Practice question · True or false
A halo conveys sanctity by resemblance rather than by convention.
Hints
- Ask whether a viewer unfamiliar with the tradition would read a gold disc as holiness.
- Nothing about a disc resembles being holy.
Show the answer
False
Why
False. A halo is a symbol: it works by convention alone, and a viewer without the convention sees a gold disc behind a head. The example is worth holding onto because it shows how much of what looks obvious in a picture is learned, which is the whole premise of iconography.
Practise Is Art a Language?
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Art History I is free to start.
More questions on Is Art a Language?
- Why does Goodman conclude that painting cannot be a notation?
- Sort each art by whether it is AUTOGRAPHIC or ALLOGRAPHIC in Goodman's sense.
- An image can express negation as directly as a sentence can.
- Which respects does the language analogy genuinely capture?
- Complete the vocabulary of the lesson.
- How many modes of reference does Peirce's trichotomy distinguish?
- Match each mode of reference to how it works.
- If art functions strictly as an allographic language, what follows for the art historian confronted with a…
- Arrange these steps of asking how an image refers, in the order they are useful.