Engagement with the image has played a decisive role in the formulation of the very idea of philosophy since Plato. Identifying pivotal moments in the history of philosophy, Dennis J. Schmidt develops the question of philosophy's regard of the image in thinking by considering painting—where the image most clearly calls attention to itself as an image. Focusing on Heidegger and the work of Paul Klee, Schmidt pursues larger issues in the relationship between word, image, and truth. As he investigates alternative ways of thinking about truth through word and image, Schmidt shows how the form of art can indeed possess the capacity to change its viewers.

"Challenge: Create an image out of a word, using only the letters in the word itself. Rule: Use only the graphic elements of the letters without adding outside parts. Word as Image invites you to see letters beyond their utilitarian dullness. It's about discovering the magic behind the unique shapes and infinite possibilities of letters and words. This book showcases nearly 100 of Ji Lee's head-scratching word images, along with tips to help you create your own and share them at www.wordasimage.com."--Page 4 of cover.

A highly illustrated survey of the use of words (or language) in art. Art, Word and Image asks what it means when a painting is 'invaded' by language - how do the two forms converse and combine, and what messages are intended for the viewer?

CD-ROM contains the digitized images found in the book.

"[The Book of Kells' contains almost 2000 decorated initials, the majority of which are formed by human figures, beasts, birds and fish. This title offers an in-depth examination of the smaller decorated initials, script layout, and marginalia of this book]"--Jacket cover.

For decades educators and cultural critics have deplored the corrosive effects of electronic media on the national consciousness. The average American reads less often, writes less well. And, numbed by the frenetic image-bombardment of music videos, commercials and sound bites, we may also, it is argued, think less profoundly. But wait. Is it just possible that some good might arise from the ashes of the printed word? Most emphatically yes, argues Mitchell Stephens, who asserts that the moving image is likely to make our thoughts not more feeble but more robust. Through a fascinating overview of previous communications revolutions, Stephens demonstrates that the charges that have been leveled against television have been faced by most new media, including writing and print. Centuries elapsed before most of these new forms of communication would be used to produce works of art and intellect of sufficient stature to overcome this inevitable mistrust and nostalgia. Using examples taken from the history of photography and film, as well as MTV, experimental films, and Pepsi commercials, the author considers the kinds of work that might unleash, in time, the full power of moving images. And he argues that these works--an emerging computer-edited and -distributed "new video"--have the potential to inspire transformations in thought on a level with those inspired by the products of writing and print. Stephens sees in video's complexities, simultaneities, and juxtapositions, new ways of understanding and perhaps even surmounting the tumult and confusions of contemporary life. Sure to spark lively--even heated--debate, The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word belongs in the library of millennium-watchers everywhere.

Art and Science in Word and Image investigates the theme of ‘riddles of form’, exploring how discovery and innovation have functioned inter-dependently between art, literature and the sciences. Using the impact of evolutionary biologist D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form on Modernist practices as springboard into the theme, contributors consider engagements with mysteries of natural form in painting, photography, fiction, etc., as well as theories about cosmic forces, and other fields of knowledge and enquiry. Hence the collection also deals with topics including cultural inscriptions of gardens and landscapes, deconstructions of received history through word and image artworks and texts, experiments in poetic materiality, graphic re-mediations of classic fiction, and textual transactions with animation and photography. Contributors are: Dina Aleshina, Márcia Arbex, Donna T. Canada Smith, Calum Colvin, Francis Edeline, Philippe Enrico, Étienne Février, Madeline B. Gangnes, Eric T. Haskell, Christina Ionescu, Tim Isherwood, Matthew Jarron, Philippe Kaenel, Judy Kendall, Catherine Lanone, Kristen Nassif, Solange Ribeiro de Oliveira, Eric Robertson, Frances Robertson, Cathy Roche-Liger, David Skilton, Melanie Stengele, Barry Sullivan, Alice Tarbuck, Frederik Van Dam.

Essays on the enduring complex relationship between word and image, from hieroglyphics to new media.

The artists’ books made in Russia between 1910 and 1915 are like no others. Unique in their fusion of the verbal, visual, and sonic, these books are meant to be read, looked at, and listened to. Painters and poets—including Natalia Goncharova, Velimir Khlebnikov, Mikhail Larionov, Kazimir Malevich, and Vladimir Mayakovsky— collaborated to fabricate hand-lithographed books, for which they invented a new language called zaum (a neologism meaning “beyond the mind”), which was distinctive in its emphasis on “sound as such” and its rejection of definite logical meaning. At the heart of this volume are close analyses of two of the most significant and experimental futurist books: Mirskontsa (Worldbackwards) and Vzorval’ (Explodity). In addition, Nancy Perloff examines the profound differences between the Russian avant-garde and Western art movements, including futurism, and she uncovers a wide-ranging legacy in the midcentury global movement of sound and concrete poetry (the Brazilian Noigandres group, Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Henri Chopin), contemporary Western conceptual art, and the artist’s book. Sound recordings of zaum poems featured in the book are available at www.getty.edu.

These perceptual portraits of more than 100 thinkers who have fashioned our understanding of mind and behavior provide an alternative view of the history of psychology. Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Pierre Broca, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Ruth Benedict, Allen Newell, David Marr and scores of others whose ideas have made psychology an empirical discipline emerge from motifs specifically drawn by the author or derived from a figure or text in one of the portrayed person's books, or an apparatus he or she invented. The treatment of portrait/motifs often challenges the viewer to discern the faces embedded in them and always tells us more than how these students of mind looked: these portraits reflect their thoughts and lead us to forage further into their lives and legacies. The portraits and motifs have been manipulated in a variety of ways, using graphic and photographic procedures. They are arranged in order of birth date in a format of one page of descriptive text facing a full-page perceptual portrait. The text presents a brief synopsis of the person portrayed, that person's ideas, and the source of both the portrait and the motif. Interrelations between people are stressed, bringing to light common threads that run through the work of particular groups. --From publisher's description.