Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?

On the Modern Origins of Pictorial Complexity
1. Auflage 1999
ISBN: 978-0-415-91942-5
Verlag: CRC Press

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 536 g

With bracing clarity, James Elkins explores why images are taken to be more intricate and hard to describe in the twentieth century than they had been in any previous century. Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? uses three models to understand the kinds of complex meaning that pictures are thought to possess: the affinity between the meanings of paintings and jigsaw-puzzles; the contemporary interest in ambiguity and 'levels of meaning'; and the penchant many have to interpret pictures by finding images hidden within them. Elkins explores a wide variety of examples, from the figures hidden in Renaissance paintings to Salvador Dali's paranoiac meditations on Millet's Angelus, from Persian miniature paintings to jigsaw-puzzles. He also examines some of the most vexed works in history, including Watteau's "meaningless" paintings, Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling, and Leonardo's Last Supper.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Elkins, James

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunsttheorie, Kunstphilosophie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

INTRODUCTION: MUTILATED FIRE UNITE PART 1 CONSIDERING THINGS 1 THE EVIDENCE OF EXCESS 2 WHAT COUNTS AS COMPLEXITY? PART 2 STAYING CALM 3 HOW TO SOLVE PICTURE PUZZLES 4 AN AMBILOGY OF PAINTED MEANINGS 5 ON MONSTROUSLY AMBIGUOUS PAINTINGS 6 CALMING THE DELIRIUM OF INTERPRETATION PART 3 LOSING CONTROL 7 HIDDEN IMAGES: CRYPTOMORPHS, ANAMORPHS, AND ALEAMORPHS 8 THE BEST WORK OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY ART HISTORY 9 ENVOI: ON MEANINGLESSNESS

Über Autor(innen)

James Elkins is Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including What Painting Is (Routledge, 1998) and The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing (1996).