Mitchell’s essay posits that in reality there are no visual media, but rather that all visual media, as we define them, are in actuality a combination of multiple sensory experiences. His essay delves into the ideology of media through Aristotle’s lexis, melos and opsis (words, music spectacle) and Gesamtkunstwerk. He also acknowledges Greenberg’s call for the ‘pure painting’ or ‘pure opticality’, which he notes Tom Wolfe, Barthes and Victor Burgin because on the basis of how we interpret through language.  This essay traces the main theorists of historical that validated teh precedent of “all media are mixed media” (260). In a sense, Mitchell cites everyone imaginable to reify his position. But Mitchell’s main goal of the essay is not to state that there is not visual media, which is to say there is no purely visual media. Rather, Mitchell sets up his argument to position the study of Visual Culture as nessicarily remaining outside the academic disciplinary boundaries, so that it can continue ... “ problematizing, theorizing, critiquing and historizing the visual process” (264). For Mitchell, the necessity of freeing Visual Culture from defining pedagogies enable the methodology of Visual Culture to mature into a taxonomy, which it just so happens he is currently creating.

Mitchell, W.JT. There are No Visual Media. Journal of Visual Culture, 2005; 4; 257- 266