"Art" and "Image"

"Art":
Drucker provides a very clear and concise history of artistic styles, movements, and appreciation. She claims, and I think rightly so, that "the characteristics that long distinguished fine art from ordinary objects or mass media - the use of special materials, particular kinds of imagery, and aspirations toward higher values - are no longer definitive" (3). She also says that "the emphasis on media as an aesthetic device and art as a specialized form of experience within the larger realms of mediated perception", stemming from her analysis of Janet Zweig's The Medium. In that quote, she defines both the role of media and art in experiences modified by mediation.

"Image":
Mitchell provides a brief explanation of image through history, including examples of banned images and biblical law. Later, he defines an image as "as sign or symbol of something by virtue of its sensuous resemblance to what it represents" (38-9). He claims that "the persistence of these qualities is what ensures that, no matter how calculable or measurable images become, they will maintain the uncanny, ambiguous character that has from he first made them objects of fascination and anxiety. We will never be done with asking what images mean, what effects they have on us, and what they want from us" (47). I'm a little worried by the last part of that quote, which makes images sound autonomous.