September 10, 2014

Horst BredekampTheorie des BildaktsBerlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2010. 463 pp.; 203 b/w ills. Cloth
39.90 (9783518585160 )

Beatrice Kitzinger

CrossRef DOI: 10.3202/caa.reviews.2014.103

The central portion of Horst Bredekamps Theorie des Bildakts (Theory of the Image-Act) closes with the
verbal image of Aby Warburg as the figurehead of a ship, gaze locked in apotropaic contact with the waves
of destruction, alone in propounding the irritating life possessed by forms of all sorts (3056). Warburgs
dictum, Du lebst und thust mir nichts (You live and do nothing to me), is the implicit epigram to
Bredekamps enterprisegiven that Bredekamp frames Warburgs declaration as more trepidatious
adjuration than confident assertion (2122). 1 Bredekamp maintains that Warburgs thinking about art, craft,
vision, and culture approached more closely than nearly any other the duplicity of the anorganic and the
living (21). The task Bredekamp sets himself in the present book is to excavate the nature of this duplicity.
Bredekamp declares his intention to tackle a phenomenon he characterizes as both fundamental to the
image-saturated world and as something theorists have previously shied away fromnamely, the capacity of
ostensibly dead matter literally to live by taking form in images. In Bredekamps account, to face the way in
which images possess Eigenleben, an independent life force, is to face the ways in which images may act on
humans, and to expose the double-cross (Doppelspiel) that images stage between the vivid and the
lifeless.
The banner of Bredekamps investigation of image independence is the compound term Image-Act.
Bredekamp approaches the term as a redefinition, not a coinage, tracing the genealogy of its use by
theorists he criticizes for reducing images to the status of evidence of action or vehicles for action (in the
manner of words in J. L. Austins entrenched concept of the Speech-Act, see 4851). Bredekamp bids to
shift the definition of Image-Act to cast images themselves as actors possessed of sovereign agency
separable from their handling or their perception by people (51).
Because Bredekamp has developed a vocabulary to define his theory, sketching the parameters of the study
is best done in the authors own terms. Bredekamp distinguishes three classes of Image-Act: the
Schematic, the Substitutive, and the Intrinsic. After an opening treatment of inscriptions ascribing life and
agency to objectsdesignated as witnesses to the theorythe book devotes a section to each class of
Image-Act and its Werkaussagen (expressions in works). The essays began life as the 2007 Adorno
Lectures in Frankfurt, and a certain oral flavor is retained as Bredekamp presents a kaleidoscopic set of
examples, periodically cross-referenced to highlight continuities and distinctions. Throughout, Bredekamp
takes up Warburgs standard again in coordinating an ecumenical diversity of images (Bilder) drawn from
art, science, nature, and the everyday.
Bredekamp ends with a summary of the relationships between the three classes of Image-Act that greatly
clarifies his overarching project; some readers might prefer to consider the Scheme included on page 327
before exploring the cases presented in the body of the text. This chart coordinates the three varieties of
Image-Act through a sequence of interlinked attributes, designated as Category, Medium, and Form.
Form corresponds to the type of image cited in the text. The Medium, a process or entity that disseminates
an Image-Act, derives from a broader type, or Category, of Image-Act itself. The name of the Category
indicates the principal sphere of action in which images are said to operate, and which they themselves
may drive. For one straightforward summary case: under Substitutive Image-Act, the Category is
punishment; the Medium is punishment through images; and the Form is defamatory images. The three
classes of Image-Act are additionally paired with a one-word summary of their modus operandi: Schematic =
Life, Substitutive = Exchange, and Intrinsic = Form. It is worth offering an extended translation of
Bredekamps commentary on the Schemefirst for the sake of further elaboration on the essential terms of
the books project, and also in order to convey something of the texts tone.
All diagrams and models possess a double character as openers and as circumscribers. This
ambivalence applies to the Scheme of the Image-Act with its three essential categories. It should be
clear that, with its living images, its automata, and its biofacta, the Schematic Image-Act
encompasses the patterns of thought and action for images that live through [human] bodies,

through auto-motion, and through biological constitution. The Substitutive Image-Act, in contrast,
does not evoke the living components of images; rather, it exchanges images and bodies for one
another. In this way, effects are attained by direct meanssometimes deadly means in the case of
destructive media. The Intrinsic Image-Act, equally effective in art (Kunst) and in nature, derives its
profound effects from the irresistibility of form as form. Insofar as form is freed from contexts of
constraint, this distance creates the autonomy from which the effectiveness of the Intrinsic Image-Act
derives. In this, the Intrinsic is the purest form of Image-Act.
The Theory of Image-Act presented here aims at an enlightenment (Aufklrung) that attends to the
living autonomy of the image as one of its defining conditions. If a subject is capable of experiencing
in the images right to life a domain that comesself-determinedfrom without [the subject], then
that subject encounters the possibility of unbraiding the narcissistic bonds of its I-fixation in favor of a
dialogic liberty. This means overcoming the overwhelmingly limited sphere produced by the modern
privileging of the subject as creator and keeper of the world. The I becomes stronger when it
relativizes itself against the activity of the image. Images can be placed neither before nor behind
reality, because they work to constitute reality. They are not realitys consequences, but rather a form
of its determination. (328)
The processes that gain the name of action under the Theory of Image-Act are relatively clear:
enlivenment, substitution, destruction, transmission. More complicated, in some respects, is the nature of the
images recognized as agents. Everyone dealing with Bildwissenschaftwhether in English or in German
has to grapple with the capacious definitions allowed by Bild.2 Image is Bilds closest English counterpart
and frequent translation, largely because it similarly resistsor can be made to resistcircumscriptions of
medium and origin. By presenting a slew of varied examples in rapid succession, with distinctions of
historical context and medium routinely elided, Bredekamps discussion prompts essential questions of
terminology and categorization. What constitutes an image or picture? Is image opposed to the concept of
art? Are we dealing with metaphorical, imagined, or material images? To what extent are pictures separable
from their media? When we deal with an image are we speaking of something diagrammatic or something
mimetic? To what extent should we distinguish the made from the unmade, the artisanal from the natural,
forms crafted from forms recognized? Where do we draw the line between the work of human hands and the
imaginative apprehension of the world at large? Bild permits Bredekamp a suspension of such distinctions
within a single wordexplicit lines to be drawn deliberately at moments of the authors choosing.
Essentially, Bild is defined as the lowest common denominator of everything that demonstrates even a
modicum of human intervention in establishing its form (34). In later sections discussing natural images,
particularly when focused on evolution, Bredekamp explicitly questions this definition (e.g., 316); but, as for
Ernst Gombrich, recognition is ultimately counted more fundamental to the definition of images than is
facture. A form becomes an image when it is perceived and understood.
The notion of perception fundamentally impacts the most pressing issue raised by Bredekamps discussion:
that of human agency relative to image agency. Bredekamp himself calls this the decisive question (49). If
Alfred Gell worked to frame the manufactured world as a crucible of social relationships (Art and Agency,
Oxford: Clarendon, 1998) and Hans Belting sought to locate the deep fusion between materialized images
and the human body and imagination (Bild-Anthropologie, Mnchen: Fink, 2001) (click here for review),
Bredekamp sets out to circumscribe a life principle in images that may be conceived not as a direct
extension from the human body or society, but as a force emanating naturally from images themselves. This
force, in his account, then turns to impact both body and society. Bredekamp repeatedly invokes the ideas of
images Eigenleben (own or intrinsic life), Eigenkraft (own strength), and Lebensrecht (right to life). He
introduces and deploys these terms casually, suggesting that his theory restores a radical absence of people
to the native character of images. The language of the book seeks largely to isolate what Bredekamp defines
as the self-sufficient forces of images, as distinct from their uses; and Bredekamps answer to the decisive
question claims to carve new space for image-autonomy in relation to Bildakts previous identity as the
name for a symptom of the iconic turn in efforts to understand human society (51).
An interesting tension in the book emerges here. Bredekamp frames his explicit attempt at a definition
of Bildakt by interrogating what power enables an image, when it is seen or handled, to spring out of latency
into an outward effect on sensation, thinking, and action (52). An essential corollary to Image-Act, then, is
that images gain their power through perception and interaction. Another corollary to this point may be
derived from Warburg himself. Bredekamps defense of images right to life is rooted in Warburgs ideas
regarding pathos in images (see especially 29899) and the productive role for images in society achieved
through images distancing effects. Through Warburgs Distanzbildung, images create space for human
beings to regard themselvesto fulfill their own potential in the recognition that humankind has only so much

control over the manufactured world that exists in counterpoint to lived experience. While making room for
image agency, this relationship rests on the premise that images in any form are media for human reaction,
expression, will, and desire, for human perception of others and perception of self.
These points granted, it becomes impossible to extricate human agency from image agency. If it is
impossible fully to disentangle that which is image act from that which is human act, and impossible to
extricate humans from the creation of images (whether by perception or by facture), it then seems curious to
resist a thoroughgoing argument that a theory of Image-Act is simultaneously an anthropology. In the books
closing double-cross, image theory is ultimately offered as a theory about people after allabout the selfdefinition of human beings through foils and catalysts of their own making. The final chapter comes to rest on
a clear note that seems to call for a tighter braid between viewing subject and image than other registers of
the book would allow: The I becomes stronger when it relativizes itself against the activity of the image
(328).
Acknowledging the tenacity of human agencywhether of facture, function, or perceptionperhaps
paradoxically opens up the greatest power in Bredekamps theory, although it simultaneously (and perfectly
reasonably) dilutes the claim to complete image autonomy. To my mind, the books strongest aspect is its
political dimension. Since historical (and material) contingency is largely suppressed in the integrative force
sweeping Bredekamps trans-temporal discussion, it becomes clear that the primary historical context and
image discourse examined under Bredekamps theory is the contemporary one. Image agencies derived
from sources of both the recent and the distant past prove most potent in the books implicit call for attention
to the image politics of the present day. The works political face shows, on the one hand, in sections dealing
explicitly with subjects such as war, communal symbols, and the law, and in particularly effective interludes
with news photographs such as Colin Powells 2003 speech before a veiled Guernica and the 2006 deathbed
of Alexander Litvinenko. The entire discussion, though, is shot through with political considerations. This tone
sounds partly via Bredekamps insistence on terms such as Lebensrecht, but more importantly via the
periodic recognitionallowed to define the close of the textthat images are inextricably entwined with
human experience. Under this banner, the inscriptions marshaled in the opening section to witness the
theory that life inheres in images in fact bear strongest witness to the durable perception that life may inhere
in the products of our making, and that images thereby work to constitute human reality. This is a socially
and politically charged argument, reinforcing the idea that claims for greater image agency readily circle back
to confirm how central images are to peoples definition of the world, and location of themselves within it.