This fascinating examination of visual experience offers an explanation and assessment of the traditional means of analyzing visual culture. Most of our experience is visual--we obtain most of our information and knowledge through sight, whether from reading books and newspapers, from watching television, or from quickly glimpsing road signs. Many of our judgments and decisions, as well as our entertainment and recreation, are based on the visual experience. Using a wide range of historical and contemporary examples, this book argues that the groups which artists and designers form, the audiences and markets which they sell to, and the different social classes which are produced and reproduced by art and design are all part of the successful explanation and critical evaluation of visual culture.