This lecture will introduce semiotics or the semiology of art, a mechanism for deriving meaning that is considered to a more inclusive development of Panofsky’s Iconography

1. How Art Works:
Week 4
Is a picture worth 1,000 words?
Textual Analysis
Rene Magritte
This is not a pipe
(1948)

2. Mechanisms of Meaning
Last week we considered the various ways in which we derive meaning
from art:
Formal Analysis (Heinrich Wölfflin)
 An integrated study of all the formal qualities of an artwork
 Formal qualities contribute to meaning.
Content: Subject matter and iconography (Erwin Panofsky)
 Content is an artwork’s theme or message
 Subject matter is what is seen by observation
 Iconography is the symbolism or ‘hidden’ meaning behind what is
seen

3. Mechanisms of Meaning
Joseph Kosuth. One and Three
Chairs (1965)
This lecture will:
• introduce semiotics or the
semiology of art (a post
WW2) mechanism for
deriving meaning that is
considered to a more
inclusive development of
Panofsky’s Iconography

4. Meanings are produced through
a complex social relationship that
involves at least two elements
besides the image itself and its
producer:
1. how the viewers interpret or
experience the image
2. the context in which an image
is seen.
Works or art and media rarely
“speak” to everyone universally.
Tracey Moffat
Adventure Series (2003)

5. The painting as text and its
consumption
Peter Paul Rubens
A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning
(circa 1636)
• Not everything can be
explained by
reference to marks on
the surface
• The meaning will be
determined by where,
how and by whom it is
consumed by

6. Rene Magritte
This is not a pipe
(1948)
This
representation
(or any
representation)
is not that
which it
represents.

7. Representation refers to the use of language and images to
create meaning about the world around us.
These systems have rules and conventions about how to
express and interpret meaning.

8. Textual Analysis
Rene Magritte
This is not a pipe
(1948)
Reality itself is
unrepresentable, and
as a consequence the
world can only be
represented through
that which it is not.
Hal Foster. Return of the Real (1996)

9. Textual Analysis
• Texts are in the broadest sense
of the word meaningful units
• The meaning is not inherent to
the text, but the result of
reading it
• If one reads a text anew, one
puts it into another context

10. Textual Analysis
What is a text?
• Whenever we produce an
interpretation of something's
meaning - a book, television
programme, film, magazine, clothing,
art- we treat it as a text. A text is
something that we make meaning
from
• Texts are the material traces, the
empirical evidence we have of how
other people make sense of the
world.
Douglas Gordon
Self-portrait as Kurt Cobain, as Andy Warhol,
as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe (1996)

11. Semiotics
Semiotics, another method of analysis of representation
• Representation always involves the construction of reality
• All texts, however 'realistic' they may seem to be, are constructed
representations rather than simply transparent 'reflections',
recordings, transcriptions or reproductions of a pre-existing reality
• Representations which become familiar through constant re-use
come to feel natural and unmediated
Keith Haring
Pop Shop (1988)

12. Semiotics
Jan van Eyck
The Arnolfini Portrait (1434)

13. Semiotics
Structuralism & Semiotics
 Social and cultural structures influence the meaning of art
 As study of language, Structuralism was called Semiotics
 The study of signs in verbal or written communication
 Late 20th Century Semiotics came to be applied to all forms of
communication, including art
Deconstruction
 Seeks to undermine or reveal myths, clichés, and stereotypes
embedded in Western systems of signs

14. Martha Rosler
Semiotics of the Kitchen
(1975)

15. Semiotics –Some Key Concepts
• Culture is composed of different languages, or systems of signs
• Myth (or connotation) is constructed by emptying out or distorting
the signs’ original meanings (denotation)
• Myth is seductive, and its is apparently natural and innocent

16. The Semiotics
of Colour
Mark Rothko

17. A Rose
For romantics a red rose can be a symbol of love.
In Lancashire it is a symbol for the county.
It has even been a symbol for a political party.
These are all connotations or extra layers of meaning that the image
carries with it.

18. An Apple
It can be a symbol of health.
It can have associated meanings of New York -“The Big Apple”.
It can even have stand for sin.
These are all connotations or extra layers of meaning that the image
carries with it.

19. The process of interpretation is
derived from semiotics, a theory
of signs which is concerned with
the ways things (words, images,
and objects) are vehicles for
meaning.
We live in a world of signs, and
it is the labor of our
interpretation that makes
meaning of those signs.
The sign is composed of the
signifier (a sound, written word,
or image) and the signified
(which is the concept evoked by
that word or image).
Jenny Holzer, ‘Abuse of Power comes as no
surprise’, 1983

20. Sign
Something that stands for something else
(“signifier”)
Signifiers
images/actions/objects
Signified:
What the sign means
Signification
Meaning / the act of signifying
Decode
To read signs
Image:
A collection of signs
Codes
Systems of signs (e.g., bridal codes)
Denotation:
Literal meaning
Connotation:
Ideology/Mythology
Semiotics –Some Key Concepts

21. Signs are objects that convey
something – a message they
presuppose someone who
understands them – an interpreter.

22. Textual Analysis

23. Differences in value judgements
• Cultures may ascribe different levels of value to things around them
• Value judgements are not natural, nor are they universal
How do we judge those different ways of making sense of the world?
• My culture has got it right. It simply describes reality. Other cultures
are wrong
• A structuralist response: all these cultures seem to be making sense
of the world differently; but really, underneath, they have common
structures. They're not all that different; people across the world
are basically the same
• A post-structuralist approach: all these cultures do indeed make
sense of the world differently: and it is impossible to say that one is
right and the others are wrong. In a sense, people from different
cultures experience reality differently

24. Joseph Kosuth. One and Three Chairs (1965)

25. Structuralism, Post-structuralism and
Deconstruction
• From a `structuralist' perspective, you look for the deep
structures that aren't actually apparent in the text, but that
you can find by specialized training.
• From a `post-structuralist' perspective, you look for the
differences between texts without claiming that one of them
is the only correct one.
suth One and Three Hammers
(1965)

26. If you were to describe what
you see you may consider for
example:
• How are the three elements
that compose this work are
related?
• How does the photograph
and the dictionary definition
function differently than the
chair itself. Is one
representation of the chair—
visual or written—more
accurate?
The recognition that the
meaning of an artwork does
not necessarily lie within it, but
as often as not arises out of the
context in which it exists.

27. The photograph and description, a connotation of the art work.
The denotation being the chair is the physicality and reality of the
object. All three collaborate to create one thought moment and
emphasise on the word ‘Chair’.

28. All images have two
levels of meaning.
The denotative
meaning of the image
refers to its literal
descriptive meaning.
The connotative
meanings rely on the
cultural and historic
context of the image
and its viewers.
Cathy Wilkes. Non Verbal (2006)

29. The term myth, as used by
Roland Barthes, refers to the
cultural values and beliefs that
are expressed through
connotations parading as
denotations.
Myth is the hidden set of rules
and conventions through which
meanings, which are in reality
specific to certain groups, are
made to seem universal. Yinka Shonibare
Diary of a Victorian Dandy (1998)

30. All images are produced within dynamics of social power and
ideology.
Ideology is the shared set of values and beliefs through which
individuals live out their complex relations to a range of social
structures.
Ideologies often appear to be natural or given aspects of everyday
life.
Sodoma, ‘St
Sebastian’, 1531
The prisoner known
as 'Gilligan’ at Abu
Ghraib, 2003
Robert Mapplethorpe,
‘Dominick and Elliot’,
1979

31. We decode, or read, complex images
almost instantly, giving little thought to our
process of decoding.
We decode images by interpreting clues
to intended, unintended, and even
suggested meanings.
These clues may be formal elements of
the image, such as colour, shade, and
contrast, or the socio-historical context in
which it is presented.
Marcus Harvey
Myra
(1995)

32. An icon is an image that refers
to something outside of its
individual components that has
great symbolic meaning for
many people.
An image produced in a specific
culture, time, and place might
be interpreted as having
universal meaning.
Vanessa Beecroft, ‘Black Madonna With
Twins 4’, 2006.

33. When taste is naturalized, it embodies the
ideologies of its context and time.
In the 1960s, French Marxist Louis
Althusser argued that “ideology represents
the imaginary relationship of individuals to
their real conditions of existence.”
In other words, ideology is the necessary
representational means through which we
come to experience and make sense of
reality.