Synopses & Reviews
List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1: The Pictorial Turn2: Metapictures3: Beyond Comparison: Picture, Text, and Method4: Visible Language: Blake's Art of Writing5: Ekphrasis and the Other6: Narrative, Memory, and Slavery7: Ut Pictura Theoria: Abstract Painting and Language8: Word, Image, and Object: Wall Labels for Robert Morris9: The Photographic Essay: Four Case Studies10: Illusion: Looking at Animals Looking11: Realism, Irrealism, and Ideology: After Nelson Goodman12: The Violence of Public Art: Do the Right Thing13: From CNN to JFKConclusion: Some Pictures of RepresentationIndex
Synopsis
"All that is logocentric melts into images in this fascinating discussion, which might also be titled 'What Do Pictures Want?' Do they want to get along with text or elbow it out of the way? At a time when the contents of entire art galleries are available from Microsoft and writing of the alphabetic variety is not necessarily the signifier of choice, Mitchell's playful, erudite attempt to 'connect William Blake, Wittgenstein, and Spike Lee' couldn't be more on the money". -- Editors' Choices, Voice Literary Supplement
Synopsis
What precisely, W. J. T. Mitchell asks, are pictures (and theories of pictures) doing now, in the late twentieth century, when the power of the visual is said to be greater than ever before, and the "pictorial turn" supplants the "linguistic turn" in the study of culture? This book by one of America's leading theorists of visual representation offers a rich account of the interplay between the visible and the readable across culture, from literature to visual art to the mass media.
About the Author
W. J. T. Mitchelland#160;is the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago and editor of Critical Inquiry.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1: The Pictorial Turn
2: Metapictures
3: Beyond Comparison: Picture, Text, and Method
4: Visible