Abstract
The lecture deals with memetics and its possible usefulness in art history. Memetics is an application of evolutionary model on culture.
However, it is mostly rejected by scholars in the humanities. The lecture is aiming to show that memetics does not have to be accepted as a dogmatic scientific theory.
It can be inspiring as a metaphor. This approach is possible because art history has been already employed as a metaphor in the natural sciences.
Architecture serves as an analogy in the evolutionary theory of S. J.
Gould. If biology successfully uses art history as an analogy in its disputations, there is no reason why it could not happen vice-versa.
Furthermore, theories similar to memetics has been already proposed by some art historians. For example, theory of W.
J. T.Mitchell uses metaphor of living pictures.
Mitchell also suggests few other biological analogies. Memetics could provide art history with a new perspective which enables art historians to ask different types of questions and to focus more on the image itself.