| Description |
xix, 326 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
1. Marks, Traces, Traits, Contours, Orli, and Splendores -- 2. The Anti-Splendor -- 3. Figure and Ground in Philosophy, Neurophysiology, Phenomenology, Psychology, Painting, and Psychoanalysis -- 4. The Signs of Writing -- 5. The Common Origins of Pictures, Writing, and Notation -- 6. Different Horizons for the Concept of the Image -- 7. Nine Steps Down the Ladder of Disorder -- 8. The Unrepresentable, the Unpicturable, the Inconceivable, the Unseeable |
| Summary |
On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them provides detailed, incisive critiques of fundamental notions about pictures: their allegedly semiotic structures; the "rational" nature of realism; and the ubiquity of the figure/ground relation. Elkins then opens the concept of images to non-Western and prehistoric ideas, exploring Chinese concepts of magic, Mesopotamian practices of counting and sculpture, religious ideas about hypostasis, philosophical discussions concerning invisibility and blindness, and questions on the limits of the destruction of meaning |
| Notes |
Includes index |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-315) and index |
| Subject |
Image (Philosophy)
|
|
Interpretation (Philosophy)
|
| Genre/Form |
Pictures.
|
| LC no. |
97027900 |
| ISBN |
0521571081 (hb) |
|
0521624991 (paperback) |
|
