C h a p e

Theoretical Frameworks

Genealogy and the Object(s) of Visual Studies

Since the term "pictorial turn" was coined in the United States in the 1990s
by W J. T. Mitchell, it has served as a focus for the ongoing theoretical dis­
cussion on pictures whose status lies "sorn.ewhere between what Thomas
Kuhn called a 'paradigm' and an 'anomaly"' and which have emerged as a
"kind ofmodel or figure for other things" in the human sciences (Mitchell
1994, p. 13). At the sarn.e time, the related issues of vision and visuality
have been zealously explored across a broad range of the hurn.anities and
social sciences-the trend called the "visual turn" (Jay 2002a,b). Mitchell
(19956) has further posited that a new interdiscipline of visual studies has
surfaced around the pictorial turn that runs through critical theory and
philosophy. I argue that if we are to accept Mitchell's thesis that visual
studies was born to the rn.arriage of art history (a discipline organized
around a theoretical object) and cultural studies (an academic movern.ent
echoing social movements), we should recognize that it is the "cultural
turn" that made visual studies possible in the first place. In this case, the
question arises: What constituted the cultural turn?
From the early 1980s on, the study of culture has become over­
whelrn.ingly significant in the human sciences. 1 In general, we can distin­
guish betv,,een two research paradigrn.s: one that organizes the study of
society 011 the model of natural sciences, and anothe r whose app roach be­ notion of ideology-tha t i t covers ali aspects
of societal life and is analo­
longs to the in te rp retative and he rmeneu tic tradition that emphasizes gous to sys tems of signs-the work of art came
to be seen as a commu­
human subjectivity and con tex tual meaning.Befa re the cultural turn, re­ nica tive exchange.As a result, the concept of auton
omy of art was replaced
searche rs did not much question che meaning or ope ration of social ca te­ by the concept of inte rtextuali ty.Art is now tr
eated as a specific discursive
gories themselves, no r did they pay a ttention to individual motivation system that during che modern period created
the catego ry of"a rtwork"
vvithin social fo rmations. Research projects based on a commonsense as a reposi tory fo r values (noninstrumen tality,
creative labor, e tc.) tha t had
nieaning of the social typically used quantitative methods. In che end, been supp ressed within the dominant culture
of mass production. Con­
"mulcimillion-dollar studies of census records ...and thousands of indi­ ternpora ry scholarship has disclo
sed che ways in which the work of art has
vidual case s tudies came up wi th contradic to ry rathe r than cumula t ive been tradi tionally presented as the object tha t
rejects contingency and re­
results. Social categories-artisans, me rchants, women,Jews-turned out fuses or"frustra tes the g rasp of discu rsive system
s of knowledae b throuah
to vary from place to place and from epoch to epoch, some times from year b
its relentless fo rmal self- transfo rmation" and
has revealed how "fo rmal
to year.As a result, the quantitative me thods that depended 011 social cat­ meaning becomes the emblem of an immanent,
au tonomous drive to­
ego ries fell into disrepute" (Bonnell and Hunt 1999, p. 7 ). wards differentiation" (Kester 2000, p. 2). The
scholarship that rejects the
The maja r theme needing revision was the status of che social.His­ p rimacy of art in relation to othe r discursive
practices and yet fo cu ses 011
tor ians began to explore cul tural contexts in which groups or individuals the sensuous and semiotic pecu
liarit y of the visual can no longer be called
acted and to emphasize che inte rpretation of symbols, rituals, and dis­ are history-it dese rves che name of visual s tudies
.
courses. The issue of subjectivi ty and the subjective side of social relations It is impor tant to emphasize from the outset tha
t the field of visual cul­
was given an important place 011 the research agenda.The scru tiny of cul­ ture or visual s tudies is not the sarne thing fo r
all of its theorists and prac­
ture demonstrated, among other things, that ali our approaches are con­ titioners. Moreover, one can speak of distinct
schools of thought being
taminated wi th ideological p reconcep tions.The previous paradigm, based fo rmed at the difle rent institutions of highe r learn
ing in which these people
on a belief in the objective nature of social scientific inquiry, was subse­ teach and do research.To begin
wi th, Michael Ann Holly, fo rmer chai r of
quently displaced by a standpoint that reveals culture-a representational, the A rt and Are His tory Depa
rtrnent at the University ofRo
chester (home
symbolic, and linguistic system-to be an instiga tor of social, economic, to the first U.S.gradua te program in visual s tudies
) and now director of
and political fo rces and p rocesses rathe r than a me re reflection of them.As
S tuart Hall stresses in the Open University course entitled"Culture, Me­
dia and Identities," the cultural turn "could be read as representing a 're­ Michael Ann Hol/y at the Clark Art lnsti­
turn' to ce rt ain neglected classical and tradicional sociological themes after tute, Williamstown, Mass., December
2003. Photo by Mark Ledbury.
a long pe riod dominated by more structural, functionalist or empiricist
concerns" (1997, p. 223). Among the notable outcomes of these explo­
ra tions is the fo rging of a common language tha t uses the same concepts

and ter111s-such as "culture,""practice,""discourse," and "narrative"­

across many disciplines that have become mutually intelligible (Bonnell
and Hunt 1999 ).
The cultu ral turn brought to the study of images a reflection 011 che
complex interrelationships between power and knowledge. Representa­
tion began to be studied as a structu re and process of ideology that pro­
duces subject positions. In light of Louis Al thusser 's (1971) broadened

Theoretical Frameworks 49
research at the Clark Art Institute, thinks of visual culture as a hybrid term
that describes a situation when one fuses works of art with contemporary
theory imported from other disciplines and fields, particularly semiotics
and feminism (see the interview with Michael Ann Holly in the appen­
dix of this volume). For Holly, visual studies calls into question the role of
all images in culture, from oil painting to twentieth-century TV These
images can be compared on the basis of their working as visual represen­
tations in culture rather than through the use of such categories as "mas­
terpieces" and "created by geniuses" versus "low art." As a historiographer
interested in the intellectual history of art history, Holly has been con­
cerned with how the practice of art history in the United States was turn­
ing into an empirical discipline, preoccupied solely with facts and frozen
in place around the time of the Cold War. In the late 1980s, the influx of
thinking that has fallen under the ubiquitous term "theory " shook up
those established procedures and protocols of the discipline.
In his response to my questionnaire, Stephen Melville ofühio State
University points to theory as the essential background for the origin of
visual culture:

Shortly after the Second World War, and depending very much on
a complicated set of cultural and political developments through the
1960s, y ou have the emergence of a very powerful line of thinking
in France that ultimately gives rise to what is called, briefly and
mostly around the journal Te/ Que/ in France but much more sus­
tainedly in the United States, "theory." The developments that drive
the emergence of theory happened in a variety of fields-anthro­
pology, literary criticism, psy choanaly sis, intellectual history, phi­
losophy. There is a large body of shared references that bind them
together-to Saussure and linguistics, to the drift of post-Kantian
European philosophy, to sorne stakes in or near Surrealism. One Stephen Melville at Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw, fall 2003. Photo by Gabriela Switek.
shared feature of this work is its claim to a thorough-going "anti­
humanism." Sorne people think of it as a form of Marxist ideology
critique with the modifier "bourgeois" understood to be integral to
what's meant by humanism here; others, including my self, will take
its force to be better caught by reference to Nietzsche or Heidegger.
It seems natural to take this as entailing also sorne kind of critique of
"the humanities." Visual culture, more or less inheriting all this,

Theoretical Frameworks 51
 Jane\ Wolff, July 2002. Photo by Ira Fox.
would be part ofan undoing or unprivileging of che humanities and
the ce ntral place they traditionally occupy in the university, and of
course art history would be one ofthe things in need of such undo­
ing. (Melville, response to Margaret Dikovitskaya)
The new field of visual culture draws upon critica! theory and cultural
studies, the latter itself being a critique of the barrier s between the hu­
manities and the social sciences that vvere constructed in the nineteenth
century owing to the refu sal of art to be subsumed under scientific ra­
tionality. In chis light, Janet Wolff, former director of the Rochester Vi­
sual and Cultural Stud ies Program and now as sociate dean of the School
of the Arts at Columbia Univer sity, argues that the necessary project for
che stu dy ofart is an approach that combines textual analysis with socio­
logical analysis of ins titutions . Such an approach has emerged from her
own frustration with two modes ofanalysis-what she describes as a
parallel e xperience and parallel dissatisfaction with two traditions :
first, a sociological tradition that looks at cultural institutions and
cultural processes but never pays attention to the te xt ...and which
is agnostic about aesthetic questions ; and second, textual analysis
mainly in the humanities, which for the most part pays no attention
to institutions and social processes, but concentrates on readings­
however interesting but nonetheless just readings-ofte xts and im­
ages. My argument has been that the best kind of work in visual
stud ies manages to d o both of those things and to integrate them .
(Interview with Janet Wolff, this volume)
In short, visual studies-the study of representations-pays close atten­
tion to the image but uses theories developed in the humanities and the
social sciences to address the comple x ways in which meanings are pro­
duced and circulated in specific social contexts . 2 Holly, coeditor of three
anthologies, Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation (Bryson, Holly, and
Moxey 1991), Visual Culture: Images and Inte,pretations (Bryson, Holly, and
Moxey 1994), and Art HistorJ� Aesthetics, Visual Studies (Holly and Moxey
2002) , is convinced that considering images in light of new theoretical
p er spectives provides new answer s to old questions about art.At stake here
is not only the possible "scientific" classification ofobjects-which could
be the pitiful fate ofan art history that is not so theoretically informed­
but also the loss of the interrogation of images: testing them and bom­
barding them with ideas.
ForJames D. Herbert ofthe University ofCalifornia at Irvine, visual
culture is a term encompassing ali "human products with a pronounced vi­
sual aspect includ ing those that d o not, a s a matter ofsocial practice, carry
the imprimatur ofart," whereas visual studies is a name for the academic
d i scipline that takes visual culture as its object of stud y (Herbert 2003).
3
Visual studies democratizes the community of visual artifacts by consider­
ing ali objects-and not just those classified as art-as having aesthetic and
ideolog ical complexity. However, instead of le veling them or lumping
them ali together, visual studies embarks on the scrutiny of the hierarchy
ofobjects that has imbued and continues to imbue some with a greater sig­
nificance than others.I find a connection between this view on visual stud­
ies and the concept of"World Art Studies" initially put forward by Br itish
art historianjohn Onians . W hen world art studies works against the art his­
torical canon by "taking the broadest view ofwhat is visually interesting,"
it, like visual studies, involves "acknowledging the variation of concentra­
tion 011 different forms of art through time and across cultures" (Onians
1996, p. 206) . As Onians notes, chis should ultimately help us understand
Theoretical Frameworks 53
 James D. Herbert, 2001.
Herbert's desire for the expanded territory of visual studies also
echoes somevvhat the concept of material culture introduced to art history
sorne twenty years ago by Jules David Prown, an art historian from Vale
University where Herbert studied for his Ph.D. The object-based theory
ofmaterial culture posits that artifacts are primary data for the study ofcul­
ture and that they should be used as evidence rather than iUustrations; it thus
deals with objects such as pieces of furniture because they have symbolic
meaning or symbolic capital in the antebellum United States. Through its
attendance to both art objects and artifacts, visual culture in Herbert's for­
mulation forges an important bridge with material culture studies and thus
escapes the danger ofbeing reduced to mere semiology ofthe visual sign.
Additionally, visual culture pays special attention to the study of modern
manufactured goods (thus distinguishing itselffrom art history).5
W J. T. Mitchell of the University of Chicago describes visual cul­
ture as analogous to linguistics: The former has the same relation to works

such phenomena as the European privileging of fine arts over decorative W. J. T. Mitchell, 2002. Photo by The
arts or the Chinese disregard ofpaintings not produced by the literati.-1 American Academy in Berlín.

Onians underlines the possibility ofwhat he calls a "natural" history

ofart, whose task would be to explore how the relationship ofhumans to
their natural environment determines the diverse character ofart through­
out the world. Herbert's visual studies, however, suspends itself some­
where between an art history that uses evidence ofhuman social practice
to understand a work of art and an anthropology that regards material
artifacts as evidence ofsuch practice. In this formulation, visual studies re­
flects the impact ofcultural anthropology, which was responsible for the
recent displacement ofthe elitist notion ofculture based on absolute mod­
els of aesthetic value (which needs to be cultivated in everybody but is
available to only a few) by another concept that considers material, folk,
and popular cultures as important signifying practices. This all-embracing
and anthropologically more egalitarian notion of culture implies that all
artifacts and practices are worthy ofscientific study. I t also encourages the
application of methods and procedures that were previously reserved for
the study of"high" culture to those artifacts that have been thought to be
outside ofit but which are cultural nonetheless.

54 C h a p t e r
Theoretical Frameworks 55
of visual art as the latter has to literature.Art plays the role of literature
despite a fundamental difference between, on the one hand, visual imaging
and picturing and, on the other, linguistic expression: Language is based
on a system (syntax, grammar, phonology) that can be scientifically de­
scribed whereas pictures cannot.In addition, while literature forms a part
of the study of language, visual art is just one area of visual culture. 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 analyze
writing as a system of images. The Chinese character system, Egyptian
hieroglyphics, and Aztec writing have very elaborate graphic conventions.
Ali these symbols have historical origins; they become the proper domain
of visual culture, which stimulates an interest in typography, graphology,
and calligraphy.
Beyond this graphic leve!, there is a realm of what can be called "vir­
tual" visuality in literature implied by the text that contains images,
inscriptions, and projections of space. Traditional literary scholars, who are
not interested in how the text represents itself, usually read through nov­
els, plays, and poems for something else (plot, meaning, etc.) and are not
very mindful of descriptive literary texts where the projection of virtual
spaces and places unfolds. Visual culture, on the other hand, refers to this
world of interna! visualization that appeals to imagination, memory, and
fantasy. Memory is encoded both visually and verbally and has a connec­
tion to rhetoric. The psychological notions of vision-interior vision,
imagining, dreaming, remembering-are activated by both visual and lit­
erary means. Thus, the study of visual culture allows ali these aspects to
come into view: One begins to look at and actually examine the process
of visualizing literary texts.
The focus of visual culture analysis has shifted away from things
viewed toward the process of seeing, insists Mitchell. He chose the title
"Visual Culture" instead of"Visual Studies" for his course at the Univer­
sity ofChicago because he was interested in the constructedness of vision:
The name "Visual Studies" see1ned to me too vague, since it could
mean anything at all to do with vision, while "Visual Culture" ...
suggests something 111.ore like an anthropological concept of vision
56 C h a p t e r Theoretical Frameworks
as artifactual, conventional, and artificial-just like languages, in
fact, vvhich we cal! "natural languages," in the same breath we admit
that they are constructed systems on the borderlines between nature
and culture. By calling the field visual culture, I was trying to cal! at­
tention to vision as itself prior to consideration of works of art or
irnages, and to foreground the dialectics of what Donna Haraway
calls "nature/culture" in the formation of the visual field. Vision it­
self is a cultural construction. (Interview with W J. T.Mitchell, this
volume)
One of the main questions that visual culture addresses is: What is it that
you learn when you learn to see? According to Mitchell, works of art do
not set the boundaries of the new field; nor do images or representations.
For instance, buildings and landscapes, which are neither images nor rep­
resentations, are nevertheless objects that are looked at in the course of
everyday life and are, therefore, legitimate objects of visual culture.
The way one sees the world is important, and the visual field is the
place where social differences are inscribed. Researchers who adopted
Mitchell's (19956) definition of visual culture as the study of the cultural
construction of visual experience in everyday life, as well as in media, rep­
resentations, and visual arts (Barnard 1998; Mirzoeff 1999), use "cultural"
and "social" interchangeably, and this calls for clarification. When asked
during our interview, Mitchell posited that visual culture is about the
social formation of the visual field, or visual sociality:
Raymond Williams suggests we think of society as designating the
whole realm of relations among persons, classes, groupings, i.e., so­
called face-to-face relations, or immediate relations. Culture is the
structure ofsymbols, images, and mediations that make a society pos­
sible. The concepts are interdependent: you could not have a soci­
ety that did not have a culture, and a culture is an expression of social
relations.However, the culture is not the same thing as the society:
society consists in the relations among people, culture the whole set
of mediations that makes those relations possible-or (equally im­
portant) impossible. Visual culture is what makes possible a society
of people with eyes. (Interview with W J. T. Mitchell, this volume)
57
The epistemological centrality of culture implies not that "everything is
culture" but that every social practice depends on and relates to meaning,
and culture is the constitutive condition of that practice. One can con­
elude that visual culture is a field for the study of both the social con­
struction of the visual (visual images, visual experience) and the visual
construction of the social, which apprehends the visual as a place for ex­
amining the social mechanisms of differentiation.The interesting ques­
tions that might further be asked here are, What is the absence of visual
culture? and What is the absence of cultural vision?
Visual studies claims that the experience of the visual is contextual,
ideological, and political. Douglas Crimp of the U niversity of Rochester
claims that objects of study should be determined by the type of knowl­
edge that one seeks to create and by the specific uses for that knowledge.
When he began thinking about the subject of AIDS about twenty years
ago, he was interested in how American artists 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 guestions6 he had been asking were inadequate for
the type of information he sought to produce: "To limit myself to fairly
narrowly defined notions of art practice or the art world would not
suffice....This didn't mean that I relinquished my interest in how art
practices were dealing with AIDS, but it gave me a very different per­
spective on how people might deal with it: what kinds ofinformation they
would have to understand in order to deal with the subject adequately"
(interview with Douglas Crimp, this volume).Thus, Crimp began look­
ing at wider ranges of cultural discourses, including popular culture and
medica! discourse, that were outside the purview of contemporary art.
This is just one albeit vivid example ofhow and why a researcher's orien­ Douglas Crimp, 2001. Photo by Catherine O pie. Courtesy of Gorney, Bravin + Lee, New York
tation has changed from an art critica! to a visual studies perspective. and Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Calif.

Nicholas Mirzoeff of the State University of New York at Stony

Brook insists that visual culture is "something different from simply art
history with a little bit oftheory admixed" (interview with Nicholas Mir­
zoeff, this volume). He calls visual culture the interface between all the
disciplines dealing with the visuality ofcontemporary culture.7 According
to Mirzoeff, visual culture was born in the new art history departments set
up in the British universities, but it has begun to have a much wider range
ofpossibilities in the last ten years.The latest developments in digital tech-
nology caused the immense cultural changes throughout the world that
earned the visual a preeminent place in our everyday life.This explains vi­
sual culture's preoccupation with analysis ofevents in which the consumer
interacts with visual technologies in search of pleasure, information, or
other edification.Today, Mirzoeff opines, visual culture needs to position
itself as a critica! study of the genealogy and condition of the global cul­
ture of visuality. Globalization in its various forms-global TV channels

58 C h a p t e r
Theoretical Frameworks 59
 Nicholas Mirzoeff, 2000. Photo by Carl Pope.
and programs, global visual infrastructures such as cable and satellite, and
the World W ide Web-is one of the key features of our lives. Since the
exploration of these forms does not fit the disciplinary boundaries of
traditional academic courses, a postdisciplinary formation called visual
culture c01nes to the fore:
Visuality is the term that I tend to use now, rather than visualization,
meaning the visual in the overlap between representation and cul­
tural power. In talking about visuality, one has in mind a much
vvider field than that concerned only with the media, one covering
the present process of collapse of the media into each other, or con­
vergence-particularly in the digital realm-so that it no longer
makes sense to organize our study of visuality by medium. (Inter­
view with Nicholas Mirzoeff, this volume)
Visual culture entails a mediation on blindness, the invisible, the un­
seen, and the unseeable. Engagements with biomedicine and digital tech­
nology !uve allowed us to form new conceptions of contemporary bodies.
Lisa Cartwright, a former professor at the University of Rochester and
now at the University of California, San Diego, explores the optical vir-
Rn r. h ::i n t P. r Theoretical Frameworks
tuality of postvisual domains constituted by institutional discourses of sci­
ence and medicine. T hese use such techniques as endoscopy, where sim­
ulation reproduces not merely the image but also behaviors and functions.
Telepresent surgery, which involves using virtual reality to perforrn. sur­
gery at a distance, is another example of a possible object of scrutiny for
visual culture.
David N. Rodowick, a former professor at the Rochester Visual and
Cultural Studies Program and now the director of the Film Program at
King's College (London), is mostly interested in the critical theoretical
study of the different visual and articulable regimes. Contrary to Mirzoef{
Rodowick argues that the notion of visual culture is not only a function
of twentieth-century culture but needs to be applied historically. He bases
his concept of visual culture on Deleuze's (1988) understanding of Fou­
cault's theory. Deleuze was able to see in Foucault what Foucault did not
necessarily see clearly himself: that he had a unique sense of how the oc­
currence of epistemic changes from early modern society and the industri­
alized era to the twentieth century took place. Foucault revealed not only
changing notions of subjectivity but also how such notions of subjectivity
themselves overlap different strategies of visualization and expression,
which Deleuze called le visible et l'énonfable, or the visible and the utterable.
Deleuze developed a periodization of the history of power-from a
sovereign, to a disciplinary, to what he calls a controlsociety. W hile each
Lisa Cartwright, 2002. Photo by Brian Goldfarb.
61
 LIS A C ARTWRIGHT

SCREENING THE BODY.

TRACING MEDICINE'S
VISUAL CULTURE
David N. Rodowick, Gil/es Deleuze's Time Machine. Durham: Duke University
Press, 1997.

Lisa Cartwright, Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine's Visual Culture. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1995.

Theoretical Frameworks 63
of these periods is marked by different strategies of knowing and power,
they are also articulated by means of distinctive mobilizations of the vis­
ible and the expressible. In our interview, Rodowick stated that the same
set of concepts can be used to explain both cultural and epistemological
changes taking place over long periods of time: "For me, this is what vi­
sual culture is all about: how these different notions ofpower and knowl­
edge change across different strategies of visualization and expression, and
how they are imbricated with one another in different complex vvays in
different, relatively distinct, historical eras" (interview with David N.
Rodowick, this volume). Visual culture embraces modes ofbeing and ex­
periencing within distinct regimes, modes such as subjectivities-subject
positions that emerge through visual relations, the subject within the "so­ READING THE FIGURAL,
ciety of spectacle" -as well as industries of the visual. 8
To summarize, sorne researchers use the term visual culture or visual OR, PHILOSOPHY
studies to denote new theoretical approaches in art history (Holly); some
AFTER THE NEW MEDIA
want to expand the professional territory ofart studies to include artifacts
from ali historie periods and cultures (Herbert); others emphasize the pro­
D. N. RODOWICK
cess ofseeing (Mitchell) across epochs (Rodowick); while still others think
of the category of visual as encompassing nontraditional media-the
visual cultures not only oftelevision and digital media (Mirzoeff) but also
of science, medicine, and law (Cartwright). Objects of visual studies are
not only visual objects but also modes of viewing and the conditions of
the spectatorship and circulation of objects. One can conclude that visual
studies goes far beyond its constituent object-oriented disciplines of art
history, anthropology, film studies, and linguistics.

Between Art History and Cultural Studies: Methodology of Visual Studies

Customarily, in addressing the quartet of art, culture, history, and visual­

ity, one sets up different hierarchies ofknowledge that stem from the long
debate about the relationships of their study: art and history are paired,
as are the cultural and the visual. From the standpoint of visual studies,
this stance solicits critica! reflection: a difference between art and culture
can be posited only if art is given an exceptional status, which would take
us back to Kenneth Clark's Ci11ilisation (1969), a work that conceived of David N. Rodowick, Reading the Figura/, ar, Philosophy after the New Media.
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2ooi.
art as the highest cultural achievement ofEuropean society. But why is art
singled out? Why does one ask the questions about the study ofart but not

,-. 1- - ..,. t- o r

Theoretica/ Frameworks 65
the study of, for example , photography's history in institutional contexts?
One ofthe reasons could be that there has always been the problem ofthe
"lost paper trail" (Cartwright, response to Margaret Dikovitskaya) in doc­
umenting the history of culture as a whole and the great difficulty of
tracing reception patterns and audience responses.In those few instances
where artistic practice has been documented, the recorded work was as­
signed a special quality by succeeding generations. In the course ofthe past
six centuries, these works of"art" have come to occupy a special pla ce in
human history.A set of factors was firmly established that readily fulfilled
the concept of art based 011 this cumulative retrospective account, which
was in resonance w ith the aesthetics of the European Enlightenment.
Art studies in the form of art history began to take shape as a disci­
pline in the late eighteenth century, when it became fashionable to study
ideas , objects, and events from a historical p erspective and new genera­
tions were encouraged to learn about art with the use of a historical
rnethodology.At that time, art history was synonymous with the history
of fine arts, which was a ligned with the acadernic humanities through lit­
erature , poetry, and music ofthe beaux arts.The name ofthe discipline of
art history consists of two nouns, and today
the largest disciplinary questions with "the study of art and history"
are about how exactly these two terms are to be related.Ifthey name
separate objects of study, how are they brought together within a
single practice or discipline ? How exa ctly <loes one make the way
"art" and "history" belong together? Do they name two dimensions
ofa single object? Is one, say, "history," a crucial condition for the ap­
pearance ofthe other? (Melville, response to Margaret Dikovitskaya)
In other words , <loes "art history" imply that it is history or memory that
makes art what it is? Further questions provoked by the term could be,
"What is art a history of?" and "Ifhistory there be, ofwhat is it a history?"
(Alphen 1999, p. 195). 9 Fina lly, should we dismiss "art" and "history" al­
together and replace them with the umbrella term "culture"?
In the last decades of the twentieth century, there have been severa!
attempts to answer these questions by offering some alternatives to the tra­
ditional accounts of art.In the 1970s, the social history ofart opposed the
widespread tendency of scholars to isolate works of art from the broader
cultural circumstances of their production and reception.10 This move­
ment redirected the viewer's attention to political and ideological contexts
ofimage creation.As a historical enterprise, it sought to restare the rniss­
ing dirnension of once-existing socia l conditions and relations. Víctor
Burgi n ha s i mpartially observed the shortcoming that such a methodol­
ogy ra ised:
"history" i s still conceived as once "over" (completed) and "over
there" (distanced); art historical research is stilJ seen as working 011
the pa st ...the unexarnined notion of the "art object," a legacy of
art history's origins in antiquarianism and connoisseurship, still re­
mains of founding centrality ... art history being content simply to
fil] in the previously empty social space around the inherited "mas­
terpiece" with a glut of detail purporting to establish its "determi­
nations" in th e (mainly economic) class relations of which are in
general is seen a s the more or less "mediated" expression.(Burgin
1986, p.41)11
Despite its desire to add to the standard canon, social history ha s failed to
revise the category of art-the founda tion for the entire enterprise of a rt
history.
Cultural studi es reinforces the articulation of an awareness of the
dialogue between th e art of the great masters and their worldly environ­
ment.More over, it gen erates an interese in exploring how p eople are
constructed and ma nipulated by cultura l forms in everyday life.Cultural
studies ana lyzes conduct, modes and sites of belong ing and agency, and
forms of political mobility and stability."Culture" has come to imply the
shared set of values by which a society lives.As a result, "in its zeal to es­
cape from historical determination , cultural studies has proved able to
sacrifice the historical dimensions of present cultural reality" (Steinberg
1996, p.110), and the cultural <loes not necessarily assume a strong sense
of history but rather is embedded in a set ofdiscourses.12
Research of the visual in art (Holly 1996a), in science and medicine
(Cartwright 1995 , 1998), among communities ofthe deaf(Mirz�effl 995),
and in surveillance practices (Rodowick 1991) has br idged che exploration
ofthe arts and cultural analysis. In visual studies, the relationship between
the visual and the cultural (as two adjectives) is entirely meshed , and the
Theoretical Frameworks 67
 ab out in terms of a matrix of e xper ience that includes ali of the five senses
ning­
rough cu ltural and p sychic mea
visual can b e understood on ly th interwoven. G unning is concerned that "ver y often whe n people privi­
ual studie s mak es use
of the sam social
e
making processes. T herefore, vis l ege [sight] they pick up on the old hier archy of arts , which is not neces­
al theo ries th at hol d
that mean ing is
theo r ies a s cultural studies , soci sarily b e ing true to the mode rn e xperien ce " (interview vvith T homa s
oststructuralism ,
emb e dde d not in o
bj ects but in human rel at ions-p G unning, this volume). Mitchell responds to this cr iticism thus :
ychoanalysis . However, where the
stress
Marxist the or y, semiotics, and ps pectator­
d Singerman notes , s
e diffe rent: A s H0vvar
is p la ced will often b The reason for isol ating [vision] is that one can then determine
te xts as M artinjay's "Do
wncas t Eyes are more relevant
ship theory and such much m ore precisely the b oundar i es and interactions between the
t o someone fro m . the
E nglish D epart­
to our p rogr am than it would b e way we constr uct the world thro ugh sight and the way we construct
oward Si ngerman ,
ment work ing in cul
tural studies" (inter view with H the world through soun d and t ouch, in fa ct through all of the se n ses
this volume). othe r than sight. (I nterview with W J. T. Mitchell, thi s volume)
among schol ars that visual stud-
W hile there is a general consensus
vi­
t condition of our culture in which
ies is b rought ab out by the presen b A ccording to M itchell, the emphasis of visual studies on vision allows the
opinions e xp ed a out
ortant, there are diverse
13 ress
suality is centrally in1p whole manifold of means of reception to become obj ects of study.
on. T homa s G unning
o f the University of C hicago
the privil eg ing of visi Visual studies is neither cultural studies nor a mode rnized art his­
from a broader consideration of the
is convinced that sep aration of vision tor y. Although b oth cultur al studies and visual studies gu estion the firm
sou nd, is not desirab le
. V isuality should b e thought
senses , particularly of stance art history takes with regard to the authen ticity of artistic e xpres­
sion at the leve! of high art, cultural studies b egins from the assumption
Thomas Gunning at the
that cultural e xpression at the leve! of popular culture is an authentic e x­
University of Chicago,
2001. Photo by Peter Kiar. p ression of class or national identity, thus reversing the formula "high ar t
versu s mass culture." V isual studies, rather than making this rever sa!, his­
toricizes the visual by promoting the view that the discipline of art history
begs the fu ndamental guestion , W hat is art? This gu esti on coul d not have
been asked within art history because the discipline itself- as its name
presupposes -depends on the a ssumption that what is worthwhile , "art,"
is alre ady known. James D. Herb ert, trained as a socia l histor ian of art , had

begun his research by posing the problem , "Here's a painti ng of peasants,

and there i s so rne histo ry ab out p easants; l et's e xamine the conn ection." I n

spite of the fa ct that social hi stor y was a radic al movement at the time

however, this research guestion did n ot yield a radically ne w i nsight :

If you study the social history of ar t, you end up measuring these

" artistic" things against something else , and similar ly if yqu . are do­
ing a formal analysis, or carryi ng out an interte xtual analysis of cr it­
icism . I n eac h case, there seems to b e this need fo r art or sp ecific

"artistic " artifa cts in order to justify the discipline .... In writing
my first b o ok called Fauile Painting: Th.e Nlaking of Cultural Politics

Theoretical Frameworks 69
 Sorne time ago, Mitchell wrote that "ifthe questions and debates are
(1992), I realized that by the very nature ofthe topic I would not be
posed frankly ... then infor rnation, values, and exposure to the fi nest pro­
able to answer cer tain questions because I begin by saying, "L et's
d uctions of visual culture will inevitably follow" (1995a, p.210). This
start with F auve painting."...In my second b ook, París 1937: World
statement begs for additional explanation.H ow does one reconcile such
on Exhibition (1998), I looke d at six world exhibitions, taking p lace
"finest" productions with visual studies' assura nce ofthe significance ofall
over an eight-mont h per iod in France ; so n1e of the1n were ar t exhi­
cultural phenomena? I n the i nter vie w, Mitchell elucidated that the ques­
bitions and some were not.The idea of the b ook was to find some
tion of value or of what is fi nest is independent ofthe distinction between
way ofholding all histor ical variables constant in order to see clear ly
high and l ow, and this independence is an underlying pr inciple in the un­
what particular fu nc tion and pur pose the categor y of ar t h as.At art
de r standing of value in visual culture. The rnain issue he re conce rns the
exhibitions, the "art " label is assume d va lid.H ow different it is when
standard mode of thought that the best things are located un iquely in the
the l abel is absent! (Inter view with James D.H erber t, this volume)
sphere offine arts as opposed to low or popular culture.Yet,

The fi eld of visual studies enables us to ask questions that are not asked in
"fi ne art" is not necessar ily fine in any sense of qualitative excel­
art histor y: What does art do? What are the soci al and formal advoca cies
lence. A ver y high per centage of so- called high ar t is bad or
for the cate gory of art? Her ber t has recently become convinc ed that the
mediocre, yet it is still high ar t in that it aspires to a cer tain st at us, it
most socially e ffective aspect ofpainting is to be found in a scr utiny ofthe
is intended for museums.... Ther e are certain rnovies and televi­
constr uctedness of "art," when t he notion of art itself takes p recedence
sion shows (The Sopranos is everyone 's favorite example), which 011
ove r the ar twork i n stipulating its reception.Ar t is a human construct that
any scale of values are ma ster pieces, they are ver y fine "wo rks ofart"
functions in par ticular ways at particular times. Visual studies has no in­
in sorne sense, yet they are not high orfine art and do not aspire to be
terest in finding s01ne Platonic de fi niti on ofar t that would hold tr ue once
regarded that way, but lie r ather comfortably within the sphere of
and forever. I nstead, it analyz es ar tistic production locally. The p rop er

qu estion for visual stu dies is "H ow are the aestheti c cate gor i es in thei r
var ious manifestations realizing themselves, being applied, approp r iated,
and redeployed in this local circumstan ce?" (ibid.).H ence, the first task
mass culture.... The reason for so much uncer tainty about what
the value of art is derives from the fa ct that too often we have made
the decision beforehand as to whether or not something is valu­

1
able -i.e., as if we had a methodol ogy alread y in pla ce for coming
of visual studies is to critique what ha s been histor ic ally valorized as ar t
to a de cisi on.I think that in fa ct we lea rn what the finest thi ngs are,
and to r urninate on the differences between notions ofart and 11011-ar t that
h ave been created dur ing p ar ticular historie p er iods. what the good things are, by actual ly l ooking at the works ofart, and
sometimes we change our minds about what counts as good­
Visual studies does not pursue the goals ofredefining all cultur al ar­
\ tifacts as art, expanding the canon, or er asing the "high-low" distinction. ness....It is not just that you come to value new works of art, but

The boundaries-high, low, and middle -still exist, but their definitions
are deter rnined by the type of rnaterials (for exarnp le, oil painting ver sus
photogr aphy) r ather than by the deg ree of aesthetic sophisti cation.What
we see in conternporar y exhibitions is tha t these rnargins are continually
being r edefined: there are mixtures of the high and the l ow, and there are
instances ofborder crossing in multimedia works. At the sarne time, when
rnass culture items are placed in a rnuseurn, the b order is reset as rnuch as
er ased be cause of the nature of the rnuseurn as an instit ution.
that new works ofar t may lead you toward new values.With images,
in contrast, as in a repeated motif like cr ucifixion, the question of
value is not l ocated in the i ndividual picture or work, but in the cir­
culation of the image, its proliferation and dur ability in the whole
sphere of visual culture.The image in itself will, in this sense, prob­
ably be familiar and utter ly banal in direct p ropor tion to its value as
image, even though it may appear in thousands ofmediocre works of
ar t. (I nterview with W J. T.Mitchell, this volume)

Theoretical Frameworks 71
 David Joselit, January
reconsider one's grounds of j udg
ment
to obj ectify and
2004. Photo by Steven
I think the ability p lly
erative, Nelson.
g at paint ings or sculptures is i n1p
es ecia
in t he process oflo okin
t valu e cr iter ia from their men . tors and
fo r art histor ians who often inheri
amination of their ve
racity.
them wi thout any ex
then continue to use
­
al studies is intellectually "an out
According to sorne scholars, v isu
gy
ry that take inter pretive metho dol
o to
growth ofthose vie ws in art histo
aret Dikovitskay a).
e, response to Mar g
b e its defining featur e" (Melvill
ges of its developmen . t, art histor y was
Mitchell think s that in the early sta
e, Panofsky made it
l culture. F or exampl
cl oser to what is now called visua aster­
l ogy one has t o go bey ond the m
clear that in order t o study icono
ul ar (inter view with
W. J. T. Mitchell ,
pieces and engage with the vernac
one can hy poth­
this vol ume). Panofsky
was also interested in cinema, and
media.
int erested in all visual
ere today he could b e
esiz e that ifhe were h
nnection b et ween art history and
Another example of the early co pl ate a single image for a sust ained l ength of t im e ther eby affording the
story, which was c onc
er ned
arb ur g school of art hi
visual cu lture is the W opportu nity t o actively engage, int ell ectually and em otionally, with for m
r tistic 111.odes of visua
l rep resentation .
with general iconography and nona ester ,
and content" (int ervie w with George D im ock, this volume). W hil e the
whil e at the U niversity of Roch
Si nger man remarked that H olly, f the appreciation of p a inti ng usually re qui r e s a long
look, "visuality at present
heir to a certain critica! version o
wanted to see v isual cul ture as "the er w isdominatedby the sp eed, t he l ogic, and t he ubiq uity of the el ectronic
of iconology with a t,vi st " (int vie
W arburg I nstitute, or as the proj ect x­ screen-we ha ve al i b ecome accustomed to sc anning p ictur es i nstanta­
). T he m etahistory of art, or the e
with H oward Singerman, this volume p ­ neously i n an env iro nment dominated by sensory overl oad " (ibid.). H ow­
ciplinary k nowl edge
in art histo ry has be en ut to
amination of how dis ever, the method ofclose examination that was introduced into ar t history
in Rochest e r. The
visual cultu re proj ect
gether, has b ecome crucial for the dor a 's at the end of the n ineteent h centu ry, which assumes a slower and mor e
d to op ening "the Pan
es t here might b e l ikene
advent of v isual stud i method ical p ractice of looking, seems worthwhile : "I t is crucial," insists
ly,
(inter vinN with Michael Ann H ol
b ox of a rathe r confined art hist ory" s b David Jos elit, "that the sust ained, c areful, and historically accurate analy sis
d ar t histor y or aesth
etic ut
studies has not replace
this v ol ume). Vi sual of objects that art histor y is fo unded on be carri ed over into visu al stu d ­
b l e to
zed them both by making it possi
has supplem.ented and problemati g the ies" (inter v ie w with D avid Josel it, this volume).
ological presupposit ions under ly in
grasp some of the axioms and ide There are, however, strengths in vis ual studies that art history may
t history.
past and current method ol ogy of ar lack. The discipline of art history, b ecause it emerged alongsid e the mu­
ks that visual studies cannot "b ase
C onversely, Thomas C onl ey thin seum, is structured around the categorizati on of individual objects, whereas
cs of art hist o ry
its models on Gomb ric
h or even on Wolffiin," the cl assi
erent visu al studies is more interested i n sy stems of vis uali ty than in singul ar
l ong to an era in history very diff
whose analy tical constructions b e objects ; thus the competencies of the l atter are exp anded. Add itionally,
omas C onley, this vo
lume). A fu rther
from our own (intervie w with Th altho ugh art history has devel oped the ability to d isti nguish iconographic
that art his tor y
d i stinct ion b et ween art
history and visual studies is the fact
traditions, it is visu al studies that accounts fo r changes ou tsid e of the artist's
n in a histo rie p eriod
when spectators had more
as a discipline was b or studio that have b earing on the develop ment of iconography. I n the end,
at the ar t work in a qua
litat ively d ifferent cognitiv e
time and spac e to gaz e t here is a process of negotiation taking place b et ween t hese t wo levels
ck p oints out, "Paintin
g and sculp ture are b as ed
mode. A s George D imo where "eac h pro fi ts from t he other, and there is no need to ass ume �
tem -
wer has sufficient attention to con
011 the premise that any given vie

Theoretical Frameworks 73
 Martín Jay, Berkeley, Calif., summer
2003. Photo by Rebecca Jay.
master disciplin e that is rn e. t ho do logically uniform and can subsurn.e b oth
under its own aegis " (inter view with Martinjay, this volume).
Visual studies works to supplant t he reified history of art with ot her
cultural disc our se s and c over s a wider fie ld o f inquiry by emb racing p ho ­
to gr aphy, film, media, and the Internet, none of w hich falls within the
_ p ersp ective.I should like to add here tha t despite t he fact that sorne au­
most entrenched b oundar ies o far t history.Fa timah Tobing Rony, w ho 1s
currently teaching in t he Visua l Studies Program a t t he University o fCal­
ifornia, Ir vine, complet e d a Ph.D. at the D epar trn.ent of Art History a t
Yale Univ ersity on t he topic o f re pre sentation of p eople of col or in film.
In her dissertation, she examines how the image o f the primitive savage
was constructed in Western cinema. In the process ofga thering ni.aterials,
Tobing Rony went on to study such various s ources as photo graphs, mu­
seum display s in et hnographic exp ositions, and textual sourc e s. She con­
siders her thesis to b e an exe mplary disser ta tion of visual studies rather
t han art history ( inter view with Fatimah Tobing Rony).
At the sa me time, visual studies is a 11a rrower field tha 11 art history' 4
b e cause it uses a critica! fra mework, a set o f assumptio11s, through w hich
on e assesses the obj ect unde r ana ly sis. B eca use o f t his approach, visual
studies is able to reevaluate the past a11d re disc o ver asp e cts oftech11ol o gies,
p erso11alities, and discur siv e pra ctic es.U11til recently t he history ofculture
has tended to stress the impor tance of print.15 T he profound transfor ma­
tion of c onte mporary culture to vv hich we are witnesses demands a new
history of moder nity. Say s Mir zoeff,
Such things a s Charl es Babbage 's i11ventio11s of the Differenc e E11-
gin e, a calculating machine, and t he Analytical Engine, are now see11
as pre cursors of t he computer.Th e i11creasi11g use of the tel egr aph,
a11d various alte rna tive visual technol ogies of the 11i11e tee11t h cen­
tur y, were n ot sufficiently stressed in traditional histories.T he dio ­
ramas, t he pa noramas, and ali t he alt ern ative for ms o f visua lization
used in the nineteent h c entur y were not much discussed because
they did not seem to bear 011 canonical art and litera ture....There
are enormous oppo rtunities for students and for nonacademic p eopl e
as well.I t hink ofLaurie Ander son, w ho's re cently done a grea t dea l
of work 011 t he nin e t ee nth c entury in h er p erfo r ma nc e s base d 011
lvloby-Dick a11d her works having to do with th e Communist lvlani­
festo. These are ver y challe11ging reenvisionings , w hich have had a
great deal to say to p eople doi11g critica! work. (Inter view wit h
Nichola s Mirz oeff, this volume)
H enc e, a sec ond ta sk of visual studies is to char t new inve11tori es and write
local histori es that deal with names, issues, and tendencies from today's
th ors focus on t he present, neglecting at times w hat happened b efore the
ninet eenth c entur y, this 11ew area is rel e vant to t he explora tion of culture
of m ore distant eras in t hat it allows us t o tra ce hist or ie tre nds a11d i11t er­
relatio11ships.Inst ead of cre ating grand nar ra tives, howe ve r, visual studies
gene ra tes situated and par tial acc ounts of the pa st in which subj e ctivity is
not hidden and aut hors no l onger evince a Baumgar tenian disinterest.
One can conclude that visual studie s is b ecoming a new historiog­
raphy.It is a critique ofw ha t ha s b een val or iz ed as ar t. By examining th e
settings for sp e ctatorship and wo rking against t he theory of t he univer sal
respo nse, it dispel s the illusio11 that ar t c orrespo 11ds to so rne e t erna l stan­
dard ofbeauty.Visual culture stresses t he importanc e ofconte mporar y vi­
sual t echnol ogies.It sheds light on those t hings that were noticed only in
passing in the standard histori es of culture but which had an enor mous
impact on our current c ondition. This n ew histo riography réquires an
Theoretical Frameworks 75
 Anne Friedberg, It is important to stress here that inte
Paris , 2003. Photo by . rdisciplinarity does not 111ean s1m-
Tristan Rodman.
pJifiied comparat1ve study, wherein difl:erences between the
· . ge11 1·es of aras. ac
.
pr.nduc 10n are erad1cated. Students of visual cult
� ure may apply a method-
ology frnm hterary cnt1C1sm to a wor
k of art, o r from film studies to arch
tectu re, but they pay equal attentio i-
• n to the " resistance
' " of tl1 e one to t 11e
ot¡1er. In tlm regard, Paul Duro crit
icizes a model of cultural study that
based more on a nmeteenth-century is
Burckhardian idea, whereby the con
cepts of a particular culture are made ­
to cover both literature anda< 1·t. H e fi .
t]1e1• exp
, ] ams
• , "I am mte U!-
• rested in locating this sort of resista11c
' e · · · tO W1l!C
. 11
end { approach the visual using a vari
ety of different metl1 odo1 og1. es-
to f¡md some ult1m . not
ate meaning, since I have never beli
eved in that, but to
generate new meaning" (interview
. ¡ with Paul Duro, this volume).
M itc 1 ell, as well as Duro, find
s the comparative method problem
interdisciplinary methodology, one that has developed through its reflec­ atic:
tion on objects falling between the cracks of compartmentalized disciplines [Y]ou take a literary text from the
seventeenth century and y ou take
and through its use of cross-fertilizing methodologies that originated in a pa111t111g from the same century
, and y ou say, "These are both
discrete research areas. Anne Friedberg, a film histo rian and former grad­
uate advisor in the Visual Studies Program at the University of California
Pau/ Duro, Department of Art
at I r vine (novv a professor at U.S.C.), thus descr ibes her experience:
and Art History, the Universit
y of
Rochester, 2000. Photo by Shan
­
As a g r aduate student, I worked on a p roject that combined liter­ non Taggart.

ary studies, literary theory, film history, and film theory; the proj­
ect was devoted to literary female modernists and their approach
to the cinema, both in writing and making films (D. Richardson,
Gertrude Stein, and others). It was an interdisciplinary project and
through it I began to realize that the field of film studies was lim­
ited in its purview in that it did not deal with othe r rep resenta­
tional forms sufliciently and its theoretical questions we re often too
circumscribed.
My book Window Shopping (1993) was a work that challenged
the traditional boundaries of the field of film studies since it dealt
with visual practices as part of every day life, considered as contex­
tualizing acts of spectatorship.... I was very interested in visuality
itself, and I think many of the writings about spectatorship, includ­
ing my own, seemed to demand a wider-ranging inquii¡y into visu­
ality rather than just a consideration of cinematic spectatorship.
(Interview with Anne Friedberg, this volume)

Theoretical Frameworks
77
 ue work s of art,
produced in the same p eriod, th ey are b oth B aroq ning identifies the ne w field as a research area based on a descrip tion of
one of them is verbal, one is v isu
al, so we will compare them and the alter at ion of modern e xperience.Th e source of the definition itself is
aroque cult ure" . l
demonstrate how they share th e prop er ties of B Walter B enj amin's conclusion in"Wor k of Art in th e Age of M echanical
at represents a pr im it ive p recursor Reproduction" (1935) about th e change in the p ercep tions of p eople liv­
th ink th is i s a ver y bad m ethod th
is th at comparison
of the study of visual culture.... The problem ing through the histor i cal and cultural m etamorphoses of the past centur y.

alway s assumes that y ou ]uve reac

hed sorn.e plateau of generality Gunning uses the word"e xp er ience" instead of"perception" to describe
things, in the
where y ou ]uve a framework for comparing t wo the situa tion wh en "v isual sti muli, whether they ar e posters or television

po m and a paint­
B aroque per iod, say, or even for choosing, say, a or photog r aphs in ma gazines, have multiplied enor mously, often outside
e

stop there? Why not a math e­ of the regim es that are usually thought of as cult ure, such as the museum
ing as obj ects of compar ison. Why
16

lar reason for

rn.atical equation , a musical score? There is no particu or the ar t galler y" (interview wi th Thomas Gunning, this volume ).These
t for comparison and conducting s timuli are simultaneously par t of our exp er ie nce and a record of it, and
a
choosing j ust an ima ge and a te x
n . l
m ethodical inventor y of sim ilarity/difference obser visual culture accordingly reflects and investigates the entire domain of
vatio s t is an

foo p of: gu ntees "res ul ts" th is e xp er ie nce.I n mode rn tim es, the r ise of technology and ur banizat ion
e xercise in wh ich the m ethod is
l ro it ara

iew with W.J. T.

but rarely produces discover y or sur pr ise. (l nter v led to the democr atization and capi talization of way of life. For e xample,
Mitchell, this volume ) the v isual pleasures of color, form, and te xture that had been e xclusive to
the dress of ar istocracy only two hundred y ears ago suddenly became
Most of what Mitchell has wr itten about the method is skep tical.H e does availa ble to the lay p erson in the late n ineteenth centur y as a result of the

no t th ink that visual cultu re ha s a d istinct ive m ethodology and pre fers to
keep the question of m ethodology op en, tak ing rath er th e tack that"th is
is my field of inquir y, here is where I will foc us my attention, and these
are the questions I w ill ask" (ibid.). Moreover, h e is willing to b e eclecuc
about rn.eth ods when doing s tructuralist and formal ist an aly ses, using
rise of a mass-production i ndustr y. Another e xample is the rad ical con­
version of th e urban environment at the turn of the t wentieth centur y,
vvhen the sudden prolifer ation of posters gave Paris and other European
metropolitan cities a sp ectacular visage. G unn ing sees the association of
visual dominanc e and modernity as a long-ter m p roj ect spanning the last

an allegor ica l reading or p sy choanaly tic m od el and following these ap­ one hundred and fifty y ears and continuing to the p resent."I am not sure
proaches as long as they s eem p roductive. This statement reveah ª non­ that it is wrong to talk about the last f e w y ears in term s of postmodern ity,
.
dogmatic attitude as well as discloses the fact that visual stud1es 1s st1ll and I do think something has changed but I do not think some thing has

try ing to figure out what its m ethodolog ies will be ; p erh ap s, 111 th e en d, 1t ende d: I see it m ore a s c ontinuity" (ib id.).

will retain a k ind of h eterogeneity of models upon which to draw.What B r ian Goldfarb does not think that visual culture and the postmod­
is p rod uctive fo r o ne researc h er m ay not necessar i ly b e p roductive f� r ern coincide, but he j ustifies his opinion on different grounds. In his
anoth er. Th is poses another, p e da gog ical p roble1n: If th ere are no 1dent1- mind, the desire of v isual and cultural studies to br eak clown certain insti­
fiable methodologies and no guidance for practice, how does one t each tutional hierarch ies and to claim different fo r ms of k nowledge as being

students to work in the visual field? I fin d it interesting that both M itchell, more valid than oth er s is what makes th em ideolog ically closer to mod­
who takes an ant imethodolog ical stance, and H erb ert, whose course is de­ ernists than to postmoderni sts.Goldfarb ma kes an interesting point about

signed sp ecifica lly to acquaint students with methodologies, suggest that the role of the contemporar y in th e initial proj ect of cultural studíés. At
hav ing a"toolbox" 17 is usefu l in dealing with v isuality. that time, Ray mond Williams and Stuar t H all wanted to challenge, in the
T he scholars engage d in this v irtual poly logue p resent different opm­ way Paulo Freire did, the then dominant idea of legitimate knowledge.
ions on visual culture 's s ign ificance w ith r egard to th e postmodern. G un- They had to focus on the present-day and the ver nacular because these

78 C h a o t e r Theoretical Frameworks 7!l

 Brian Goldfarb, 2003. Phot
o by Lisa of visual motivation rather than the sub stance ofthe words a' nd a. , 1g uments ,
. . .
Cartwright. so tha t "t oo mue ¡1 p ostm odern wntmg seems to hide it selfbe111 nd the
PvJ ro tec¡rn1cs of postm odern visuality" (ibid .).
The pro sp ects ofthe future ofvisual studies are ' ·ed . Accord1110-
' va1·1 . to
e0111ey, t111s new
. fi el d 's produ cti o n o f an a ly si s m ay co nst i t u t e a s p:ce'
_ . .
a1way s 111 process' m a condlt!· on of re111vention that cannot b e localized .

TI11. s confidence i. s based on ideas of Michel de Ce1·tea' L1 , ,v · h o 111 . d"1 cated

.
that s1g· n-place i s an in ert and l ocalized entity and tha' t 1.t 1.s space t11a t up-
rn
· ots p ¡ace and b ecomes an area in the wor ld lived by d1·scoms . e. Con1ey
¡1 op es t¡ 1at visu
• al culture , by directing attention to the connection be-
tween what is seen and what is read, will mobilize wr itten culture and ere-
ate ne w spaces . On a' ¡ess pos1t1v · · e note , Jay voices ala rm over the possible
. of obJ. ects , whether they are visual ar tifacts or texts, into their
d1. ssolv111g

contexts. He also IS criti ca! ofthose who see anything p rodL1ced over t1111 . e
,
as examp ¡ es of larger trends . He calls productive "the tension betwee11 a
al students at B ir m­
e t o the nontradition .
matters were the 111.ost accessibl work of ar ' t , a text, or p¡11·1osoph1 cal argument, that is produced' 'and the
' enter for C ontemporary C ultur al Studies (fo unded
ingham University s C enablmg. and dissemm · of receptive
· atmg . contexts, a tension which should
in 1964). b e 1.eta111
. ed ra ther than resolved either in fav ' or of the a te mpora¡·ity of
oted to p opular
inquir y was not dev
Although Williams and Hall's t¡1e o b"� ect, making it tra nscendentally valuabl e for ali ' ti111e , o1. ti1 e utter
eaching new M arxis
t approaches to inter ­
cu lture per se-their aim was t as G old­
matter has prevailed. H owever,
p retation-this type of subj ect ersities and
ways to study the visual at univ
farb recognizes , there are new ked at only in the
colleges. Until recently
, visual texts were ignored or l oo
arginalized w ithin
discipline of ar t hist or
y, which itself has often b een m
new re­
, phil osophy, and science. T he
the academy in favor of liter ature
sys tems ofp o,ver, is e
ngaged in constant
search area , exa mining values and
dial ogue w ith ar t his
tor y.
turn,
the postmoder n and the visual
Jay sees a connection b etween t st udy
to another. He contends that he
b ut he does not wish to reduce one
t "Comolli cal led the
of visual culture did e
merge out ofthe context of wha
of images , the specta
cle, and our interest
frenzy of the visible-the fl ood
of the p ostm odern
in sur veillance, all of
which seem to b e characteristic
e). N e vertheless , b e
­
artín Jay, this volum
movement" (inter view with M
is fo unded on th e re
flexive relationship b etween
cause p ostm oder nism
anguage as rhetoric,
to the postmodern the linguis­
language as te xt and l
are considered ofequal
value. At the same
tic and visual aspect s oflanguage age in to­
t the power of what is on the p
time , Jay finds it intriguing tha cophony Thomas Con ley on a canoe trip, 2003• Photo by Tom F"t
1 zs,mmons.
ages , type face , and ca
' en th e result of the im
day s magaz ines is o ft

Theoretical Frameworks 81
 reduction of the object to nothing but an exemplar of its context" (inter­
view with MartinJay, this volume).
There is y et another potential methodological pitfall, which has
been pointed out by Laura U. Marks: Insofar as we analyze the visual, as
opposed to language-based information, then what we are doing is aes­
thetic (interview with Laura U. Marks, this volume). Visual culture began
with the rejection ofKantian aesthetics; but it is now in danger of reifying
sensual perceptions, and in the long run it may turn into aesthetics again.
This paradoxical situation might be avoided, suggests Goldfarb, if one
takes into consideration semiotics along with the theories of vision and
thinks about images through both absence and presence. In this way, such

D HE A ,\'I W OH 1, D an object as the telephone, for instance, can be seen as a majar visual tech­
nology ofthe twentieth century, for "it allows for associations ofvision via
A�D auditory presence much like the Panopticon" (interview with Brian

C 1\ T ,\ S T 1\ O P II E Goldfarb, this volume). This version of a visual culture appeals to mental

images rather than perceptible artifacts and prevents the regression to
,:---. \ ri11•1'
T11 E I' , .... :-:.1,c tiF \\ Kantian aesthetics.
�T
1\ l·:,...,T \\1) \\E
Another way around the aesthetics dilemma has been proposed by
Rodowick, who believes that cinema and the electronic arts-the realm
of visual culture-are ahead ofphilosophy. Because new images rnay have
a conceptual basis not accessible via traditional aesthetic approaches,
"philosophical criticism has to find or invent new concepts as tools for
understanding, semiotically and critically, what is happening culturally"
(interview with David N. Rodowick, this volume).
Susan Buck-Morss, one of the respondents to the October "Visual
Culture Questionnaire," takes an interesting turn. She devised her recent
book Dreamworld and Catastrophe as an experiment that "attempts to use
images as philosophy, presenting, literally, a way of seeing the past that

1
1 challenges common conceptions as to what this century was all about"
·
• East and (2000, p. xv). On this account, visual culture as the study ofthe social pro­
Pass1ng of Mass Utopía in

1
orss, Drea mw orld and Catastrophe: The
Sus an Buck-M
. duction of meaning may replace a contested philosophy.
The MIT Press, 2000
West. Cambridge, Mass.:
Mirzoeff calls visual culture a "tactic with which to study the ge­
nealogy, definitions, and functions" of today's life from the point of view
of the user (1999, p. 3). I understand Mirzoeff's concept to be based on
the Marxian postulate that the process of consumption itselfcreates both
the producer and the consumer. Michel de Certeau has elaborated on this

Theoretical Frameworks 83
 r or reader by
ductive insofar as the viewe
1. ssue.. H e i.egai·ds vie wing pro . i· ' i stic producuon.
'.

atm g .
it, is e g g e d 11 art
taking an im .age and recircul
a
. n
_ . .
' t m e nts fu r ther d1scus
s1on,
t of o srnn .
ns n1 tha
, 1oth er aspec
The1.e 1·s a1
c n e
.
stu den t s are p erceived as c
onsume1s. The p ro- C h a p t e r 2
t tha t tod y's
s i· s eLOS ter.ed by
cac
nan1e¡y, tl1e L, ' a . • ·
. . uo studies in u 111vers1t1e
of the m uru . na¡·izat"1on of visual
ces s s
presents (actual
demands. The_ n ext chapter
studen ts' r apidly ch anging
n of that top1c.
materi. a1 and offie1·s a' discussio

lnstitutions and Pedagogy

The expansion of the fi eld of art history was brought about by the larger
leftist politicization ofU.S. academia, connected to the civil rights move­
ment, feminism, and other attempts to combine teaching with social jus­
tice . The history of visual studies as a university subject can be linked to
the "culture war s" of the 1980s, when there was a g reat deal being pub­
lished on the question of the r elationship between art and the humanities
and mainstream American culture. The profound tr ansformation that has

occurred in the culture of the student population over the last twenty y ears
has created favorable conditions for the introduction of a new subject into
the currículum. More and more students are entering colleges "without
having, or vvishing for, tr aditional European elite taste preferences and
without the desire to fo r m themselves ethically through their consump­
tion or knowl edge of canons" (During 1999, p. 26).
Nowaday s, students live in a world in which the technical capacity to
produce and spread images has increased enonnously. I n this environment,
"virtually all modes of discour se are dominated by th e electronic media"
(intervie w with G e orge Dimock, this volume). As Martin jay emphasizes,
the current generation is "visually literate even though thi s liter acy is not
in general informed by art histor ical precedent ; still, they have visual tech­
nological sophistication in all r espects, and this visual literacy allows them
to feel comfortable in talking about images. Students now expect slides or
videos [ even] i n history lectures" (intervie w with Martin jay, this volume).
 ssay in this b ook itself s
peaks for the i mpor­
distri bution and consumption rnodel, inse rting the fi eld of visual culture into the fi eld tries. The fact of publication of suc h an e
of this n w bj t.
tance of the recogn ition and theor izing
e o ec
of cul t ural production, wh ich is itself a part ofth e l arge r fi eld of g en eral production.
ican schol­
! of those European and North Amer
14. As D onald Kuspit arg ued, the inside r o - utsider issue as well as the question of art 4. On ians (1996) is also highly cr itica t t ndards and
d n t
izing that their academic activ ities
o o se s a
historical versus extra-ar t histor ical " haunts the entire st udy of the twentieth- century ars who are far frorn real
ng c ountr ies .
art" (1987, p. 129). He g ives an example ofth e de bate around the exhib ition '"P rim­ w ho neglect scholarship in the developi
essor at the Un iversi t y
itivism' in 20th Centur y Art" held at the Museum ofM odern Ar t in New York (1984), id Joselit, a former prof
S. I n rel ation to this, the works ofD av ritten on th e
are exemplary.H e has w
dur ing which "an outsider," Thomas McEvilley, critic ized t he curators fo r their an­ now at Yale University,
ofCaliforn ia , J r vine and
throp ol og ical shor tcomings and confronted che pro blem of ar t's intellectual belong ing cept ofthe "ready made ," w hic h fu se d the realm
works ofMarcel D uchamp and the con h centur y
by questioning "which disciplin e can offer the best and most numerous i nsights into it." first quart r f t tw nt iet
alm of ar t as early as the
e o he e
of conimerce with the re
Th nt e t n w commodi­
-1941, 1998). s i ho
(Infinite Regress: lVforcel D/.lclta111p, 19"10
is i er
15. I know of one exception to this rule, in Canada : the D epar tment of Art Histor y
l ted n overlapp ed in the past e
ffected his p ersonal move to -
and Cultural Studies at York Universi ty, Toron to. For deba te on the institutionaliza­ ties and art o bject s circu a a d

tion of cultural studies, see chapter 2. ward visual studies.

l r it Ro­
incides with that ofG ay atri Spivak and
16. The question is also whether or not those discipl ines visual culture neg ates are as 6.The position ofD ouglas Cr imp co w field of
tions that they ask t p ce th e ne
go ff, according to whom it is the ques
hat rodu
firmly formulated today as these definitions might suggest. To do JUStice to these dis­ h w R mp ley as a pos1 -
16). This stand is criticized by M att e a
ciplines, we mus t l ook at how they are th emselves unde rg oing signifi cant transfor ma­ i nquiry (Rog off 1998, p.

tions along sim ilar lines as v isual c ulture. tion th at ma. kes

henomena is al­
use the desc r iption of p
17. J onathan C uller in "What Is C ultural Studies?" contends that mass culture­ the unwarranted conclusion tha t b eca
phenomen m t lw a y s b e consonant
way s rel ative to a par ticu lar theor y, those
a us a
"foisted up on [pe op le] by capitalism and its media and entertainment industr ies"- is w n d, much of the
et as Pe ter D
wi th the implications of that theor y.Y
e s has ote
opp osed to p op ular cult ure (1999, p. 339), a position tha t is debat ab le given tha t in the ation of the
nt re th inter rog
of science ... has ce
d on e
attention of philosophy
e
market-dr iven ag e of consumerism these two c ultures are no longer in conflict. n f p ecific theoretical
th p d t
discrepancies b e tween ob servation and
e re ic io o s

ten dev ised to s hore up

the ore tical con­
18. Representing a "se eing" approach to academic inquir y, this magazine has changed par adigms, and the ad /,oc strategi es of
, p.3).
t narne twice : I t has been published as Visual Sociology Review (1986-1991) and as Vi­
i s
clusions increasingly beset
by such contradictions (Rampley 2002
s,w
. l Sociology (1991-2002). go bey ond a narrowly
s and a hav ing a desire to
I do not think that asking new question
n n .Aft r ali, to focus on prob­
ny predict ability ofthe co clusio s e
defined o bJ ect leads to a
Chapter 1 , ne h u d mphasize questions
ect from a different ng o s o l e
le ms and assess the o bj
a le
he H istor y of
s is wha t, for ex ample, t
i fferent approac hes.Thi
1.Among the reasons for this occurrence, Simon D uring sugges ts, is the increased im­ spanning a number of d
of Cali for nia, Sant a C ru
z, has been doing suc-
p or tance ofcultural industries to postindustrial national ec onomies and the r ise in "the C onsci ousness P rog ram at University
cessfully for more than t
h ir ty y ears.
use of cul tural he r i tag es and cult ural cons umption t o mai nta in o r sta biliz e identi ties

by na tions, e thnic groups, and individuals (partly because socialism has been delegi t­ as an inte,face, that is, the
point of intercon­
7. I think that the thesis of visual culture
imized, and p eople cease to identify with a class)" (1999, p. 26). other network (here be
tween the disciplines),
nection between one network and an ut for ward by
cism of visual culture p
answer to a recent cr iti
2. An examp le of the transition to a m ore theoretic al model of visual studies can be can be pres ented as the
ribing
lture for "v isual essentialism" i its desc n
found in Paul D uro's b ook The Rhetoric of the Fra 111e (1996).D uro, w ho recently suc­ Mieke Bal, who lay s blame on visual cu t rest of
l, as if it could b e isolated ... fro m he
ceeded H olly at the Un i versity ofRochester, confessed that the editing ofthis collec­ "the segm.ent of that culture that is visua
that cultu re " (B al 2003,
p.6).
tion of essay s on framin g devices tha t condition the way we vi ew works of art enabled
great dif­
him "to move away from the p oin t of vi ew tha t isolates pe riod and historical context, fornia at l rvine is convinced that "the
8. Mark P oster ofthe Univer sity ofCali M dle Ages
to instead look at t hing s t he oretically, across discipli nes, but also across instances wi t hin selv es and our ancestors
from th e id
ference in visual regimes between our 68). H e urg es
the fine ar ts" (inter view with P aul D uro, chis vol ume). n the present" (2002 , p.
in formation m achines i
concerns the spread of
t nd i s ing con­
material form of its o bje
s a n o do
that visual studies takes seriously " the
c
3.T he quo tation is taken from an es say that was kindly sent to this author by J ames D. b dg t g p b tw een a
dia studies." Thus, Poster
's thesis r i es he a e

Herbert in 2001.The essay recently appeared in the second edition of Critica/ Ter111sfor ceives it self as par t of me
cult ure.
r l tu nd t m erging theory of visual
concept of m at cul re a he e
Art History (2003), which contains the orig inal twenty-two essay s and nine new en- e ia

Notes 291
290 Notes