Customer Reviews

The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book was ground-breaking for its time because of Freedberg's insistence on a new? approach to the study of images that focused on writing biographies of particular images which highlighted the historical and locally constructed responses, and what those responses could tell us about the psychology of the human response to images generally, rather than the more "traditional" art-historical aesthetic analysis approach. "Power of Images" is organized thematically with topics such as versimiltude, iconoclasm, and desire played out in front of the eyes of particular representative images. One of best aspects of this book is how clearly Freedberg takes seriously the notion of "presence" in images.

The biggest limitation of this book is that it is almost completely bereft of information on non-pre-Enlightenment-European-Christian images. Rather than recusing himself from treating say Thai amulets, Freedberg overextends his conclusions in an unfortunately totalizing metanarrative. To be specific, I disagree with his brief rejoinder aimed at Stanley Tambiah's "Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets," and generally, I think many of Freedberg's conclusions would map poorly onto Tibetan or Japanese sacred statuary.

In conclusion, I would still highly recommend this as a first-book for someone who wants to either learn about how to begin thinking about (religious) imagery and our responses to it, or someone who is looking for a wealth of short biographies and references to information on some of the most famous European Christian images.

The author's thesis, quite simply, is that images affect people in powerful ways. Apparently no one has ever noticed this before. Shockingly, the image's power has something to do with the fact that it is accessible to visual perception. Images have a magical presence that previous scholars have simply ignored, denied, repressed, dismissed as mere superstition, or explained in aesthetic terms (aesthetics is bad for some reason).

Freedberg clearly sets out to write against a tradition in art history of overemphasizing a history of art (high culture) to the detriment of other image-histories, which he associates with low culture. His approach is, in this sense, novel.
However, Freedberg falls well short of the mark in several key areas. First, he never contends directly with the idea of a high-low hierachy in culture, but rather seeks to reconcile the two into a system of images. He could well have said that a system of images replaces distinctions between high and low culture (his analysis certainly leads this way), but he does not do so. There are also serious problems with this book as a piece of historical scholarship. Freedberg fails totally to address, or even acknowledge, the significant contribution of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida (and hordes of followers) to the field of reality-representation. Indeed, this failure may in fact be a concerted effort on Freedberg's part--many of his ideas about the essential nature of human response are poorly insulated against Foucault's well-developed argument that human nature is historically specific. (See, for example, Foucault's "The History of Sexuality.") Finally, Freedberg's reliance on psycho-history shows a generally poor knowledge of historical scholarship; this approach has been roundly critiqued by post-structuralists, (again, see Foucault). He does not, however, seem to address this critique anywhere.
In addition to problems of analysis, scope, and lack of awareness, or selective ignorance of historical literature, Freedberg's book suffers from one additional flaw that hinders its overall usefulness. Freedberg's prose is flabby, and the text suffers because of this. His stylistic flourishes and indulgences seem out of character for a book that purports to be in part a critique of the Ivory Tower of art history. All in all, the prose renders the book frustrating, and likely inacessible to the unitiated in this field.
Freedberg has, however, undertaken an interesting project -- namely an interrogation of histories of representation. Were he to recast this book in later editions he could add much to his analysis by reading widely in history, and tidying his prose.