Visibility of the Image History and Perspectives of Formal Aesthetics
Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Lambert Wiesing, a prominent figure in image theory, is Professor of Philosophy at Jena University, Germany. He was President of the German Society for Aesthetics between 2005 and 2008. He was a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, UK in 2013. Translator Nancy Roth is an independent writer and translator based in the UK.Lambert Wiesing's The Visibility of the Image is the most important book on the history of art history I know. It gives six case studies of six art historians: Zimmermann, Riegl, Wolfflin, Fiedler, Merleau-Ponty and Morris, in search of the roots of a certain version of broadly formalist vision of art history and an account of our engagement with pictures. A must-read for anyone interested in any of these six authors but also for anyone interested in (vaguely formalist) art history and our engagement with pictures. -- Bence Nanay, Professor of Philosophy and BOF Research Professor Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp (Belgium), and Senior Research Associate Peterhouse, University of Cambridge (UK). Lambert Wiesing's landmark study reveals the deep historical roots of contemporary debates in image theory while at the same time opening up new philosophical resources. The reader is granted access to a distinctive tradition of enquiry that enormously enriches our understanding of image perception. -- Jason Gaiger, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Oxford, UK In this fascinating work, Wiesing takes the reader on a journey through formal aesthetics via the ideas of a judiciously selected range of important art historians and philosophers. The resulting discussion sheds light upon an impressive array of intellectual issues concerning pictures. A must read for anyone interested in the philosophical questions arising from pictorial representation. -- Dominic Gregory, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Sheffield, UK In this fascinating work - part history of philosophically-minded aesthetics, part rumination on the nature of images, and part exploration of how the possibilities implicit in that nature have increasingly been exploited by new image-making technologies - Lambert Wiesing offers a deeply informed and theoretically searching exploration of one of the dominant phenomena of our age. -- Robert Hopkins, Professor of Philosophy, New York University, USA