This book records the conclusions that I came to as I thought through the cultural evolution of each of the different sorts of visual art and tried to piece together their story from the perspective of philosophy. Chapter 1 discusses how culture shapes art to be what it is from the outside, like a mold shapes clay, and the great power of art to affect the way we think and to promote cultural change. Chapter 2 discusses the evolution of Fine Art from its birth in the Renaissance to its present old age and decline. Chapter 3 discusses the institutional structures that make art for popular taste its own sort of art, and the culture wars over censorship and whether public art should be Fine Art, or art for popular taste. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the life histories of design and advertising. This book is also the story of how art interacts with technology. In my work in Artificial Intelligence research I saw that there is an intimate connection between the evolution of design in engineering and design in art. In both sorts of design there is a growing understanding of how to make and use levels of packaging, and how to approach things from the functional perspective of the artifact. This is discussed in Chapter 4. My talk in Chapter 1 of how art styles affect us also reflects this functional approach. That is, instead of approaching art styles in the traditional ways, I have approached them in terms of the tasks of vision and how art delivers information packaged to be understood at different levels of visual processing. Using this functional approach, I stress what art does for us rather than what art is. I also tried to address the evolution of culture given the mass media and mass market, and the role of art in the growing marriage between television and computer. As I thought about computers in my work in Artificial Intelligence, I saw that a new sort of idolatry was arising where ^he computers were being asked to be infallible experts giving us advice on everything from taxes to marriage problems and our health. I saw that computers were being used not just as art tools and artists, but also as art objects like the ancient idols. This started me thinking about how other ancient functions of religion were being filled by advertising and the media.

Now available in a significantly updated second edition featuring two new chapters, Social Communication in Advertising remains the most comprehensive historical study of advertising and its function within contemporary society. It traces advertising's influence within three key social domains: the new commodities industry; popular culture; and the mass media which manages the constellation of images that unifies all three.

Now there's a book that digs deep and goes to the heart of the matter. "Sexual Idolatry" has the answers men are looking for to be able to put an end to the mystery of sexual temptation.

Feeding off the frenzy of fleeting fame and image overload, Hostetler takes anecessary look at the false gods in modern society. This timely book can helpreaders realize and overcome their own idolatries.

The dominance of advertising in everyday life carries potent cultural meaning. As a major force in the rise of "image based culture," advertising spreads images that shape how people live their lives. While scholarship on visual images has advanced our understanding of the role of advertising in society, for example in revealing how images of extremely thin female models and athletic heroes shape ideals and aspirations, images circulated through lagnuage codes--or "verbal images"--in advertising have received less attention. Imaging in Advertising explores how the verbal and visual work together to build a discourse of advertising that speaks to audiences and has the power to move them to particular thoughts and actions. In this book, Fern L. Johnson presents a series of case studies exploring important advertising images--racial connotations in cigarette advertising, representations of cultural diversity in teen television commercials, metaphors of the face appearing in ads for skin care products, language borrowed from technology to sell non-technology products, and the illusion of personal choice that is promoted in many Internet web sites. Johnson argues that examining the interplay of verbal and visual images as a structured whole exposes the invase role of advertising in shaping culture in 21st century America.

A brilliant new biography of Saint Paul, whose interpretations of the life and teachings of Jesus transformed a loosely organized, grassroots peasant movement into the structured religion we know today Without Paul, there would be no Christianity. His letters to various churches scattered throughout the Roman Empire articulated, for the first time, the beliefs that make up the heart of Christian practice and faith. In this extraordinary biography, Bruce Chilton explains the changing images of Paul, from the early Church period when he was regarded as the premiere apostle who separated Christianity from Judaism to more recent liberal evaluations, which paint him as an antifeminist, homophobic figure more dedicated to doctrine than to spiritual freedom. By illuminating Paul’s thoughts and contributions within the context of his time, Chilton restores him to his place as the founding architect of the Church and one of the most important figures in Western history. Rabbi Paul is at once a compelling, highly readable biography and a window on how Jesus’ message was transformed into a religion embraced by millions around the world. Drawing on Paul’s own writings as well as historical and scholarly documents about his life and times, Chilton portrays an all-too-human saint who helped to create both the most beautiful and the most troublesome aspects of the Church. He shows that Paul sought to specify the correct approach to such central concerns as sexuality, obedience, faith, conscience, and spirit, to define religion as an institution, and to clarify the nature of the religious personality—issues that Christians still struggle with today.

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