Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Image, branding, and logos are obsessions of our age. Iconic images dominate the media.Christ to Coke is the first book to look at all the main types of visual icons. It does so via eleven supreme and mega-famous examples, both historical and contemporary, to see how they arose and how they continue to function. Along the way, we encounter the often weird and wonderful ways that they become transformed in an astonishing variety of ways and contexts. How, for example, has the communist revolutionary Che become a romantic hero for middle-class teenagers?The stock image of Christ's face is the founding icon - literally, since he was the central subject of early icon painting. Some of the icons that follow are general, like the cross, the lion, and the heart-shape. Some are specific, such as the Mona Lisa, Che Guevara, and the famous photograph of the napalmed girl in Vietnam. The American flag, the "Stars and Stripes", does not quite fit into either category. Modern icons come from commerce, led by the Coca-Cola bottle, and from science, most notably the double helix of DNA and Einstein's famous equation E=mc2. The stories, researched using the skills of a leading visual historian, are told in a vivid and personal manner. Some are funny; some are deeply moving; some are highly improbable; some centre on popular fame; others are based on the most profound ideas in science. The diversity is extraordinary. There is no set formula, but do the images share anything in common?So famous are the images that every reader is an expert in their own right and will be entertained and challenged by the narratives that Martin Kemp skilfully weaves around them.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface and Acknowledgements
• List of Plates
• Introduction
• 1 Christ. The True Icon
• 2 The Cross
• 3 The Heart
• 4 The Lion
• 5 Mona Lisa
• 6 Che
• 7 Napalmed and Naked
• 8 Stars and Stripes
• 9 Coke. The Bottle
• 10 DNA
• 11 E=mc 212 Fuzzy Formulas

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Having published widely on Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance art, and the connections between art and science, Kemp (art history, emeritus, Trinity Coll., Oxford) now broadly explores the concept of visual iconography. He investigates 11 icons, ranging from Christ to the Coca-Cola bottle, Che Guevara, and E=mc, including the cross, the heart, the lion, the Mona Lisa, the American flag, a photo of a Vietnamese napalm victim, and the double helix. Kemp argues that while an image may begin on a purely functional level, it may in some instances be transformed and raised to the level of the iconic. The author organizes his theory on iconography in terms of "types," such as abstract graphics, animals, science, photographs, etc. In a chapter on each image, he traces the start of each icon from its origin as a functional image, follows its remarkable rise in status, and assesses its unique validity as an icon. In the final chapter, he discusses the similarities between all icons but admits that there is no clear-cut relationship. -VERDICT Recommended for all those interested in iconography, art history, advertising, and branding.-Shauna Frischkorn, Millersville Univ., PA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Leonardo expert Kemp (emer., Oxford Univ.) offers a deeply idiosyncratic but consistently engaging book that investigates what makes an image take on the extraordinary recognizability, transhistorical significance, and rich and diverse associations that identify it as an icon. Breaking the field into several categories--religious, artistic, political, commercial, scientific, and more--Kemp traces the historical development and dissemination of examples of each, such as the cross, the Mona Lisa, the Coke bottle, and the DNA double helix (all examples are European or American). The first chapters demonstrate Kemp's deep knowledge of the Renaissance in explorations that are layered, compelling, and sometimes surprising, presenting his material in accessible prose and allowing for an icon's visual beauty or horror to exceed full accounting. When his focus shifts to modern times, the research gets more superficial, and specialists in 20th-century media may be unsatisfied with his undertheorized engagement with the shift from icons of belief to icons of consumption. But Kemp brings his own perspective to discussions of the meaning of photographs of Che Guevara and Vietnamese napalm victims, showing how their visual power draws on older icons and representational strategies that trace far back into the Western tradition. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and general readers. E. Hutchinson Barnard College and Columbia University