How Images Mean: Iconography and Meta-iconography

This groundbreaking study interrogates a rich and diverse repertoire of images from all over the world to answer the fundamental question: how are the meanings of images assigned, conveyed and recognized?

Combining art history, anthropology, philosophy and linguistics, the book expands the field of traditional iconography, which explains what images mean, by introducing new, useful categories that enable us to understand how images mean (meta-iconography). In his study of iconography from a century ago Erwin Panofsky famously discussed what an “Australian bushman” might make of Leonardo’s Last Supper: though unaware of the religious story, the Aboriginal viewer would have known it was a picture of humans eating a meal together. Paul Taylor’s book argues that this gets the question the wrong way round. We only know the painting depicts people at supper if we know it represents a supper. It is through knowing the cultural context that we can interpret the contents of an image. Universal in scope and profoundly topical at a time when artificial intelligence is redefining our visual horizon, this book represents a resource for scholars in a variety of fields and a thought-provoking read for all those interested in art.