Author: Eisner, Elliot W.

Publication Year: 1977

Media Type: Report

Summary:

Abstract:

The articles in this book represent an effort to describe the relationships between the forms of cognition used to read text and those used to read visual art. In our vernacular we recognize a commonality that cuts across a large number of apparently diverse fields of human activity. We say, for example, that we read music as well as poetry, paintings as well as faces; that body posture is a language that we learn to read; and that even tea leaves, palms, and futures can be read. But what does it mean to read novels or works of visual art? Does our use of the vernacular simply represent the sloppy use of language, or does it represent an intuitive grasp of the way our minds construe meaning from patterned events and objects, even if the grammar for such events and objects cannot be articulated?

This book was stimulated by a conference sponsored by the National Art Education Association on Reading, the Arts and the Creation of Meaning which was held in New York City in January of 1977. That conference represented an effort by the National Art Education Association to bring together people in the arts and the fields of reading, psychology, and philosophy to explore relationships the conference theme represented. All of the papers included in this volume, with the exception of mine, were prepared especially for this volume. My paper was prepared initially for the Claremont Reading Conference and was later modified for use in New York. (p. 7, 10, 11)

CONTENTS
Introduction by Elliot W. Eisner.
Reading and the creation of meaning by Elliot W. Eisner.
Reading for non-literal meaning by Gabriele Lusser Rico.
What is basic about reading? by Kenneth S. Goodman.
On the mysteries of reading and art: The picturebook as art object by Kenneth Marantz.
On reading: the great American fetish by Malcolm P. Douglas.
Metaphorical perception by D. N. Perkins.
Art, Criticism , Reading by Edmund Burke Feldman.
About the authors.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Arts Education