To mark the emergence of a new Dan Brown novel, Slate's Explainer explains that there is no such thing as a "Professor of Symbology," the title given to Brown's hero, Robert Langdon. Explainer fails to note that one famed art historian functioned as a real-life equivalent to Langdon: Erwin Panofsky.
He called himself an iconologist -- a word that he did not coin, although he embraced it as no other historian ever did. He once wrote that iconology concerned itself with subject matter rather than form. That's an oversimplification. Panofsky saw iconology as the attempt to comprehend the deepest meaning of a work by studying its use of symbols, which express "tendencies of the human mind" as filtered by historical conditions. The symbols may tell a story differing from the one which the artist consciously intended.
Did Dan Brown intentionally model Langdon on Panofsky? Maybe. Like Langdon, Panofsky was a professor at Harvard. As far as I know, Panofsky (whose circle of friends included Pauli and Einstein) never did get involved with any weird Vatican or Freemasonic conspiracies. But he did write the essay on the "ET IN ARCADIA EGO" motif in art, long before that phrase gained notoriety among the paranoid. Brown may have discovered Panofsky by way of that monograph.
(Incidentally: At the age of 73, "Pan" married a 36 year old. Let's see Tom Hanks top that.)
2 comments:
Alas, Mr./Ms. Explainer needs to look up the definition of the word "semiotics".
Brown's book might represent a marvel in time technology, having first appeared as a movie (National Treasure) or was it two? (From Hell).
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