Visual culture studies: twenty years later

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-197
Author(s):  
Margaret Dikovitskaya
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies

scholarly journals A descriptive mode in art and the issue of a representation

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-17
Author(s):  
O. V. Bezzubova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
American Art ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Research

The predominant for XX century art studies tradition was seriously reconsidered during the 1970– 1980s during the so called «new art history» development, when many received concepts were called into question. A notion of descriptiv e mode of painting proposed by an American art historian S. Alpers is of great interest in this context because it allows us to revise the homogeneous development of European art. While elaborating the concept of descriptive mode of painting, Alpers took under consideration a wide range of historical and cultural sources thus contributed to the new research approach nowadays known under the title of visual culture studies. It is not less important that she also focused on the issue of pictorial representation, which inquires the essence of the work of art.

scholarly journals Temptation, Resistance, and Art Objects: On the Lack of Material Theory within Art History before the Material Turn

2019 ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Charolotta Krispinsson
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material Turn

Niccolò di Pietro Gerini's painting “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” (1390-1400) serves as a point of departure for this essay. It depicts Saint Anthony during a lapse of self-control as he attempts to resist an alluring mound of gold. Since the mound is in fact made of genuine gold leaves applied to the painting's surface, it works both as a representation of temptation as well as an object of desire affecting the beholder. The aim of this essay is to explore different approaches to materiality before the material turn within the art history discipline by examining two opposing directions within the writing and practice of art history:  the tradition of connoisseurship; and the critique of the fetish within the theoretical apparatus of new art history and visual culture studies of the 1980s and 90s. As an expression of positivism within art history, it is argued that connoisseurship be considered within the context of its empirical practices dealing with objects. What is commonly described as the connoisseur's “taste” or “love for art” would then be just another way to describe the intimate relationship formed between art historians and the very objects under their scrutiny. More than other humanist disciplines, art history is, with the possible exception of archaeology, an object-based discipline. It is empirically anchored in the unruly, deep sea of objects commonly known as the history of art. Still, there has been a lack of in-depth theoretical reflection on the materiality of artworks in the writings of art historians before the material turn. The question however, is not ifthis is so, but rather, why?In this essay, it is suggested that the art history discipline has been marked by a complicated love-hate relationship with the materiality of which the very objects of study, more often than not, are made of; like Saint Anthony who is both attracted to and repelled by the shapeless mass of gold that Lucifer tempts him with. While connoisseurship represents attraction, resistance to the allure of objects can be traced to the habitual critique of fetishism of the first generations of visual culture studies and new art history. It reflects a negative stance towards objects and the material aspect of artworks, which enhanced a conceived dichotomy between thinking critically and analytically in contrast to managing documents and objects in archives and museum depositories. However, juxtaposing the act of thinking with the practice of manual labour has a long tradition in Western intellectual history. Furthermore, it is argued that art history cannot easily be compared to the history of other disciplines because of the simple fact that artworks are typically quite expensive and unique commodities, and as such, they provoke not just aesthetic but also fetishist responses. Thus, this desire to separate art history as a scientific discipline from the fetishism of the art market has had the paradoxical effect of causing art historians to shy away from developing methodologies and theory about materiality as an act of resistance. 

Visualizing Literacy: Images, Media, and Method

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan P. Bonfiglio
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Visual Literacy ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Media Research

While biblical scholars have long been interested in questions about textual literacy in the ancient world, relatively little attention has been given to the concept of visual literacy – that is, the extent to which images were produced and read as a type of language. The following article introduces this concept as it has been developed in recent work in visual culture studies and then offers a series of probes that attempt to assess the prominence of visual literacy in the ancient Near Eastern world. Though it is not possible to arrive at a precise rate of visual literacy, there is ample evidence to suggest that those who produced/commissioned art were highly concerned about questions regarding the readability of their materials and often privileged artistic motifs over epigraphic content in the design and implementation of certain mixed-media artifacts. These lines of evidence suggest that images functioned as a prominent vehicle of communication in the ancient world alongside, and sometimes in place of, text-based media. Research on visual literacy not only sheds new light on the ancient media contexts of the biblical world but also offers a more explicit rationale for how and why ancient images should be used in biblical interpretation today.


Introduction

Picture World ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Rachel Teukolsky
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Media History ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Cross Media ◽  
Cultural Field ◽  
Words And Images

The introduction explores both Victorian and contemporary theories of visual culture, while developing the book’s own interdisciplinary methodology. Visual culture studies, media history, art history, literary history, and cultural history number among the book’s disciplines. The chapters move across media to study novels and poems alongside photographs and illustrations. Weaving together both visual and textual strands, the book presents a revisionist, multidisciplinary approach to “culture” as it was lived and experienced in the nineteenth century. Academic divides between the disciplines today have obscured the cross-media connections studied in the book. The book’s approach captures the historical reality of the nineteenth century’s turbulent media moment, when the bounds of high art and mass culture were not yet fixed, and words and images mingled indiscriminately in the cultural field.

Viewer, I Married Him

Veil and Vow ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 140-162
Author(s):  
Aneeka Ayanna Henderson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies

This chapter uses film theory and visual culture studies to parse Malcolm D Lee's film The Best Man (1999) and Gina Prince-Bythewood's film Love and Basketball (2000) as well as the corresponding soundtracks, screenplays, and publicity. It illuminates how the films unsettle genre boundaries as well as encode progressive and pernicious messages about the formation of African American marriage and Black love for its Black middle-class characters.

Prismatic views: a look at the growing field of transgender art and visual culture studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-170
Author(s):  
Cyle Metzger ◽  
Kirstin Ringelberg
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
New Ideas

Transgender art and visual culture studies is a quickly growing field, and we present it to readers of this themed issue less as a linear discourse or a set of parameters than as a prism, with no clear temporal progression or geopolitical center. In this introduction, we not only announce the articles in this issue and discuss their convergences and divergences but also survey works in transgender studies that have proven critical to discussions of the visual and material within transgender cultures. Reading what follows, we hope any shared notion of transgender art and visual culture is expanded rather than contracted – that we find new ideas rather than merely those that reconfirm our existing sense of things or serve a monolithic construct that limits our future imaginary.

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