Understanding Pictures
Author | : Dominic Lopes |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 240 |
Release | : 2004 |
ISBN-10 | : 0199272034 |
ISBN-13 | : 9780199272037 |
Rating | : 4/5 (34 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: There is not one but many ways to picture the world--Australian "x-ray" pictures, cubish collages, Amerindian split-style figures, and pictures in two-point perspective each draw attention to different features of what they represent. Understanding Pictures argues that this diversity is the central fact with which a theory of figurative pictures must reckon. Lopes advances the theory 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 argues that 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.