The Language of Vision: Meditations on Myth and Metaphor

By Jamake Highwater

Book Overview

Jamake Highwater, one of the most important, original and popular writers of our time, here continues a voyage into the realms of myth, art, and contemporary culture that began with his best-seller The Primal Mind and continued with Myth and Sexuality. Highwater, who has often been described as a modern myth-maker and visionary himself, has once again written a book bound to provoke, inspire, inform, and entertain as he explores and illuminates the links between the way society views its art and artists and the way our art and artists gaze back at us. Organized around the twenty-two cards of the Tarot Major Arcana, The Language of Vision presents a dazzling range of challenging and controversial subjects, including the transformation of art from an act of revelation in the service of the sacred to a purely secular activity; the puritan division of art into high and low and the direct influence of "popular" forms on contemporary artists; cultural piracy in a time of multiculturalism: the image of the homosexual as outlaw and the literature of transgression; iconography as destiny; the body as metaphor; imagination as political power and art and censorship; the reinvention of the past; and the triumph of the dream life. Daringly inventive and brilliantly executed, The Language of Vision reflects ideas and issues central to our creative and cultural lives today in the context of what Joseph Campbell called "the myths we live by". It is sure to be a rich source of debate, discussion and instruction for years to come.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802133460
• ISBN13: 9780802133465
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Grove Pr
• Length: 342 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.3" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

This work is an excellent essay on how we view ourselves.

I could not read a page of this work without stopping to think and consider. Highwater's views come painfully close to the truths about our western culture, but, at the same time, they are uplifting because they illuminate the value art has had and still has for all of us. I keep on quoting this author, so I know his ideas must have seeped into my soul and transformed me. The writing is not always crystal clear, and there are errors the editor should have noticed, but my journey through Highwater's vision of vision was worth the effort. If you are strong enough to intellectually challenge what you think you know, then make the effort also.