Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics - by Michalle Gal

Book Synopsis

This book offers a new definition of metaphor-as an ontological and visual construction, whose roots are external visual forms, and its motivation is our attachment to forms. This definition, which Michalle Gal names "visualist," challenges the ruling conceptualist theory of metaphors and places a new emphasis on how we experience rather than understand metaphors. In doing so, she responds to the visual turn that is taking place in literature and the media, demanding that the visual become a site of philosophical analysis.

This focus on the external visual world allows Gal to employ visual theories to capture the essence of metaphor. She looks beyond conceptual or semantic mechanism, and returns to theories of Arnheim and Gombrich and the current evolution of ideas about the visual or material and embodied cognition. Proposing to see visual metaphors in their basic form, she uses a new externalist terminology of ontology, visuality, composition, affordance, construction, and emergence.

Setting out a new theory that takes into account that humans are visual no less than cognitive creatures, Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics lays the foundation for a new vocabulary to talk about metaphors.

Review Quotes

Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics is incredibly audacious, which should encourage researchers to take an interest in reading this book.
Metaphor and Symbol

Gal pulls this off with ease through smart and elegant writing, building up her theory point by point, chapter by chapter. Irrespective of which metaphor theory we follow, the result is a highly engaging and stimulating read that will undoubtedly spark countless debates on the nature of metaphor in the long run. What is certain is that Gal's thought-provoking-might I even suggest provocative-book offers a fresh and original insight on metaphor, substantially expanding the perspective for metaphor scholars working in any discipline.
British Journal of Aesthetics

Michalle Gal's Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics: A Formalist Theory of Metaphor is a major accomplishment. It takes seriously the imagistic, material, and imaginative dimensions of metaphor, and it shows that language use is shot through with painterly ambitions. This is a theory of metaphor by a philosopher of art for philosophers of art, and it is most welcome.
John Gibson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Louisville, USA

About the Author

Michalle Gal is Professor of Philosophy at the Unit of History and Philosophy and the Interdisciplinary Design Graduate Program, Shenkar. Gal is the author of Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics: A Formalist Theory of Metaphor (2022), Aestheticism: Deep Formalism and the Emergence of Modernist Aesthetics (2015), and Introduction to Design Theory: Philosophy, Critique, History and Practice (2023). She is the editor of the special issues Art and Gesture (2014), Visual Hybrids (2023), and the forthcoming Design and its Relations (2024).