خلاصة:
Objective: This research aims to understand the 'Iconclass' method and highlight how to utilize it for classifying artistic works.Methodology: The research method employed in this study is a bibliographic referencing method. After introducing the Iconclass method, the current article elaborates on the efficiency aspects of this method in documenting and classifying artistic works.Findings: The findings of this research indicate that the mentioned method has three main capabilities: firstly, unlike methods focusing on the formal and visual classification of artworks, this method enables understanding the content of artworks beyond their visual form. One of the contents found in the artistic work resulting from this method is symbolic and mythological themes hidden in the images. This provides the audience with the opportunity to go beyond the superficial and obvious aspects and delve into the literary, historical, mythological, and other dimensions related to the artistic work. As mentioned earlier, this is also observed at the second level of Erwin Panofsky's method (iconographic analysis). At this level, the image is linked to other texts using the Iconclass method, enabling a more extensive understanding and analysis of the work. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that with this method, it is possible to somewhat identify the personalities, symbols, allegories, and signs present in the images. Furthermore, it should be noted that the content-based classification (iconographic) has mostly been prepared and made available to date in specific subjects with special needs in limited countries (mostly Western) and centered around Western art. The Iconclass method provides an opportunity to classify artistic works beyond national boundaries and the dual classifications of East and West. Secondly, using this method, documentation and classification of artworks are also based on the content of the works, allowing for the introduction and analysis of complex patterns, themes, and their interrelationships for the documenter. This enables the documentarian to provide a precise and reliable analysis and interpretation of artistic works by selecting vocabulary, symbols, notes, signs, and organizing them in a hierarchical structure. With the hierarchical structure of the mentioned method, the documentarian can easily filter and separate the necessary data, as the subsets of each class are classified as alphanumeric data. Thirdly, the researcher gains access to a set of resources related to the subject, enhancing the research study`s speed and depth. In other words, this method simplifies the search process for young researchers, making it easy and transparent for them to move from the data and initial description of the work to a deeper level and grasp the relationship between text and image. Furthermore, the use of controlled vocabulary provides an opportunity for a consistent and unbiased description of artistic works. In other words, it can be said that this method enables researchers to uncover hidden themes in artistic works.Conclusion: The method mentioned here eliminates the challenges of accessing resources related to artistic works and assists researchers in retrieving images more easily. By utilizing this approach, museums and art collections can classify items in their collections. It also contributes to producing lists and catalogs for museums. This, in turn, will help advancing art history research.
ملخص الجهاز:
This article is extracted from a research project titled "Investigating the capabilities of the CCO method in the documentation of cultural objects" conducted at Shiraz University of Art. Introduction One of the most important concerns of art historians is the documentation of objects and artworks present in art collections and museums.
Empirical Background As previously mentioned, Iconclass is a multilingual classification system for art and cultural heritage images that has a thesaurus consisting of more than 28,000 controlled terms for describing objects, people, events, and even abstract ideas.
This precise system is based on a keyword index that, by referring to the smallest parts to the whole image, makes the description of visual documents possible and is considered an important source for iconographic studies of medieval art before 1400 AD" (Abdi, 1390, p.
In the Iconclass method, subjects and images are introduced content-wise based on a principled system according to a hierarchy and 9 main groups (it should be noted that in 1996, group number zero was also added to this classification, which included subjects of abstract and non-representational art 1).
Given what has been mentioned above, it seems that the aforementioned method, in addition to providing a classification system for artworks for museums and art collections, is also very efficient in the field of iconographic research.
(
, 
, 
)
