French Literature Reviews - 2026
W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images
Art and Visual Culture
What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images
W. J. T. Mitchell
Les Presses du Réel,
Foreword by Maxime Boidy and Stéphane Roth.
Translated from American English by Maxime Boidy, Nicolas Cilins, and Stéphane Roth (original title: What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, University of Chicago Press, 2005).
Published September 2014
French edition
15 x 21 cm (paperback)
384 pages (color and b&w ill.)
36.00 €
ISBN: 978-2-84066-364-5
EAN: 9782840663645
A groundbreaking analysis of our relationship with images, transcending disciplinary boundaries, marking the culmination of the theoretical movement of visual studies of which W.J.T. Mitchell was one of the principal pioneers in the United States.
Why do we have such visceral reactions to images? Why do we confer such power upon them? Why do we act as if images were alive, capable of seducing us, acting upon us in certain ways, and sometimes even leading us astray?
For W.J.T. Mitchell, one of the leading figures of visual studies in the United States, the key is to understand that images are not merely inert objects carrying meanings, but living beings animated by desires, needs, and demands. Spanning the visual arts, literature, and mass media, What Do Pictures Want? opens up visual analysis to Byzantine icons and cyberpunk films, racial stereotypes and public monuments, ancient idols and modern clones, hurtful images and found objects, American photography and Aboriginal paintings.
By focusing on Dolly the cloned sheep—who realized the ancestral dream of creating a living image—or the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, which marked the return of a virulent form of iconoclasm to the political sphere, W.J.T. Mitchell theorizes the status of images in the era of biocybernetic reproducibility that is now ours. In doing so, he charts radically new perspectives for the ancient tradition of iconology.
W.J.T. Mitchell (born 1942) is a professor of English and art history at the University of Chicago. The author of numerous books translated into several languages, he also edits the renowned American journal Critical Inquiry. His previously published works in French include: Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (2009) and Cloning Terror (2011).
Read an excerpt on the publisher's website…
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An article on this work can be read on the nonfiction.fr website:
The inquiry builds upon the longstanding tradition of iconology, shifting the focus from what images mean to what they want, and tracing their agency across a diverse array of cultural manifestations. Within the broader field of visual culture studies, scholars examine how human societies interact with visual artifacts, moving beyond traditional art history to encompass mass media, popular culture, and digital technologies. By treating pictures not merely as passive representations but as active participants in social and political life, this approach reconsiders the boundaries between the animate and the inanimate across various media forms.
The volume traverses multiple domains, ranging from ancient artifacts and Byzantine icons to contemporary cinema, public monuments, and technological reproductions like cloned organisms. This wide-ranging scope reflects an engagement with both historical image practices and modern technological developments that challenge traditional definitions of representation and iconoclasm. Readers interested in contemporary approaches to visual studies and media theory may find this French translation by Maxime Boidy, Nicolas Cilins, and Stéphane Roth relevant to their investigations.