Navigating between images and words. Research on the aesthetic experience

Abstract

The cultural history of the West is a literate history, given the high number of printed texts whose production increased exponentially from the eighteenth century onwards. The written word gradually displaced images, whose most significant function had been the dissemination of religious ideas since the Council of Trent, in response to the advance of Protestantism, which was centred on the reading of the Bible. This situation began to change with the arrival of analogue photography, a period in which images became incorporated into the written press, reaching their greatest expansion with digital photography (Fontcuberta). The combination of images and words has even reached literature, as shown by the cases of Orhan Pamuk and W. G. Sebald, writers who have managed to create narratives of profound dramatic intensity by incorporating images into their novels. The possibility of establishing this connection between both semiotic systems (images and words) is due to an element incorporated into the New Aesthetics: the sensitive and emotional “atmosphere” that underlies both systems, developed from two complementary paradigms: the Psychology of Art (Vygotsky) and the New Phenomenology (Böhme).