What precisely, W. J. T. Mitchell asks, are pictures (and theories of pictures) doing now, in the late twentieth century, when the power of the visual is said to be greater than ever before, and the "pictorial turn" supplants the "linguistic turn" in the study of culture? This book by one of America’s leading theorists of visual representation offers a rich account of the interplay between the visible and the readable across culture, from literature to visual art to the mass media.

CONTENTS:

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1: The Pictorial Turn
2: Metapictures
3: Beyond Comparison: Picture, Text, and Method
4: Visible Language: Blake’s Art of Writing
5: Ekphrasis and the Other
6: Narrative, Memory, and Slavery
7: Ut Pictura Theoria: Abstract Painting and Language
8: Word, Image, and Object: Wall Labels for Robert Morris
9: The Photographic Essay: Four Case Studies
10: Illusion: Looking at Animals Looking
11: Realism, Irrealism, and Ideology: After Nelson Goodman
12: The Violence of Public Art: Do the Right Thing
13: From CNN to JFK
Conclusion: Some Pictures of Representation
Index

AUTHOR:

W. J. T. Mitchell is the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago and editor of Critical Inquiry.