"In this exploration of art of the modern period, Dario Gamboni explores the sources, intentions and effects associated with ambiguous images by examining the viewer's degree of participation, the nature of the latent of 'potential' image and its relation to issues of representation and abstraction. He also draws on disciplines as diverse as psychology, semiotics, literary theory, the art of the insane and popular visual riddles in his quest to decipher and interpret the significance of potential images in the history of modernism."--Jacket.