Visual Culture and Art Theory

Visual culture and art theory examine how images, objects, and performances produce meaning—not just as aesthetic experiences but as active forces shaping social life, identity, and power. Scholars draw on art history, semiotics, and media studies to trace how visual representations circulate across different media forms, a concern captured by concepts like intermediality, which attends to the crossings between painting, film, text, and digital image, and ekphrasis, which studies how language attempts to translate visual experience. The so-called iconic turn has pushed the question further, arguing that images operate by their own logic rather than simply mirroring language or reality. Ongoing debates center on how sensory experience beyond vision fits into a discipline organized around sight, and on what it means to analyze visual culture in a global context where the histories and norms of image-making differ radically across traditions.

Works

53,073

Total citations

201,932

Keywords

Visual CultureIntermedialityEkphrasisIconic TurnMedia StudiesSensory Studies