“Biopolitical Effigies: The Volatile Life-Cast in the Work of Paul Thek and Lynn Hershman Leeson,” Tate Papers, no. 24 (Fall 2015), online (original) (raw)
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The full book is available to download in high-resolution here: http://courtauld.ac.uk/research/courtauld-books-online/revisiting-the-monument Revisiting the Monument pays tribute to Erwin Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini, which remains the most influential and comprehensive survey of funerary monuments to be published in the last fifty years. While Panofsky wrote a single, epic narrative charting the development of tomb sculpture from Antiquity to the Baroque, Revisiting the Monument is more akin to a series of short stories. The contributors are art historians with a keen interest in funerary monuments, whose research extends from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries and covers England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal. Each chapter represents a cross-section through the history of tomb sculpture, examining a particular tomb, group of tombs, or theme with wider implications for our understanding of funerary monuments. The methodologies extend close iconographic study of monuments to place them in their historic and social contexts, as well as in dialogue with other media. Recurring themes include monuments as sites of liminality, the reception and visibility of tombs, the relationship between corpse and monument, and the symbolic significance of materials. This collection of essays examines the great contribution made by Tomb Sculpture to the field, extends the debates begun by Panofsky, and suggests new avenues of enquiry within a rapidly expanding field.
PAPERS ON ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE LEIDEN MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES , 2022
Acting with images and images that act Egyptian non-royal tombs were created, used, and visited by diverse audiences on different occasions, during the construction and the burial, for reasons of funerary cult, and at events in the necropolis such as religious festivals and processions. 1 The patron, the artists, architects, and craftsmen, members of the tomb owner's family, his peers and subordinates, priests, relatives, or even passers-by and participants in feasts were able to enter the tomb chapels and see the decoration. As such, the iconographic programme of the tombs reflects the values and concerns of members of the elite, and we can assume that there was a desire to individualise the images. After all, tombs were meant to establish a funerary cult related to the identity of their elite owners, 2 who most probably wished to be distinguished from their peers by the uniqueness of their monument. 3 It seems obvious that for the owners, the construction and decoration of a tomb was an important event during their lifetime, since the cult chapels in particular were prestigious locations where knowledge about social rank was imparted and commemorated. It was also most probably in the interest of the tomb owner to attract visitors and family members to the tomb with the decoration of the chapel, and thereby ensure an ongoing offering cult. It was only through continued visits by the living that the monument's cult could be maintained, and so in this context the inventiveness of artists responsible for decorating the chapel was of importance. 4 Tomb owners likely wished to "make good dwelling in the graveyard, make worthy the station in the West", as expressed in an Egyptian literary text known today as the Instruction of Hordjedef, 5 among others. Thus there was the desire to build a monument, which satisfied all the cultic needs for the afterlife, served as self-representation of the tomb owner, and performed memorial functions for the deceased. The iconographic programme of the tomb 1