May 13, 2005
Joseph Leo Koerner
Courtauld Institute art historian Joseph Leo Koerner writes, in the introduction to The Reformation of the Image:
"Everything must be submitted to an ever more radical critique, including the critique itself in infinite regression. Yet although preceded and succeeded by iconoclasm, we generally feel ourselves not actively engaged in a scandalized, scandalous blow but stalled in image-breaking's interminable aftermath....From the long history of iconoclasm, we learn that there never were, nor will there ever be, idols, since these are artefacts of the iconoclast's conviction, the imaginary Other of all critical campaigns. It is iconoclasm itself that never goes away, but haunts us as if forever newly with its fictive foe."