Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture, and Media Aesthetics by W. J. T. Mitchell

by W.J. Thomas Mitchell

Almost thirty years ago, W. J. T. Mitchell’s  Iconology  helped launch the interdisciplinary study of visual media, now a central feature of the humanities. Along with his subsequent  Picture Theory  and  What Do Pictures Want? , Mitchell’s now-classic work introduced such ideas as the pictorial turn, the image/picture distinction, the metapicture, and the biopicture. These key concepts imply an approach to images as true objects of investigation—an “image science.”

Continuing with this influential line of thought,  Image Science  gathers Mitchell’s most recent essays on media aesthetics, visual culture, and artistic symbolism. The chapters delve into such topics as the physics and biology of images, digital photography and realism, architecture and new media, and the occupation of space in contemporary popular uprisings. The book looks both backward at the emergence of iconology as a field and forward toward what might be possible if image science can indeed approach pictures the same way that empirical sciences approach natural phenomena.

Essential for those involved with any aspect of visual media,  Image Science  is a brilliant call for a method of studying images that overcomes the “two-culture split” between the natural and human sciences.

Genres: Art

Hardcover

First published November 5, 2015

About the author

William J. Thomas Mitchell is a professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. Editor of the journal Critical Inquiry.

His monographs, Iconology (1986) and Picture Theory (1994), focus on media theory and visual culture. He draws on ideas from Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx to demonstrate that, essentially, we must consider pictures to be living things. His collection of essays What Do Pictures Want? (2005) won the Modern Language Association's prestigious James Russell Lowell Prize in 2005. In a recent podcast interview Mitchell traces his interest in visual culture to early work on William Blake, and his then burgeoning interest in developing a science of images. In that same interview he discusses his ongoing efforts to rethink visual culture as a form of life and in light of digital media.

Reviews

[ASC Library]

701.8 Mit

[Karla Kitalong · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few chapters that didn't resonate with me.