Eidetic

Eidetic (pronounced ahy-det-ik)

(1) Of, relating to or constituting visual imagery vividly experienced and readily reproducible with great accuracy and in great detail.

(2) In anthropology, political science, sociology etc, of or relating to eidos (the formal content of a culture, encompassing its system of ideas, criteria for interpreting experience, etc).

(3) In psychiatry and neuroscience (as eidetic memory), of visual (or sometimes auditory) images, exceptionally vivid and allowing detailed recall of something previously perceived (most common in young children, the capacity appearing to diminish as language develops).

(4) Relating to or subject to such imagery.

(5) The (1) essence or (2) perfect, vision of an object or concept.

(6) In psychoanalysis (of dreams), as “eidetic memory”, a dream that can be “seen in the mind” so vividly it appears to be “movie-like”.

(7) In philosophy and phenomenology (as “eidetics”), the study of eidetic reduction (a technique used to help identify the essential components of a phenomenon by attempting to reduce it into its necessary essences).

(8) In literary criticism, writing sufficient evocative as to create in a reader’s imagination a “photo-realistic image” of what’s being described or discussed.

(9) In visual art (painting), a technique used to produce a work close to indistinguishable from a photograph (literally possible before advances in photography and photographic reproduction); the work so painted.

1924: From the from German eidetisch (pertaining to the faculty of projecting images), from the Ancient Greek εἰδητικός (eidētikós) (pertaining to images and used also in the sense of “pertaining to knowledge”), from eidesis (knowledge), the construct being εἶδος (eîd(os)) (form, shape) + -etic.  The -etic suffix was from the Ancient Greek -ητικός (-ētikós), from -έω (-éō) + -τικός (-tikós).  It was used to form adjectives meaning “pertaining to”, derived from nouns, most of which end in -esis and -esy.  Most English words formed with the suffix were from words formed in other languages (sometimes mixed), including Old, Middle and Modern French, Italian, Latin, and Ancient Greek.  Eidetisch was in 1924 coined by German psychologist Professor Erich Jaensch (1883-1940).  The back-formation dyseidetic refers to an individual found to be dyslexic (with regard to the visual aspect of written words) while the adjective “noneidetic” (not eidetic) seems one of English’s most significantly pointless words but presumably it’s useful for clinicians making case notes.  The now obsolete alternative spelling was edetic.  Eidetic is an adjevtive, eidetiker is a noun and eidetically is an adverb; the noun plural is eidetikers.  The special case of eidetics (in philosophy the study of eidetic reduction) is an example of a noun plural existing without a base noun

The term “eidetic memory” is used as a synonym of the popular “photographic memory” and an individual possessing the characteristic can in clinical use be described as an “eidetiker” (one with an “eidetic memory”); the medical literature however makes clear there is no evidence of any subject ever having exhibited a true “photographic memory” in the way the condition of “total recall” has been depicted in fiction and elsewhere in popular culture.  Sometimes, a subject may seem to have a “photographic memory” but, upon investigation, it has always been found to be something less impressive.  In the 1980s, one US television comedy had the governor of a state astonished by his secretary’s memory:

Secretary: “I’ve memorized the telephone numbers of the entire US Senate.”

Governor: “What?  All of them?”

Secretary: “Well, there are only two.”

That worked also as a “blonde joke”, a breed now proscribed under threat of cancellation.  In general use, what “photographic memory” usually indicates is “an exceptionally good memory” but often this manifests in specialized fields of learning rather than general experience.  As something more generalized, it’s most common in young children who have, by definition, a limited length of memory from which to draw and the capacity appears usually to diminish as language develops.  In adults, it definitely is a spectrum condition so the adjectival senses (the comparative “more eidetic”, the superlative “most eidetic”) can be used and in neuroscience publications “semi-eidetic (partly or partially eidetic) does appear.  That said, in the literature, there are cases of patients who suffer from being “unable to forget”, a genuinely disturbing condition for those with memories of traumatic events.  Even then however, that is an instance not of “total recall” but rather the recollected events being ones they’d prefer to forget but cannot. 

The legacy: Zur Eidetik und Integrationstypologie: Arbeiten aus dem Institut für psychologische Anthropologie an der Universität Marburg/Lahn (On eidetics and integration typology: Works from the Institute for Psychological Anthropology at the University of Marburg/Lahn, 1941) by Professor Rudolf Jaensch, Barth, Leipzig, Germany.

Although at times one of the most cited and influential psychologists of the inter-war era (1919-1939), Rudolf Jaensch is now remembered only for his work on eidetic analysis, his “eidetic hypothesis formation” still one of the standard models in psychology.  His other work in the theories of constitutional types are now little studied, largely because his reputation was sullied by his enthusiastic commitment to and prosecution of the National Socialist Gleichschaltung (coordination) and restructuring of professional & academic life in Germany after the Nazi Party gained power in 1933.  Although Jaensch joined the party only some months after Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) was appointed chancellor (the oft-quoted reference to the Nazis “seizing power” is misleading, the political & military elite miscalculating in thinking having Hitler as head of a government in which the Nazis were in a minority would leaving him “manageable” and thus “handed him” the office)) and was thus susceptible to being derided by the “old fighters” as one who joined the movement only for career advancement, he’d been affiliated with a number of the party’s organs since mid-1932.  However, he certainly made up for lost time and in March 1933 was one of several hundred professors to sign a declaration of support for the new regime but unlike many of them who genuinely were seeking only to protect their careers and families, Jaensch was an activist, denouncing those who dissented from the party’s new orthodoxies and was particularly interested in excluding Jews from academic life, seeking not only to secure their dismissal but also discredit their work.  That of course resulted in the migration of many Jewish and engineers and scientists, something that at least partially realized Hitler’s core ideological obsession but greatly would come to disadvantage Germany during World War II (1939-1945).  Hitler may have disdained “Jewish physics” but the British and Americans did not as the Irish-born UK journalist & politician Brendan Bracken (1901–1958) would later (and not wholly facetiously) explain: “We won the war because our German scientists were better than their German scientists”.

Portrait of Martin Heidegger (2017) by Mathieu Laca (b 1982).  A painter can use a retreat from photorealism for reasons that may be artistic or political.

Jaensch's involvement with the Nazis so tainted to his reputation that in the post-war years only his seminal work in eidetic theory remained “acceptable” although the “guilt by association” paradigm was never much of a feature of post Nazi Germany and that he wrote a forward to the published version of Hans Bender’s (1907-1991) revised doctoral dissertation Zur Experimentalpsychologie des Unterbewußten und der außersinnlichen Wahrnehmung (On the Experimental Psychology of the Subconscious and Extrasensory Perception) seems not to have affected Dr Bender’s flourishing career in the 1950s.  There may also been some appeal in the English-speaking world, it being hard to think of a better name then “Bender” for a psychologist working in the field of extrasensory perception.  Unfortunately, in Germanic use, while the name “Bender” was from the Middle High German benden (to bend; to twist), use was typically occupational and applied to (1) a cooper (barrel-maker), with Bender a clipping of Fassbinder or Fassbender (a cooper (ie someone who builds and repairs wooden barrels or casks by bending staves) or (2) a craftsman or metalworker (the artisans and smiths who shaped materials like wood or metal using techniques of bending and curving.  Less commonly, it could be topographic (someone who lived near a sharp curve or bend in a river or a road).  Whether, had Professor Jaensch lived to undergo the de-Nazification process of the post-war years, had he apologized for his conduct, he’d have been “sort of forgiven” in the mood of selective generosity that has seen figures like conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908–1989) and philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) to one degree or another rehabilitated is unlikely; Karajan’s association with the regime was pure careerism while Heidegger’s flirtation was brief and soon abandoned whereas Jaensch died an unrepentant Nazi and his only legacy is eidetic theory.

Eidetic memory has never appeared in the APA's (American Psychiatric Association) DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), either as a diagnostic term or disorder, presumably because it’s regarded as a natural variation in the human condition.  Although an acknowledged psychological phenomenon, the DSM does not regard an exceptional memory (however described) as pathological, even when discussing the functioning of memory in the context of neuro-cognitive or dissociative disorders.  Despite, that, the term “eidetic” is far from unknown in the psychiatric & psychological literature (professional & popular) but many publications cast a much wider net than the DSM that focuses on the diagnosis of metal disorders rather than reviewing the range of “normal” human characteristics.  So, while there are books devoted to discussing eidetic memory (and related topics) and the “self-help” shelves in bookshops often have volumes on “improving memory” or “developing a photographic memory”, that’s very different from “eidetic memory”.  For example, psychiatric teaching material describes eidetic images as visual memories of almost hallucinatory vividness but the DSM’s editors applied the same rationale when not including Aphantasia (an inability voluntarily to recall or form mental images) in their editions, the DSM being concerned primarily with phenomena insofar as they constitute clinically significant dysfunction or form part of a recognized disorder.  The eidetic memory spectrum does though remain a recognized psychological phenomenon and for clinicians that’s helpful because of the need to differentiate instances from hallucinations, a very different symptom.

In painting, there is a long “eidetic” tradition of works so photorealistic that, unless closely examined (and certainly when reproduced photographically) can be assumed to be photographs, some artists in recent years even adopting the technique as a signature.  Those still able to view art for pleasure can enjoy the perceptual ambiguity (and maybe even enjoy being fooled) but art critics know paintings are there to be criticized and while the sheer technical prowess of the artist can be acknowledged, photorealistic painting often has been treated with hostility.  It wasn’t always so because photorealism predated photography as some artists sought to achieve what would later come to be called the “hyper-realistic” and, in a nice linguistic paradox, it would be decades (well into the twentieth century) before technology had improved to the point at which a developed photograph could match the “realism” achieved by the most skilled artists, a group working not only in paint but also with pencils and, remarkably, even charcoal, a substance uniquely suitable for emulating monochromatic images.  The objection of latter-day critics was not only the predictable: “Why not just take a photograph?” but also it being known many artists actually took photographs and copied these to create their paintings.  To many critics, that meant it was less “art” than “drafting”.

Telephone Booths (1967), acrylic on Masonite by Richard Estes (b 1932), Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid, Spain.

The classic exponent of the technique was US artist Richard Estes and Telephone Booths is his best-known work in this vein.  At the technical level, the piece was most accomplished because for a painter, intrinsically, a tree in a park is a less challenging subject than some Manhattan telephone booths in their surrounds, the work demanding the rendering on a two dimensional surface, glass, shiny metal, reflections and transparencies, a grab of multiple overlapping optical images of simultaneous movement.  Now on permanent display at the Thyssen-Bornemisza, the exhibit’s curatorial notes detail the production process, the composition beginning with several photographs taken of a row of telephone booths at the intersection of Broadway, Sixth Avenue, and 34^th Street, subsequently combined as a montage.  The hyperrealism inherent in emulating photography owes something to the tradition of trompe l'oeil (deceives the eye) in that the works often were a deliberate attempt “…to confuse and disorient the viewer.  Despite depicting a recognizable scene, the complexity of the framing and the blurring of reflections require an additional effort of concentration, since nothing can be grasped at a single glance.”  The choice of setting does though hint at the way artists are selective to make the effect work, glass having the necessary characteristics to create ambiguities, the stuff simultaneously reflective and transparent.  What Estes did was use the accumulation of reflections as a “device of distortion”, some images sharply defined on the glass while others appearing on metallic surfaces slightly were warped while still allowing concurrent recognition of the booths before the eye and the buildings “behind us”, cues such as the signs of the Macy's and Woolworth there as markers of familiarity.  Making a painting from a photograph may sound simple (for those with the skill and time) but what Estes did was not mere transcription for he took his montage and rearranged it, Telephone Booths depicting a scene no single photograph recorded.  That didn’t exactly mean “montage beget collage” but it was an interesting take on “appropriating and reconstructing reality”.  For those who like the idea of telephone booths as subjects there are now fewer from which to choose but in many cities there are survivors (some re-purposed as Wi-Fi hotspots) and in Australia, one that provided vital communications when cellular (mobile) services were disabled by bushfires has been granted “Protected Heritage” status.

Central Savings (1975), oil on canvas by Richard Estes.  Reflected images were a feature of the photorealists, the scenes providing a useful layer of “pre-distortion”.

Tellingly, while Estes usually left his cityscapes devoid of human presence, in Telephone Booths there were four figures, each partially visible in the temporary sanctuary of their booth, backs to the viewer.  As a trick on the path to photorealism that was a wise choice because the almost flat expanses of a trench coat’s fabric makes the effect easier to achieve than the contours and colours of a human face.  However, for professional critic and ultracrepidarian alike, the meaning beneath (or perhaps “beyond”) is there for the viewer to take from it what they will, those better-versed in critical theory, tending sometimes to impart meaning, seeking to “know the mind of the artist”.  The Italian art critic Sandro Parmiggiani (b 1946) described those “on the phones” as “metaphors for broken voices and a faceless humanity, remaining unknowable within those impenetrable spaces, to which the stains that border their metallic edges allude as a visual rhyme, increasing the mystery and the visual bewilderment.”  Now we know.  The author John Updike (1932–2009) was no less a deconstructionist, declaring: “We know nothing about the two people on the far right, nothing except that their clothing is light-colored; we know even less about the couple on the left—they seem transparent in their oblique reflections. Thanks to the label of metropolitan crowd, these people have been reduced to mere signifiers affixed to telephone booths; like bytes.  The sounds of a computer or the strokes of a typewriter take their place and convey information. The emptiness of this information contrasts with the visual richness that the painter has imparted without sparing any effort, constructing a profoundly tender artistic irony.”  It was the Anglo-Irish satirist & Anglican cleric Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) who in the poem On Poetry: a Rhapsody (1733) included the lines:

Or else perhaps he may invent
A better than the poet meant;
As learned commentators view
In Homer more than Homer knew.

That pair of couplets became famous as a critique of overly obsessive literary critics & scholars anxious to find in texts hidden meanings and profundity, the objective perhaps not to inflate the esteem in which the author was held but enhance their own reputations; wisdom displayed by pointing out what the professor down the corridor failed to notice.  Swift may have made a famous point but mostly he was ignored and has of late been steamrollered by the post-modernists & deconstructionists able to construct “meanings in the meanings” although, unfortunately, so jargon-laden are some of their texts the meanings these formalist's documents sometimes barely are decipherable to all but fellow semioticians.  The industry has of course moved on from Homer and the words of figures like Bob Dylan (b 1941) and Jonathan Swift’s now more famous namesake (Taylor Swift (b 1989)) have been analysed as closely as any theologian has studied the Scriptures.  Dylan presumably was on occasions amused by finding out what “he really meant” and was modest, telling one interviewer he was “just a song & dance man” and another that those who “…called his lyrics poetry, probably hadn’t read much poetry”.  Still the critics clearly prevailed because in 2016 the Swedish Academy awarded Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him one of the more publicized laureates of recent decades.  Of Ms Swift’s oeuvre, meaning may be easier to find: she’s of her generation so the songs are “all about her”.

Hot Fudge Sundae (1972), oil on canvas by Ralph Goings.

The US painter Ralph Goings is sometimes said to have made photorealism “his signature” but it seems to have been more “his calling”, drawn to the technique because of a genuine “aesthetic objection” to the way pop-art artists of the 1960s were tending to expressionism (and even mannerism) in their depictions of simple, mundane objects.  Those approaches were of course “just another path to meaning” but for his bank buildings, diners (condiment sets very much a theme) and pick-up trucks, Goings emulated the camera’s objectivity although, without the original photographs, it’s not known if some licence was taken although almost certainly that happened.  While a dent in the tailgate of a parked pick-up truck is unexceptional, maybe it was added for some optical verisimilitude.  Estes’s Telephone Booths was admitted not to be a “pure” piece of eidetic imagery but a compositional piece that was a construct of what such an image might have been; Goings by contrast claimed always to be “true to the original”.

That should be treated as a statement of intent but Goings never exhibited the 35mm color slides that were his “intermediate tool” but he admitted going “beyond the photographs” in tweaking details such as light and color saturation or adjusting an inconvenient shadow.  That he used slides was also of significance because frequently, in a darkened room, he would project the images onto a primed, blank canvas, enabling him to bypass freehand drawing, instead with a pencil “tracing the grid”, meticulously rendering every the edge of every shape, contour or shadow.  That done, what’d he’d have was a kind of “paint-by-numbers” set, the canvas now an assembly of outlined shapes awaiting paint, the original photograph a legend of the color scheme.  So it could be called “craft” and the much skill and patience was demanded but whether that meant it should be called  “art” divided critics.  However, an artist’s relationship with the critics is just one aspect of life and there’s also the relationship with the auction houses and the customers; the current record sale price for a painting by Goings was some US$700,000 and his stuff definitely is now part of the “art market”.

Airstream (1970), oil on Molino by Ralph Goings (1928-2016), Mumok (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (Museum of modern art, Ludwig Foundation), Museumsquartier in Vienna, Austria.  Molino is a fabric-based support, often a plain-weave or un-primed textile material akin to the specialized canvas or heavy cotton & linen weaves used in Europe.  It's known also as “cotton duck canvas” but that has nothing to do with Anatidae feathers, "duck" from the Dutch doek (cloth). 

More eye-catching still was Airstream.  Still in production after 90 years, vintage Airstreams are a collectable, distinguished by their polished aluminium skins, a dramatic look that has at times been controversial because, on sunny days, the reflections from the large surface area were thought to be “distracting” for other road users.  Some owners of latter-day Shelby American Cobras (the originals (1962-1967) all painted) who opted for the expensive option of polished aluminum bodywork also came to rue the decision, the seductive curves showing every fingerprint.  The big Airstreams did however make a great photograph and, as Ralph Goings knew, a great photo had the potential to be a great painting though in his genre, it had to be the right photo.  Airstream was one of his favourites because he thought it best represented the possibilities in his technique and although what he did was in a sense “mechanical”, it could also be exacting, a few square inches of canvas sometimes taking days to complete.  For Goings, the paintings are best thought of as his “love affair with America”.

Lindsay Lohan rendered in the style of nineteenth century Impressionism (right) by Gemini.ai.  The digital version was based on a photograph (left) of her in a Jill Sander (b 1943) gown in light chartreuse from the Spring 2023 collection (with a Tyler Ellis (b 1984) Clutch, Joseph Saidian & Sons Vintage Marquise & Baguette Cut Diamond, Anabela Chan Orchid Diamond Cascade Earrings and Piferi Fade Sandals by Alfredo Pīferi (b 1987)) while attending the Disney Legends Awards ceremony, Anaheim, California, August, 2024.  On the day, although the environment was not optimized for photography, the light and breeze cooperated, the gown’s fabric swishing in a way the Impressionists would have painted, even had the air been still.  In the 2010s, as video cards became more powerful, software emerged to allow users to take photographs and re-create them in a wide variety of modes including pencil sketches, water colors, oils and even styles such as cubism.  This was the opposite process from that used by hyperrealists such as Estes and Goings; now generative AI makes possible just about anything able to be displayed on a screen.

The paradox of course was that Airstream was the exemplar of a painting functionally indistinguishable from a photograph thus illustrating the usual critique: What’s the point?  Why not just produce prints of the photograph, something able to be done in limitless quantities and at marginal cost?  That’s a classic utilitarian question and one that ignores a concept like l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake) but then, other than as generators or economic value, utilitarians likely thought society gained little benefit from movements such as vorticism, cubism, abstraction, expressionism and such.  There was also elitism in the disdain; photorealism associated with craft, folk-art, advertising, ordinary consumer objects and other fields tainted by commercialism (although the art-mafia was untroubled by their business being focused on money like few others).  Still, contemporary conceptual and abstract art was thought intellectually sophisticated in a way “copying photographs” could never match, the technical virtuosity less valued than the imagination of the “true artist”.  Despite all that, photorealism did find a niche and is now an accepted part of the industry.

The Hay Wain (1821), oil on canvas by John Constable (1776–1837), National Gallery, London (left) and Flatford Mill from a Lock on the Stour (circa 1811), oil on canvas by John Constable, Royal Academy of Arts, London (right).

John Constable was among the last generation of painters to live before the age of photography and although now regarded as one of the greatest of Britain’s landscape artists, in his lifetime he enjoyed only modest commercial success; not until the age of 52 was he elected to the RA (Royal Academy of Arts).  The two paintings above are examples of the different ways he painted, the high Romantic Flatford Mill from a Lock on the Stour noticeably less “realistic” than The Hay Wain, a work among his most elegiac.  Viewed retrospectively, as the technology of photography improved, there would have been times when each of these paintings could be deemed photorealistic (if, for purposes of comparison, rendered in gray-scale or sepia) but that was not the dominant artistic measure of the era.  It’s not known when Constable made his remark: “My pictures will never be popular for they have no handling, but I do not see handling in nature” (the quote appearing (undated) in Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Esq (1843) by the UK-based US genre painter Charles Robert Leslie RA (1794–1859)) but it’s tempting to think it might have been before painting Flatford Mill, a work executed with notable “handling”.  Constable used “handling” (then trade jargon among the critics) to describe the painter’s visible manner of applying paint, the brushwork, facture, finish and characteristic “touch” by which a viewer could see how the artist worked their brush.  The comparison was something like the difference between watchmakers who took care to conceal their creations’ movements and those who made visible the wheels & cogs, Constable in effect saying “nature shows no painterly technique, so why should an artist?”  Time of course doesn’t display the mechanism of how it works any more than do the clouds in the sky: both just are.  The critics though were society’s opinion-makers (especially among those who actually paid arts for their work) and in Constable's time, an academic landscape painter of renown was expected to demonstrate skilful, controlled brushwork that made visible the mechanics of the action.  Not all did it in the same way but the most commercially successful had their ways of making obvious how the oil was blended and modulated, clouds, rocks, foliage and all the elements of landscape rendered through established conventions.  As well as the beauty of what was being depicted, the artist's execution was there to be admired.

The Opening of Waterloo Bridge seen from Whitehall Stairs, 18 June, 1817 (circa 1832), oil on canvas by John Constable, Tate Britain, London.  In the industry’s classification system, Constable is listed as a painter of landscapes, in the Romantic tradition but as much as anything, he was a painter of skies and cloudscapes.

Constable made no secret he thought these conspicuous displays of artistic virtuosity as “bravura”, preferring to be what he called a “natural painter” depicting the “natural environment”.  Discarding, the bravura taught during his student years, he eschewed “showing off” and let nature do the talking; nature having no brushstrokes and trees, clouds and sunlight without “handling”, manifesting only as optical phenomena.  That was what Constable wanted to paint.  He was though a realist and in some of his work there is much of his signature “handling”, rough, broken, apparently (though doubtlessly not) spontaneous brushwork applied in flecks, dabs, flecks, streaks and thick impasto (paint applied thickly to create a topography of peaks and crests that, in physically extending from the surface, lends something of a 3D (three-dimensional) effect), sometimes obviously using paint unmixed and straight “from the tube”.  Constable didn’t change his view that he wanted viewers to focus on the painting rather than the independent performance of the painter but whether “Constable 2.0” was an evolving artist or one adapting to commercial reality in “surrendering art to artifice” can be debated but what no historians dispute is that the later impressionists owed a debt to this exemplar of the Romantic movement.  Constable now is more highly regarded than ever he was in his lifetime.

Iconoclast

Iconoclast (pronounced ahy-kon-uh-klast)

(1) A person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions etc as being based on error or superstition.

(2) A breaker or destroyer of images, especially those set up for religious veneration.

(3) An adherent of the heretical movement within the Greek Orthodox Church from 725-842 AD, the ethos of which was the destruction of icons and religious images (late applied to the Puritans who pursued the same goal during the European Reformation).

1590–1600: From the Middle English, from the French iconoclaste from the Medieval Latin īconoclastēs from the Byzantine Greek εἰκονοκλάστης (eikonoklástēs) (literally image-breaker), the construct being eikono- (genitive eikonos) (icono-) + -klastēs (breaker), equivalent to klas-, variant stem of klân (to break) + -tēs (the agent noun suffix).  The early meaning referred to those who, in acts of theological obedience, literally physically broke or destroyed objects judged "idols"; the figurative meaning in reference to beliefs, cherished institutions etc emerged later, sources variously citing the first use between 1842-1858.  An older word for it was iconomachy (1580s), from the Greek eikonomakhia.  In geology, "clast" is technical term describing a fragment of rock broken from a larger rock or rock unit.  In a religious context, although not exact synonyms, the words often seen when discussing "iconoclast" include: "unbeliever", "revisionist", questioner", "dissenter", "heretic", "radical", "dissident", "non-believer", "critic", "rebel", "revolutionist", "cynic", "sceptic", "ruiner", "revisionist"  & "non-conformist".

In secular use, it’s different.  The targets of the self-appointed iconoclast Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) included Dr Henry Kissinger (1923-2023; US national security advisor 1969-1975 & secretary of state 1973-1977), the Albanian-Indian Catholic nun Saint Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu; 1910–1997; founder of the Missionaries of Charity (1950)) and God, his intellectual method being: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”, now a rule in philosophical debate in the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s (1872–1970) teapot and known as Hitchens’ Razor.  That was based on the model of Occam's razor, a reductionist technique in problem-solving (known also as lex parsimoniae (Latin for “law of parsimony”, the idea being explanations are best found by reducing problems to the smallest number of elements)), attributed to English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher and theologian William of Ockham (or Occam, circa 1287-1347).  One suffering iconophobia (an aversion to icons) is said to be iconophobic but this is a condition in metal health (one of many phobias not listed in the APA's (American Psychiatric Association) DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) not necessarily related to any theological or doctrinal object to icons although there's no reason why the conditions can't run in parallel.  Those whose objection to icons is based on religious teachings maintain a position of iconomachy (hostility to images as objects of worship) and may be classed as iconomachs.  Iconoclast, iconoclasm & iconoclasticism are nouns, iconoclastic is a noun & adjective and iconoclastically is an adverb; the noun plural is iconoclasts.

The Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy

The Iconoclastic Controversy, an eighth & ninth century dispute over the use of religious images in the Byzantine Empire, was one of the many squabbles in Christendom (and other religions) triggered by arguments between those reading ancient texts literally and those treating them as allegory.  Thanks mostly to the efforts of medieval (and later) writers further to the west, much of what grew from the city of Byzantium was a reputation for rules of needless complexity, bureaucracy and seriously weird theology but more recent scholarship of the empire's history of over a millennium has been more positive and there’s now a recognition that in the history of Western civilization, something remarkable happened on the Bosphorus.  The place did though have its moments and the iconoclasts objected to icon veneration, essentially because of the Old Testament's prohibition of images in the Ten Commandments and the possibility of idolatry.

Byzantine icons.

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:4 (King James Version of the Bible (KJV, 1611))

The defenders of the importance of imagery insisted on their symbolic nature and the dignity of created matter and nor was the controversy in Constantinople anything new.  From the Church’s earliest days, the making and veneration of portraits of Christ and the saints had been opposed by many but the use of icons nevertheless steadily gained in popularity, especially in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire.  By the late sixth century, icons had become the object of an officially encouraged cult, sometimes implying a superstitious belief in their animation and the opposition to these practices became especially strong in Asia Minor (the modern-day Republic of Türkiye (Turkey)).  In 726, the Byzantine emperor Leo III (circa 685–741) took a public stand against the perceived worship of icons, and in 730 proscribed their use, trigging a persecution of icon venerators that was most severe in the reign of Leo’s successor (Constantine V (741–775)).  While the emperor’s scholars expressed the theological edict in elegant Byzantine script, on the ground, the smashing of icons and the attacks on the idolaters was done by angry mobs, assembled for the purpose by the social media of the day, events reprised in the sixteen and seventeenth centuries by Protestants in the Netherlands who vandalized former Roman Catholic churches in a second (and most enthusiastic) burst of iconoclasm.

Icon of the Empress Theodora, from a sixth century wall mosaic, Church of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy.

Over the decades, in Byzantine fashion, power shifted between the factions.  In 787, the Empress Irene (circa 752–803) convoked the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea at which Iconoclasm was condemned and the use of images was again permitted.  The Iconoclasts regained power in 814 after the accession of Leo V (circa 755-820) meaning icons returned to the banned list after a ruling at a council in 815, the prohibition lasting until the death of the Emperor Theophilus (Circa 800-842).  Within a year of his death, his widow, the Empress Theodora (circa 815–circa 870s), finally restored icon veneration, an event still celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Feast of Orthodoxy although, in a piece of theological sophistry that would have impressed any pope, or those writing the tortured communiqués emerging from Lambeth Conferences, Theodora explained she was permitting only veneration (not worship) and in that state, the Eastern Orthodox view of icons has rested for more than a thousand years.

Neville Chamberlain in “uniform” (bowler hat, winged collar, watch fob & chain and rolled umbrella), 10 Downing Street, July 1937.

Presumably it was for veneration rather than worship one Greek Orthodox church in October 1938 wrote to 10 Downing Street asking for one of Neville Chamberlain's (1869–1940; prime minister of the UK 1937-1940) umbrellas so it could be made into an icon.  Cheered in the House of Commons and for a while the most popular man in Europe after negotiating in Munich "peace in our time", Chamberlain's earnest, sincere hopes for peace were soon dashed.  Chamberlain had often been photographed carrying his rolled black umbrella; it was part of an English gentleman’s “uniform” but when the moral and political bankruptcy of the Munich Agreement was exposed, rapidly his umbrella was transformed from an icon of civilized diplomacy into an emblem of a naïve and ineffectual amateur unsuited to a dangerous new world.  He was the “prime suspect” among 15 and named as “Umbrella Man” in the 1940 pamphlet Guilty Men (an excoriation of the well-intentioned (and highly popular) but failed policy of appeasement) by Cato (the pseudonym of three politically-aligned journalists (Frank Owen (1905-1979, Liberal), Michael Foot (1913-2010, Labour) and Peter Howard (1908-1965, Conservative).  It's not known if the priest ever got his umbrella.  

Screen icons: A MS-Windows 11 system running Windows 10 GUI emulation.

Although, reflecting the state of electronics at the time, the early implementations were chunky and the color range was limited, screen icons first appeared in computer GUIs (graphical user interfaces) in 1973 on the experimental Xerox Alto computer developed at Xerox's PARC (Palo Alto Research Center, later re-branded as the Future Concepts division).  The Xerox Star (1981) is believed to be the first commercially available system (technically a workstation) with a GUI including many now familiar screen icons (folders, trash can etc) although it wasn't until 1975 Xerox began using "icon" to name the shapes.  As many analysts have pondered, such was Xerox's jump-start in what evolved into personal computing that had things been handled differently, it might have been Xerox rather than IBM, Microsoft and Apple which came to dominate the field; within the industry, it’s acknowledged both Apple and Microsoft drew on the pioneering work by Xerox when developing their own GUIs.  Apple’s Lisa (1983-1986) from the start used an icon-rich GUI and although a landmark technical achievement, it was too expensive ever to succeed in the consumer market and in corporate use it was only ever a niche device.

Screen icon: Icon is now one of popular culture's more overused words, but, in fairness, there's been a bit of meaning-shift and re-purposing since the iconoclasts rampaged through Constantinople's churches, all those years ago.

It was the less ambitious Apple Macintosh (1984) that (at around a quarter the Lisa’s price) first popularized the GUI although in the 1980s, such was the influence of IBM (International Business Machines) that although the original IBM PC (1981) and its immediate successors were in many aspects less capable than the Macintosh, those modest machines achieved a much higher level of corporate penetration that Apple in the pre-mobile era managed.  Microsoft though could see the writing on the wall and as early as 1983, the first release of Windows (a GUI operating environment that ran “on top” of the PC & MS-DOS operating systems) included screen icons although, because of limitations in cost-competitive hardware, the implementation was partial with file-loading happening through text-lists while the icons appeared at the base on the screen only when running programs that had been minimized.  Not until Microsoft Windows 3.0 (1990) did the icons appear as central elements and mainstream corporate acceptance came with the release of Windows NT 4.0 (1996) and Windows 98 (1998), both with the object-oriented GUI still used by current versions of Windows.  In the early 1980s, command line junkies of course viewed icons as effete things needed only by “girly men unable to memorize arcane text strings” but, after a while, even those curmudgeons found themselves mousing their way around and clicking rather than typing; they didn’t long remain iconoclasts and many now would deny they ever were.

Leftover

Leftover (pronounced left-oh-ver)

(1) Food remaining uneaten at the end of a meal, especially when saved for later use (usually in the plural: "leftovers").

(2) Anything left or remaining from a larger amount; remainder.

(3) A casual (and disparaging) term used in the PRC (People's Republic of China) to describe women still un-married after the age of twenty-six (sometimes quoted as "late twenty-something"). 

1878: A compound word, the construct being left + over (a noun use of verb phrase left over).  The meaning is always in the sense of left (“remaining, abandoned”) + over (“excess”).  Left was from the Middle English left, luft, leoft, lift & lyft, from the Old English left & lyft (air, atmosphere) from the Proto-Germanic luft with which may be compared the compared the Scots left (left), the North Frisian lefts, left & leefts (left), the West Frisian lofts (left), the dialectal Dutch loof (weak, worthless) and the Low German lucht (left).  Over was from the Middle English over from the Old English ofer from the Proto-Germanic uber (over), from the primitive Indo-European upér, a comparative form of upo; akin to the Dutch over, the German ober & über, the Danish over, the Norwegian over, the Swedish över, the Icelandic yfir, the Faroese yvir, the Gothic ufar, the Latin super, the Ancient Greek ὑπέρ (hupér), the Albanian upri (group of peasants) and the Sanskrit उपरि (upári).  The hyphenated left-over (remaining, not used up) was in used by at least 1890 as a noun meaning "something left over" is from 1891.  The sense of (the almost always plural) leftovers “excess food after a meal" (especially if re-served later) dates from 1878 and in this sense, the Old English had metelaf.  Leftover is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is leftovers.

Leftover women

Sheng nu (剩女; shèngnǚ), most often translated as "leftover women", is a phrase (usually considered derogatory) describing Chinese women who remain unmarried by their late twenties.  First promulgated by the ACWF (All-China Women's Federation) when promoting government programmes, it’s been used in other countries but remains most associated with the PRC .  As a demographic phenomenon, it was once unexpected because the conjunction of the PRC's one-child policy and the disproportionate abortion of female foetuses had led to a distortion in the historic gender balance; births in China since the one-child policy was introduced in 1979 have averaged 120 males for every 100 females, compared to a global ratio of 103:107.  In theory, this should of course have meant women were more able to find partners to marry but other circumstances combined to create a pool of "leftover women" and, because in the PRC the population is so large (believed now to be slightly in excess of 1.2 billion), that pool is a "big number". 

A bride with four suspected leftovers, looking enviously on.

The term appears to have entered general use in 2005-2006 and seems first to have appeared in the Chinese edition of Cosmopolitan (the PRC proved a receptive market for the glossiest forms of Western decadence).  Unlike most of Cosmopolitan’s editorial content, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) took Sheng nu seriously and instructed the ACWF (a kind of cross between the Australian CWA (Country Women’s Association) and the PLA (the PRC's People’s Liberation Army) to publish articles stigmatizing women still unwed by their late twenties.  Borrowing from Maoist tradition (if not theory), the ACWF provided a useful analysis of the problem, concluding that while “pretty girls” didn’t need much education to find a rich partner, “average or ugly” ones who seek higher degrees thinking it will “increase their competitiveness” in the marriage market are delusional; all that happens is they become old “…like yellowed pearls."  The rhetorical flourishes aside, they had a point and in London, New York, Paris & Turin, the editorial staff of Cosmopolitan and other glossies probably shared their view although, of course, in the West, such heresies can be spoken only in hushed tones and certainly never printed.  As the numbers of highly educated women rose, the cohort  of potential husbands they found acceptable did not for what the distorted gender balance created by the one-child policy and the selective-sex abortion preferences had produced was an increasingly educated and middle-class female minority, not much impressed by the available pool of a less schooled and more rural male majority. 

Geographic distribution of leftover women, PRC, 2022.

“Leftover women” seemed the choice in print but on the internet, the punchier 3S or 3SW (Single, Seventies (referring to the then prominent 1970s birth cohort) and Stuck) was also used instead of sheng nu.  There is an equivalent term for men, guang gun (bare branches (ie men who do not marry and thus do not add branches to the family tree)); shengnan (leftover men) does exist but is rare.

As early as 1993, the CCP's demographers had expressed concerns about the social and economic implications of the one-child policy but "bureaucratic inertia" built into the institutions of the Chinese state is stubbornly resistant to change and it wasn't until the new century, the policy was first selectively relaxed, then revised to permit additional children for those selected by the CCP as desirable breeders before, on 31 May, 2021, at a meeting of the of the CCP's Politburo, the three-child policy (三孩政策) was announced.  The session, chaired by Xi Jinping (b 1953; CCP general secretary 2012- & PRC president 2013-), followed the release of the findings of the seventh national population census that had shown the number of births in mainland China in 2020 (some 12 million), would be the lowest since 1960, a marker of the demographic trend causing the ageing of the population.  The Xinhua state news agency then announced the three child policy would be accompanied by supportive measures to “maintain China's advantage in human resources” but surveys suggested the section of the population the CCP would like to see produce three children per household were generally unwilling to have even two, the reasons overwhelmingly the high cost of living in Chinese cities and the costs inherent in raising children.  The subsequent announcement on 26 July, 2021 permitting Chinese couples to have any number of children, was thus greeted by most with restrained enthusiasm.

Leftover no longer: Lindsay Lohan's engagement ring.  Ms Lohan announced her engagement in 2021, marring the following year.  In 2023, a post confirmed reports of her pregnancy. 

The problem of re-production is not restricted to the PRC, the birth rate in the RoK (Republic of Korea (South Korea)) now down to around .8 per woman (2.1 is necessary for a population to be sustained).  What exacerbates the problem in the PRC is the simple lack of women of child-bearing age, caused by the distorted male/female live-birth rates in the decades following the imposition of the one-child policy and any vague hope the long stretches of pandemic-era lock-downs may have encouraged procreation were not realized; like those in the West, Chinese couples preferred television and the internet.  Despite that disappointment, the CCP wasn't discouraged and embarked on a new propaganda campaign, making it clear to young women that having babies was part of their patriotic duty to the motherland: pregnancy was now compulsory.  That seems not to have had much effect and in the West, the decline in the birth rate has for some time been thought a problem, largely because of the impending acceleration in the distortion between those of working age (paying into the system) and those not generating income (extracting from the system).  Of late however, influenced by the un-anticipated rapidity in the advances in AI (artificial intelligence) and robotics, theorists are re-visiting the models and pondering the implications.  Given it's at least possible vast numbers of us will be able to be replaced by robots or AI agents, it may be the falling birth-rate will be, in a sense, demographically self-correcting because the only humans who may be "needed" will be a tiny elite and their servants (mechanics, technicians, bodyguards, prison wardens and "personal service workers", the latter category including sex workers but especially weighted towards nurses and specialist medical staff). 

The thoughts of Chairman Mao, 1973.

The problem of China’s “leftover women” is not new, Dr Henry Kissinger (1923-2023; US national security advisor 1969-1975 & secretary of state 1973-1977) in The White House Years (1979) recalling one revealing conversation with comrade Chairman Mao (Mao Zedong 1893–1976; chairman of the CCP, 1949-1976) during a meeting in Beijing in 1973:

“And yet for all his preoccupation with foreign policy, the Chairman could not avoid the obsession of his last years with Peking’s internal problems, which as so often in China’s history seemed to follow their own momentum.  Repeatedly Mao warned me about the pressures on him from radicals, but he did it so allusively that my dense Occidental mind did not immediately follow his meaning. ‘You know China is a very poor country,’ said Mao.  ‘We don’t have much. What we have in excess is women.’  Thinking that Mao was joking, I replied in kind: ‘There are no quotas for those, or tariffs.’  ‘So if you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands,’ shot back Mao.  ‘Of course, on a voluntary basis,’ interrupted Zhou [Zhou Enlai (1898–1976; premier of the People's Republic of China (PRC) 1949-1976)].  ‘Let them go to your place,’ Mao continued. ‘They will create disasters.  That way you can lessen our burdens.’  He laughed uproariously.  But Mao was not yet sure that I had got the point; he returned to the theme a few minutes later.  ‘Do you want our Chinese women? [W]e can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests.’

Whether Dr Kissinger long considered the comrade Chairman’s offer is something he seems never to have discussed but he may have mused over the advantages of an increase in the US “woman supply”.  Although he’d probably prefer to be remembered for his profound observations on foreign policy or diplomacy, his best known quote probably remains “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac” and upon becoming a “political celebrity”, he became a fixture on the international cocktail party circuit, seemingly never short of glamorous female companions; presumably there were also a few unlucky “leftovers”.  Within the White House he was dubbed the “playboy of the western wing” but the well-connected socialite Barbara Howar (1934-2024, who’d often been seen on his arm) complained he was a bad date, advising anyone going out with him to “…not start to get dressed until the third time he’s called to say he’s on his way.”  She also claimed their well-publicized relationship was “strictly platonic”, explaining: “The reason Henry goes out with me is that he knows I’m one woman who is not husband hunting” but also quipped “Henry’s idea of sex is to slow the car down to 30 mph when he drops you off at the door.”  Clearly, she was no leftover but their relationship must be thought a “strategic ambiguity”.

Lord Kitchener Wants You, the famous British Army recruitment poster (1914) created by graphic artist Alfred Leete (1882–1933).  Immensely influential, for many purposes, the technique has since widely been used, its effect achieved by Kitchener’s gaze and pointing finger appearing to be directed straight at a viewer, regardless of the angle at which they stood.

As Dr Kissinger noted, the comrade Chairman’s concerns were not motivated only by aggregate numbers, conditions in China by 1973 “…far from being as stable as they looked [with] women… stirring up China and challenging the prevailing policy.”  Central to this unrest was Mao’s (fourth) wife (Jiang Qing (1914–1991)) who would in the aftermath of the chairman’s death emerge as one of the “Gang of Four” who attempted to seize power.  After her arrest was ordered by the dominant CCP faction, she was in 1980 tried and sentenced to death but a two-year stay was issued and later this was commuted to life imprisonment.  She died in 1991, reputedly by suicide and it was an interesting example of the difference between the way things were once done in Beijing and Moscow.  Had comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) been having troubles with a bolshie wife, he’d have known what to do; wife would have understood his language.  It’s a shame comrade Chairman Mao never had a chance to meet the UK’s Lord Kitchener (Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1850–1916; secretary of state for war, 1914-1916) because they’d have had much about which to chat.  When, after the battle of Omdurman (1898), Kitchener visited Balmoral to meet Queen Victoria (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901), he explained that in the aftermath of the conflict he’d been “rather inconvenienced by having some 2,000 women on his hands”.  Intrigued by anything “exotic”, Princess Beatrice (1857-1944) asked: “What were the women like?” to which Kitchener replied: “Very like all women.  They talked a great deal.”  As the chairman and field marshal would have agreed, on a case-by-case basis, “women are always a problem, it’s just a matter of working out why”.