Content area
Full text
Thomas F. Heck, with contributions from Robert Erenstein, M. A. Katritzky, Frank Peeters, A. William Smith, and Lyckle de Vries. Picturing Performance: The Iconography of the Performing Arts in Concept and Practice. University of Rochester Press, 1999. xii, 255 pp.
One picture is worth a thousand words. Despite all the caveats and cautionary tales included in this collection of essays entitled Picturing Performance, the authors convincingly convey their belief that iconography is an invaluable critical tool. During the course of separate contributions by six different specialists, scholars are repeatedly urged to pursue the investigation and proper application of visual sources, are provided with very specific guidelines, and are appropriately reminded that interdisciplinary cooperation is essential in the interpretation of images of the performing arts. Organized and edited by Thomas Heck, Professor of Musicology and head of the Music and Dance Library at Ohio State University, the book presents, as its subtitle promises, essays in the theory and practice of the iconography of the performing arts. Its central chapter (chapter 3 of six) consists of four brief "Discourses in Applied Iconography" in music, dance, theater, and the performing arts; the last-named, which actually precedes the other three, is an introductory essay in methodology, illustrated by sources concerning the commedia dell'arte. Surrounding these discourses, which constitute the book's core "applications" of iconographic concepts, other chapters offer a wide variety of theoretical perspectives, from a review of terminology and art-historical methods to the semiotics of scenography and a guide to research resources. The latter includes a gratifyingly practical emphasis on the internet, thanks largely to Heck's awareness that the Web's impact on iconography has already been significant and will certainly increase in the very near future.
The word iconography has been defined and used in many ways, but in pictorial analysis it is generally acknowledged to mean the study of subject matter and meaning in works of art and, as a corollary, the study of signs and symbols in art. Having established the distinction between iconography and iconology (a distinction eroded by current usage, as he points out), Professor Heck provides an extremely learned survey of the various uses of the term through the ages, from Cesare Ripa's first descriptive collection of emblems (Iconologia, 1593) to the most...