Ventrella, Francesco (2011) Under the hat of the art historian: Panofsky, Berenson, Warburg. Art History, 34 (2). pp. 310-331. ISSN 0141-6790

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Abstract

Starting with Erwin Panofsky’s famous use of the hat as a device for iconological explanation, this essay builds upon a series of encounters with hats from within the discipline of history of art and its practices of writing. Such hats mark not only a gendered space; they also delimit an absence of the body. From Panofsky’s suggestion that in the act of taking one’s hat off there can be seen a residue of chivalric gestures, this essay examines the forensic approach of connoisseurship to images in order ultimately to read, in the guise of a deferred action, Aby Warburg’s discussion of the stovepipe hat worn by Uncle Sam as the embodiment of an anxiety for the body’s vulnerability in times of war. Documenting the use of the hat as a fictional tool
for an art historian’s creative writing, but also refl
ecting
creatively on writing art history, art-historical
interpretation is framed as the other side of bodily
investment.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Republished in: Creative writing and art history. Blackwell, London (2012), pp. 88-109. ISBN-9781444350395
Schools and Departments:	School of History, Art History and Philosophy > Art History
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general > NX0440 History of the arts
Depositing User:	Francesco Ventrella
Date Deposited:	20 Sep 2013 10:54
Last Modified:	03 Jul 2019 01:46
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/46416

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