An Introduction to Visual Culture Studies

Life in the culture of image, in the era of screens, where our experience is mediated through television, the Internet and films require a conscious reader. The aim of the course is to present the language of the images, paintings and visualizations surrounding human societies. It is an interdisciplinary reflection concerned with the production, circulation, consumption of pictures which create our point of view. Lectures focus on the influence of the pictures on societies, politics of the countries and everyday life. In a nutshell, lectures try to find the answer to the main question of the discipline: what do pictures want? (W.J.T. Mitchell). The lectures are divided into two parts. First part contains the basic terms, theories and disciplines which are useful in Visual Culture Studies. Second part is focused on the most popular image media like: photographies, paintings, posters, films, TV picture, effigies and performances. This part contains the analyses of visual objects which have performative strength.

List of the lectures:

I. Theoretical part

1. Visual Culture Studies: basic terms and definitions, research field, theory and theorists.

2. William John Thomas Mitchell’s research project: anthropomimetic pictures/ metapictures

3. Svetlana Alpers – representation without interpretation. Fresh and new view on masterpieces

4. Nicholas Mirzoeff – the subject of visual culture

5. David Freedberg – iconoclasm. Destruction of masterpieces

6. Hans Belting – facial politics. From the renaissance portrait to selfie

7. Georges Didi-Huberman’s research project: new art history, virtuality and visuality, invisible and blurred, frame, outskirts

8. Gottfried Boehm – images and words interferences. Few words about ekphrasis

9. Mieke Bal – the act of reading pictures. Few words about the travelling concepts

II. Visual Culture Studies in practice

10. Medium is a message? A brief characterization of the term in Visual Culture Studies

11. Portraits and self-portraits

12. Analogue and digital photography. The importance of the photographic medium in visual culture

13. Historical painting. Close watching and visual references

14. Title and the work of art. Interferences between word and image. Władysław Hasior’s assemblages

15. The book cover. How to judge a book by its cover

1. S. Alpers, Rembrandt’s Enterprise. The Studio and the Market, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

2. M. Bal, A Mieke Bal Reader, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

3. H. Belting, An Anthropology of Images. Picture, Medium, Body, trans. T. Dunlap, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014.

4. H. Belting, Face and Mask : A Double History, tans. Thomas S. Hansen, Abby J. Hansen, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 2017.

5. G. Didi-Huberman, Confronting the Images. Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art, Penn State University Press 2009.

6. G. Didi-Huberman, Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz, trans. Shane B. Lillis, University of Chicago Press, 2012.

7. D. Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1991.

8. D. Freedberg, Iconoclasm, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2020.

9. W.J.T. Mitchell, Iconology. Image, Text, Ideology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1987.

10. W.J.T. Mitchell, Landscapes and Power, University of Chicago Press 2002.

11. W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, University of Chicago Press 2004.

12. N. Mirzoeff, Introduction to Visual Culture, Tylor and Francis Ltd 2009.

13. N. Mirzoeff, Visual Culture Reader, London-New York: Routledge, Tylor and Francis Group, 2012.

14. N. Mirzoeff, How to See the World: An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to Selfies, Maps to Movies, and More, London: Basic Books 2016.

15. S. Linfield, The Cruel Radiance. Photography And Political Violence, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2010.

Dictionaries:

1. Critical Terms for Art History, edited by R. S. Nelson, R.Shiff, University of Chicago Press 1996.

2. Critical Terms for Literary Study, edited by F. Lentricchia, T. McLaughlin, University of Chicago Press 1996.