More Than Meets the Eye: Subject Cataloging for Images
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Karen Kessel presentation for "More Than Meets the Eye? Retrieving Art Images by Subject" session at VRA + ARLIS/NA 2nd joint conference in Minneapolis, MN.
![Moderator: Karen Kessel Visual Resources Specialist, Sonoma State University ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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More Than Meets the Eye: Subject Cataloging for Images
- 1. More Than Meets the Eye Subject Cataloging for Images ARLIS/VRA Joint Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN 2011
- 3. Charles Sheeler, Self-Portrait , 1923 Charles Sheeler uses this image of a telephone to convey something about himself as an artist
- 4. For Images, Subject equals Of- ness About- ness Who, What, Where, When, Why
- 5. Pieter Brueghel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Pieter Brueghel the Elder , Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
- 6. Rene Magritte, The Son of Man, 1964 “ Everything we see hides another thing; we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us.”
- 7. Fogg Classification System Subject Categories Religious Subjects (further subdivided by iconographic categories for Western and Asian art) Mythology, Legend, and Allegory Portraits, subdivided by gender, number, identity Landscape and Marine Architectural subjects Architecture, Sculpture and Decorative arts have additional categories by function
- 8. Simons Tansey Classification System Subject Categories Abstractions Altarpieces Animals and Plants Asiatic Religious subjects Cycles or series Architectural exteriors and interiors Busts Figures Furniture Genre Historical, military, political Modern art movements Landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes
- 9. Simons Tansey Classification System Subject Categories Mythological, allegorical, legendary, literary New Testament Old Testament and Apocrypha Portraits Saints Still Lifes Art Theory, subdivided into Color, Composition, and Perspective Tombs, for Sculpture Architecture and Decorative Arts are categorized by function
- 10. Sonoma State University Art Department Local Subject Cataloging Terms Animals Architecture Subjects Interiors Figurative (People) Landscape, Seascape, Sky Natural Forces Non-Objective Still Life Inanimate Objects Plant Forms
- 11. Erwin Panofsky’s 3 levels of Meaning in Art: Physical description Expressional analysis or identification of subject Iconographic Interpretation
- 12. “ Presentation Theme” drawn from a Moche stirrup bottle from ancient Peru and interpreted by Christopher Donnan
Editor's Notes
- Patricia Harpring is developing CONA, the Cultural Object Name Authority under the auspices of the Getty Vocabulary program, which will provide a unique record and ID number for known works of art. The core record in CONA requires a subject entry, but Patricia points out that most image records do not include subject entries. Judy Weedman has done research on the motivation for and design of local subject indexes. Hans Brandhorst is responsible, with his collaborator Etienne Posthumous, and with the sponsorship of RKD, for the interactive web presence of ICONCLASS, an iconographic subject indexing system developed in the 1940’s by Henri van de Waal for Western art. Dustin Wees considers the feasability of adding subject terms to art images in ARTstor.
- The Library of Congress Subject Headings have sometimes been used in image records to define the time period and nationality of the artist and the date the work was made. There are other discreet fields for this type of information in image databases. The subject field should be reserved for describing the image itself.
- This image is of a farmer plowing a field above grazing sheep on a coastline, with ships in the water and a city in the background. The title conveys the artist’s focus on the legs sticking out of the water in the lower right foreground corner of the picture. This is not water ballet, but the subject of a Greek legend about hubris. The artist utilizes the Greek legend to contrast the value of daily work with the vanity of Icarus’ folly.
- From a radio inverview with Jean Neyens (1965) cited in Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, trans. Richard Millen. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
- The Fogg and Simons Tansey Slide Classification systems utilized alphanumeric call numbers to facilitate filing slides in correct sort order as they were arranged in slide drawers or vertical files. Within an artist’s section, works were usually sorted by subject, date, and title. Where these systems have been used, the subject categories could be migrated with the other data from the slide records if the call numbers were included in the migration process and a script composed to translate the codes into the terms they represent.
- The Simons Tansey Categories are very similar to the Fogg categories. They provide broad general terms that break down the total number of images to search into smaller groups. VRA pioneer Luraine Tansey developed the Simons Tansey Classification system with collaborator Wendell Simons for her Master’s thesis in Library School.
- I created a local subject index using these general categories with further hierarchical subcategories for each and a free text field for further description since the collections I worked were not set up with alphanumeric call number systems. I closely adapted the terms from the Fogg and Simons Tansey lists. Neither Fogg nor Simons Tansey had adequate terms to cover non-objective art or natural forces.
- By recording the physical description of what is represented in a work, the cataloger can provide the tools for the art historian/iconographer to search on deeper levels of meaning if they know what symbols to look for, although Hans Brandhorst points out that often people make assumptions about meanings in the physical description, and conversely, they may not have the knowledge to recognize significant distinctions in physically describing what they see. CONA and the CCO require subject terms in core image records. They provide 24 broad subject terms that can be used to satisfy this requirement on a minimal level.
- From Donnan, Christopher B. Moche Art of Peru: Pre-Columbian Symbolic Communication, Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Even if one does not understand the narrative being illustrated, one can recognize repeating combinations of motives such as figures and gestures as part of a semantic unit. This is a detail of a diagram of a recurring theme found on Mochica pottery.