ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up the question of visual art, particularly the ways in which visual texts have been understood and deployed, in the Western tradition, as capital-A Art. It looks specifically at the ways in which art has been transformed in modern and postmodern societies, particularly through the developments that have occurred in visual communication technologies. Art is generally an extremely visual field, or set of practices, even if we look outside the obvious candidates of painting, drawing and sculpture. While ‘art’ provides techniques, structures and mechanisms for the production of individual artistic statements, ‘culture’ provides the social and ideological conditions in which works of art can be made and disseminated. Aesthetics is associated now with art history and philosophy, rather than visual culture more generally, and is a set of knowledges, theories and practices that address the nature and value of art objects and art experiences.
