Iconographic Analysis of The Martyrdom of the Great One
Introduction
Understanding iconography demands that a few pre-requisites be achieved first on the part of the viewer. What is required of the viewer to understand what the artist responsible for the icon is attempting to communicate? As Panofsky explains, one must know what the gestures meanjust as one must know what it means when one passes a gentleman on the street and the gentleman lifts his hat as sign of cordiality and respect.[footnoteRef:2] If one has no understanding of this gesture, the meaning of the act is lost upon him. Just so, to engage in iconographic analysis one must understand the mechanisms of meaning used by these artists. Particularly, one must be able to contextualize based upon ones sense of the history and trends and style and culture of the artist and his time. To extend the analogy used by Panofsky, a gentleman raising his hat to another on the street will make sense if one is in the Western world in the early part of the 20th centurybut not if one is in the East or in any era but the modern one. Thus, with iconography, one cannot apply modern philosophical or cultural perspectives to the art and expect it to make sense; rather, one must view it from the perspective of the time and place in which it was created. One must understand the artistic gestures and understand them as they would have been understood in that time. Before analyzing The Martyrdom of the Great One, it is necessary to understand the forms, and that means looking at both pre-iconographical methods and iconographical methods. Once these are understood, one can see that Diana Thorneycroft uses iconographic motifs and narrative to express allegorical meanings about Canadian national identity and culturespecifically that in Canada it is not Christ Who is the Great One but rather Wayne Gretzky, hockey hero. The weight of this meaning cannot be comprehended unless one understands the contextual history of iconography and how Thorneycroft ironically uses it to comment on her own modern world. [2: Erwin Panofsky, Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art, Mechanisms of Meaning, 220.]
Pre-Iconographic
Describing a work of art in terms line, form, color, lumps of shapes as symbols of natural environments, the relationship between objects as representative of events, and recognizing the pose or gesture of a subject as indicative of the
[3: Erwin Panofsky, Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art, Mechanisms of Meaning, 221.]Iconographic
Describing a work of art in terms of its meaning and subject matter instead of in terms of its formthis is what it means to engage in iconography. In the iconographic approach, one focuses on subject matter and meaning rather the line, movement, shape, color, space. It does not look at the manner in which a thing is done, communicated or expressed; instead, it looks at the meaning of the action itself. Once more, the lifting of the hat to express a salutation by a gentleman passing on the street is an act that can be described in terms of its meaning. If it were a work of art and one were attempting to describe it in pre-iconographic terms, one would look at how the...
…Thorneycrofts picture is meant to shock and horrify and even make to laugh at the ridiculousness of the modern world and its superficial culture.
However, viewer must bring something to the image to complete the meaning that the artist begins, as Howard argues.[footnoteRef:5] Yet, at the same time, one must remember that the artist is reflecting something genuine and real at least in terms of his or her sense of time and place. As Argan argues, the world of images is an ordered worldand the intellect is still another sector or segment of image.[footnoteRef:6] This means that there is correspondence between the image or art work and the individual viewer. The art brings something to say and the viewer must try to interpret it based on his or her understanding of the symbols, motifs, themes, and so on. If one has no sense of the iconographic perspective, one may struggle to interpret a work of art that relies on iconographic images, motifs and themes to convey meaning to a modern audience. [5: Seymour Howard, Iconology, intention, imagos, and myths of meaning, Source: Notes in the History of Art, no. 13 (1996), 2.] [6: Giulio Carlo Argan, Ideology and iconology, Critical Inquiry 2, no.2 (1975), 297.]
Conclusion
Thorneycroft uses images, motifs and themes consistent with Old World icons to convey meaning about the modern world of Canada, its values, and its lack of religious belief. Instead of saints going to Heaven, Canada and the modern world are concerned with sports heroes, legacies of athleticism, and the natural wonders of the world. Rather than see glory in death, they see old age and dying as an offense in and of itself. Thus, it is better that the Great One (Gretzky) be torn apart by lions than remind moderns of the fact that all must age and…
