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Carrier, David. The Aesthetics of Comics. University Park: Penn State Univ. Press, 2000. 
Added by: joachim (7/20/09, 1:34 AM)   Last edited by: joachim (2/10/14, 10:36 AM)
Resource type: Book
Language: en: English
ID no. (ISBN etc.): 027101962X
BibTeX citation key: Carrier2000
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Categories: General
Keywords: Aesthetics, Art
Creators: Carrier
Publisher: Penn State Univ. Press (University Park)
Views: 20/1221
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Abstract
From Gary Larson’s The Far Side to George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, comic strips have two obvious defining features. They are visual narratives, using both words and pictures to tell stories, and they use word balloons to represent the speech and thought of depicted characters. Art historians have studied visual artifacts from every culture; cultural historians have recently paid close attention to movies. Yet the comic strip, an art form known to everyone, has not yet been much studied by aestheticians or art historians. This is the first full-length philosophical account of the comic strip.
Distinguished philosopher David Carrier looks at popular American and Japanese comic strips to identify and solve the aesthetic problems posed by comic strips and to explain the relationship of this artistic genre to other forms of visual art. He traces the use of speech and thought balloons to early Renaissance art and claims that the speech balloon defines comics as neither a purely visual nor a strictly verbal art form, but as something radically new. Comics, he claims, are essentially a composite art that, when successful, seamlessly combine verbal and visual elements.
Carrier looks at the way an audience interprets comics and contrasts the interpretation of comics and other mass-culture images to that of Old Master visual art. The meaning behind the comic can be immediately grasped by the average reader, whereas a piece of museum art can only be fully interpreted by scholars familiar with the history and the background behind the painting. Finally, Carrier relates comics to art history. Ultimately, Carrier’s analysis of comics shows why this popular art is worthy of philosophical study and proves that a better understanding of comics will help us better understand the history of art.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations (ix)
Acknowledgments (xi)
Introduction (1)

I The Nature of Comics
1. Caricature; or, Representing Causal Connection (11)
2. The Speech Balloon; or, The Problem of Representing Other Minds (27)
3. The Image Sequence; or, Moving Modernist Pictures (47)
4. Words and Pictures Bound Together; or, Experiencing the Unity of Comics (61)

II Interpreting Comics
5. The Content of the Form; or, Seeing Pictures, Reading Texts, Viewing Comics (77)
6. Interpreting a Populist Art Form; or, The Liberating Force of Krazy Kat (87)

III The Place of Comics in Relation to Art History
7. Posthistorical Art; or, Comics and the Realm of Absolute Knowledge (107)

Bibliography (125)
Index (137)


Added by: joachim  Last edited by: joachim
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