical-geometrical methods can be used. They function according to the same principles. Subsequently, these methods can also be used in urban development the entire architecture is planned according to such principles. One can anticipate the future, one can make calculations: if I do it in this way, I will be at this point at that time. Or one can plan a complex building in such a way. There have been similar consequences for the field of communication. In the end, this has opened up the new possibility of databases. Certain combinations of numbers, together with the instructions of how to put them together, can be reproduced at any other place in a similar way. Also, since it is an algorithm, this operation provides the incentive of mechanizing and machinising this process. Looking back, one can say that there has indeed been a progress towards this in the field of photography and its corresponding instruments and - if one includes the dimension of time - also in the field of video cameras and filming.

Among symbol, icon and picture

The symbolic form, referred to perspective and therefore to pictures by Panofski, encompasses that, which Warburg had seen as the critical phase among symbol, icon and picture, " where the symbol is understood as an icon and still remains vivid as a picture, where the excitement of the soul is held in suspense between the two poles, neither concentrated by the binding force of the metaphor to a degree where it would discharge into an action, nor dissolved by the decomposing order of the idea to a degree where it would vanish into conceptions. This is exactly where the "picture" (in the sense of an artistic simulacrum) has its place"^[1].

In the execution of the thesis of affirming perspective as symbolic form, Panofski´s correlation with Warburg´s intentions becomes quite loose, or even lost sight of. As if it was quite natural, he incorporates Cassirer´s formulations and appoints the perspective as stylistic moment, as discriminant "for the individual epochs of art and fields of art"^[2]. At this point he neither discusses the change of Cassirer´s theories just are after they got into contact with Warburg´s intentions nor does he himself directly include the further reaching intentions of Warburg. Warburg was not primarily concerned with stylistic devices but rather with the question of the effectiveness of pictures, with a historical memory that can always be updated with the help of pictures. In comparison to the detailed analyses of the perspective constructions themselves and their changes, Panofski´s referral to the theoretical surroundings appear strangely scarse if one reads the only the only direct referral to Cassirer in his well-known article "perspective as symbolic form". He emphasizes that central perspective only appears to be a solely mathematical matter, and it does not directly posses an artistic quality. " Even if perspective is not a momentum of value, it surely is a momentum of style, well even more: it may, in order to utilize Ernst Cassirer´s felicitously chosen term for art history as well, be denominated as one of those "symbolic forms". Through these, an intellectual content of meaning is bound to a concrete sensual sign and is internally dedicated to this sign; and in this sense it is essentially important for the individual epochs of art, not only if they have got perspective or not, but also which perspective they have got."^[3] There was no concern regarding a relationship of applications however.^[4]

Perspective as Symbolic Form

Panofski writes about "perspective as symbolic form" (1927).

The article traces back to a lecture held by Panofski in the Warburg cultural studies library. In accord with Jesinghausen-Lauster´s ^[5] extensive analysis published under this heading, the circle around Warburg was concerned with the problem of the reorganization of the individual sciences. This became virulent when philosophy could no longer perform its old task of resuming and acting as an intermediary between the individual natural sciences and humane disciplines. A central and centralizing discourse did not exist anymore. And neither were the scientific forms of organization able to recognize the problems arising from the segregation of individual sciences, let alone to handle them. The circle around Warburg realized that "fundamental improvements of scientific options and outputs can not take place without an improvement in the institutional basic conditions. The institution has to be adapted to the problem and the requirements of its solution. Lacking flexibility of the institution creates the situation that Warburg and his friends art out from" ^[6]. It was actually about a reform of the sciences. Besides the "institution" of the Warburg library, the talk about the symbolic form, configuring a container to conceptually grasp the reform, became a central theme. After Cassirer, who introduced his idea of a "reform" of philosophy to the circle, entered this circle, this term was considered to have the potential to grip both sides of the circle´s problem: " The historical question concerning the connectedness of the three main epochs and concerning the driving forces concretizes in the individual cultural phenomena. It leads into the systematic culture - anthropological question concerning the mediation authorities between the human and that which confronts him as external, natural, historical, social, transcendental. The second, the structural side of the problem, aims at the recognition of a beyond historical stock in the historically proceeding exchange between human and world. The forms and the rules of formation in which this exchange occurred, the "symbolic cultural forms" as Cassirer called myth, language, art, literature and sciences as well as their connectedness form this stock."^[7] This problem was the background of the reception of Cassirer´s philosophical approaches^[8] ; the talk of the symbolic form was rather the abridgement of the problem than its solution.

Reform of the sciences

The talk of a symbolic form conceives a reform of the sciences and their institutions that can not be formulated without referring to the arts. The term "symbolic form" reminds of the necessity of a different organization and methodology of scientific work.

From that, which is subsequently articulated as symbolic form of perspective by the Warburg circle, also a structure for the individual evolves. It is thought of as autonomous, it is self-reflexive, it has an own perspective on the world, the surrounding, its matters, but also temporal into the future and the past, it relates everything to itself and can also distance this. It has developed an identity by dissociating itself from other individuals. It has come to the point where this is thought to be the natural form. Only the version as symbolic from allows viewing "perspective" as one of the potentially symbolic forms. Once a form is adapted, it becomes self-acting in a way.

Jesinghausen-Lauster paraphrases the symbolic forms: " They (the symbolic forms, KJP) can be described as psychic instances or institutions turned to the outside and regulating the exchange between subject and object"^[9]. In this sentence the subject is "the symbolic forms"^[10]. The fact that the concept of the symbolic form experiences its first concrete precision in the Warburg circle on the example of "central perspective" through Panofski, is significant in several ways:

According to our present knowledge, in the Renaissance the individual sciences and art were not separated in the contemporary manner, but rather interwoven with one another. Using the example of perspective, the concept of symbolic form concretizes the image, the metaphor, scolded by modern philosophy. It is implanted in an important position in the context of mediating individual sciences that are drifting apart. The way of thinking of the circle around Warburg is also confirmed by Winds analysis of Warburgs approach, opposing the concurrently familiar art historical position deriving from Wölfflin and Burckhardt: "He (Warburg, KJP) has to ask the double question: What do these other functions - religion and literature, myth and science, society and state mean to the pictorial phantasy? What does the picture mean to this function?"^[11]

The connection, seen as constitutive for the explication of a picture by the Warburg circle, can not simply be made from the accumulation of knowledge about the domains mentioned above, their theories and their repertoire of knowledge. It can not be reached by turning the picture into a document in the absence of written tradition^[12]. "The method by which this can be achieved", Wind writes, " can only be an indirect one. By studying all kinds of documents that can be brought into connection with the picture following a historically critical method, circumstantial evidence needs to be supplied for the fact that an imaginative complex, which would need to be distinguished specifically, contributed to the configuration of the picture^[13]."

Here, a criminologic momentum clearly takes effect in the imagery of Wind´s language. This has a great similarity with motives of Freud^[14]. And this relatedness in the basic approach can further be reinforced: " The word mnemosyne (in the original greek version, KJP), which he (Warburg, KJP) had placed on top of the entrance to his research institute, is to be understood in a double sense: as a request to the researcher to bethink that he, by interpreting the works of the past, is an "inheritance manager" of the experiences grounded in them. It is also a reference to this experience itself as a subject of research, it is a call to analyze the workings of the social memory on the basis of historical material"^[15]. Wind further writes about Warburg: " Each commotion he experienced in himself and overcame through reflection, became an organ of his historical cognition."^[16]

Commotion experience

Certainly, it can not be ignored that the moments of observing his own commotion, which were marked by Warburg´s own experience of suffering, the reflection, the exploration of the commotion as a medium of realization^[17] mostly disappeared in Panofski´s formulations,^[18] or at least they do not become explicit anymore. This is exactly the momentum in which the "historical method" in art history reaches short and fails in the sense of Meister Eckhart.

Warburg has a broader comprehension of the picture. In his formulation of the question, to which the talk of perspective as symbolic form wants to give an answer, it can be clearly recognised that the picture has a prominent meaning for the development of personality.

In my opinion, the talk of "perspective as symbolic form" and especially its problems and limits leads into the centre of current pedagogic discussion. It makes the rational formations of personality that reach to the subconscious a subject of discussion, it brings together picture and concept, it mentions the problem of abstraction and concretization, it includes the process of detection and research itself into the development of theories. Warnke (1980, 141f) emphasizes that "Warburg believes the aesthetic form to be capable of bearing a social function, which is currently rather ascribed to language´s exhaustive ability of communication". In my opinion, this confidence in the rational discourse without including the social function of the aesthetic form, the picture, equals a blind trust.^[19]

Database as Symbolic Form

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Film: Interview with Prof. Dr. K.J. Pazzini "Database as Symbolic Form"

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References

1. ↑ Wind, Edgar (1931): Warburgs Begriff der Kulturwissenschaft und seine Bedeutung für die Ästhetik.In: Warburg, Aby (1980): Ausgewählte Schriften und Würdigungen. Hg.v. Dieter Wuttke. Baden-Baden: V. Koerner. S. 401 - 418, S. 410.
2. ↑ Panofsky, Erwin (1927): Die perspektive als 'symbolische Form'.In: ders.: Aufsätze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft. Hg. v. H.Oberer u. E. Verheyen. Berlin: Spiess, p. 410.
3. ↑ Panofsky, Erwin (1927): Die Perspektive als 'symbolische Form'. In: ders.: Aufsätze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft. Hg. v. H. Oberer u. E. Verheyen. Berlin: Spiess,, p. 108.
4. ↑ Also in his later works, Panofski doesn´t change his practice concerning this theme. (compare with: Panofsky, Erwin (1978): Sinn und Deutung in der bildenden Kunst. Köln: DuMont,p. 36 - 67; Panofsky, Erwin (1979): Die Renaissancen der europäischen Kunst. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, p.119 - 215). The "relationship of applications" is stressed further, although there the term symbolic form does not appear anymore. It even comes to a further attenuation of Warburg´s motives, that were still reconstructable in this term, when Panofski calls the concrete historically allocatable artwork " a symptom of something else which articulates itself in an incalculable variety of other symptoms"(1978, p.41).
5. ↑ Jesinghausen-Lauster, Martin (1985): Die Suche nach der symbolischen Form. Der Kreis um die Kunstwissen­schaftliche Bibliothek Warburg.. Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner.
6. ↑ Jesinghausen-Lauster, Martin (1985): Die Suche nach der symbolischen Form. Der Kreis um die Kunstwissen­schaftliche Bibliothek Warburg.. Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner. p.14.
7. ↑ Jesinghausen-Lauster, Martin (1985): Die Suche nach der symbolischen Form. Der Kreis um die Kunstwissen­schaftliche Bibliothek Warburg.. Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner. p. 15.
8. ↑ Concerning the introduction of the term for more details see: Jesinghausen-Lauster, Martin (1985): Die Suche nach der symbolischen Form. Der Kreis um die Kunstwissen­schaftliche Bibliothek Warburg.. Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, p.57 ff: here, the abstract contraposition of rationality and mysticism is clear, which influenced Cassirers approach. Also the "historical turn" in Cassirer´s philosophy of symbolic forms is analyzed (64f). It is shown that Cassirer can not simply be grasped under the label "neokantanism" (p.66ff, especially p.69). How (post)modern Cassirer´s argumentation is, can (still) be worked out against the grain of Jessinghausen-Lauster´s version of the so-called "relapse of Cassirer into elative aporia" (p.77) and "his eclecticism".
9. ↑ Jesinghausen-Lauster, Martin (1985): Die Suche nach der symbolischen Form. Der Kreis um die Kunstwissen­schaftliche Bibliothek Warburg.. Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner , p. 15.
10. ↑ In its usage and its further development the concept of symbolic form leads away from a mere mediatory term to an "active subject". This aims at Lacan´s talk of the subject being spoken and not the subject speaking.
11. ↑ Wind, Edgar (1931): Warburgs Begriff der Kulturwissenschaft und seine Bedeutung für die Ästhetik.In: Warburg, Aby (1980): Ausgewählte Schriften und Würdigungen. Hg.v. Dieter Wuttke. Baden-Baden: V. Koerner. S. 401 - 418, p. 31.
12. ↑ vgl. hierzu Ehmer, Hermann K. (1987): Über kunstpädagogische Kunstvermittlung und ihre verborgene Opposition gegen die kunstgeschichtliche Kunstrezeption. In: Kunst+Unterricht 109, 13 16.
13. ↑ Wind, Edgar (1931): Warburgs Begriff der Kulturwissenschaft und seine Bedeutung für die Ästhetik.In: Warburg, Aby (1980): Ausgewählte Schriften und Würdigungen. Hg.v. Dieter Wuttke. Baden-Baden: V. Koerner. S. 401 - 418, S. 406.
14. ↑ Freud, however, partly links to an art historical procedure, to Morelli, who does not let the style of his analysis be tied down to those themes immediately obtruding , the manifest contents. In his attribution of paintings he is rather guided by "unimportant" details like the representation of fingernails or earlobes. For more information on the relatedness between criminology and psychoanalysis also see: f.e. Bonaparte 1934; Lacan 1973; Ginzburg 1983, p.61-69; Lorenzer 1985; Dahmer 1988; Lehmann 1988. With my thesis of similar motives of Warburg and Freud, also compare Warburg´s deliberations on the control of phobic reactions. Only one sentence shall be cited: "By the supersiding picture the stimulus pushing in is objectified and created as an object of resistance." (taken from Warburg´s notes cited after Gombrich 1984, 297. There, similar thoughts can be found.). Yet, Warbung didn´t want to get on with Freud, as Gombrich (1984, p.380) testifies.
15. ↑ Wind, Edgar (1931): Warburgs Begriff der Kulturwissenschaft und seine Bedeutung für die Ästhetik.In: Warburg, Aby (1980): Ausgewählte Schriften und Würdigungen. Hg.v. Dieter Wuttke. Baden-Baden: V. Koerner. S. 401 - 418, S. 407.
16. ↑ Wind, Edgar (1931): Warburgs Begriff der Kulturwissenschaft und seine Bedeutung für die Ästhetik.In: Warburg, Aby (1980): Ausgewählte Schriften und Würdigungen. Hg.v. Dieter Wuttke. Baden-Baden: V. Koerner. S. 401 - 418, S. 407.
17. ↑ also cf: Warnke´s contribution to the comprehension of Warburg with the title: "Mankind´s collected misery becomes human property", which is cited from Warburg´s notes. (Warnke, Martin (1980): ãDer Leidschatz der Menschheit wird humaner Besitz". In: Hofmann, Werner/ Syamken, Georg/ Warnke, Martin (1980): Die Menschenrechte des Auges. Über Aby War­burg. Frankfurt: Europ.Verlagsanst. p. 113 - 186, p. 113 - 186, esp. p. 131f).
18. ↑ With a different interest in mind, Jesinghausen-Lauster confirms this with a formulation bordering on defamation: "Like Cassirer and in contrast to Saxl and Warburg, Panofski shows no fascination for the historico-cultural phenomena of a benighted consciousness. In his works he preserves the course of clarity, he always writes a part of history of liberation, of the growing self-consciousness of the occidental human, steps of refinement towards an enduring equilibrium in the medium of a beauty reflected in itselfÉ"(1985, p.105). - Incidentally, Jesinghausen-Lauster does not seem to be capable of distinguishing between Pächts pertaining critical remark, that Panofski does not refer to "modern" psychoanalysis, "the realm of the unconscious" (Pächt 197 Pächt, Otto (1979): Kritik der Ikonologie.In Kaemmerling, Ekkehard (Hg.) (1979). Ikonographie und Ikonologie. Theorien, Entwicklung, Probleme. Köln: DuMont, p. 353 376. p. 374) and the (in his assessment) accompanying nonsense, to bring iconology " in the disrepute of the abnormal, especially because it does not want to join the psychoanalytical quest for the pathological."(1985, p.118).
19. ↑ In this sense the term of the symbolic form appears in Bourdieu´s analyses. In his book "Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste" ("Kritik der gesellschaftlichen Urteilskraft") with the title "The sense of distinction" ("Die feinen Unterschiede"(1982) in one chapter "embodied social structures"("Inkorporierte soziale Strukturen") (1982, p.467 ff) Bourdieu puts forward the following thesis: (in the following sentence some citation and quotation marks must have been lost in the print. I add in brackets). " The cognitive structures which social agents implement in their practical knowledge of the social world are internalized, `embodied´ social structures. The practical knowledge of the social world that presupposed by `reasonable´ behaviour within its implements classificatory schemes (or ´forms of classification´ , ´mental structures´ or ´symbolic forms´ - apart from their connotations, these expressions are virtually interchangeable), historical schemes of perception and appreciation which are the product of the objective division into classes ( age groups, genders, social classes) and which function beneath the level of consciousness and discourse. (Bourdieu,Pierre. 1984. Distinction. A social critique of the judgement of taste. Routledge, London, p.468). In a text from 1974 Bourdieu talks about habit as the "culturally unconscious" (1974, p.123) and "There is no perception, that does not include an unconscious code" (Bourdieu, 1974, p.162). By means of discursive thinking which works in the cognitive structures described above, the "act ofmiscognition" (Bourdieu, 1984, p.471), which is necessarily produced by principles of classification, is not noticed. For in the primary perception of the social world, principles of construction play a part, "that are external to the constructed object grasped in its immediacy; but at the same time it is an act of miscognition, implying the most absolute form of recognition of the social order." (Bourdieu, 1984, p.471). With the construction- and perception-principle of perspective, this can be shown especially well.-In the following, Bourdieu talks of how the relation to the social world is inscribed "in a lasting, generalized relation to one´s own body" (Bourdieu, 1984, p.474). "There is no better image of the logic of socialisation, which treats the body as a ´memory-jogger´, than those complexes of gestures, postures and wordsÉ(Bourdieu, 1984, p.474).