WEEK SIX: SEMIOTICS

                Semiotics had me grappling with it in understanding and in order to pin down and put to paper what it meant for the history of art in the impressive collection of readings. Damisch questions the validity of semiotics attempt to analyze products of art because iconography already seems to have that job and offers that semiotics could just be a new label for a study in art that already existed (234). To understand iconography, the viewer must have pre-existing knowledge and operates in the privileged realm of representation (238). He argues the only way semiotics stands a chance in the history of art is when a modern image challenges the viewer’s taste and make them see works in a new light similar to the Impressionists (241).

            Panofsky confronts semiotics from a less straightforward perspective and instead shines light on the artist Poussin and discusses the signs and symbols he uses in his Classicist work. Poussin removes the intense drama from the Counter-Reformation that had so long shaped art into a calmer form and motif (258). The symbols are died down and less obtrusive giving a more relaxed semiotic interpretation of the scenes. Despite the misinterpretation of the meaning Et in Arcadia ego the new conception of the Tomb by Poussin retained the symbol of death but changed the moral (262,262).

            Marin continues with the Arcadian Shepherds but focuses on the iconographical approach rather than Panofsky’s iconographical anaylsis. As viewers we are not needed in the narration of the images and our interpretations are merely speculative (266). He states that the viewer does not need to interpret the signs of an image as we forget we are looking at a picture (276). The Arcadian Shepherds create iconic dialogue with their gazes as we have no need to apply meaning just simply understand them as they are (269).

            Bryson and Bal separate their article in sections of the work of art historians as they propose semiotic tools can further art historical analysis (244). The problem begins with context itself and art history’s definition oversimplifies rather than enriches the argument (243). The article references Derrida who insisted meaning rose from movement of sign to the next (247). Authorship is another problem they emphasize as it designates property and offers as little explanation of signs similar to context (254, 255). In art history it is almost impossible to remove the narrative study of genre to man to work (256).

            Barthes discusses mythology and displays it as belonging to general sciences, and coextensive with linguistics which is semiology (694). Mythology because it is a study of a type of speech as myths can be passed orally it is considered a type of sign by Saussure in semiology and it studies ideas in forms (694, 695). Semiology can be defined by the signified and the signifier and the sign, such as roses could signify a person’s passion and it is hard to dissociate roses from the message they typically carry (695, 696). The signifier is meaning or form, the signified is the concept, and the sign in relation of myths is signification and with this terminology a semiologist can discuess writing and pictures (697, 698). Schapiro, like Barthes, uses terminology of signifier and signified, influenced by Saussure. Schapiro focuses his article on what he calls the “image-sign” and how non-mimetic elements affect the overall picture. He examines whether or not pure convention of the signs are responsible for the mimetic elements or if they are rooted to the meaning originally in the sign. He mostly lists elements that concern him and the examples of the forms they take in art as frames and if the frame is the focus of the picture (11).

            Potts discusses the theory of sign and how, reduced to bare essentials, it can carry the ground of social conventions (21). Linguistic models have been brought into the study of art as it is our main means of communications (24). We endow an image with a sign as a personification as they psychologically charge and challenge us (29).

            Mitchell writes on trying to understand what an image is. He argues that you should not try to distinguish literal images from metaphorical ones. Words and images are often seen as invasions by literary analysis but he encourages it (52). He argues that art history would not exist if they could not describe the art it studies (53). 


 SEMIOTICS AND STRUCTURALISM

• semiotics: study of signs
• a non-mimetic element of an image
• word and image.         
• signifier and the signified
• Anthropology side
• Levi-Strauss
• Hurst
• leci n'est une pipe
• not a real pipe, symbol or representation of a pipe
• images probably more prevalent 
• picture worth a thousand words, etc
• seeing is believing
• Panofsky
• different interpretations of Et Arcadia in ego
• either "I too lived in Arcadia" "I am now dead"
• very tenses influence the translation
• Closed meaning that misinterpreated could lead to alternate readings
• communicational exchange
• what does it mean to represent?
• semiotics vs semantics
• discourse vs narrative
• Marin
• thinks Panofsky does not raise the correct questions
• open eliptical sentence where the verb is supplied by the reader in the translations. no closed meaning. Not two way dialogue. 
• incomplete sentence, some parts have been erased. intended to be indescernable
• could have specfic but not fixed meanings
• self-reflective history
• history itself representation of death, a fixed story and closed narrative not open to interpretation. 
• Poussin recognizes that the icon of the image continues to reinterate itself as modernly painted so it cannot be properly closed and fixed 
• representation is a process and not a close ended thing
• Bal and Bryson
• conneseurship:
• antique roadshow
• expert in specific fields. 
• value art based on specific narrative place in history
• craftsmanship, history, social history
• history and cultural history is the enemy of semiotics because of the past influence
• fixed way of viewing images
• context in text itself
• objective truth. offers up information that is truth
• fixed viewpoint again
• chicken and the egg. find stories and use them to explain the image
• reinforces its out existence
• metaphor is a literary construct 
• art history already uses metaphor and allegory so why not move into semiotics?
• Damisch
• root to history so the image means this because of history