
What Is an Image?
Pennsylvania State University Press
Will be published approx. on 15. December 2011
Book
Hardback
296 pages
978-0-271-05064-5 (ISBN)
Description
What Is an Image? raises the stakes for writing in art history, visual studies, art theory, and art criticism by questioning one of the most fundamental terms of all, the image or picture. This innovative collection gathers some of the most influential historians and theorists working on images to discuss what the visual has come to mean. Topics include concepts such as image and picture in the West and outside it; the reception and rejection of semiotics; the question of what is outside the image; the question of whether images have a distinct nature or are products of discourse, like language; the relationship between images and religious meanings; and the study of non-art images in medicine, science, and technology.
Among the major writers represented in this book are Gottfried Boehm, Michael Ann Holly, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, W. J. T. Mitchell, Marie-Jose Mondzain, Keith Moxey, Parul Dave Mukherji, Wolfram Pichler, Alex Potts, and Adrian Rifkin.
Among the major writers represented in this book are Gottfried Boehm, Michael Ann Holly, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, W. J. T. Mitchell, Marie-Jose Mondzain, Keith Moxey, Parul Dave Mukherji, Wolfram Pichler, Alex Potts, and Adrian Rifkin.
Reviews / Votes
"What Is an Image? offers a richly informative, wide-ranging, and open-ended ensemble of ideas and viewpoints that significantly advances the scholarly conversation. One of the great virtues of the volume is that it breaks with the standardized format of much academic writing to allow the coexistence of a plurality of voices and opinions. The reader is allowed to 'listen in' on a discussion that takes place at the cutting edge of current research and thereby gains a clear overview of the issues at stake in reconceptualizing the image."-Jason Gaiger, The University of Oxford "What Is an Image? is bursting with incisive debate and suggestive commentary about the nature, diversity, and peculiarity of images, ranging from brief remarks to focused critiques to a sustained analytic afterword. In navigating the thicket of past and contemporary image theory, it juxtaposes an astonishing range of views-sometimes compatible, sometimes contradictory, always distinctive. But it never loses sight of core concerns, and it productively reopens and reorients some of the most challenging questions about our reception and representation of the visible world."
-Whitney Davis, University of California at Berkeley
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
University Park
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Illustrations
5 Charts; 3 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 178 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
839 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-271-05064-5 (9780271050645)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
James Elkins is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Maja Naef is an art historian and art critic based in Basel, Switzerland.
Maja Naef is an art historian and art critic based in Basel, Switzerland.
Content
Contents
Series Preface
Introduction
James Elkins
The Seminars
1 How Many Theories of Images Are There?
2 What Is Outside Images
3 Accounts of Images, and Accounts That Begin from Images
4 Ontology
5 Non-Western Accounts
6 Public and Private
7 Religion, Ritual, the Sacred
8 Painting and Images
9 Image, Notation, Graph . . .
Assessments
Preface
James Elkins
Frederick M. Asher
Michael Ann Holly
Adrian Rifkin
Frank Vigneron
Keith Moxey
Harry Cooper
Parul Dave Mukherji
Thomas Baumeister
Vivian Sobchack
Alex Potts
Kavita Singh
Paul Messaris
Emmanuel Alloa
Aud Sissel Hoel
Ellen Chow
Xaq Pitkow
Crispin Sartwell
Klaus Speidel
Antonia Pocock
Paul Willemarck
Ruth Sonderegger
Thomas Macho and Jasmin Mersmann
Ciaran Benson
Christoph Luethy
Sebastian Egenhofer
Irmgard Emmelhainz
Ladislav Kesner
John Michael Krois
Karin Leonhard
Francesco Peri
Frederik Stjernfelt
Rainer Totzke
Michael Zimmermann
Sunil Manghani
Klaus Sachs-Hombach
Jose Luis Brea
Afterword
Wolfram Pichler
Notes on the Contributors
Index
Series Preface
Introduction
James Elkins
The Seminars
1 How Many Theories of Images Are There?
2 What Is Outside Images
3 Accounts of Images, and Accounts That Begin from Images
4 Ontology
5 Non-Western Accounts
6 Public and Private
7 Religion, Ritual, the Sacred
8 Painting and Images
9 Image, Notation, Graph . . .
Assessments
Preface
James Elkins
Frederick M. Asher
Michael Ann Holly
Adrian Rifkin
Frank Vigneron
Keith Moxey
Harry Cooper
Parul Dave Mukherji
Thomas Baumeister
Vivian Sobchack
Alex Potts
Kavita Singh
Paul Messaris
Emmanuel Alloa
Aud Sissel Hoel
Ellen Chow
Xaq Pitkow
Crispin Sartwell
Klaus Speidel
Antonia Pocock
Paul Willemarck
Ruth Sonderegger
Thomas Macho and Jasmin Mersmann
Ciaran Benson
Christoph Luethy
Sebastian Egenhofer
Irmgard Emmelhainz
Ladislav Kesner
John Michael Krois
Karin Leonhard
Francesco Peri
Frederik Stjernfelt
Rainer Totzke
Michael Zimmermann
Sunil Manghani
Klaus Sachs-Hombach
Jose Luis Brea
Afterword
Wolfram Pichler
Notes on the Contributors
Index