Dispositives

It is necessary to consider the history of media production and reproduction of pictures as an integral part of the rethorics of ekphrasis. This is true both on the level of the deep changes that ekphrasis undergoes owing to the presence of specific media devices, as well as the more general medial circulation of pictures. The most important “new media” in the history of painting are the museum and the gallery, which for centuries have determined our relationship with artworks. It is not therefore surprising that the museum and the gallery as dispositives have had a great influence on ekphrasis and conditioned its rhetoric and expressive form.