Pictures

The first candidate to compete in the determination of a scopic regime is the picture. Which pictures are we talking about? What is their ontological status? Which media devices are used to create their effects? Can we speak of ekphrasis even in the absence of a picture transmitted by a medium? Does the well-known distinction between image and picture have implications for a taxonomy of ekphrasis? John Hollanderekphrasis? John Hollander drew a distinction between “notional” and “actual” (or real) ekphrasis, the former referring to artworks that had never existed, the latter to verbal description of existing and verifiable works of art. What are the conseguences of this “ontological” difference for the rhetorics of ekphrasis?