t¡t

;: ::1:
-! la ,f
: . .;;,
'
ì', llt t:t :::: {ar ; :: :::::: -t::::
.a
I tiüt

t!il
llll
s

rl;
! lr
ll
illlll l¡ll
ll|]
ii lllï ti li''
ilil illl lf/t il
i ,lT
I

I
:lrliiii
lr' ll¡il
riit¡ titililt iltI ,li

lllt HII¡i rllll lllr tt ll r I ¡ ', lail l' r

1

III! rIWI !illt ril

i lr t llr
lJ I
I
l:t
ill ¡ I' fft[ iiii il iili il lli ir il! |i:iiìi li¡iä
t¡¡lt
tilli
lllr rli :, lliltllll ll¡ll : ,l tt¡l lll ll ,r ill.ltl il I l¡i.l ,, t fl
.rÑ¡ ¡a,a¡æ
¡ a¡¡ t¡t taa llta rlL
-- --"* ':l al Ë!r la t- ) a..taa !-tm !ü¡¡
l u|III
;¡ii
t!lt
lrr
fi ìt ffi[ ilr lil ; liirtitir I li'ffi|
rl
$|nlll
r |tl rrttrl . t¡
,' l ;¡ $llNiflllf r
lt;t
ilil ¡li
,

lllill lll til l{,.

t'
rll
rri
l ¡rtll:
ll a¡¡¡t¡ ìi Iiii c,ii :
il. i r, lil' ?ti i:iiir
illu! fi I
ri
!lr'l
lnRä ilil
ar

tüi lr
I
'i li'''l I

tII llt llll¡ll Í llltl ¡( ;il rlttl' tl ll |tl i¡ xir

.¡¡daa rtr ¡a¡¡¡ U{'rr at¡¡¡¡ :!
; ¿i. 't
ll
lllt Itf
lllH {i{
ir it
s'
ìilll
il¡' I
txt lll lt ftilTi llllÌ
'l ll l' i lnltr rlllr stir

till tll ' I Ir

r aill t"
t It
i lËll Iti I
rtr 'r¡ii I" lTilri
l¡'
:'
ll'

ili
l'
'ì
tlilï tlii
. är
lr
rf

.; _:'
'|\

r* 'i

¡¡ !-.

1f o' lf ll"
tr

THE HANnRnnK nE VISUAL CULTURE

l¡näu.'inl*tL fr(
trl r),
_Þ
 IN VISUAL CULTURE 69
MAJORTHEORETICAL FRAME\øORKS

THE VtSUAt TURN

,visual
The term
culture' Êrst appeared on rhe covers of books whose topics were neither
a capital '¡i: Towards ø Visual
ü.rr.r¡ arr nor-in the spirii of their time-art with and Visual Cul-
¿;;;r, Educating tbrough-Teleuision (1969) by Caleb Gattegno, Comics

'l
1 ".',1),
nn*uh StudUs from Ten Coun*ies (1936), edited by Alphons Silbermann and
the Little Tiauerse
Oyrot, and The Way h Happened: A Wsual Culture Hhtory of
'1a,"-.g.
'iolyrr¿, McClurken. Before he acquired a blacþa.d-white

Maioï Th eoTeilca ihß:;*"

dOdawa(1991) byJames
s"et in 1966, Gattegno had studied the imagery
of childrens drawings and

sln
a
films for reachers'education. Marvelling at the efficacy of
knowing through

Frarne\il ofk ää;,

*"ir,frO book distinguished
between 'the clumsiness of speech' as a means of expression
powers of vision ' With sight' Gattegno
states'
,íd tn"

v SUA1 Culture
a

1, infinities are given at once;

wealth is its description. In contrast to the speed of light'

*. "*¿ ti*, to talk and express what we want to say. The (Gattegnoine¡tia of photons is nil
1969: 4)
.ornp"r.d to the inertia of our muscles and chains of bones.
ITSKAYA
T DI KÛV
hÄAF1GÅ\RE.
This position reflects a utoprân spirit:
Gattegno posrts tha t televisio n would make the
gßatest contribution ln the area of education by 'casting away ouf preconceptions, our
prejudices made expl rclt by the shock of the encountef of a true image and presumably

rl¡C belief' As such, obviously vulnerable to cfttlclsm from all quarters of contem
1t 1S

scholarshi p: we need tlme t0 see what \MC gaze upon, and this
meaning-making
ts unthinkable without language, after all. B ut Gattegnot
text 'was among the
that emphasized the formation of subjectivity: 'To talk of the medium of television
,o arlk of the perceiver, the responder, the expander, and the processor of
-"n
(1969:4).
at present 1S dominated by the speed, the logic and the ubiquiry of the
screen: we have all become accustomed to scanning lmages instantaneo uslv
dominated by sensory overload. There ls a much greater fluidity of
between the visual and other forms of knowledge, with more access to obj ects
the visual, The condition of our culture in which visuality is centrally impor-
to the fore the new approaches to its academic study. The issues of visual-
I have
been zealously explored across â broad range of the humanities and
trend called the'visual turd (Jay 2002)
tefm 'pictorial turn' was col ned 1n the 1 99 0s by \ø.J T Mitchell, it has
focus for the ongolng
theoretical discussion o n prctures whose sta tr¡s lies
between what Thomas
Kuhn called "paradigm and an anomalv and
as a kind of model or figure for other things' 1n the human scl-
r994: 1 3). Mitchell (
995b has further posited that a new interdisci-
has surfaced around
the Plcto rial turn that funs through critical
argue that if we afe to âccept Mitchell s thesis that visual stud
marriage of art
histo ry (a discipline organized aro und a theoretical
studies (an
academic movement echoing social movements) we

research'
 R TI-l F,O RE',f I CAL FITAME SøO RI(S I N VISUAI. CULIURE 7t
MAjo
PERSPT'CTIVE'S
AND THþìORETICAL
HISTORICAL
production. Contemporary scholarship has disciosed the ways in which the wolk
10 r^ "ìcrral studies possible
in the ¡nass
rejects contingency and refuses
that nrade
visual stu< ofart-has been traditionally presented as the object that
tutn'
that it is the 'cultural or
,frusrrares the grasp of ciiscu¡sive systems of knowledge thlough its relentless formai
shoulcl recognize and has revealecl how 'formal meaning becomes the emblem of an
self-transformarion'
(Kester 2000 2). The scholarship
immanent, auronomous dlive towards differentiation'
,ho, ,.;..r, the primacy of art in
relation to other discursive practices and yet focuses on
rhe sensuous and semiotic
peculiarity of the visual can no longer be called art history-it
deserves the name of
visual studies'

FROM ART HISTORY TO A HISTORY OF IMAGES

The ûeld of visual culture

or visual studies is not the same thing for all of its theorists and
Moreovet, one can speak of distinct schools of thought being fonned at
fr..titio,r.rr.
,h. dtff.r.n, institutions of higher learning
in which these people teach and do research.
To start with, Michael Ann Holl¡
former chair of the Art and Art History Department
at the Universiry of Rochester
(home to the first US graduate Program in Visual Studies)
at the Clark Art Institute, thinks
,nd no¡v clirector of research and academic program
of visual cnlture as a hybrici rerm that describes
a situation when one fuses works of art

with co'temporary rheory imported from other disciplines

and fields, particularly semi-

otics a'cl feminism. For Holly, visual stuclies calls into questiou the role of all images in
be contrasted ancl
cultule, fr.om oil painting to twentieth-centuryTV Trese images can
compared on rhe basis of their working as visual representations in culture
rather than
through tþe use of such categories as'masterpieces' and'created by geniuses'versus'low
arC (óikovitskaya 2005h: 194). As a historiographer interested in the intellectual
his-
tory of arthistor¡ Holly has been concerned with how the practice of art history in tire
United States was tuuring inro an empirical discipline, preoccupied solely with facts and
frozen in place around the time of the Cold \7ar. In the late 1980s, the influx of think-
ing that has fallen under the ubiquitous term 'theory' shook up those established proce-
dures and protocols of the discipline. Stephen Melville of Ohio State University pointed
to theory as the essential background for the origin of visual culture:

Shortly afìer the Second Vorlcl \Øar, and depending very much on a complicated set
of cultural and political developments through the i960s, you have the emergence of
a very powerful
li¡e of thinking in France that ultimately gives rise to what is called,
briefly and mostly journal France l¡ut much more sustainedly
around the Tet Quetin
tn theUnited Stltes, 'theory.' The developments that drive the emergence of theory
nappened
in a vrr.ie ry of fielcls-anthropology, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, intel-
lectual
history, philosophy. The¡e is a large body of shared references that bind thern
together.-to
Saussu¡e and linguistics, ro rhe drift of post-Kantian European philoso-
Ph|' to 5snq
or neâr Surrealism. One shared feature of this work is its claim
stal<es ir.r
to-a,thorotrgh-going'anti,humanism.'Some
people think of it as a form of Marxist
critique *irt ,t-r. modifìer 'bourgeois' unclerstood to be integral to what's
Ïi]"ry
"'ç¿nt bI hurnanism
hele; others, including myself, will take its force to be l¡etter
 MAJOR THEORETICAL FRAME \øORKS IN Vi SUAL CULTURE /J

PERSPECTIVES
AND THgORETICAL
H1STONCÀL within images; instead, this new field breaks down established systems of interpretation
12 in order to find new meanings in the work of art'
Moxey charted two possibilities for the new research area: it could become the study
of ttll images'without making qualitative distinctions' between them, or, preferably, it
'all images for which distinguished cultural value has been or
rnight concern itself with
is being proposed'
(t996: 57).he use of the past perfect tense along with the present
was not accidental: it spells out Moxeyt idea that aesthetic
tense in the last statement
what was worth studying
criteriado not exist outside a specific historical context, and
vesterday might
not be considered so today. This consciousness helped to undermine the
has animated art history; indeed, it was the absence of
th.ory of universal response that
basis for art histo¡ical activiry that made the new academic
this universal epistemological
field of visual studies
possible. Yet, while Moxey rejected the concept of immanent aes-

thetic value, he did not deny

its existence as a social consttuct: aesthedc value had been
ascribed to the work of art by the culture of the European Enlightenment and has been

modified with the times. Far from supporting

the canon, Moxey argues that visual stud-
ies should reenact a contestation between different forms, genres and mediums of visual
production as rhe embodiments of different cultural values. Hence, this new field will
have a selective focus, which will change over time.
There has been no unanimity among scholars about the relation of art history to the
nudy of image. For instance, Moxey suggests that visual studies has revived the disci-
pline of art history through the study and 'the recognition of [images'] heterogeneiry the
clfcumstances of their production, and the variery of cultural and social func-
theyserve' (Moxey 2001: 109). On the other hand, art historian Thomas Crow
not welcome visual culture claiming that 'a panick¡ hastily considered substitu-
of image history for art history can only have the effect of ironing out differences'
in Heller 1996: A8). For Crow, the study of art acknowledges that art is a social
but asks that it cannot be equated with visual culture as a whole.a

THE VISUAT AND THE cUTTURAL IN VISUAT STUDIES

D' Herbert of the University of California at lrvine, visual culture is a term
all human products with a pronounced visual aspect including those
as a matter of social practice, carry the imprimatur of art, whereas visual
name for the academic
discipline tha t takes visual culture as ltS o bj ect of
studies democra
tlzes the communltv of visual artefacts by cons idering all
not just those classified
as art_as having aesthedc and ideological com-
instead o f leveling
them or lumpin o them all together visual studies
ùe scrutiny of the
hierarchy of o bjects tha t has imb ued and conttnues to
greater sl gnificance
than others. I find a connectlon between this
studies and
the concept of \Vorld fut Studies' initially put fo rward by
John Onians. \Øhen \Vorld Art Studies works against the art his-
the broadest vlew
of what ls visually interesting It' ike visual
the vaflatlc)n of concentratl0n on different forms of
 MAJOR THEORETI CAL FRAME\øO RKS IN VISUAL CULTURE 75
PERSPECTIVES
THEORETICAL
H1STOR1CALAND
assuch. Mitchell treats textuality as a foil to imager¡ a significant other or rival mode of
7 representation. Vithin this framework, the history of culture is the story of the struggle
berween pictorial and linguistic signs, a history which refects

the relations we posit benveen symbols and the world, signs and their meanings. The
image is the sign that pretends not to be a sign, masquerading as (or, for the believer,
actually achieving) natural immediacy and presence. The word is its 'other,' the artifi-
cial, arbitrary production of humanwill that disrupts natural presence by introducing
unnatural elements into the world-time, consciousness, histor¡ and the alienating
intervention of symbolic mediation. (Mitchell 1986:43)

According to Mitchell, the word-image difference can be likened to the relation between
wo languages that have been interacting for a long time: an ongoing dialogue between ver-
bal and pictorial representations. Mitchell condemns the current separation
of the academic
humanities into verbal and visual factions6 and stresses that all media are mixed media.
For Mitchell, the emergence of visual culture is a challenge to traditional notions of
reading and literacy. Because the literary text consists of visible signs, the alphabet and
mode of inscription become issues: the researcher has to analyse writing as a system of
images. The Chinese character system, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Aztec writing have
very elaborate graphic conventions. All these symbols have historical origins; they be-
come the proper domain of visual culture, which stimulates an interest in typograph¡
and calligraphy. Beyond this graphic level, there is a realm of what can be
.gaphology
in literature implied by the teft thât contains images, inscrip-
l ulled 'virrual' visuality
and projections of space. Thaditional literary scholars, who are not interested in
the text represents itself, usually read through novels, plays and poems for some-
else (plot, meaning, etc.) and are not very mindful of descriptive literary texts
thepro.iection of virtual spaces and places unfolds. Visual culture, on the other
refers to this world of internal visualization that appeals to imagination, memory
Memory is encoded both visually and verbally and has a connection to-
The psychological notions of vision-interior vision, imagining, dreaming,
activated by both visual and literarv means. Thus, the studv of vls ual
ellows all these asPects to come ln to vlew: one
begins to Iook at and actually
the process of visualizing li teratY texts.

PRACTICES OF SEËING
visual culture
analysis 1S shifted away from things viewed towards the Pro-
insists Mitchell.
In this light, visual reDresentâttons aÍe seen as Part o f an
set of practices and
disco urses. Mitchell chose the title 'Visual Culture' 1n
for the ûrst ln the United States undergrad uate course (in the
was nterested ln the constructedness of vlslon:

Studies seemed ro me roo vague, since it could mean anything

r¡ith vision,
while Visual Culture . .. suggesrs something mo¡e like an
 MAJOR THEORETICAL FRAME\øORKS IN VISUAL CULTURE 77
PERSPECTIVES
AN D THEORETICAL
HiSTORICAL
In this light, Janet \X/olff, former director of the Rochester Visual and Cultural
lo Studies Program and now professor of Cultural Sociology and director of the Centre for
Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts at the University of Manchester, has argued that
the necessary project for the study of visual culture is an approach which combines tex-
tual analysis with sociological analysis of institutions. Such an approach emerged from
her own frustration with two modes of analysis-what she described as a

parallel experience and parallel dissatisfaction with two traditions: first, a socioiogi-
cal tradition that looks at cultural institutions and cultural processes but never pays
arrenrion to the text... and which is agnostic about aesthetic questions; and second,
textual analysis mainly in the humanities, which for the most pâft pâys no att€ntion to
institutions and social processes, but concentrates on readings-however interesting
but nonetheless just readings-of texts and images. My argument has been that the
best kind ofwork in visual studies manages to do both of those things and to integrate
them. (Dikovitskaya 2005 e: 27 6-7)

Visual studies claims that the experience of the visual is contextual, ideological and
political. Douglas Crimp posits that objects of study should be determined by the rype
\When
of knowledge that one seeks to create and by the specific uses for that knowledge.
hc began thinking about the subject of AIDS about twenty-five years ago, he was inter-
csted in how US arrists and the art world as a social matrix were responding to the crisis
brought on by the epidemic. Crimp became involved in a political movement fighting
: AIDS. He soon realized that the initial questions he had been asking were inadequate
ûr the rype of information he sought to produce:

To limit myself to fairly narrowly defined notions of art practice or the art world
not suffice . .. This didnr mean that I relinquished my interest in how art prac-
were dealing with AIDS, but it gave me a very different perspective on how peo-
might deal with it: what kinds of information they would have to understand in
to dealwith the subject adequately. (Dikovitskaya200lc: L32)

Crimp began looking at wider ranges of cultural discourses, including popular

medical discourse, that were outside the purview of con temporary art This
albeit a vivid, example
of how and *hy a researcher' s oflentatlon has changed
crìtical to visual
studies pers pectl ve
of Do uglas Crimp coincides with that of Gayatfr Spivak and Irit Rog-
to whom lt IS the questions that they ask that produce the new field of
99 8: I 6) Rogoff's essay, Studying Vis ual Culture' appeared ln The
Reøder 1
99 8 edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff and almlng to trace how a
of visio n and the gaze over the preceding fifteen years had led to
of visual studies.
AS she poin ted o rlt what wâs being analysed by 7be
of vision version
of Derrida' concept of dffirance' organized around
of queries '\Whom
we see and whom we do not see, who ls pri vileged
 MAJ OR THEORETICAL F RAME \øO RKS IN VIS UAL CULTURE 79
CAL PERS PECTlVES
AND TH!,ORETI
HISTORICÀL forms-TV channels and programs, visual infrastructures such as cable and satellite and
\World \Øide \Øeb-is one of the key features of our lives. Since the exploration of
the
these forms does not fit the disciplinary boundaries of traditional academic courses, a post-
disciplinary formation called visual culture comes to the fore. Mirzoeffcalls visual culture
the interface beftveen all the disciplines dealing with the visuality of contemporary culture
and studying the visual in the overlap between representation and cultural power. I argue
that the thesis ofvisual culture as an interface, that is the point of interconnection
between

one nerwork and another network

(here between the disciplines), can be presented as får
answer to a recent criticism of
visual culture put forward by Mieke Bal, who lays blame

onvisual culture for'visual essentialism'in its describing'the segment

of that culture that
if it could be isolated . . . from the rest of that culture' (Bal 2003: 6, emphasis
is visual, as

added). Neither Mirzoeffnor

other theorists mentioned in this essay would have suggested

such a narrow approach.

Furthermore, stressed Mirzoeff, in talking about visuality

one has in mind a much wider field than that concerned only with the media, one
covering the present process of collapse of the media into each other, or convergence-
panicul"rly in the digital realm-so that it no longer makes sense to organize our
study of vistraliry by medium. (Dikovitskaya 2005i:227)

David N. Rodowick, a former professor at the Rochester Visual and Cultural Studies
Program and now the director of Graduate Studies for Film and Visual Studies, is mostly
in the critical theoretical study of the different visual and articulable regimes.
interested
to Mirzoeff, Rodowick argues that the notion of visual culture is not only a
of twentieth-century culture but needs to be applied historically. He based
concept of visual culture on Deleuzet (1988) understanding of Foucault's theory.
was able to see in Foucault what Foucault did not necessarily see clearly himself
that he had a unique sense of how the occurrence of epistemic changes from
society ancl the industrialized era to the twentieth century took place. Fou-
revealed not only changing notions of subjectivity but also how such notions of
themseives overlap different strategies ofvisualization and expression, which
called /ø uisible et l'énonçable, or the visible and the utterable.
developed a periodization of the history of power-from a sovereign, to a
towhat he calls a'conrrolsociery'. \While each of these periods is marked
strategies of knowing and power, they are also articulated by means of dis-

of the visible and the expressible. Rodowick states that the same
can be used to explain
both cultural and epistemological changes taking
long periods
of time, and this is what visual culture 'is all abour: how these
of Powef and knowledge change across different strategies of visualiza-
and how they are imbrica ted wlth one another ln different com plex
relatively distinct,
historical efas (Dikovitskaya 20 0 5 b: 263) Visual
rnodes of being and experiencing within distinct re gimes, modes such
positions that emerge through visual relations, the sub
of spectacle, )ect
well as industries of the visual.
-as
MAJOR THEORETI CAL FRAME\íORKS iN VISUAL CULTURE 81

in Visual Studies than they are to someone from the English Department working in
cultural studies'
Visual studies is neither a modernized art history nor cultural studies. Although
both cultural studies and visual studies question the firm stance art history takes with
regarå to the authenticity ofartistic expression at the level ofhigh art, cultural studies
begins from the assumption that cultural expression at the level of popular culture is an
authentic expression of class or national identity thus reversing the formula 'high art
versus mass culture'. Visual studies, rather than making this reversal, historicizes the vi-
sual by promoting the view that the discipline of art history begs the fundamental ques-
tion, \Øhat is art? This question could not have been asked within art history because
the discipline itselÊ-as its name presupposes-depends on the assumption that what is
worthwhile is already present. Herbert, trained as a social historian of afi,tz had begun
his research by posing the problem,
'Here's a painting of peasants, and there is some his-

tory about peasants; lett examine the connection'. In spite of the fact that social history
was a radical movement at the time, however, this research question did not yield a radi-

ølly different insight:

Ifyou study the social history of art, you end up measuring these'artistic' things against
something else, and similarly if you are doing a formal analysis, or carrying out an in-
terrextual analysis of c¡iticism. In each case, there seems to be this need for art or spe-
cific'artistic' artifâcts in order to justify the discipline ... In writing my first book called
Fduue Pøinting: The Møhing of Cuhural Politics, I realized that by the very nature of the
opic I would not be able to answer certain questions because I begin by saying, 'Let's
rartwith Fauve painting' ,..h my second book, Paris 1937: IVorld on Exhibition,
looked at six world exhibitions, taking place over an eight-month period in France;
of them were art exhibitions and some were nor, The idea of the book was to find
way of holding all hisrorical variables consranr in order to see clearly what partic-
function and purpose the category of art has. At art exhibitions, rhe 'art' label is as-
valid. How different it is when the label is absent! (Dikovitskaya 2005d: 186)

teld of visual studies enables us to ask q uesttons that aÍe not asked tn art his-
does art do? \Øhat are the social and formal advocacies for the
category of 2
scholars afe convinced that ^Ít
the most sociall v effective aspect of painting 1S
ln a scrutiny of the constructedness
f
of 'aÍt' when the notlon o aÍt itself takes
over the artwork
1n stipulating ItS receptron Visual studies has no lnterest ln
platonic defi
nltlon of art that would hold true once and forever. nstead, rt
human construct
that functio ns ln particulâr ways at particular tlmes, and
Production locally. The
Pro per q uestlon for visual studies IS How are the
tn their varlous
manifestations realizing themselves, being applied,
redeployed
rn this local clrcumstance Hence, the Êrst task of visual
what has been
historically valorized AS art and to rum lna te on the
notions of art and non
Visual studies
-art that have been created during particular
does not replace ârt history or âesthetics but sup plements
MA]OR THEORETICAL FRAME\TORKS IN VISUAL CULTURE 83

stressesthe importance of contemporary visual technologies. It sheds light on those

things that were noticed only in passing in the standard histories of culture but which
had an enormous impact on our current condition. This new historiography requires an
interdisciplinary methodolog¡ one which has developed through its reflection on ob-
jects falling between the cracks of compartmentalized academic disciplines and through
irs use of cross-fertilizing methodologies that originated in discrete research areas.
Visual culture, by directing attention to the connection between what is seen and what
is read, mobilizes written culture and creates new spaces. It is important to stress here
rhar inrerdisciplinariry does not mean simplified compararive stud¡ wherein differences
berween the genres of artistic production are eradicated. Students of visual culture may
apply a methodology from literary criticism to a work of art, or from film studies to
architecture, but they pay equal attention to the'resistance'of the one to the other. In
this regard, Paul Duro criticizes a model of cultural study that was based more on a
nineteenth-century Burckhardian idea, whereby the concepts of a particular culture are
made to cover both literature and art. He further explained, 'I am inrerested in locating
this sort of resistance .,. to which end I approach the visual using avariety of different
methodologies-not to find some ultimate meaning, since I have never believed in that,
but to generate new meaning' (Dikovitskaya 2005): 149). Jay calls productive

the tension berween a work of art, a text, or philosophical argument, that is produced,
and the enabling and disseminating of receptive contexrs, a rension which should be
retained rather than resolved eithe¡ in favor of the atemporality of the object, making
it transcendentally valuable for all time, or the utter reduction of the object to nothing
but an exemplar of its conrexr. (Dikovitskay a 20059: 203-4)

Ïhere is yer anorher potential methodological pitfall: insofar as we analyse the vi-
æ opposed to language-based information, then what we are doing is aesthetic.
culture began with the rejection of Kantian aesthetics but it is now in danger
of sensual perceprions, and in the long run it may turn into aesthetics
holds Laura U. Marks (Dikovitskaya2005f). This paradoxical situation might
suggested Brian Goldfarb, if one takes lnto considera tlon seml0ttcs
along
theories o f vlslon
and thinks abou t lmages through both absence and Pres-
this way, uch
an obJect as the telephone, for lnstance can be seen âs e ma)or
of the twentieth centurv for rt allows for assoclatlons of vlslo n vla
much like the Panopticon' (D ikovitska
Ya, 2005 ai 1 63) This verslon
culture appeals
to men tal lmages fa ther than perceptible artefacts and pre-
to Kantian aesthetics. Ano ther wâ around
v the aesthetics dilemma
by Rodowick
\M ho believes that clnema and the electronic arts-the
çul¡¡¡¡s_¿¡ç
ahead of philo sophy (Dikovitskaya 200 5b 260 Beca use
)
have a conceptual
basis not accessible vlâ traditional aes thetical ap-
find or ln vent new concepts as to ols for under-
 MAJOR THEORETICAL FRAME\øORKS iN VISUAL CULTURE 85
PERSPECTlVES
AND THÊOR!'TICÀL
HiSTORICAL of academics varied greatly-from the condemnation of visual cultu¡e as being 'anamorphic,
junk-tech aesthetics of cyber-visuality', through ro a moderate resisrance considering it to
84 rurn' be a 'levelling of all cultural values', to the acceptance of visual culture as 'an updated way of
,u*"-",ï vßuat after
the cutrurat
talking about postmodernism.' Overall, three clusters of scholars were represented: the Êrst
i,'r::;;,he saw visual studies as an appropriate expansion of art history; the second group viewed the
new focus as independent of art history a¡d more appropriately studied with technologies
ofvision related to the digital and virtual era; and, Ênall¡ the rhird clusrer considered visual

ï',',ffif #üþffi : studies a field that threatens and selÊconsciouslychallenges rhe traditional discipline of art
history. The questionnaire did not eliminate the increasing inreresr among its students but

"#,trililruï',^:*l'',.,''iî.||
*'ïi'il"ï]i"ri:i*:::îJï: ii:[ï; Jçvi,,,"t
r0ø"'*
*,*.*
cur'lure '
,o Vïs,rai
rather helped proponents ofvisual cultu¡e to articulate their positions and thus contributed
ro the theoretical growth of the new field. The experience also demonsrrated that, since the
v.l.T. 2ttuz' 'rvr'- e naxio¡_o;;ru.-i,nr.", NY and issue of visual culture's relation to anthropology, history and postmode¡n rheory has had
Mïtchell, .- r. The toubled
'""'-iìr,165-81.^r.,Nosrarsïa- ,:,,n:.,y1.'#i,::;:'";:ii;'ï,"LÏ;iåî:":ïiïÏ: very material effects on the perceived place of scholars of rhe visual in tåe university and
* o',' o,å* publishing spheres, there was increæing pressure within visual srudies to define itself as valu-

"*î.iî:i iäru".ffi' -* able, relevant and distinct from othe¡ fields.

Corr 4. Another question was, '\Øhere to look for the location ofart in this new lunapark ofvisual
Lonóon:
culture?' (Sauerländer 1995: 391) . Donald P¡eziosi condemns the very aspect of art history
that Saurländer suggests is missing from visual culture, claiming rhat 'arr', the objecr domain
of art histor'¡ is

1
a uirtual space populated by artifacts simultaneously historical and a-hisrorical, docu-
mentary and monumentai, semiotic and eucharistic, ethical and aesthetic, and never
entirely reducible to the one or the othe¡. It is precisely this irreducibility which rende¡s
the very idea of 'art' .. . so powerful, so seemingly narural, so apparently universal.
(Preziosi 1999:94)

In the intloduction to
Wsaal Culture: 7he Reader, editors Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall
pointed to rhe reasons visual culture had been neglected: Mainl ¡ 'the privileging of the lin-
model in the study of representation led to the assumption that visual artefacrs are
the same, and function tn ,ust the same way, as any other cultu¡al text' (Evans
Hall 999 2) It 1S doubtful, howeve¡ that the introduction
and prevalence of a linguis-
and the textualizarion across the humanities and social sclences
took as much of a
on the study ofvisual imagery as Evans and Hall would have us believe. In fact, far from
lost in rhe endless
chain of signification, arrwo¡k has come ro be seen as a.thing, (to
jargon) ln ltS own right. argue that this wâs due to the
seml0 üc ap proach:
ûrst time ln art
studies, the work of art wâs talked about as having lts own specific-
ts as being
neither an autonomous entity nor a mere reflection of social and political
but a maker of culture As Keith Moxey put 1t,

of a socially and historically

specific notton of the slgn implies that the
visual representations
will approach visual slgns as lr they wefe contiguous to
with the signi$'ing
svstems that st¡uctur€ ail other aspects of the his-
fhere ls no attem
pt to look through the network of slgns 1n order to
the intentions
f
o the âftlstsln volved 1n their production A semto tlc
attempt to
defìne the wâys ln which works of art actively wo¡ked to
and thus
to define the values of the socletv. (Moxey
1 99 9 9 5)
 MA]OR THEORET]CAL FR,AME\øORKS IN VISUAL CULTURE 87

12. Inthel9T0s,thesocialhistoryofartopposedthewidespreadtendenryofscholarstoisolare
works of art from the broader cultural circumstances of rheir production and reception. This
86
movement redirected the viewer's attention to political and ideological contexts of image
creâtion. fuhistorical enterprise, it sought to restore the missing dimension of once exist-
a

ing social conditions and ¡elations. Despite its desire to add to the standard canon, social
history failed to revise the câtegory of art-the foundation for rhe enrire enterprise of art
historY.
6 13. In contemporary exhibitions these margins âre continuâlly being redefined: rhere are mix-
tures of the high and the low, and the¡e are instances of bo¡der crossing in multimedia
works. At the same time, when mass culture items are placed in a museum, the border is
reset as much as erased because of the nature of the museum as an institution.

REFERENCES

,{lthusser, Louis. 1971 .

'ldeology and the Ideological State Apparat us' , in Lenin ønd Philosophlt
ønd Other Esayl trans. Ben Brewste¡. London: New Left Books.
Bal, Mieke. 2003. 'Visual Essentialism and the Object of Visual Culfire', Joarnal ofWsuøl Cul-
øre,211:5-32.
Bunard, Malcolm. 1998. Art, Design and Visuøl Cuhure: An Introcluction, New York: St. Mar-
tin's Press,
Bcnnerr, Tony, 1998, 'Cultural Studies: A Reluctant Discipline', Culrural Studies, 7214:
528-45.
Victoria E. and Lynn Hunt. I 999. Beyond the Cuhural Turn: New Dìrections in the Studlt
of Society ønd Cuhure. Berkeley and Los A.ngeles: Universiry of Califo¡nia Press.
Norman, Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxe¡ eds. 1991. Vlsual Theory: Pøinting and
Interprctatiln. Cambridge: Poliry Press and Blackwell
N orman, Michael Ann Holl v and Keith Moxe¡ eds. 9 94. Wsual Cuhure: Images and
Ifiterprctations. H anover and Lonclon: \Wesleyan University Press.
Lisa. 1995. Screening the Body: Tiacing Medicine's Visaal Culture. Minneapolis: Uni-
of Minnesota Press.
Lisa. 998. A Cultural Anatomv of the Visible Human Proj ect' tn Paula A, Tie-
Lisa Carwright and Constance Penley (edÐ, The Visibh Woman: Imøging Technolo-
Genden and Science New York: N e\¡r' York Uni verslrv Press
9 69 Ciuilisation: A Personal View, New York: Harper & Row.
999 '\X/hat Is Cultural Studies ln Mieke Bâl (.d.) 7he Practice of Cuhural
Exposing Interdisciplinary
Interpretøtion, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
MAJ OR THEO RETICAL F RAME\øORKS IN VIS UAL CULTURE 89

Chris, ed. 1995. Visual Culture. London: Routledge,

Jenks,
Kester, Glant. March 24,2000. A Response to Tim Hodgkinson, Socialþ Engaged Practice
Fo r u m, messâge # 25 . <hrtp : I I www.l istbo t. co m. >

McClurkerr, James M. 1991. Tlte Wøy h Høppened: A Visuøl Cuhure History of the Little Tiauerse
Balt Bands of Odawa. East Lansing: Michigan State tJniversity Museum.

Melville, Stephen \Ø
2001 . Response to Mørgaret Dikouitskaya. Unpublished manuscript.
Nicholas. 1995. Silent Poetry: Deafness, Sign, and Wsual Culture in Modern France.
Mirzoeff,
Princeton, NJ and Chichester, UK: Princeton University Press.
ed. 1998. The Visual Cubure Reader. London and New York Routledge.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas,
Nicholas. 1999. An Introduction to Wsual Culture. London and New York: Routledge.
Mirzoeff,
1986. Iconologlt: Image, Ti:xt, Idnlogy. Chicago and London: Univelsity of
Mitchell, \øJ.T.
Chicago Press'
Mirchell, W,J.T. 1994.
Picture Theory: Essays on Wrbøl and Wsual Representatiln Chicago:
UniversitY of Chicago Press'
Is Visual Culture?', in Irving Lavin (ed.), Meaning in Visuøl Arts:
Mitchell, V].T. 1995a. '1ü4rat

Viewsfom the Outside. Princeton, NJ: Institute for Advanced Srudy,207-17.

Mirchell, \(J.T. 1995b. 'interdisciplinarity and Visual Culture', The Art Bulletin, 77 14:
540-544.
ldoxey, Keith. 1991.
'Semiotics a¡d the Social History of Art', New Literary History,2214:
985-1000.
Keirh. 1994. The Practice of Tlteory: Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History.
NY and London: Co¡nell University Press.
Ithaca,
Keith. 1996. 'Animating Aesthetics: Response to the Visual Culture Questionnaire',
October,TT: 56-59
Keith. 2001. 'Nostalgia for the Real: The Tioubled Relation of fur Histo¡y to Visual
, in of Persuasion: Parødox and Power in Art History. Ithaca, NY and
Zhe Practice
Co¡nell lJniversiry Press, 1 03-23.
John. 1996. '\ù7orld Art Studies and the Need for a New Natu¡al History oî At(, The
Bulhtin,7812:206-9.
Donald. 1999. 'Virtual (fut) History' , RACAR: Cønødian Art Reuiew,26ll-2:91-5
on Visual Culture', 199 6. Oao ber, 77 (Summer): 25.
lvlatthew 2002. '\Øhatever Happened to Material Culture ?'
Unpublished paper Pre-
to Session on Theory and Pedagogy of Visual Culture
at the Crossroads 1n Cultural
4rh International Conference,
Tâmpere, Finland
N 99 The Dfficuhy of Dffirence: Psychoanaþsis, Sexual Dffirence, andFílm
York: Routledge,
998. 'Studying
Visual Culture' ln Nicholas Mirzoeff (.d. The Visual Cuhure
and New york: Routledge, 14-26.
1995. 'struggling with a
Deconsrructed Panofsþ/, in Irving Lavin (ed.),
Wual Arts: Views
from rhe Outside. Princeron, NJ: Institute for Advanced Study,