Review
"This book will be most useful to graduate level students and scholars who are exploring questions of meaning, symbolism, and representation both linguistically and pictorially." Religious Studies Review
Product Description
In this innovative, interdisciplinary study, James Elkins argues against the assumption that images can be adequately described in words. In his view, words must always fail because pictures possess a residue of "meaningless" marks that can not be apprehended as signs. On Pictures and the Words that Fail Them provides detailed, incisive critiques of fundamental notions about pictures: their allegedly semiotic structures; the "rational" nature of realism; and the ubiquity of the figure-ground relation.
