Synopses & Reviews
Why do we have such powerful responses toward the images and pictures we see in everyday life? Why do we behave as if pictures were alive, possessing the power to influence us, to demand things from us, to persuade us, seduce us, or even lead us astray? According to W. J. T. Mitchell, we need to reckon with images not just as inert objects that convey meaning but as animated beings with desires, needs, appetites, demands, and drives of their own.
What Do Pictures Want? explores this idea and highlights Mitchell's innovative and profoundly influential thinking on picture theory and the lives and loves of images. Ranging across the visual arts, literature, and mass media, Mitchell applies characteristically brilliant and wry analyses to Byzantine icons and cyberpunk films, racial stereotypes and public monuments, ancient idols and modern clones, offensive images and found objects, American photography and aboriginal painting. Opening new vistas in iconology and the emergent field of visual culture, he also considers the importance of Dolly the Sheep—who, as a clone, fulfills the ancient dream of creating a living image—and the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, which, among other things, signifies a new and virulent form of iconoclasm.
What Do Pictures Want? offers an immensely rich and suggestive account of the interplay between the visible and the readable. A work by one of our leading theorists of visual representation, it will be a touchstone for art historians, literary critics, anthropologists, and philosophers alike.
CITATION:
"The book displays great analytical energy, playfulness, and insight into the many varied answers that [Mitchell] offers to his own central question: images want to be kissed and touched and heard; they want to trade places with the beholder; they want everything and nothing. When Mitchell argues that critics should put the image first, he is attempting to open up the field of visual inquiry and avoid any orthodoxy of method, whether psychoanalytic or materialist, that would consider the image as mere symptom or ideological manifestation, an object of iconoclastic destruction of idolatrous esteem. The strength of What Do Pictures Want? is that it is less a manifesto on the rules and systems of analysis than a call to expand the field with 'new questions of process, affect, and the spectator position,' a thought experiment on the vitality of images and their ability to create in the present new forms and representations of the deep pa(Anna Siomopoulos, Afterimage, Mar 1 2006 )
CITATION: "Mitchell's book is a treasury of episodes-generally overlooked by art history and visual studies-that turn on images that `walk by themselves' and exert their own power over the living, from the resurrection of the dinosaur in the Victorian natural-history museum, to the quasi-animated statues of Antony Gormley, to the continuing vitality of the visual stereotype of racism. His account offers the most serious challenge in many years to the view that images are merely `signs,' asking only for interpretation or analysis or commentary. What images want from us is much more than that."-Norman Bryson, Artforum(Artforum)
CITATION: "Mitchell's book is a treasury of episodes-generally overlooked by art history and visual studies-that turn on images that `walk by themselves' and exert their own power over the living, from the resurrection of the dinosaur in the Victorian natural-history museum, to the quasi-animated statues of Antony Gormley, to the continuing vitality of the visual stereotype of racism. His account offers the most serious challenge in many years to the view that images are merely `signs,' asking only for interpretation or analysis or commentary. What images want from us is much more than that."-Norman Bryson, Artforum(Norman Bryson, Artforum)
CITATION: "This lively collection of essays is something more than a critical tour of the problematics of contemporary art theory; it is more than a set of pertinent (or impertinent) interventions on a series of current exhibits, films, and images of all kinds; more even than a tireless and insistent reproblematization of everybody's work on pictures, images, and image society, turning all the new ideas back into questions and more questions. It is also the elaboration of what is surely destined to become an influential new tripartite concept of the object, namely as idol, fetish, and totem."-Fredric Jameson(Fredric Jameson)
CITATION: "As the history of art history reveals, to reveal is to also conceal. So what happens when, over many years of studying pictures, you ask them what they want? You find that pictures have a whole lot to say, although interviewing them is not for the uninitiated or fainthearted because ultimately it means interviewing us and our time-honored procedures too. What fun, therefore, to have Tom Mitchell take us on this rollercoaster ride into the image itself, no longer only visual but a full-bodied intellectual experience, forthright and dazzling."-Michael Taussig
(Michael Taussig)
CITATION: "This rich volume is of an `intimate immensity'. . . sufficient to engage anyone-that is, everyone-interested in visuality under any guise at all. . . . Mitchell has a rare quality of generosity. . . . He is frequently witty, never boring, and always able to move rapidly from one sense to another (in all senses) without any self-conscious delight. This is serious stuff, regardless of its humor. . . . Among his other influential works, this one will hold a particular place, for its wide-ranging and exemplary clarity in a field often troubled by the criticisms of those who doubt the efficacy of such boundary-hopping experiments."-Mary Ann Caws, Modernism/Modernity(Modernism/Modernity, Mary Ann Caws, Apr 1 2006 )
Review
"The book displays great analytical energy, playfulness, and insight into the many varied answers that [Mitchell] offers to his own central question: images want to be kissed and touched and heard; they want to trade places with the beholder; they want everything and nothing.and#160; When Mitchell argues that critics should put the image first, he is attempting to open up the field of visual inquiry and avoid any orthodoxy of method, whether psychoanalytic or materialist, that would consider the image as mere symptom or ideological manifestation, an object of iconoclastic destruction of idolatrous esteem.and#160; The strength of What Do Pictures Want? is that it is less a manifesto on the rules and systems of analysis than a call to expand the field with 'new questions of process, affect, and the spectator position,' a thought experiment on the vitality of images and their ability to create in the present new forms and representations of the deep past and near future, from digitized dinosaurs to cloned sheep."
Review
and#8220;Mitchelland#8217;s book is a treasury of episodesand#8212;generally overlooked by art history and visual studiesand#8212;that turn on images that and#8216;walk by themselvesand#8217; and exert their own power over the living, from the resurrection of the dinosaur in the Victorian natural-history museum, to the quasi-animated statues of Antony Gormley, to the continuing vitality of the visual stereotype of racism. His account offers the most serious challenge in many years to the view that images are merely and#8216;signs,and#8217; asking only for interpretation or analysis or commentary. What images want from us is much more than that.and#8221;
Review
"This lively collection of essays is something more than a critical tour of the problematics of contemporary art theory; it is more than a set of pertinent (or impertinent) interventions on a series of current exhibits, films, andand#160;images of all kinds; more even than a tireless and insistent reproblematization of everybody's work on pictures, images, andand#160;image society, turning all the new ideas back into questions and more questions. It is also the elaboration of what is surely destined to become an influential new tripartite concept of the object, namely as idol, fetish, and totem."
Review
"As the history of art history reveals, to reveal is to also conceal. So what happens when, over many years of studying pictures, you ask them what they want? You find that pictures have a whole lot to say, although interviewing them is not for the uninitiated or fainthearted because ultimately it means interviewing us and our time-honored procedures too. What fun, therefore, to have Tom Mitchell take us on this rollercoaster ride into the image itself, no longer only visual but a full-bodied intellectual experience, forthright and dazzling."
Review
and#8220;This rich volume is of an and#8216;intimate immensityand#8217;. . . sufficient to engage anyoneand#8212;that is, everyoneand#8212;interested in visuality under any guise at all. . . . Mitchell has a rare quality of generosity. . . . He is frequently witty, never boring, and always able to move rapidly from one sense to another (in all senses) without any self-conscious delight. This is serious stuff, regardless of its humor. . . . Among his other influential works, this one will hold a particular place, for its wide-ranging and exemplary clarity in a field often troubled by the criticisms of those who doubt the efficacy of such boundary-hopping experiments.and#8221;
Review
"W.J.T. Mitchell is an important theorist, and this book is a valuable addition to the literature of iconology and visual culture."
Review
"Mitchell combines a dazzling array of theoretical discourses to develop analyses, interpretations and provocations that enable us to better understand the modalities and power of visual culture."
Review
"The reader gets an invigorating glimpse of a brilliant mind at work, insatiably asking questions."
Review
co-winner of the Modern Language Association'sand#160;James Russell Lowell Prize
Review
andldquo;In publishing there is a difference between making a splash and actually making waves. Brownandrsquo;s work has done both. He opens his lens this time to a wide array of aesthetic and cultural objects from indigenous ethnographic sculpture to the kitsch memorabilia of 9/11. Along the way, there are readings devoted to material objects in canonical literature and more popular contemporary writing. Holding all this together in the force field of Brownandrsquo;s lucid prose are his steadily surprising insights into andlsquo;things otherandrsquo; than meet the eye in such object matter. This new book, too, will be not only applauded but widely consulted.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Why do we have such powerful responses toward the images and pictures we see in everyday life? Why do we behave as if pictures were alive, possessing the power to influence us, to demand things from us, to persuade us, seduce us, or even lead us astray?
According to W. J. T. Mitchell, we need to reckon with images not just as inert objects that convey meaning but as animated beings with desires, needs, appetites, demands, and drives of their own. What Do Pictures Want? explores this idea and highlights Mitchell's innovative and profoundly influential thinking on picture theory and the lives and loves of images. Ranging across the visual arts, literature, and mass media, Mitchell applies characteristically brilliant and wry analyses to Byzantine icons and cyberpunk films, racial stereotypes and public monuments, ancient idols and modern clones, offensive images and found objects, American photography and aboriginal painting. Opening new vistas in iconology and the emergent field of visual culture, he also considers the importance of Dolly the Sheepand#8212;who, as a clone, fulfills the ancient dream of creating a living imageand#8212;and the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, which, among other things, signifies a new and virulent form of iconoclasm.
What Do Pictures Want? offers an immensely rich and suggestive account of the interplay between the visible and the readable. A work by one of our leading theorists of visual representation, it will be a touchstone for art historians, literary critics, anthropologists, and philosophers alike.
Synopsis
Why do we have such extraordinarily powerful responses toward the images and pictures we see in everyday life? Why do we behave as if pictures were alive, possessing the power to influence us, to demand things from us, to persuade us, seduce us, or even lead us astray?
According to W. J. T. Mitchell, we need to reckon with images not just as inert objects that convey meaning but as animated beings with desires, needs, appetites, demands, and drives of their own. What Do Pictures Want? explores this idea and highlights Mitchell's innovative and profoundly influential thinking on picture theory and the lives and loves of images. Ranging across the visual arts, literature, and mass media, Mitchell applies characteristically brilliant and wry analyses to Byzantine icons and cyberpunk films, racial stereotypes and public monuments, ancient idols and modern clones, offensive images and found objects, American photography and aboriginal painting. Opening new vistas in iconology and the emergent field of visual culture, he also considers the importance of Dolly the Sheepwho, as a clone, fulfills the ancient dream of creating a living imageand the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, which, among other things, signifies a new and virulent form of iconoclasm.
What Do Pictures Want? offers an immensely rich and suggestive account of the interplay between the visible and the readable. A work by one of our leading theorists of visual representation, it will be a touchstone for art historians, literary critics, anthropologists, and philosophers alike.
“A treasury of episodesgenerally overlooked by art history and visual studiesthat turn on images that ‘walk by themselves and exert their own power over the living.”Norman Bryson, Artforum
Synopsis
The humanities continue to ride a wave of interest in the material or phenomenological object world. Early in the boom in what we might call Thing Studies, Brown observed that andldquo;these days you can read books on the pencil, the zipper, the toilet, the banana, the chair, the potato, the bowler hat.andrdquo;and#160; By now the list is a good deal longer. How should we understand the broad spotlight now being cast on the inanimate object world within various disciplines? This book sets out to answer that question by reference to objects as various as puppets and glass plate, writers ranging from Virginia Woolf to Philip K. Dick, and artists as various as Rodin and Man Ray. Taken together, the essays in Other Things explain modernismandrsquo;s investment in disclosing an object world whose enchantment persists in the face of disenchantment. Working with conceptual tools derived from the work of Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Lacan, Brown advances an object/thing distinction that grasps the unanticipated force of an object, no matter how banal that object may be. For Brown, gaining purchase on the world we inhabit requires theory to engage the everyday object world, just as it requires us to ask new questions of material culture, including the question of what we mean by materiality itself.
Synopsis
From the pencil to the puppet to the droneandmdash;the humanities continue to ride a wave of interest in material culture and the world of things. How should we understand the force and figure of that wave as it shapes different disciplines? In
Other Things, Bill Brown explores this question by considering an assortment of objectsandmdash;from beach glass to cell phones, sneakers to skyscrapersandmdash;that have fascinated a range of writers and artists, including Virginia Woolf, Man Ray, Spike Lee, and Don DeLillo.
Brown ranges across the literary, visual, and plastic arts to depict the curious lives of things.and#160; Beginning with Achillesandrsquo;s Shield, then tracking the object/thing distinction as it appears in the work of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan, he ultimately focuses on the thingness disclosed by specific literary and artistic works. Combining history and literature, criticism and theory, Brown provides a new way of understanding the inanimate object world and the place of the human within it, encouraging us to think anew about what we mean by materiality itself.
About the Author
W. J. T. Mitchell is the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. He is the author or editor of eight books published by the University of Chicago Press, including
Picture Theory,
Iconology, and
Landscape and Power. He is also the editor of
Critical Inquiry.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part One: Images
1. Vital Signs | Cloning Terror
2. What Do Pictures Want?
3. Drawing Desire
4. The Surplus Value of Images
Part Two: Objects
5. Founding Objects
6. Offending Images
7. Empire and Objecthood
8. Romanticism and the Life of Things
9. Totemism, Fetishism, Idolatry
Part Three: Media
10. Addressing Media
11. Abstraction and Intimacy
12. What Sculpture Wants: Placing Antony Gormley
13. The Ends of American Photography: Robert Frank as National Medium
14. Living Color: Race, Stereotype, and Animation in Spike Lee's Bamboozled
15. The Work of Art in the Age of Biocybernetic Reproduction
16. Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture
Index