‘What one must paint is the image of resemblance—if thought is to become visible in the world. ‘ —Rene Magritte
Semiotics is the study of works of art signs and symbols, either individually or grouped in sign systems that can give us more insight from the work source and meaning. All painters work in a pictorial language by following a set of standards, basics and rules of picture-making. There is a big resemblance between pictorial image making and the creation of written language, the study of this nature of what consists and the individual components of pictorial and written language is known as Semiotics.
Semiotics can translate a picture from an image into words. Visual communication terms and theories come from linguistics, the study of language, and from semiotics, the science of signs. Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no natural meaning and become signs only when we provide them with meaning.
The semiotic theories are not definite but constantly being reviewed, extended and developed to become more precise and improve the significance of the information gathered when these theories are applied to works of art.
Visual Art consumers have become highly sophisticated readers of signs and signals, decoding subconsciously art work compositions. Everything surrounding us human beings today, including our own identities are all moulded and manipulated by signs, words, images and our visual language.
Communication can be a form of mind control; the one that has the power to speak higher and have the right speech can have a power over others in a certain way by making the individual point stand above all. The same happens with artworks with a conceptual meaning that stand and activate other people’s minds.
Different media carries different meanings despite the message content. Each form of media explores these meanings in the way the subject is represented and the context in which it appears. Visual language covers a whole range of different social mediums from low culture advertising, comic books and television to high culture like galleries and theatres. Visual signs look for the possibility of a language that already exists and is used already by a large amount of people connected or not with the arts and the media. The linguistic sign consists of content like sense and meaning of an expression like letters or sounds. Language is ruled by strong codes or rules and becomes complicated when we look at it in the form of visual artworks. It becomes a translation from linguistic to visual expression and the forms are as random as in linguistic signs.
Icons as a form of semiotics are all kinds of pictures representing an object like photos, drawings and paintings. Most pictures have a double meaning; visual and symbolic, conventional and arbitrary. Everyone knows, for example, that a picture of an old woman with a broom it is just a picture of an old woman but it can be perceived as a picture of a witch. Modern advertising is filled with this type of signage that holds double meanings.
Normally it is thought of as language in relation to pictures, very straight forward and clear where the visual language is an expression of emotional, deeper thoughts or even ambiguous ideas. It is then that visual expression needs the linguistic explanation to clear up the superfluous meaning. For example, in advertising, a linguistic message always comes attached to the advertisement in order to help establish the picture being shown.
So this form of anchorage of meaning opens us up to not only one, but several meanings without unsettling the main indented meaning; it forces the mind to interpret the media in a most complex and accurate way.
Pictorial Semiotics is often concerned with the study of pictures into a more constructive verbal description while maintaining confidence in the objectivity of the practice. A linguistic community that speaks the same language is a group of people making verbal agreements, speaking similarly as long the community lasts. Small changes are easily adopted and taken positively and are adjustable. The idea of representation by chance, where things do not follow rules but are used as signs is however very explored in the visual arts. This is where the principles of semiotics come in use; to map out and decode as a discipline.
The paintings of Rene Magritte for example in his series called ‘ The key of dreams (1930)’ show a collection of objects illustrated and labelled just like in a child’s learning picture book. They are all incorrectly described except for one of them. the As another example he paints a standard side view of a head of a horse against a black background with white writings and labels it ‘a door’, all of this with a primary aesthetic. These violations of representation are playing up with our early impingement teaching of associating names with the correct class objects that are part of our visual culture since childhood. Of course we grow up taking this for granted but Magritte with this illustration is showing us in a great way how resemblance, symbols and signs are often just representations of the real things.
Magritte in ‘The Betrayal of Images‘(1929) makes a painting of a simple pipe, a side view well illustrated with the phrase underneath saying’ This is not a pipe’. This text is neither true nor false and explores a new science of representation and signing. Is the painting a pipe or a depiction of a pipe? Yes, it is not the physical reality of a pipe, it is a representation of a pipe, a painting of it, a signifier for it but not the real thing. Would that still make it a pipe or should we call it something else?
Magritte had a special talent to make objects look mysterious and magical, and his objects are carefully chosen and depicted in a school textbook way. The ‘Pipe’ painting is a good example of how conventional imagery often betrays us all by making everyone realize that it is just a convention and not a real object. In my opinion I think Magritte was trying to make us all aware of the signs and symbols we often take for granted in our everyday lives.
This is a classical association for artists to make out the difference between the signifiers and the signified. A sign is something that stands for something other than itself; we interpret things as signs naturally by relating them to familiar systems or conventions.
Angela,
I feel the need for a more specific question in order to engage in discussion here, unless I just want to launch out in my own direction. What is the issue here? What do we gain or lose by agreeing or disagreeing with your interpretation? What is really at stake?
It seems to me that semiotics is so vaguely defined as to have little power as a specific discipline. For example, according to Wikipedia, Umberto Eco, in his Semiotics and philosophy of language, has argued that semiotic theories are implicit in the work of most, perhaps all, major thinkers. Is it possible that semiotics does nothing more than point out the obvious, without extending the analysis?
Karl, I agree the post is somewhat rambling, but since when have you been inhibited about going off in your own direction? ;-)
Pointing out the “obvious” can have great value, because we often forget about what we take for granted. As Mark Twain said (approximately): “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Semiotics tries to explain how our interpretations of (in this case) images works, something we tend to think “just happens naturally.” That unawareness is relied on by advertisers and propagandists. So in answer to the title question, I think semiotics is very useful. Obviously it’s only part of the story. A bigger part for Leslie’s Hello Kitty series than for my junkyard car paint series.
An excellent site on the subject (most of which is also available in book form) can be found at:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html
It is not about pointing out the obvious but providing a means of articulating it.
Best, Sean.
Sean,
I agree that’s an excellent source, I’ve used it in the past. It is oriented toward the literary and academic. More related interpretation of images is John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, mentioned by Leslie in a previous post.
It seems to me that semiotics is so vaguely defined as to have little power as a specific discipline
Which is why you would need within semiotics specific theories, thinkers, and sub-fields– all with their biases and narrower fields of interest. This is like saying physics is uselessly vague because it purports (on some level) to describe the entire material world.
Who in the world has the idea that interpretations “just happen naturally”?
Sean, Steve and Angela, if you find semiotics so powerful, use it to tell me something about an artwork on Art & Perception that makes me reach an insight I never had before. And please, let’s leave Magritte out of it because he presents the “toy problem.”
Arthur,
I disagree with your analogy. Physics is based on a core of mathematically based analysis that can be used with power in many sub-disciplines. Semiotics in its different branches seems permeated with the same vague notions posing as obvious truth. As Gibbon wrote, the paths of error are various and infinite.
Philosophy, which is also largely qualitative, would be a better analogy. But what I was trying to suggest was that semiotic theory, in and of itself is of little use is understanding art or any other specific cultural phenomena. Rather it might underly and sharpen other–probably more or less traditional–ways of understanding art.
Who in the world has the idea that interpretations “just happen naturally”?
95% of the world population, at least. Karl, you are far more sophisticated in recognizing why people see what they see in images.
Leslie’s work, such as in the HK series or involving Sesame Street critters, depend hugely on our understanding of images in our culture. The same could be said, say, of the Guernica itself. When you view these and think about them, I claim that you are essentially doing semiotics, whether you choose to recognize it as that or not. Call it just informed artistic understanding if you like, but it didn’t come from nowhere.
Steve,
I don’t doubt that I’m doing semiotics without knowing it, since the definition is so broad. What I want to hear is some power that gives in analysis. All I’ve read above is, “oh, is powerful and useful.” Okay, so show me something specific.
my interest in this relates to the photogaphic, rather than visual arts in general (though of course all are related, emeshed: a history of photography begins with a history of painting).
Is photography indexical, iconic or symbolic… While a specific photograph in a specific context can be any or or all of these – or used as such – I would state that it is in the first instance always indexical – and it is this that differentiates it from painting and the reason for its power. As Susan Buck-Morss points out: ‘To see a photograph as purely symbolic, rather than a trace of the real, is a reductive visual practise.’
To put it another way one can refer to semiotics to articulate differences between the photograph and the drawing. And one can turn to such theories to draw distinctions between the analog and digital photography – if digital photography is still photography… (but of course this is another question).
Or one could turn to Transparency theory – another framework from which to work uypwards in articulating a difference between the photograph and painting…
How would you personally discuss a piece of art work, or a TV series for that matter… you must have recourse to some abstract means of argument? Do you regard the photograph as no different to the painting: if so why, and if not, how would you relate such information?
‘While we need not accept the postmodernist stance that there is no external reality beyond sign systems, studying semiotics can assist us to become more aware of the mediating role of signs and the roles played by ourselves and other in constructings social relaities. It can make us less likely to take reality for granted as something which is wholly independent of human interpretation.’ (Daniel Chandler).
One could apply Karl’s argument to asthetics – I am sure you form arguments about this and that piece of art and by doing so you are, no matter how unaware you are of it (or indeed I for that matter), employing theory, or a strand of theory.
Well, thats my two-pence worth!
Best, Sean.
P.S. : the very title of the site relates ‘Art and Perception.’ What do you perceive, and how do you articuale this – semiotics is a means of doing so.
I think where semiotics is useful in art is when it is used to understand art as functional or instrumental differentiated from an aesthetic expression to communicate some human truth. Examples would be activist art or art at the service of politics. Art when used functionally or instrumentally it is not primarilly an effort of expression of a human truth, but is an attempt to corerce or pursuade. The art in these situations stands-in primarily than the work of art itself. Semonics can help to undersatnd the meaning of art when used as sign.
Just to be clear, semiotics is useful to ‘know’ art. It seems some bristle at semonics because they do not discern a way of ‘knowing’ from a way of sensing, preceiving or judging.
I think where semiotics is useful in art is when it is used to understand art as functional or instrumental differentiated from an aesthetic expression to communicate some human truth. Examples would be activist art or art at the service of politics. Art when used functionally or instrumentally it is not primarilly an effort of expression of a human truth, but is an attempt to corerce or pursuade. The art in these situations stands-in primarily than the work of art itself. Semonics can help to undersatnd the meaning of art when used as sign.
Thank you very much for what you have written here. I have been having problems understanding what exactly semiotics is and how it is related to art. This really enlightened me. Thanks again.
Interesting. I’ve never heard of semiotics before this. Seems like a neat subject.
I have found the comments about why semiotics in art to be quite interesting, especially as I’ve just published a book (FireSigns) through MIT Press that tries to give tools for using semiotics in graphic design. In an art critique, if a kid were to ask “WHY” – like little kids do – the critic would probably get to two or three “whys” before admitting we don’t know why! Semiotics provides a theoretical framework for how the feelings, conceptual meanings, and resonances happen in a work – for people with a certain predisposition. It does this by breaking down the artwork into a collection of visual entities and their compositional relationships. It then transfers these elements into a syntactical description (formalist) and a semantical description (interpreted sense and feeling). This analysis addresses presence and expression on the affect register, and the denotative and the connotative aspects on the conceptual register. It’s powerful. Really powerful tool.
Sean, the link you provided isnt working really want to find out what is there. Can anyone help?
Hi Samuel, I think this must be where that content lives now:
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/
Hi Angela,
I’m very interested in study this subject, do you think you can contact me through my e-mail so I can have a little more input on how well the subject is developed worldwide?
I am currently taking a second MA in Art Markets at ISCTE – Lisbon and it would be great to be in touch with you.
Thank you!