We live in the age of the mobile image. Our world is now saturated with moving images of all kinds, both analog and digital. This sea change in image production and circulation is nothing less than the Copernican revolution of our time. The centrality of the movement and mobility of the image has never been more dramatic. And just like the Copernican revolution, the aesthetic revolution of the image has consequences not only for the way we think about the contemporary image but also the way we think about all previous images. Theory of the Image offers a new and systematic philosophy of art and aesthetics from the perspective of movement--the first of its kind. Throughout history, the image has been understood in many ways, but rarely has it been understood to be, primarily and above all, in motion. Thus, Theory of the Image offers not only the first aesthetics of motion but also the first history of the mobility of the image in the Western art tradition, from prehistory to the present.

"Image Studies provides an engaging introduction to visual studies analysis and an account of existing and emergent visual culture debates, along with chapters on a range of topics, including: consumer culture and identity; photography and digital imaging; painting and drawing; the moving image; the relationship between image and text (including reference to text in art, comics and animation); and scientific imaging. Written in an engaging and accessible way, the text will also include extracts of existing critical materials. Each chapter will include key set readings, including short extracts from existing literatures with accompanying study notes and questions. The chapters will also include a range of critical and creative tasks, designed to bring the academic study of visual culture into direct contact with practical aspects of visual culture and image-making. Image Studies is a new text aimed predominantly at undergraduate students in visual culture, but which will also be useful for media studies students and arts students more generally"--

What precisely, W. J. T. Mitchell asks, are pictures (and theories of pictures) doing now, in the late twentieth century, when the power of the visual is said to be greater than ever before, and the "pictorial turn" supplants the "linguistic turn" in the study of culture? This book by one of America's leading theorists of visual representation offers a rich account of the interplay between the visible and the readable across culture, from literature to visual art to the mass media.

"This learned and heavy volume should be placed on the shelves of every art historical library."—E. H. Gombrich, New York Review of Books "This is an engaged and passionate work by a writer with powerful convictions about art, images, aesthetics, the art establishment, and especially the discipline of art history. It is animated by an extraordinary erudition."—Arthur C. Danto, The Art Bulletin "Freedberg's ethnographic and historical range is simply stunning. . . . The Power of Images is an extraordinary critical achievement, exhilarating in its polemic against aesthetic orthodoxy, endlessly fascinating in its details. . . . This is a powerful, disturbing book."—T. J. Jackson Lears, Wilson Quarterly "Freedberg helps us to see that one cannot do justice to the images of art unless one recognizes in them the entire range of human responses, from the lowly impulses prevailing in popular imagery to their refinement in the great visions of the ages."—Rudolf Arnheim, Times Literary Supplement

W.J.T. Mitchell – one of the founders of visual studies – has been at the forefront of many disciplines such as iconology, art history and media studies. His concept of the pictorial turn is known worldwide for having set new philosophical paradigms in dealing with our vernacular visual world. This book will help both students and seasoned scholars to understand key terms in visual studies – pictorial turn, metapictures, literary iconology, image/text, biopictures or living pictures, among many others – while systematically presenting the work of Mitchell as one of the discipline's founders and most prominent figures. As a special feature, the book includes three comprehensive, authoritative and theoretically relevant interviews with Mitchell that focus on different stages of development of visual studies and critical iconology.

will compliment Beach's book, Decision Making, and sell in management and Industrial?organizational programs.

A refreshing critique that offers a new paradigm for film studies.