ABSTRACT
At the same time, in the past two decades the image has shifted into focus of scientic interest as a primary means of expression and medium of insight. In the early 1990s, W.J.T. Mitchell and Gottfried Boehm rang in the so-called iconic turn, which responds to the social omnipresence of images. The stipulated turn to the image not only leads to an intensied theoretical examination of images meant to do justice to the role of the image in society, but describes “the image as Logos, as an act that generates meaning” (Boehm 2007b, 29) with its own epistemic quality. In doing so, the iconic turn consciously counteracts the undisputed regime of language, which in particular since the early twentieth century equates any generation of relevance and meaning with the designation and naming of reality and thus causes insight to appear to be something genuinely linguistic. On the other hand, it emphasizes the sensuous variety and visual capacity of the image and acknowledges “imaging” as “the richest, most fascinating modality for conguring and conveying ideas” (Staord 1996, 4). Against this backdrop, for the visual arts cognitive content or a specic form of knowledge as a primarily image-based form of expression or iconic communication is again called upon, and an attempt is made to dene it with respect to its features (see, e.g., Frayling 1993; Staord 1996; Young 2001; Sullivan 2005; Macleod and Holdridge 2006; Boehm 2007a, 2007b).
