Mixed Forms of Visual Culture: From the Cabinet of Curiosities to Digital Diversity

This book explores the overlooked appearances of hybrid forms in visual culture, such as the cabinet of curiosities, broadside ballads, chapbooks, scrapbooks, assemblages, and mixed reality, and argues that the quality of inconsistency plays a vital role in social life. It also relates its phenomena to the emergence of the division of labor under capitalism and addresses the shifting relationships between art and life.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 248 pages
Publication date: 29 June 2023
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

This captivating book delves into the overlooked realms of hybrid forms in visual culture, celebrating and seeking to understand the innovative ways in which incongruous elements are seamlessly blended or interwoven. With a strong emphasis on the material aspects of these entities, the book introduces the term "mixed form" to describe them. By focusing on key phenomena from the past half millennium, including the cabinet of curiosities, broadside ballads, chapbooks, scrapbooks, assemblages, and mixed reality in digital times, the book argues that the quality of inconsistency, often dismissed, plays a vital role in social life.

Crucially, Mixed Forms of Visual Culture establishes a connection between these phenomena and the emergence of the division of labor under capitalism, exploring the shifting relationships between art and life as singularity and uniformity are valued and dismissed in different arenas and at different historical points. Two chapters of the book take the form of visual essays, one featuring an anthology of found scrapbook pages and the other offering an insightful analysis of artists' scrapbooks. Throughout, the book is lavishly illustrated, adding depth and visual appeal to its exploration of these intriguing mixed forms.

Weight: 552g
Dimension: 233 x 157 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781350211414