Idol Anxiety - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804760438 ISBN 13: 9780804760430

Verlag: STANFORD UNIV PR, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

This interdisciplinary collection of essays addresses idolatry, a contested issue that has given rise to both religious accusations and heated scholarly disputes. Idol Anxiety brings together insightful new statements from scholars in religious studies, art history, philosophy, and musicology to show that idolatry is a concept that can be helpful in articulating the ways in which human beings interact with and conceive of the things around them. It includes both case studies that provide examples of how the concept of idolatry can be used to study material objects and more theoretical interventions. Among the book's highlights are a foundational treatment of the second commandment by Jan Assmann; an essay by W.J.T. Mitchell on Nicolas Poussin that will be a model for future discussions of art objects; a groundbreaking consideration of the Islamic ban on images by Mika Natif; and a lucid description by Jean-Luc Marion of his cutting-edge phenomenology of the visible.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Josh Ellenbogen is Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture at University of Pittsburgh.Aaron Tugendhaft teaches philosophy and history of religions at the Gallatin School, New York University. He was guest curator of the 2008 exhibition Idol Anxiety at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago.

Josh Ellenbogen is Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture at University of Pittsburgh. Aaron Tugendhaft teaches philosophy and history of religions at the Gallatin School, New York University. He was guest curator of the 2008 exhibition Idol Anxiety at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago.

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IDOL ANXIETY

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2011 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-6043-0

Contents

Contributors...............................................................................................................................viiEditors' Statement.........................................................................................................................xiIntroduction JOSH ELLENBOGEN AND AARON TUGENDHAFT.........................................................................................11 What's Wrong with Images? JAN ASSMANN...................................................................................................192 The Christian Critique of Idolatry MARC FUMAROLI........................................................................................323 The Painter's Breath and Concepts of Idol Anxiety in Islamic Art MIKA NATIF.............................................................414 Idolatry: Nietzsche, Blake, and Poussin W. J. T. MITCHELL...............................................................................565 Dreadful Beauty and the Undoing of Adulation in the Work of Kara Walker and Michael Ray Charles RACHAEL ZIADY DELUE.....................746 Iconoclasm and Real Space DAVID SUMMERS.................................................................................................977 How Many Ways Can You Idolize a Song? ROSE ROSENGARD SUBOTNIK...........................................................................1178 Iconoclasm and the Sublime: Two Implicit Religious Discourses in Art History JAMES ELKINS...............................................1339 What We See and What Appears JEAN-LUC MARION............................................................................................15210 On Heidegger, the Idol, and the Work of the Work of Art DANIEL DONESON.................................................................16911 Beyond Instrumentalism and Voluntarism: Idol Anxiety and the Awakening of a Philosophical Mood DANIEL SILVER...........................184Notes......................................................................................................................................203Index......................................................................................................................................235

Chapter One

WHAT'S WRONG WITH IMAGES?

JAN ASSMAN

The prohibition of images is perhaps the strangest commandment in the Decalogue. It is understandable enough that God does not want other gods to be worshipped along with him; that his name not be abused; that he wants us to keep the Sabbath and to honor our father and mother; and that he forbids murder, adultery, theft, wrong testimony, and the covetous desire for the wife, house, and possessions of others. All this is quite normal and can be found in other cultures. But why forbid images? What does God find wrong with them? And what do we learn about the concept of "image" from the fact that God forbids the making and the worshipping of them?

Let us recall the text of the commandment:

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exod. 20:4–6; cf. Deut. 5:8–10)

The Decalogue occurs twice in the Bible, in Exodus and in Deuteronomy. Depending on how one breaks up the commandments, the prohibition of images either belongs to the first commandment, the prohibition of worshipping other gods ("You shall not have other gods besides me") and forms its commentary (i.e., "You shall not make for yourself any carved image"), or the prohibition of images forms a commandment of its own. What is the difference between these two ways of reading? If the prohibition of images forms the commentary of the commandment "No other gods!" it means: do not make images, because every image tends to turn into another god. We are here in a world, to quote Hans Belting, "before the age of art"; images are not made for aesthetic pleasure, for decoration and embellishment, but for worship. Worship is the only raison d'être for the production of images. To prohibit the production of images, therefore, means to prohibit the adoration of the visible world. The visible world in its shapes and forms must not be adored and in order to avoid this mistake, it must not be represented in images.

In another passage, Deuteronomy gives a reason for this prohibition—the only passage in the Bible where such a reason is given:

Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day. (Deut. 4:15–20)

God is invisible. Therefore, he cannot be worshipped in anything visible—be it an image or a heavenly body. It is interesting to note that images are here given the same status as sun and moon and stars. This shows that images have a cosmic status; adoring them means adoring the visible world. This restriction amounts to a radical disenchantment of the world. To worship images means to worship the world, that is, "cosmotheism." The visible forms, especially the heavenly bodies, are given to the other peoples as objects of worship. They are the gods of the others and must not be worshipped by Israel, which has acquired a special status where anything visible is banished from communication with God.

The composer Arnold Schönberg gives just such an interpretation of the prohibition of images in his notebooks, written while working on his opera Moses und Aron. Images, he writes, are false gods: "There is a false god in every thing that surrounds us; he can look like everything, he originates in everything, every thing originates in him; he is like the entire surrounding nature and nature is in him as in everything. This god expresses the worship of nature and identifies every living creature with God." The prohibition of images establishes a new relationship between man and the world. Man is emancipated from his symbiotic embeddedness in and dependence on the world. Instead, he confronts the world as a subject confronts an object. This is the relation between man and the world that underlies the dominium terrae, the commandment to rule the world: "And God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: STANFORD UNIV PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804760438
• ISBN 13: 9780804760430
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Herausgeber: Ellenbogen Josh, Tugendhaft Aaron
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande