Political Caricature Analysis

There is no original to analyze, and it makes very little sense to search for concepts such as authenticity or the artist as source for objective data. However, caricatures are full of citations taken from original sources, and these citations of originals also cite their functions and intend.

In conclusion this means that the best way to gain information about a political caricature's contemporary position in tradition's customary pattern is by comparing functional elements used by all caricatures. The best option for this will be the earlier depicted three artistic devices, and an examination of their appearance in individual images. Furthermore, since past technological changes have been accompanied by the addition and change of additional

The first step will be a complete summary of all objects and characters present in the image. The next step is the identification and description of all present artistic devices. Then the objects and characters in the first step will be identified, and the image will be examined for related images. The fourth step will then place the characters, objects, and the information gained by the examination for related images in a contextual frame, and interpret the meaning of the image. Finally, the last step will complete the analysis by evaluating the results for information about the image use.

These five steps will involve a number of well established methodologies taken from art history as well as from literary studies. The primary theory for this will follow Erwin Panofsky's method of iconographical-Iconological image analysis (Hatt 2006: 6). Iconography focuses on the themes and ideas encoded in an image, while treating works of art as "symbolic expressions of the cultures within which they were created" (Hatt 2006: 6). Thus, this form of analysis may also give information about intent and purpose of an image when combined with additional sources of contextual

Firstly, the examination of the image for familiar patterns. This will be done by methods borrowed from the concept of "interikonizität", a German term that describes image-to-image relations (Loreck 2013: 7). This theory takes ideas from intertextuality and transports them to a methodological approach for image analysis (Loreck 2013: 7). The basic thesis is that citation, paraphrasing, and parodies of earlier artistic works is essential and natural to all types of art, and that thus art can be analyzed for these citations of other works to gain insight on meaning, purpose, and message (Loreck 2013: 8). Thus the examination of where these citations come from can give additional information about the intention of an image, and subsequently also about image