Product Description

In Iconology, W. J. T. Mitchell asked what images are, how they differ from words, and why these questions have been such a source of contention for centuries. In this companion volume to Iconology, he extends his investigation to pictures--the concrete, representational objects in which images appear.

Although we have thousands of words about pictures, Mitchell notes that we do not yet have a satisfactory theory of them. What we have is a variety of disciplines--semiotics, philosophical inquiries into representation, new departures in art history, studies in mass media--that attempt to converge on the problem of pictorial representation and visual culture. Identifying the problems inherent in the attempt to master visual representation with verbal discourse, Mitchell proposes instead to "picture theory." He looks at the way pictures function in theories about culture, consciousness, and representation, and at theory itself as a form of picturing. What precisely, he asks, are pictures (and theories about 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?

Focusing on Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, Oliver Stone's JFK, and television coverage of the Gulf War, he examines the capacity of visual images to awaken or stifle public debate, collective emotion, and political violence. An "applied iconology," this book by one of America's leading theorists of visual representation offers an immensely rich and suggestive account of the interplay between the visible and the readable across the culture, from literature to visual art to the mass media.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #105417 in Books
• Published on: 1995-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 462 pages

From Library Journal
Mitchell (English and art, Univ. of Chicago), who is editor of Critical Inquiry, addresses a variety of concerns about the nexus of word and depiction. In cogent, jargon-free prose, Mitchell by turn takes up the reason behind a cartoon's apparent humor; the flow between narrative and memory, which can and has been ruptured by slavery; painterly theories; and much more. Incorporating theories propounded by Barthes, Wittgenstein, Magritte, and others, this volume is a veritable chocolate box of well-developed ideas for aesthetics students and scholars. It is also accessible to the lay reader, engaging for the researcher, and an emblematic resource for classroom discussion for the teacher of art history or philosophy. Recommended for most collections.
Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A classic
This book has to be considered as a classic in the field. Ironically, Mitchell's term 'pictorial turn' seems to be more widespread than knowledge of this book, with the unsettling consequence that many people talk about pictures *replacing* the word, and few about the intricate and complex relationship between the two.
The book is surprisingly well written, rarely has an academic book entertained me so much. For everybody who wants to know what *pictorial turn* means from the point of view of the person who coined this phrase, I can only recommend it warmest.