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HANNA PAHL (ed.) Emblematic Strategies in Contemporary Art, Selected Papers from the Workshop Emblematic Strategies at the University of Kiel, July 29-31,2014, Schriften aus dem Kunsthistorischen Institut der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Vol. 7. Berlin 2014. Pp. 129. ISBN 978-3-643-90610-6. US$ 44.95 / euro 29.90.
This volume is devoted to the study of emblematic strategies in contemporary artworks of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It aims to provide new conceptual clarity to an ongoing debate within emblem studies about what constitutes an emblem in the first place. The first contribution by Hanna Pahl attempts to set out the specificities of the processes involved in contemporary emblematic approaches to art and culture. Starting with one of the etymological meanings of the Greek word "emblema" (mosaic), the author stresses the composite visual and verbal form of the emblem, the process of encoding and combination, and the formal tripartite structure of the so-called canonical emblem, conceptualized as a figura, an inscriptio, and a subscriptio. The composite nature of emblematic creations, which consist of borrowings, quotations, and fragments, triggers new ways of reappropriation, recalling Dadaist and Surrealist practice of montage and photomontage. Digital media artists, along with software artists and video game artists, use these strategies to produce...