Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education

by Barbara Maria Stafford

Chronicles the suppression of a thriving oral-visual culture of the early modern period in favor of the current text-centered culture where the mistrust of visual information shapes approaches to education. Stafford's reinterpretation casts many paintings as instances of an instructive art of demonstration. The enlightener's association of sensory evidence with deception led to the submergence of a "tricking" oral visual culture by "serious" mass literacy drives. With the onset of computer graphics, Stafford suggests fresh ways of putting intelligence, enjoyment, and communicative power back into thinking with images. Many examples are reproduced in black and white. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Genres: Art, Natural History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1994