Trim Size: 170mm x 244mm
Page 1
Iconography and Style
PAOLO FORTIS
Durham University, United Kingdom
Iconography is generally understood as the study
of the meaning of elements in art objects. Style
is concerned with the formal resemblances and
variations between art objects. A basic connec-
tion between iconography and style may be said
to arise from the need to represent or express
what people consider meaningful about objects,
or more generally about their lived world. What
is represented or expressed and how it is rep-
resented or expressed are more often than not
interconnected phenomena.
The relationship between iconography and
style has prompted interesting debates over the
years on a number of issues relevant to anthropol-
ogy, among which figure prominently problems
of continuity and change and the relationship
between artworks and meaning. While discus-
sions on style have typically been carried out
k k
by art historians and archaeologists, they have
certainly been not unfamiliar to anthropological
writing since the beginning of the twentieth
century. Panofsky (1939) famously differentiated
style and iconography, or form and meaning,
in Renaissance art, but the relationship between
the two sets of categories is less straightforward
when considered in the light of the ethnography
of non-Western societies.
In Primitive Art ([1927] 1955), Boas discussed
the issue of how to account for the development
of particular styles within specific societies and
how far styles allow or constrain changes in visual
art traditions. Starting from reflections on the link
between technical habits and materials, and conti-
nuity of forms and patterns, Boas’s main concerns
were with the power of styles to influence distinct
artistic activities within specific cultures and with
interactions between neighboring groups, which
accounted for the emergence of local styles. In his
formal analysis of the art of the Northwest Coast
The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Edited by Hilary Callan.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
k Callan wbiea1788.tex V1 - 05/12/2017 12:28 A.M.
of North America, issues of meaning were subor-
dinated to studies of forms and patterns and their
diffusion across social groups.
Despite Boas’s interest in local dynamics of
styles, subsequent generations of anthropologists
paid less attention to art and material culture,
following the general move away from social
evolutionism toward the synchronic study of
sociocultural domains. While some scholars
worked on describing stylistic types and culture
areas (e.g., Fagg 1965), it was largely archaeol-
ogists and cultural historians who, focusing on
problems of space and time division, put style at
the service of chronology and typology during
the first sixty years of the twentieth century (see
Conkey [1990] for a review of the uses of style
in archaeology). One exception was Richardson’s
and Kroeber’s (1940) study of changes in Euro-
pean women’s dress fashions over three centuries,
in which the authors argued for a relationship
between sociopolitical conditions of tension
and corresponding tensions in the field of dress
fashion. They suggested that stylistic changes can
only be worked out in relation to a basic pattern
of women’s dress style and notably that, through
studying stylistic changes, one is able to work
out a basic pattern, not vice versa. This was a call
to consider style as a tool to explore the impact
of historical circumstances on sociocultural
patterns.
Meanwhile, in Britain, functionalism had by
the 1930s rejected the study of objects as evidence
of social evolution and the diachronic study of
regional stylistic changes as speculative history.
Dominant art-historical tendencies to consider
styles as necessarily evolving toward naturalis-
tic representations were put under scrutiny by
Shapiro, who argued that both geometric and
naturalistic styles “occur in history; there is lit-
tle reason to regard either one as more typical
or more primitive” (1953, 300). In discussing
the difference between “signification” and “rep-
resentation” and moving against the unifying
tendency in art history to identify art with figu-
ration, Lévi-Strauss (1961) argued for a positive
relationship between iconography and style and
for a direct link between form and meaning.
k
 Trim Size: 170mm x 244mm
2 I CO N O G R A P H Y A N D S T Y L E
This was part of a general move (identified with
structuralism) toward exploring meanings in
artworks and relating them to the study of social
forms and forms of communication (see Layton
[1981] 1991). In a similar vein, Forge (1973)
considered style as part of the process of creating
meaning (see also Hodder 1990). He saw visual
compositions in paintings among the Abelam as
expressions of the relationships between things,
rather than the representing of particular sub-
jects. In her pioneering study of Warlpiri (or
“Walbiri”) iconography, Munn (1964, 1966, 1973)
analyzed the emergence of meaning through the
production and circulation of graphic forms in
everyday practices. According to Munn, mean-
ings are encoded in actions that are key to social
life and that integrate individual biographies
into collective time. Graphic forms link everyday
processes to social representations and endow
them with meaningfulness, hence Munn’s def-
inition of art as a “code for experience” (1973,
211–21). Further studies of local iconographies
have unpacked the multiplicity of interpretations
and the interconnectedness between artworks,
kinship, gender, cosmology, and the environment
k (Campbell 2002; Morphy 1991).
In The Way of the Masks (1982), Lévi-Strauss
explored the analytical potential of stylistic anal-
ysis in a study of particular masks made by the
Kwakwaka’wakw (or “Kawkiutl”) and Salish peo-
ple of the Northwest Coast of North America. By
comparing the formal features of such masks with
mythology and cultural practices, Lévi-Strauss
applied structural analysis to visual forms to for-
mulate historical hypotheses on cultural contact
in the absence of written sources. He also argued
that the stylistic choices of a particular society
need to be looked at in relation to either the
choices of neighboring societies or the previous
style forms of the same society. Lévi-Strauss thus
suggested the possibility of employing stylistic
analysis alongside ethnography to recuperate the
diachronic dimension in the study of art objects
previously dismissed by anthropologists (see
Fortis 2016; Gow 1997).
The most recent development in the anthro-
pological study of style has been that of Gell
(1998). His effort was directed at recuperating
formal analysis to bring it to bear on the study
of social forms. Asking “what is shared in terms
of style?” within a specific culture, Gell aimed
k
k Callan wbiea1788.tex V1 - 05/12/2017 12:28 A.M. Page 2
at producing a description of style that, through
abstracting formal attributes of artworks, would
highlight their capacity to thematize cultural
aspects. Defining style as “‘relations between
relations’ of form” (Gell 1998, 215), he suggested
comparing relations between visual motifs with
social relations. In doing so, Gell drew a compar-
ison between collective works of art, of the type
normally dealt with by anthropologists, and the
collective work of individual artists, of the type
normally dealt with by art historians and critics.
He argued that the collective work of an artist, his
or her oeuvre, leaves a trace of the artist’s agency
during his or her career and that only by looking
at it as a whole is one able to identify the salient
traits distinguishing the particular artist. Reject-
ing the link between style and meaning, and more
generally avoiding semiotic approaches, Gell
aimed at describing specific aspects of social life
by identifying the “axes of coherence” within the
visual system. His main achievement was to avoid
meaning while still talking about significance. In
taking into account the transformational nature of
both sociocultural and art forms, Gell’s goal was
to identify the “invariants under transformation” k
(1998, 167), which in his mind should shed light
on the interplay between the making of artworks
and the forging of social relations, thus providing
a powerful tool for anthropological enquiry.
Tensions between the theoretical and ana-
lytical uses of iconography and style, and of
meaning and form, continue to reflect the ongo-
ing challenges emerging from the interplay
between ethnographic studies of local art forms
and theoretical efforts to establish method-
ological and epistemological models that could
be applied cross-culturally (see Descola 2010;
Ingold 2013). These tensions both are endemic to
anthropology and represent a creative force for
rethinking aesthetics and notions of signification
cross-culturally in relation to artworks.
SEE ALSO: Boas, Franz (1858–1942); wbiea1299
Structuralism (Linguistic Anthropology); Gell, wbiea1616
wbiea1693
Alfred (1945–97); Art and Agency; Mimesis; wbiea1778
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1908–2009); wbiea1806
wbiea2007
Cross-Cultural Aesthetics; Art, Anthropology of; wbiea2049
Skill; <DRAFT: Structuralism (Social wbiea2254
wbiea2281
Anthropology)>; Visual Anthropology; wbiea1969
<BLIND: BE135>
 Trim Size: 170mm x 244mm
I CO N O G R A P H Y A N D S T Y L E
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Boas, Franz. (1927) 1955. Primitive Art. New York:
Dover.
Campbell, Shirley. 2002. The Art of Kula. Oxford: Berg.
Conkey, Margaret. 1990. “Experimenting with Style
in Archaeology: Some Historical and Theoretical
Issues.” In The Uses of Style in Archaeology, edited by
Margaret Conkey and Christine Hastorf, 5–17. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Descola, Philippe. 2010. La fabrique des images: Visions
du monde et formes de la représentation [The Making
of Images: Visions of the World and Forms of Repre-
sentation]. Paris: Somogy Éditions d’Art.
Fagg, William. 1965. Tribes and Forms in African Art.
London: Methuen Books.
Forge, Anthony. 1973. “Style and Meaning in Sepik
Art.” In Primitive Art and Society, edited by Anthony
Forge, 169–92. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fortis, Paolo, 2012. Kuna Art and Shamanism: An
Ethnographic Approach. Austin: University of Texas
Press.
Fortis, Paolo. 2016. “General MacArthur among the
Guna: The Aesthetics of Power and Alterity in an
Amerindian Society.” Current Anthropology 57 (4):
430–51.
Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological
Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
k Ginzburg, Carlo. 1998. “Style as Inclusion, Style as
Exclusion.” In Picturing Science Producing Art, edited
by Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison, 27–54. Lon-
don: Routledge.
Gow, Peter. 1999. “Piro Design: Painting as Meaningful
Action in an Amazonia Lived World.” Journal of the
Royal Anthropological Institute 5 (2): 229–47.
Gow, Peter. 1997. “A Lesson in Piro Beadwork: Under-
standing Style in a Lived World.” Curl Prize Lecture,
Royal Anthropological Institute, London.
Hodder, Ian. 1990. “Style as Historical Quality.” In The
Uses of Style in Archaeology, edited by Margaret Con-
key and Christine Hastorf, 44–51. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Ingold, Timothy. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archae-
ology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge.
Kroeber, Alfred. 1957. Style and Civilizations. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press.
Küchler, Susanne. 2002. Malanggan: Art, Memory and
Sacrifice. Oxford: Berg.
Küchler, Susanne. 2013. “Threads of Thought: Reflec-
tion on Art and Agency.” In Distributed Objects:
Meaning and Mattering after Alfred Gell, edited
by Liana Chua and Mark Elliott, 25–38. Oxford:
Berghahn Books.
k
k Callan wbiea1788.tex V1 - 05/12/2017 12:28 A.M. Page 3
3
Layton, Robert. (1981) 1991. The Anthropology of Art.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1961. Entretiens avec Claude
Lévi-Strauss—Georges Charbonnier [Interview with
Claude Lévi-Strauss—Georges Charbonnier]. Paris:
Plon.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1982. The Way of the Masks.
Translated by Sylvia Modelski. Seattle: University of
Washington Press.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Margaret Mead, Meyer Schapiro,
and Alfred L. Kroeber. 1953. “Style.” In An Appraisal
of Anthropology Today, edited by Sol Tax, Loren E.
Eiseley, Irving Rouse, and Carl F. Voegelin, 61–66.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Morphy, Howard. 1991. Ancestral Connections: Art and
an Aboriginal System of Knowledge. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press.
Munn, Nancy. 1964. “Totemic Designs and Group Con-
tinuity in Walbiri Cosmology.” In Aborigines Now:
New Perspective in the Study of Aboriginal Commu-
nities, edited by Mary Reay, 83–100. Sydney: Angus
& Robertson.
Munn, Nancy. 1966. “Visual Categories: An Approach
to the Study of Representational Systems.” American
Anthropologists 68: 936–50.
Munn, Nancy. 1973. Walbiri Iconography: Graphic Rep-
resentation and Cultural Symbolism in a Central Aus-
tralian Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. k
Panofsky, Erwin. 1939. Studies in Iconology: Humanis-
tic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York:
Harper & Row.
Richardson, Jane, and Alfred L. Kroeber. 1940. Three
Centuries of Women’s Dress Fashions: A Quantitative
Analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Severi, Carlo. 2015. The Chimera Principle: An Anthro-
pology of Memory and Imagination. Chicago:
Chicago University Press / Hau Books.
Shapiro, Meyer. 1953. “Style.” In Anthropology Today,
edited by Alfred L. Kroeber, 283–311. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
Strathern, Marylin, and Andrew Strathern. 1971.
Self-Decoration in Mount Hagen. London: Back-
worth.
Toren, Christina. 1991. “Leonardo’s ‘Last Supper’ in
Fiji.” In The Myth of Primitivism: Perspectives on Art,
edited by Susan Hiller, 261–79. London: Routledge.
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2007. “The Crystal Forest:
Notes on the Ontology of Amzonian Spirits.” Inner
Asia 9: 153–72.
 Trim Size: 170mm x 244mm k Callan wbiea1788.tex V1 - 05/12/2017 12:28 A.M. Page 4

Please note that the abstract and keywords will not be included in the printed book, but are required
for the online presentation of this book which will be published on Wiley’s own online publishing
platform.
If the abstract and keywords are not present below, please take this opportunity to add them now.
The abstract should be a short paragraph of between 50 and 150 words in length and there should
be at least 3 keywords.

ABSTRACT
Iconography deals with the study of meaning in art objects, and style deals with formal resem-
blances and variations. The relationship between iconography and style has prompted lively
debates in anthropology on issues of continuity and change and on the relations between
form and meaning. Over the years, anthropologists have explored the perspectives of style and
iconography to study social forms and social change, relations between technical skills and
materiality, and problems of signification and representation. They have also begun to exploit
the capacity of style to inform historical analysis.

KEYWORDS
k anthropology of art; meaning; representation; social and cultural anthropology; social change k