A Driving Force
On the Rhetoric of Images and Power
edited by
abstract
The volume comprises a selection of papers presented at the 5th Postgraduate International Conference organized by the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Venice, 4-6 October 2023): A Driving Force. On the Rhetoric of Images and Power. In the introduction to his well-known The Power of Images (1989), David Freedberg claims not only that images hold power over us, but they are also, inevitably, related to ‘power’ itself. Art is therefore a powerful and non-neutral tool. Its forms and expressions influence and manipulate the realm of the real. Throughout human history, the artist’s creative power gave form, substance, and meaning to otherwise inert matter. This process turned the artist into a demiurge. Furthermore, once images are given their final form, they circulate and live a life of their own. The 5th Postgraduate International Conference was aimed at investigating the rhetorical nature of the intersection between image and power. In 1979 Yuri Lotman claimed that “rhetoric” is the displacement of the structural principles of a given semiotic sphere into another semiotic sphere. The Tartu semiologist’s approach implies that the “correlation with different semiotic systems gives rise to a rhetorical situation in which a powerful source of elaboration of new meanings is contained”. In exploring these meanings from a multidisciplinary perspective, this volume investigates two main themes: the power of the image, as an autonomous device, endowed with a pervasive and persuasive character; the image as a form for representing power which addresses questions concerning the sense of authority, and its negation, namely a sense of dissidence and counter-narrations.
Labour of love • The Peggy Guggenheim Collection • Kustar • Lebanon • Russian style • Semiology • Arts • Symbols • Materialism • Warfare • Gaze • Historiographical bias • Visual identity • Metaphor • Aby Warburg • Neoliberal imaginary • Byzantine Empire • Fascism • Venice • Wearable technologies • Power representation • Post-Representation • Byzantine empire • Sursock Museum • Postcolonialism • Paraesthetics • Image theory • Pietro Aretino • Autotheory • Power • Visual culture • Poor power images • Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth • Melodrama • New Media Installation Art • Allegory • Socially engaged art • Coronation of Miraculous Images • Decoloniality • Design • General intellect • Crossmapping • Our Lady of Kodeń • Religious submission • Vittorio Viale • Arts and crafts • Contemporary art • Palaiologan Renaissance • <p>Kustar • A/traverso • Portrait de la jeune fille en few • Salon dʼAutomne • Macedonia • New Formalism • Italy • Modern art history • Occupational realism • Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock • Portrait de la jeune fille en feu • Political iconography • Countersurveillance fashion • National image • Image • Russian Empire • Iconography • Gendered bodies • Distorted portrait • Venice Biennale • Surveillance • Rhetoric • Authority • French Revolution • Post-representation • Technology • Public sphere • Visual Culture • Kodeń • Poor power Images • Feminist art • Salon d'Automne • Exhibition • Revolutionary festival • Renaissance • New media installation art • Alternative press • Geographical personifications • Image and power • The Bureau of Melodramatic Research • Saint George • John V Palaiologos • Painted facade • Holbein • Second Post War Period • Power of the images • Propaganda • Beirut • Scuole Grandi • Sex • Lucerne • Political iconology • Cittadini originari • Latin faith • Folklore • Drone • Politics • Wood • Dissidence • Speculative Design • Palazzo Madama, Torino • Speculative design • Sixteenth-century Italian art • Jan Fryderyk Sapieha • Un’Ambigua Utopia • Byzantine sculpture • Optic Nerve • Sapieha family • Modern Art History • Countersurveillance Fashion • Directory