Discipline: Humanities

Topic: Art

Art History: An Introduction

Alec Mishory

This book deals with the basic components of the visual image as such, and offers specific tools for observation needed to understand the main principles of visual literacy, the interrelationships of the formal and narrative components of the visual image, and how these join in conveying its message to the spectator. The first part of the book discusses the functions and formal characteristics of the visual image: line, form, color; texture and space (real or imaginary).

The second part deals with the narrative components of the visual image: signs, icons, visual metaphors and allegories, personifications, visual puns and double meanings etc. The third part offers a detailed survey of the various techniques and materials through which visual images are created (especially in works of art). The reader is exposed to the various ways in which the visual image is analyzed within its non-artistic contexts: social, historical, cultural and national. The book contains hundreds of reproductions of works of art. 2000, 472 pp., cat. # 10489

Dr. Alec Mishory of the Open University of Israel is an art historian and art critic. He is author of Lo and Behold, Zionist Icons and Visual Symbols in Israeli Culture (Am Oved, 2000, Hebrew), a comprehensive survey of Zionist ideas through icons and symbols.

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