The Fear of Art: How Censorship Becomes Iconoclasm

2016/01/01 by David Freedberg · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · Social Sciences · #Visual Culture and Art Theory #Aesthetic Perception and Analysis #Law in Society and Culture

paper · pdf · doi:10.1353/sor.2016.0019

openalex publication_date 2016/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

The Fear of Art: How Censorship Becomes Iconoclasm every act of censorship is also an act of iconoclasm. together they constitute one of the oldest paradoxes of image making and of figuration. To make an image is both to want it and to fear it. The more it is desired, the more it seems contra naturam, and so is feared. It often has a vitality that is startlingly at odds with its materiality and its concept.

Cited by

• Censorship [wikipedia]

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• Image Controversies
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• ‘Iconotropy: everything or nothing?’. Review of: Iconotropy and Cult Images from the Ancient to Modern World, Routledge Research in Art and Religion, edited by Jorge Tomás García and Sandra Sáenz-López Pérez, New York and London: Routledge, 2022, 212 pp., 49 b. & w. illus. 136.00 hdbk, ISBN 978-1-032-03065-4; 42.36 ebk, ISBN 978-1-003-18650-2, DOI: 10.4324/9781003186502.