Understanding Pictures

Erscheinungsjahr 2004
ISBN: 978-0-19-927203-7
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 248 Seiten, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 360 g

There are many ways to picture the world - Australian `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 time. He develops a schema 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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lopes, Dominic

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunsttheorie, Kunstphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- I Pictures as Perceptual

- 1: Representation and Resemblance

- 2: Depiction and Vision

- II Pictures as Symbols

- 3: Goodman's Symbol Theory

- 4: Symbols and Substitutes

- 5: Pictorial Reference

- III Aspect Recognition

- 6: Pictorial Content

- 7: Pictorial Recognition

- 8: Pictorial Meaning

- 9: Pictorial Experience

- IV Applications

- 10: Fictive Pictures

- 11: Picturing Pictures

- Bibliography

- Picture Credits

- Index