More Than Meets the EyeMore Than Meets the Eye

Subject Cataloging for Images

ARLIS/VRA Joint Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN 2011

Moderator: Karen KesselVisual Resources Specialist, Sonoma State University

Patricia Harpring, Director, Getty Digital Art History Access and Vocabulary Program

Judy Weedman, Professor, San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science

Dustin Wees, Director of Metadata and Cataloging, ARTstor

Hans Brandhorst, ICONCLASS

Charles Sheeler, Self-Portrait, 1923

Charles Sheeler uses this image of a telephone to convey something about himself as an artist

For Images, Subject equals

Of-Of-ness

About-About-ness

Who, What, Where, When, Why

Pieter Brueghel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

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.”

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

Simons Tansey Classification System Subject Categories

AbstractionsAltarpiecesAnimals and PlantsAsiatic Religious subjectsCycles or seriesArchitectural exteriors and interiorsBustsFiguresFurnitureGenreHistorical, military, politicalModern art movementsLandscapes, seascapes, cityscapes

Simons Tansey Classification System

Subject Categories

Mythological, allegorical, legendary, literaryNew TestamentOld Testament and ApocryphaPortraitsSaintsStill LifesArt Theory, subdivided into Color, Composition, and PerspectiveTombs, for Sculpture

Architecture and Decorative Arts are categorized by function

Sonoma State University Art Department

Local Subject Cataloging TermsAnimals

Architecture Subjects

Interiors

Figurative (People)

Landscape, Seascape, Sky

Natural Forces

Non-Objective

Still Life

Inanimate Objects

Plant Forms

Erwin Panofsky’s 3 levels of Meaning in Art:

Physical description

Expressional analysis or identification of subject

Iconographic Interpretation

“Presentation Theme” drawn from a Moche stirrup bottle from ancient Peru and interpreted by Christopher Donnan