Cover image for
Title:
Visuality and virtuality : images and pictures from prehistory to perspective / Whitney Davis.
Author:
Davis, Whitney, author.
Publication Information:
Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2017]
Call Number:
N7430.5 .D39 2017
Abstract:
This book builds on the theoretical framework established in Whitney Davis's acclaimed previous book, A General Theory of Visual Culture, in which he shows how certain culturally constituted aspects of artifacts and pictures are visible to informed viewers. Here, Davis uses archaeological and historical case studies to further develop his theory, presenting a new account of the interaction that occurs when a viewer looks at a picture. Davis argues that pictoriality - the depiction intended by its maker to be seen - emerges at a particular standpoint in space and time. Reconstruction of this standpoint is the first step of the art historian's craft. Because standpoints are inherently mutable and mobile, pictoriality constantly shifts in form and possible meaning. To capture this complexity, Davis develops new concepts of radical pictorial ambiguity, including "bivisibility" (the fact that pictures can always be seen in ways other than intended), pictorial naturalism, and the behavior of pictures under changing angles of view. He then applies these concepts to four cases - Paleolithic cave painting; ancient Egyptian tomb decoration; classical Greek architectural sculpture, with a focus on the Parthenon frieze; and Renaissance perspective as invented by Brunelleschi.
ISBN:
9780691171944
Physical Description:
xiii, 350 pages : illustrations ; 27 cm
Contents:
Introduction: Images and pictures -- Part 1: Analytics of imaging pictures in visual space. Visuality and virtuality : analytics of visual space and pictorial space ; Radical pictoriality : seeing-as, seeing-as-as, seeing-as-as-as ... ; What the Chauvet Master saw : on the presence of prehistoric pictoriality -- Part 2: Bivisibility, bivirtuality, and birotationality. Bivisibility : between the successions to visuality ; Bivirtuality : pictorial naturalism and the revolutions of rotation ; Birotationality : frontality, foreshortening, and virtual pictorial space -- Part 3: Pictorial successions of virtual coordinate space. What Hesire saw : virtual coordinate space in ancient Egyptian depiction ; What Phidias saw : virtual coordinate space in Classical Greek architectural relief ; What Brunelleschi saw : virtual coordinate space and painter's perspective.
Personal Author:
Copies: