Approaches to Understanding Visual Culture (review)

Approaches to Understanding Visual Culture is a useful and clearly written book, examining competing strategies towards the interpretation of the totality of human-made objects and imagery beyond the confines of "art history." It contains about a dozen illustrations, although one would have welcomed at least a dozen more.

With techniques from history and the social sciences, phenomenology and hermeneutics (the arts of individual consciousness-based understanding), visual theorists began in the 18th century to build methodical processes for interpretation. By the mid-20th century, individualist approaches were being applied to subject matter as diverse as Renaissance paintings and 1950s motor-scooter advertisements. Other interpretive approaches sprang from communication theory, Saussurean semiology and structuralism, while feminist and Marxist social histories also added significantly to the field. It is only after discussion of these that Barnard examines formalist art historians— too often the beginning and end of interpretation—such as Clive Bell, Heinrich Wofflin and Clement Greenberg.

Due to its discussion of a wide range of major theoretical approaches, Approaches to Understanding Visual Culture deserves a place on the theory shelf beside Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory, a similarly sized guidebook of much help for the perplexed.