An Introduction to Visual CultureThis is a wide-ranging and stimulating introduction to the history and theory of visual culture from painting to the computer and television screen. It will prove indispensable to students of art and art history as well as students of cultural studies. Mirzoeff begins by defining what visual culture is, and explores how and why visual media - fine art, cinema, the Internet, advertising, performance, photography, television - have become so central to contemporary everyday life. He argues that the visual is replacing the linguistic as our primary means of communicating with each other and of understanding our postmodern world. Part One of the Introduction presents a history of modern ways of seeing, including: * the formal practices of line and colour in painting * photographys claim to represent reality * virtual reality, from the nineteenth century to the present. In Part Two, Mirzoeff examines: * the visualization of race, sexuality and human identity in culture * gender and sexuality and questions of the gaze in visual culture * representations of encounters with the other, from colonial narratives to Science Fiction texts such as The Thing, Independence Day, Star Trek and The X-Files * the death of Princess Diana and the popular mourning which followed as marking the coming of age of a global visualized culture. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
PART ONE Visuality | 34 |
PART TWO Culture | 124 |
PART THREE GlobalLocal | 223 |
INDEX | 253 |
BOOK COVER | 272 |
TITLETITLE | i |
TITLE | iii |
CONTENTS | v |
ILLUSTRATIONS | viii |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | xi |
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
PART ONE Visuality | 34 |
PART TWO Culture | 124 |
PART THREE GlobalLocal | 223 |
253 | |
COPYRIGHT | iv |
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African alien American artists audience become Belgian Bladerunner body Borg British called camera cinema Coco Fusco Cold War colonial color Congo Congo river contemporary created critics cultural studies cyborg depicted Diana Diana's death élite European everyday evoked example experience extraterrestial fans female fetishism Figure French Fusco gaze gender global Goldin homosexuality human identity imagined Independence Day interaction Internet intersex Klingon Kongo London look male Mangbetu Mbuti means minkisi miscegenation modern Museum Nan Goldin nineteenth century nkisi painting Paris perspective photograph Picard picture pixelated political popular possible postmodern produced race racial represent representation Routledge science fiction seems sense sexual simply soap opera social society space Star Trek sublime television theory traditional transculture University Press viewer virtual reality vision visual culture visual media Weegee Western woman women X-Files York