Understanding pictures
By: Dominic Lopes.
Series: Oxford philosophical monographs
Publisher: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Oxford; Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
Subjects: Aesthetics.; Pictures.
Description: There are not one but many ways to picture the worldAustralian 'x-ray' pictures, cubist collages, Amerindian split-style figures, and pictures in two-point perspective each draw attention to different features of what they represent. The premise of Understanding Pictures is that this diversity is the central fact with which a theory of figurative pictures must reckon.

Lopes argues that identifying pictures' subjects is akin to recognizing objects whose appearances have changed over the time. He develops a scheme for categorizing the different ways pictures represent - the different kinds of meaning they have - and he contends that depiction's epistemic value lies in its representational diversity. He also offers a novel account of the phenomenology of pictorial experience, comparing pictures to visual prostheses like mirrors and binoculars.

The book concludes with a discussion of works of art which have made pictorial meaning their theme, demonstrating the importance of the issues this book raises for understanding the aesthetics of pictures.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [228]-234) and index.
Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--Oxford University, 1992, originally presented under the title: Pictures as perceptual symbols.