Nicholas Mirzoeff - An introduction to visual culture

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An Introduction to Visual Culture

An Introduction to Visual Culture is the best book I have read on cultural theory this decade The book is crisply written and offers a clear view of a complex, multidisciplinary field which has emerged over the past three years.

Anne Massey, Art Monthly

An original, well-researched and engaging text that makes a unique contribution to the analysis and understanding of visual culture. Mirzoeffs masterful handling of his material makes for a timely work that will have an immediate and direct appeal to many readers and students.

John Di Stefano, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Mirzoeffs careful attention to issues ranging from Renaissance perspective to popular media culture makes this book a valuable starting point for readers interested in sampling the range of topics covered in visual culture studies.

Lisa Cartwright, University of Rochester, New York

An Introduction to Visual Culture provides a comprehensive introduction to the exciting new interdisciplinary field of visual culture.

Tracing the history and theory of visual culture from painting to the World Wide Web, An Introduction to Visual Culture asks how and why visual media have become so central to contemporary everyday life. Mirzoeff suggests that our primary way of understanding the world is now increasingly visual, and not textual.

In this innovative introductory text, Nicholas Mirzoeff explores:

What is visual culture?

Elements of the visual, including perspectives, color, line, and vision.

A wide range of visual media, including painting, sculpture, photography, television, cinema, Virtual Reality, and the Internet.

The importance of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and the body in visual culture.

The international media event which followed the death of Princess Diana, as marking the coming of age of a global visual culture.

Nicholas Mirzoeff is Associate Professor of Art at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is the author of Bodyscape: Art, Modernity and the Ideal Figure (1995) and editor of The Visual Culture Reader (1998) and Diaspora and Visual Culture: Representing Africans and Jews (1999).

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Nicholas Mirzoeff

London and New York

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First published 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.

1999 Nicholas Mirzoeff

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-01413-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-15875-3 (hbk)

ISBN 0-415-15876-1 (pbk)

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