On Pictures and the Words that Fail Them - Brossura

Elkins, James

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0521624991 ISBN 13: 9780521624992

Casa editrice: Cambridge University Press, 2011

Riassunto

In this innovative, interdisciplinary study, James Elkins argues against the assumption that images can be adequately described in words. In his view, words must always fail because pictures possess a residue of 'meaningless' marks that cannot be apprehended as signs. On Pictures and the Words that Fail Them is a 1998 text which provides detailed, incisive critiques of fundamental notions about pictures: their allegedly semiotic structures; the 'rational' nature of realism; and the ubiquity of the figure-ground relation. Elkins then opens the concept of images to non-Western and prehistoric ideas, exploring Chinese concepts of magic, Mesopotamian practices of counting and sculpture, religious ideas about hypostasis, philosophical discussions concerning invisibility and blindness, and questions on the limits of the destruction of meaning.

Su questo libro

Descrizione del libro:

In this innovative, interdisciplinary 1998 study, James Elkins argues against the assumption that images can be adequately described in words. In his view, words must always fail because pictures possess a residue of 'meaningless' marks that cannot be apprehended as signs.

Contenuti:

1. Marks, Traces, Traits, Contours, Orli, and Splendors; 2. The anti-splendor; 3. Figure and Ground in Philosophy, Neurophysiology, Phenomenology, Psychology, Painting, and Psychoanalysis; 4. The signs of writing; 5. The common origins of pictures, writing, and notation; 6. Different horizons for the concept of image; 7. Nine steps down the ladder of disorder; 8. The unrepresentable, the unpicturable, the inconceivable, the unseeable.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Cambridge University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0521624991
• ISBN 13: 9780521624992
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 348