Lambert Wiesing, a prominent figure in image theory, is Professor of Philosophy at Jena University, Germany. He was President of the German Society for Aesthetics between 2005 and 2008. He was a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, UK in 2013.TranslatorNancy Roth is an independent writer and translator based in the UK.

• Table of ContentsList of FiguresForeword to the New Edition (2008) Introduction 1. The Beginnings of Formal Aesthetics: Robert Zimmermann (1824-1898)1. Formal Logic as a Model for Formal Aesthetics2. The Program: a Structural Theory of the Picture Surface3. Perspectives and Problems in Herbartianism2. Formal Aesthetics and Relational Logic: Alois Riegl (1858-1905)1. Transitions on the Pictorial Surface2. Kunstwollen (The Will to Art): Making Unlike Things the Same3. Intensional and Extensional Relational Logic3. The Logic of Ways of Seeing: Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945)1. The Relational Logic of an Image 2. Formal and Transcendental Aesthetics3. The Conditionality of Perception4. From the Way of Seeing to Visibility: Konrad Fiedler (1841-1895)1.The Paradigms of Formal Aesthetics2. Images Produced Technically: “For Their Visibility’s Sake Alone”3. The Disappearance of Artistic Claims to Truth5. Phenomenological Reduction and Pictorial Abstraction: Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-19611. Formal Aesthetics and Reduction2. Visibility as Quiddity3.The Abstract Image6. From the Formula to Formative Discourse: Charles William Morris (1901-1979)1.Images about Images2. Images as Formulae3. The Formative Discourse of Fast Image SequencesBibliographyIndex

Lambert Wiesing’s The Visibility of the Image is the most important book on the history of art history I know. It gives six case studies of six art historians: Zimmermann, Riegl, Wölfflin, Fiedler, Merleau-Ponty and Morris, in search of the roots of a certain version of broadly formalist vision of art history and an account of our engagement with pictures. A must-read for anyone interested in any of these six authors but also for anyone interested in (vaguely formalist) art history and our engagement with pictures.