A general theory of visual culture / Whitney Davis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, Whitney, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art and society.

Art--Historiography.

Art.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (402 p.)

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2011]

Summary:

What is cultural about vision--or visual about culture? In this ambitious book, Whitney Davis provides new answers to these difficult and important questions by presenting an original framework for understanding visual culture. Grounded in the theoretical traditions of art history, A General Theory of Visual Culture argues that, in a fully consolidated visual culture, artifacts and pictures have been made to be seen in a certain way; what Davis calls "visuality" is the visual perspective from which certain culturally constituted aspects of artifacts and pictures are visible to informed viewers. In this book, Davis provides a systematic analysis of visuality and describes how it comes into being as a historical form of vision. Expansive in scope, A General Theory of Visual Culture draws on art history, aesthetics, the psychology of perception, the philosophy of reference, and vision science, as well as visual-cultural studies in history, sociology, and anthropology. It provides penetrating new definitions of form, style, and iconography, and draws important and sometimes surprising conclusions (for example, that vision does not always attain to visual culture, and that visual culture is not always wholly visible). The book uses examples from a variety of cultural traditions, from prehistory to the twentieth century, to support a theory designed to apply to all human traditions of making artifacts and pictures--that is, to visual culture as a worldwide phenomenon.

Contents:

10. Visuality and the Cultural Succession

Notes

Index

Cover Page

Half-title Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication Page

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Part One: The Successions of Visual Culture

1. Vision Has an Art History

2. Vision and the Successions to Visual Culture

Part Two: What Is Cultural about Vision?

3. What Is Formalism?

4. The Stylistic Succession

5. The Close Reading of Artifacts

6. Successions of Pictoriality

7. The Iconographic Succession

8. Visuality and Pictoriality

Part Three: What Is Visual about Culture?

9. How Visual Culture Becomes Visible

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781400836437

1400836433

OCLC:

1315650344