Understanding pictures / Dominic Lopes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lopes, Dominic.

Series:

Oxford philosophical monographs

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aesthetics.

Pictures.

Physical Description:

240 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1996.

Summary:

There are not one but many ways to picture the worldAustralian 'x-ray' pictures, cubist collages, Amerindian split-style figures, and pictures in two-point perspective each draw attention to different features of what they represent. The premise of Understanding Pictures is that this diversity is the central fact with which a theory of figurative pictures must reckon. Lopes argues that identifying pictures' subjects is akin to recognizing objects whose appearances have changed over the time. He develops a scheme for categorizing the different ways pictures represent - the different kinds of meaning they have - and he contends that depiction's epistemic value lies in its representational diversity. He also offers a novel account of the phenomenology of pictorial experience, comparing pictures to visual prostheses like mirrors and binoculars. The book concludes with a discussion of works of art which have made pictorial meaning their theme, demonstrating the importance of the issues this book raises for understanding the aesthetics of pictures.

Notes:

Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--Oxford University, 1992, originally presented under the title: Pictures as perceptual symbols.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [228]-234) and index.

ISBN:

019824097X

OCLC:

33207364