{"title":"Whitney Davis","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"masking-the-blow-book-whitney-davis-9780520074880","title":"Masking the Blow","description":"The meaning of late prehistoric Egyptian images has until now been tantalizingly mysterious, as little understood as the circumstances of their production. As a result, analyses of these images have been general and often incorrectly illustrated. Whitney Davis now provides a welcome remedy in this detailed reinterpretation of the images carved on ivory knife handles and schist cosmetic palettes. These images are among the most important documents of early Egyptian history and include the Narmer Palette, often considered the very inception of ancient Egyptian image making. Davis deciphers the intriguing pictorial narratives and complex metaphors of images that are concerned with 'masking the blow' of the ruler. 'Masking the blow' refers to the ways that the images - from hunted animals to human antagonists - represent, elide, or suppress the depiction of a ruler's violent act of conquering an enemy. Examining late prehistoric Egyptian images in light of contemporary visual theory and illustrating his analyses with excellent reproductions, Davis goes beyond the usual concern for stylistic development and iconographic meanings that characterize prior studies. His work will greatly interest art historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and students of the visual arts.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49555354190097,"sku":"GOR009278878","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0520074882.jpg?v=1751293259"},{"product_id":"general-theory-of-visual-culture-book-whitney-davis-9780691147659","title":"A General Theory of Visual Culture","description":"What is cultural about vision - or visual about culture? In this ambitious book, Whitney Davis provides new answers to these difficult and important questions by presenting an original framework for understanding visual culture. Grounded in the theoretical traditions of art history, \"A General Theory of Visual Culture\" argues that, in a fully consolidated visual culture, artifacts and pictures have been made to be seen in a certain way; what Davis calls 'visuality' is the visual perspective from which certain culturally constituted aspects of artifacts and pictures are visible to informed viewers. In this book, Davis provides a systematic analysis of visuality and describes how it comes into being as a historical form of vision. Expansive in scope, \"A General Theory of Visual Culture\" draws on art history, aesthetics, the psychology of perception, the philosophy of reference, and vision science, as well as visual-cultural studies in history, sociology, and anthropology. It provides penetrating new definitions of form, style, and iconography, and draws important and sometimes surprising conclusions (for example, that vision does not always attain to visual culture, and that visual culture is not always wholly visible). The book uses examples from a variety of cultural traditions, from prehistory to the twentieth century, to support a theory designed to apply to all human traditions of making artifacts and pictures - that is, to visual culture as a worldwide phenomenon.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50322938364177,"sku":"CIN0691147655G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50977686487313,"sku":"CIN0691147655VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691147655.jpg?v=1751136303"},{"product_id":"visuality-and-virtuality-book-whitney-davis-9780691171944","title":"Visuality and Virtuality","description":"A provocative and challenging new conceptual framework for the study of images  This book builds on the groundbreaking theoretical framework established in Whitney Davis's acclaimed previous book, A General Theory of Visual Culture, in which he shows how certain culturally constituted aspects of artifacts and pictures are visible to informed viewers. Here, Davis uses revealing archaeological and historical case studies to further develop his theory, presenting an exacting new account of the interaction that occurs when a viewer looks at a picture.  Davis argues that pictoriality--the depiction intended by its maker to be seen--emerges at a particular standpoint in space and time. Reconstruction of this standpoint is the first step of the art historian's craft. Because standpoints are inherently mutable and mobile, pictoriality constantly shifts in form and possible meaning. To capture this complexity, Davis develops new concepts of radical pictorial ambiguity, including \"bivisibility\" (the fact that pictures can always be seen in ways other than intended), pictorial naturalism, and the behavior of pictures under changing angles of view. He then applies these concepts to four cases--Paleolithic cave painting; ancient Egyptian tomb decoration; classical Greek architectural sculpture, with a focus on the Parthenon frieze; and Renaissance perspective as invented by Brunelleschi.  A profound new theory of the work of both makers and viewers by one of the discipline's most esteemed and engaged thinkers, Visuality and Virtuality is essential reading for art historians, architects, archaeologists, and philosophers of art and visual theory.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50360352375057,"sku":"CIN0691171947G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691171947.jpg?v=1750743985"},{"product_id":"general-theory-of-visual-culture-book-whitney-davis-9780691178073","title":"A General Theory of Visual Culture","description":"What is cultural about vision--or visual about culture? 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