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London Aesthetics Forum: The Power of Pictures

London Aesthetics Forum (Institute of Philosophy)
Wednesday 7th December 2016, 16:00-18:00
Senate House, Room 234

Anne Eaton (University of Illinois, Chicago)

The Power of Pictures

Most of the conversation about pictures in contemporary analytic philosophy of art concerns issues pertaining to depiction (the form of representation that is peculiar to pictures). But there is much more to pictures than their semantic content. Pictures are made and used to accomplish all sorts of things. This talk crosses into the area of what one might call pictorial pragmatics and develops a concept of pictorial rhetoric to explain how pictures persuade in the affective realm; for instance, how they can condemn or celebrate, entice or disgust, parody or flatter, and so on. The title is a nod to art historian David Freedberg and his 1989 book, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (U Chicago Press).

The talk will be free and open to all. For more information please visit the website www.londonaestheticsforum.org

The London Aesthetics Forum (Institute of Philosophy) is generously supported by the British Society of Aesthetics.