A History of Visual Culture: Western Civilization from the 18th to the 21st Century

Description

A History of Visual Culture is a history of ideas. The recent explosion of interest in visual culture suggests the phenomenon is very recent. But visual culture has a history. Knowledge began to be systematically grounded in observation and display from the Enlightenment. Since then, from the age of industrialisation and colonialism to today's globalised world, visual culture has continued to shape our ways of thinking and of interpreting the world. Carefully structured to cover a wide history and geography, A History of Visual Culture is divided into themed sections - Revolt and Revolution; Science and Empiricism; Gaze and Spectacle; Acquisition, Display, and Desire; Conquest, Colonialism, and Globalization; Image and Reality; Media and Visual Technologies. Each section presents a carefully selected range of case studies from across the last 250 years, designed to illustrate how all kinds of visual media have shaped our technology, aesthetics, politics and culture.

Jane Kromm is Professor of Art History at Purchase College, State University of New York and author of The Art of Frenzy: Public Madness in the Visual Culture of Europe, 1500-1850. Susan Benforado Bakewell is an independent curator and scholar, and has taught at the University of Texas, Arlington and Southern Methodist University. She is co-editor of Voices in New Mexico Art.

"This is the only treatment of visual culture with a broad temporal reach across a range of Western art practices that emphasizes the historical specificity of the visual experience. The approach - to highlight the key themes in visual culture and to illustrate these themes chronologically through carefully chosen case studies - is very effective." Kathleen Stewart Howe, Art and Art History, Pomona College, USA