Approaches To Understanding Visual Culture

"What is it that happens when we understand something?" Malcolm Barnard relates the understanding of visual culture to the traditions of natural and social science and applies the theme of scientific understanding to the principal approaches to understanding art and design. Formalist, Marxist, gender-based, semiological, hermeneutic, and expressionist approaches to visual culture are clearly explained, through a wide variety of examples from fashion, architecture, film, fine art, and comics.