The ‘Theoretical Turn’ and pedagogy in illustration education

Abstract

For this themed issue of the Journal of Illustration, I was moved to initiate an inquiry into the institutionalization of theory in illustration education because, as a historian, I believe it is a defining characteristic that will identify the 2010s when we look back on the evolution of the field later. For the purpose of this discussion, ‘theory’ is defined as the most commonly cited philosophical ideas that have informed the study of visuality and culture in Europe and North America. A short list of canonical theorists and concepts named by illustrator/educator/academics whose input I solicited names, for example, Roland Barthes’ ‘mythologies’; John Berger’s ‘ways of seeing’, Latour’s ‘actor/network theory’, Laura Mulvey’s ‘male gaze’; McLuhan’s ‘medium is the message/massage’; versions of semiology and so on. The ‘Theoretical Turn’ references W. J. T. Mitchell’s ‘Pictorial Turn’, which he coined in 1995 to describe an emerging paradigm of visual thought and thought about the visual that