We live in an age of the mobile image. The world today is absolutely saturated with images of all kinds circulating around the world at an incredible rate. The movement of the image has never been more extraordinary than it is today. This recent kinetic revolution of the image has enormous consequences not only for the way we think about contemporary art and aesthetics but also for art history as well.Responding to this historical moment, Theory of the Image offers a fresh new theory and history of art from the perspective of this epoch-defining mobility. The image has been understood in many ways, but it is rarely understood to be fundamentally in motion. The original and materialist approach is what defines Theory of the Image and what allows it to offer the first kinetic history of the Western art tradition. In this book, Thomas Nail further develops his larger philosophy of movement into a comprehensive ?kinesthetic? of the moving image from prehistory to the present. The book concludes with a vivid analysis of the contemporary digital image and its hybridity, ultimately outlining new territory for research and exploration across aesthetics, art history, cultural theory, and media studies.

IntroductionPart I: Kinesthetics1. The Flow of Matter2. The Fold of Affect3. The Field of ArtPart II: History of the ImageI. The Functional Image4. Centripetal Function5. The Prehistoric ImageII. The Formal Image6. Centrifugal Form7. The Ancient Image I8. The Ancient Image IIIII. The Relational Image9. Tensional Relation10. The Medieval Image I11. The Medieval Image IIIV. The Differential Image12. Elastic Difference13. The Modern Image I14. The Modern Image IIPart III: The Contemporary Image15. The Digital Image16. The Generative ImageConclusion