Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Discourse, figure; 2. The legible body: LeBrun; 3. Watteau and reverie; 4. Transformations in rococo space; 5. Greuze and the pursuit of happiness; 6. Diderot and the word; 7. Diderot and the image; 8. 1785; Conclusion: style or sign?; Notes; List of societies affiliated to CINOA; Select bibliography; Index.

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A classic work from 1982 which changed the face of art criticism in the twentieth century.

Reviews

'Word and Image repays the effort it demands in heaped measure, because Norman Bryson writes with rare intellectual exhilaration. On page after page, he detonates fresh ideas carrying far wider repercussions than his immediate subject matter. He himself has a way of turning pedagogy into pyrotechnics, just as the painters whom he discusses here with such commitment - LeBrun, Watteau, Greuze, Chardin, David - transform moral enigmas into paint.' Marina Warner, The Sunday Times