ISBN: 9781483506821
This paper tries to demonstrate an iconological analysis on one of the most traditional and popular topoi of Japanese art; on the tradition of Fuji Painting. What matters here mostly, is not a detailed special research on Japanese art history, but a more general survey on Japanese orientation in living world, examining its central topos of Fuji Painting. Therefore, we intend to serve a dual purpose; firstly it should offer a brief overview of this cultural heritage by describing concrete materials, and secondly it intends to verify the applicability of the concerned method itself, while it tries to get insight into the problem, how far the iconological investigation would be valid for our eastern tradition.
In the first place, it is worthwhile to observe the basic fact that the term iconology consists of two notions; ‘icon’, i.e. visual representation and ‘logos’, i.e. verbal meaning and reasoning. This basic structure of the concept tells us explicitly that the iconological studies intend above all to reconstruct the semantic context of the stylization, in order to understand the ‘meaning’ of the visual expressions; of paintings, sculptures and architectures. They try to come to an understanding of ‘why thus’ of the expression and ‘what’s the meaning’ of the representation. Naturally this question of ‘why’ includes in itself the element of simple ‘what’, namely of the subject matter: ‘what is painted here?’. It is also related to the problem of technique; ‘how is it made?’ and so on. Stylistic analysis of traditional formalistic art history includes these both elements of theme and know-how with regard to the compositional device. It constitutes the basis of iconological researches; and in this sense, it is a sheer misunderstanding to oppose both principles.
The point is, that we should take this pre-scientific basis of iconological consciousness into account, i.e. the simple fact that it is based on the ‘why’ and ‘what’s the meaning’ of the visual representations before us. It is also easily intelligible to ascertain that the iconological consciousness in our everyday life, not the iconological method in the academic field, is the self-evident prerequisite and the first psychological framework we form standing before the visual expressions, before paintings, sculptures, and architectures. ‘The’ iconology in the sense of special scientific method with its strong analytical traits dealing with problems of artistic stylization is therefore to be regarded as the conceptual refinement and systematization of this basic psychological presupposition which expresses itself as rather naïve questions of ‘why thus’ and ‘what’s the meaning’ put forward before the visual expressions.
If only we become a little more conscious about the interaction between visualization and reasoning in everyday basis, we can ascertain immediately how often one comes across the amalgamation or coordination of both phenomena.
We shall pick up one example of this universality concerning the iconological consciousness from Chinese literature.
Lu Xun (Ro Jin) noticed the importance of this interaction, as he studied the documentation of primordial myths and legends in Chinese literature, which resulted in his splendid book, ‘The History of Chinese Novels’.2 According to Lu Xun, there had been a vivid tendency to connect the visual expression and verbal tradition in the early strata of Chinese literature. He exemplifies this amalgamation by quoting some ancient documents, in which one poet stands before olden wall paintings and asks not only ‘what’ (‘what is painted here?) but primarily the ‘why’ of the expression; ‘why they depicted these gods and spirits thus?’ This poet was the most suitable person to put such questions towards mythological paintings, for he is no other than Qu Yuan (339 BC - 278 BC); one of the greatest poet in ancient China. He asks before one mythical representation of the moon as follows:
<Why and in what capacity can the moon die and revive repeatedly? For what purpose does the hare dwell in her?>
(Qu Yuan, Tian Wen [The questions about heaven])3
In this occasion, Lu Xun further refers to one ancient annotation to this text from Han period, which explained the circumstances and background of this questioning:
<Qu Yuan, after dispelled from the Chu court, rambled in the mountains and lakes. There he came across many ancient shrines of olden kings and lords and saw paintings on the wall, representing gods of earth, heaven, mountains and rivers, depicting beautiful, wondrous spirits and also ancient sages, saints, and even the deeds of monsters…… Adding his own ad hoc poems on the wall, he asked why they were thus painted. >
(Wang I ) 4
One sees clearly that this document testifies the universality of iconological consciousness, which expresses itself by means of a question: ‘why is it thus represented?’ Qu Yuan went further; he himself created the new combination of visual and verbal expressions, adding his own poem to the wall painting. If this ancient painting with his text had come down to us, it would have offered a quite suitable subject for iconological study.
One can say, as this case with Qu Yuan illustrates, that the mythological way of thinking has a predetermined affinity to the iconological consciousness, for myths are represented both in visual expressions and verbal texts; and more than that; there is always a vivid tendency in mytho-poetic thinking towards interrelations and interactions between ‘icon’ and ‘logos’, between visual expressions and verbal reasonings. No other than Qu Yuan’s masterpiece, ‘Chu-cu’ (‘So-ji’), testifies by many splendid expressions how vivid and how clearly the poet could ‘see’ the mythological figures in his imaginary chronotopos. In this respect, it is interesting to observe another iconological domain of human psyche, which shows affinity and similarity with primitive-mythological thinking. This is the imagination of children. Children let their imagination work very easily in this direction of amalgamation. Their mind is predetermined by a sort of mytho-poeto-imagination; that is to say, they easily translate what they hear into what they see; and vice versa.
To sum up: there are two main fields of human mind, which function as the basic iconological presupposition, while they establish the peculiar interaction between visual impression and verbal reasoning; 1. the primitive-mythological thinking, and 2. the imagination of children. Both fields are closely interrelated.
Figure 1: <Lightning with serpent heads. Drawing by an Indian boy; from Ernst Gombrich, Aby Warburg, plate 10-a.>
There is one peculiar document, which shows very convincingly this interaction of ‘icon’ and ‘logos’ in children’s psyche. It is instructive also for our present investigation, for it illustrates the universality of iconological consciousness from an unexpected angle.
It is a part of methodological examinations of the founder of iconology, Aby Warburg (1866-1929).5 He once travelled in North America and attended religious customs and rituals of aboriginal Indians. Towards the end of this trip, he made a small experiment at one elementary school, while he asked the teachers to let the children illustrate a short narrative. This narrative was composed as a small legendary story in which a thunderstorm occurred. After hearing this story the pupils had to illustrate this particular thunderstorm. The class consisted mostly of Indian children. What Warburg wanted to see was the shape of the concerned thunderbolt. Most of the Americanized children depicted thunder in the story, understandably, with the normal zigzag representation; but two of the fourteen boys represented it in the form of an arrow-headed serpent, figure 1.6 One sees the bifurcated head of the serpent predominating the rain fall.
Why thus? Why this deviation of expression for the same story, for the same thunderbolt? Because in the Indian mythology and legends serpent and thunderbolt are identical; they are two different apparitions of the same god, who brings rain to the region and therefore belongs to the most important figure of the Indian mythology. For that reason, they receive frequent worships in rituals. The imaginations of these two children were pre-determined by the tribal mythology in such a form that they only translated what they heard repeatedly into what they wanted to see, namely into their own visualizations. The fact that other children depicted thunderbolt with normal, so to speak modern way of zigzag line, testifies the loss of autochthonous culture which was identical, in their psyche, with the loss of mythological imagination. If we ask these two children questioning ‘why thus and what’s the meaning?’, they would immediately reply: ‘because we heard so, because our parents told that the thunderbolt-god appears as serpent-god’. As for other children, they would say; ‘we haven’t heard such a nonsense’. They adopted the modern way, representing ‘natural phenomenon’ with zigzag-thunderbolt, while they lost thus the cultural roots for world orientation.
Iconological circumstances have been thus as a non-reflexive fact, i.e. in the sense of Hegelian ‘In-itself’, always universal; but the iconological method as a reflexive device is not quite so. It is born in particular cultural group at particular historical time, namely it was developed firstly in Europe (mainly in Germany) in the late 19th century. The scholar who founded this important field almost singlehandedly was, as mentioned before, Aby Warburg.7 The first formulation of this method was put forward as concluding theses to his first work, to the doctorate dissertation on Botticelli’s two masterpieces; Primavera (Spring), figure 2, and La Nascita di Venere (The Birth of Venus), figure 3.
Figure 2: <Botticelli, Primavera, Florence, Uffizi.>
It is needless to say that both pieces represent the paradigmatic cases of the artistic ‘revival’ of the classical antiquity. As to iconology the fact that the whole composition was grounded in mythological allegory is decisive, because the ‘revival’ occurred not only in the formalistic dimension, but above all in the semantic field which encompassed necessarily the contemporary literature.
Figure 3: <Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (Detail), Florence, Uffizi.>
The basic iconological consciousness was, also for the young Warburg, the question of ‘why’, while he focused on the expression of movement in detail; especially the hair blown by the wind, figure 3, and the garments with flowing and fluttering drapery attracted his attention intensely: figure 4 (Goddess Hora) and figure 5 (Goddess Primavera).
Figure 4: <Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (Detail; Goddess Hora), Florence, Uffizi.>
Figure 5: <Botticelli, Primavera (Detail; Goddess of the Spring), Florence, Uffizi.>
89