Journal of Visual Culture

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Book Review: Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after the Cultural Turn
Lee Rodney
Journal of Visual Culture 2006; 5; 427
DOI: 10.1177/1470412906070580
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Books

Communist Party and their work around Algeria. The book establishes firmly
that Bretons radical stance on Eros never wavered and that his violent hatred
of the ruling class did not mellow over the years. Mahons book
demonstrates an impressive depth of research and her closing sentence
certainly does seem to fit the mood of the times: The legacy of Surrealism
after 1968 must surely follow artists, writers, thinkers and activists who are
committed to the power of the unconscious and to the imagination of other
possible worlds (p. 215).
References
Bate, David (2004) Counterfeit Liberals, New Humanist 119, May, URL (consulted
Jan. 2006): http:www.newhumanist.org.uk/vol119issue3
Bate, David (2005) Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social
Dissent. London: I.B. Tauris.
Breton, Andr (1969[1947]) Ode to Charles Fourier. New York: Cape Goliard Press.
Engels, Friedrich (1987[1878]) Anti-Dhring, in Marx and Engels: Collected Works,
Vol. 25, pp. 24454. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Gille, Vincent (2005) Surrealism Today: Two Books, a Few Questions and the Mood
of the Times, Papers of Surrealism 3, Spring, URL (consulted Jan. 2006):
http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk//publications/papers/journal3/index.htm
Kachur, Lewis (2001) Displaying the Marvellous. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Marx, Karl (1981[1848]) Manifesto of the Communist Party, in The Revolutions of
1848: Political Writings, Vol. 1, pp. 947. London: Penguin.

Hazel Donkin
University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK
[hazel.donkin@unn.ac.uk]

M. Dikovitskaya, Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after the Cultural
Turn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. 344 pp. ISBN 0262541882 DOI:
10.1177/1470412906070580
Margaret Dikovitskayas Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after the
Cultural Turn tracks the development of visual culture and visual studies in
American institutions over the last decade. Published 10 years after the
polemical October 77, Questionnaire on Visual Culture (1996),
Dikovitskayas book signals the staying power of an area of study that has
often been regarded as a novelty within established academic disciplines. Her
study suggests that the relationship between art history and visual culture is
still fraught with tension: while its adherents continue to grow in number,
visual culture is still subject to scrutiny.
Dikovitskayas approach is somewhat tentative given the vast body of
literature on the subject. While she has conducted extensive research into
the origins of visual culture and the development of academic departments
dedicated to its study, she seems content to defer to the views of others. She

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has taken an anthropological approach, referring to her project as a kind of

polylogue; much of the book is dedicated to a series of interviews with many
of the major contributors to the field, including Nicholas Mirzeoff, Martin Jay,
W.J.T. Mitchell and Lisa Cartwright, among others. The first chapter focuses
on the fracturing of art history and the subsequent emergence of visual
culture over the past 20 years. The second chapter compares the two
founding graduate programs in visual culture in the United States (at the
University of Rochester and the University of California, Irvine).
The remainder of the book is dedicated to the interviews. These address two
important gaps in the current literature: a need for a discussion of pedagogy
in visual culture, and a history of its development. Dikovitskaya makes the
important observation that visual culture (or visual studies as it is sometimes
called) is neither cultural studies nor a modernized art history (p. 69).
However, she suggests that the turn toward the analysis of culture in
humanities programs, the cultural turn that was set in motion during the
1980s, has brought about a sea change in terms of the discipline of art
history. Rather than an emphasis on art and history, Dikovitskaya implies that
in these new programs we witness a shift in emphasis from art to the visual
and from history to culture (p. 5).
While this characterization is certainly true for some approaches, it seems
that Dikovitskayas understanding of history is bound by questions of canon
formation and chronology. It is inaccurate to equate visual culture solely with
the study of the contemporary even though it is often noted that the excess
of the visual or hypervisuality is a characteristic of postmodern culture more
generally (Mirzeoff, 1999). There are a number of books that are essential
reading in the field of visual culture that are historical studies: Mary Ann
Doane (2003), Tom Gunning (1989), Jonathan Crary (1992, 2001), and
Barbara Maria Stafford (1991, 1994) have all written on the history of
perception and technologies of vision. The breadth of this body of literature
should indicate that the purview of visual culture reaches far beyond the
contemporary field.
At the outset of the second chapter Dikovitskaya states that visual studies
helps the university prepare students to live in the contemporary world (p.
86). Given her enthusiasm for the potential of visual culture, her questions
seem to indicate a lingering concern for the status of the art object within
visual studies. While visual culture often addresses historical and contemporary art, its function is characteristically different from art criticism or
history. And while visual culture seems to incorporate the history of art
within its interdisciplinary purview, it does not often work in reverse, as art
history is the establishment position put into question by visual culture.
James D. Herbert, a professor of visual culture at the University of California,
Irvine, suggests that art history is of necessity subsumed under visual studies:
visual studies not only encompasses art history but also historicizes it (p.
185). This is an important question insofar as visual culture and visual
studies are typically taught within art history departments, or the vestiges of
art history departments that have merged with other departments.

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Books

Dikovitskaya frequently asked her interviewees about the relevance of visual

culture to the study of historical art (pp. 134, 163, 175, 187, 226, 262, 270).
This question betrays an implicit bias toward art history that may not have
been intended. She often introduced this question by quoting Nicholas
Mirzoeff (1999), who refers to visual culture as a way of talking about postmodernism, a tactic with which to study the genealogy and functions of
todays life from the point of view of the consumer. David N. Rodowicks
reply to this question indicates that visual culture needs to be applied
historically its not simply a function of twentieth century culture (p. 262).
Mirzoeff himself replies by stating that the transformation of contemporary
culture demands a new history of modernism and modernity that can begin
to account for the changes we are seeing now (p. 226).
While Dikovitskayas scope is commendable, Visual Culture at times reads
more like a field guide rather than a book or comparative study. As the
interviews comprise nearly two-thirds of her text, Visual Culture still retains
the quality of a round-table; the book lacks a critical framework or
perspective that would give the interviews some sense of exigency. What
seems missing is a sense of the critical tension that inevitably exists in any
field: personalities and positions that contradict or even clash. It seems here
that Dikovitskaya has attempted to remain objective in order to foreground
the more starkly differentiated positions of her subjects.
The interviews revealed some notable reflections missing in the critical
literature. Many of those interviewed spoke about first-hand experiences in
teaching visual culture and how student engagement has changed in recent
years. However, as Dikovitskaya aims toward a kind of quantitative objectivity
in her interview process, she betrays the tenor of the cultural turn that is
critical to her overall thesis. Since the cultural turn is premised on a more
subjective orientation toward research, it would seem to follow that she
would be more forthcoming herself in terms of outlining her own
perspective. Her background only slowly emerges through the course of the
interviews. At the end of the book, in her interview with Howard Singerman,
she mentions the influence of her early studies:
At the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, where I studied, there is a single
discipline which might be called art-visual-culture, with the
components dealt with in the same terms. Now, for me visual culture
and visual studies are the same, and I find it very useful not to oppose
art to the rest as it were. (p. 270)
Also absent is some kind of commentary on the institutional politics that have
shaped the various programs. If art history has its origins in Italian, French
and German sources, visual culture, it might seem from Dikovitskayas
perspective, is a product of Anglo-American discourse alone. While this may
be partially true, some mention of this bias might help shed light on visual
cultures relationship to the academic and institutional structures that have
given rise to this new discourse.

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Nicholas Mirzoeff points out that the future of the study of visual culture is
not limited to English-speaking countries alone: One thing I have noticed
over the last six months is the much higher degree of interest in visual
culture in Central and Eastern Europe (p. 233). As this interview took place
in 2001, one can only expect that quite a different international picture has
since emerged. Dikovitskayas research, however, has provided a valuable
overview of visual culture as an American enterprise, which will hopefully
soon be fleshed out by scholars working elsewhere.
References
Crary, Jonathan (1992) Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the
19th Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Crary, Jonathan (2001) Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern
Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Doane, Mary Ann (2003) The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency,
the Archive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gunning, Tom (1989) The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the
Avant-Garde, in Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker (eds) Early Film. London:
British Film Institute.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas (ed.) (1999) An Introduction to Visual Culture. London:
Routledge.
Stafford, Barbara Maria (1991) Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment
Art and Medicine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stafford, Barbara Maria (1994) Artful Science: Enlightenment, Entertainment and the
Eclipse of Visual Education. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Lee Rodney
University of Windsor, Ontario
[email: lrodney@uwindsor.ca]

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2006 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.