by James Elkins
SUMMARY: In the domain of visual images, those of fine art form
a tiny minority. This book calls upon art historians
to look beyond their traditional subjects to the vast
array of "nonart" images, including those from
science, technology, commerce, medicine, music, and
archaeology. Such images can be as rich and expressive
as any canonical painting. Using illustrations as
examples, Elkins proposes a way of thinking about
visual analysis, one that relies on an object's own
internal sense of organization. The author begins by
demonstrating the arbitrariness of current criteria
used by art historians for selecting images for study.
He urges scholars to adopt, instead, the far broader
criteria of the young field of image studies. After
analyzing the philosophic underpinnings of this
interdisciplinary field, he surveys a range of images,
from calligraphy to mathematical graphs and abstract
painting. Throughout, Elkins blends philosophic
analysis with historical detail to produce a sense of
such basic terms as pictures, writing, and notation.
CONTENTS:
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of plates
1 Art history and images that are not art
2 Art history as the history of crystallography
3 Interpreting nonart images
4 What is a picture?
5 Pictures as ruined notations
6 Problems of classification
7 Allographs
8 Semasiographs
9 Pseudowriting
10 Subgraphemics
11 Hypographemics
12 Emblemata
13 Schemata
14 Conclusion: ghosts and natural images
Glossary
Frequently Cited Sources
Picture Credits
Index
Hardcover, 296 pages
Dimensions: 0.99 x 10.28 x 7.25 (inches) 2.5 x 26.1 x 18.4 (cm)
Price: USA $ 45
Published: May 1999
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0-8014-3559-5
Webpages about this book:
http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=0801435595
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornellpress/cup3_catalog.taf?_function=detail&Title_ID=127&