The Visibility of the Image History and Perspectives of Formal Aesthetics

Now available in English for the first time, The Visibility of the Image explores the development of an influential aesthetic tradition through the work of six figures. Analysing their contribution to the progress of formal aesthetics, from its origins in Germany in the 1880s to semiotic interpretations in America a century later, the six chapters cover:

Robert Zimmermann (1824-1898), the first to separate aesthetics and metaphysics and approach aesthetics along the lines of formal logic, providing a purely syntactic way of using signs, regardless of objective content;
Alois Riegl (1858-1905), who went on to further develop aesthetics on the model of formal logic, creating a theory of style in response to Zimmermann's call for an aesthetics oriented toward formal logic;
Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), who represents a step toward an understanding of consciousness by using pictures as cognitive tools;
Konrad Fiedler (1841-1895), the Saxon philosopher who considered the possibility that some kinds of images are made and viewed not for what they show, but for their visibility's sake alone;
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), responsible for taking up the connections between the problems of reducing the range of potential meanings and contexts of a given image down to just the picture surface;
Charles William Morris (1901-1979), who set out to establish whether a picture with no objective reference, such as an abstract painting, still counts as a sign, and if so, in what sense.

Bringing these thinkers together and interlinking their ideas, Lambert Wiesing presents an engaging history of formal aesthetics, while reconstructing the philosophical foundations for the appearance of new image forms in the 20th century, including the video-clip, abstract collage, digital simulation and virtual reality. Using this original approach, The Visibility of the Image introduces the rise of modern image theory and provides a valuable account of our engagement with pictures in the 21st century.

Lambert Wiesing, a prominent figure in image theory, is Professor of Philosophy at Jena University, Germany. He was President of the German Society for Aesthetics between 2005 and 2008. He was a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, UK in 2013.

Translator
Nancy Roth is an independent writer and translator based in the UK.

Preface to the New Edition
Introduction

I: THE BEGINNINGS OF FORMAL AESTHETICS: Robert Zimmermann (1824-1898)
1. formal logic as a standard model for formal aesthetics
2. The project: a structural theory of the picture surface
3. perspectives and problems of Herbartianism

II: FORMAL AESTHETICS AND RELATIONAL LOGIC: ALOIS RIEGL (1858-1905)
1. demarcations on the picture surface
2. Kunstwollen: making equivalent that which is non-equivalent
3. intentional and extensional relational logic

III: THE LOGIC OF VIEWS Heinrich Wöllflin (1864-1945)
1. the relational logic of an image
2. formal and transcendental aesthetics
3. the state of seeing

IV: FROM VIEW TO VISIBILITY: Konrad Fiedler (1841-1895)
1. paradigms of formal aesthetics
2. synthetic images, made “for visibility alone”
3. the end of the artistic demand for truth

V: PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION AND PICTORIAL ABSTRACTION: Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)
1. formal aesthetics and reduction
2. visibility as actuality
3. the abstract picture

VI: FROM FORMAL TO FORMATIVE DISCOURSE: Charles William Morris (1901-1979)
1. images pictures about pictures images
2. images pictures as formulae
3. the formative discourse of rapid picture image sequencing

Endnotes
Picture Credits
Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Subjects

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