Semiotics!

Semiotics:

                     

Semiotics is the theory of signs and sign use. It is a hermeneutic discipline and it focuses on construction, deconstruction and representation, considering “texts” as specific combinations of signs yielding meaning.

Semiotics helps us to take a work of visual art as an object whose relevance derives from the processes in which it functions. So it takes art out of formalist idealizations and it also privileges meaning instead of image, studying several aspects and details as signs rather than only material elements.

The concept of semiotics originates in psychoanalytic, narrative and rhetorical theory. As a caution, it helps to avoid fallacies such as excessive realism, intentionalism and non-reflexive projection of anachronistic projections.

According to Charles Peirce, the process of semiotics works in three positions, the sign, the signified and the signifier. While looking at an object, the viewer shapes in his or her mind an image of the thing that she associates with the image. The sign that it creates is an “interpretant”. As soon as a mental image takes shape, it becomes a new sign, which will yield an interpretant, and this continuous process is called semiosis. Because the process is continuous, the interpretant is constantly shifting.

The relationship between the sign and the object leads to a grammar whose most commonly studied aspect is syntax (not to forget that semiotics is originally a linguistic theory).  An icon, according to Peirce, is a sign that possesses the character that makes it significant. An index is a sign, which would at once lose the character of being a sign, if its object were removed, but it would not lose that character if there were no interpretant. For example, a piece of mould with a bullet hole on it is a sign of shot; if there were no shot there would be no hole; but whether the viewer gets that it is a bullet hole or not, the hole is there. A symbol is, on the other hand, a sign which would lose the character of being a sign if there were no interpretant.

Iconic act: when we see a portrait, we imagine of a person that looked like the image and we don’t question the existence of that person; we adopt the iconic reading when we look at the portrait. But the icon is not predicated upon the degree of “realism” of the image. A red field means the “color red” as well as “ what red does or means” to the viewer. The iconic act is to suppose that the image refers to something on the basis of likeness. For example, a romantic music accompanying a love scene in a movie is iconic.

It’s reported that recent publications about the gaze and the look in the painting state that there is an indexical relationship between the looker and the thing looked at. The most obvious use of the concept of index is the “pointer”, where a figure points at a certain direction; our look will follow the figure’s directions.

Narratives: narratives in visual art are problematic, because narrating is a matter of discourse, not of visuality. From a semiotic perspective various theories of narrative have been developed. The best known example is Barthes’ famous book S/Z where he develops an interpretation of Balzac’s short story “Sarrasine” through an analysis of five codes.

Prorairetic code: series of models of actions that help readers to place details in plot sequences – like falling in love, kidnapping, etc. this is a narrative version of an iconographic code.

Hermeneutic code: presupposes an enigma and induces us to seek out details that will contribute to its solution.

Semic code: introduces cultural stereotypes

Symbolic code: the viewer brings in symbolic interpretations to read certain details, like “love”, “hostility”, “loneliness”, etc.

Referential code: brings cultural knowledge like the identity of the subject in the painting, class, ethnicity, etc.

Together, these codes do produce a narrative. On the other hand, Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony in the art historical material yields that the image is not unified. Details that do not fit in are ignored or set aside as “mistakes”. But Bakhtin makes us accept that even when the image is made by one artist, there will be alterities.

The act of looking at a narrative painting is a dynamic process. The semiotic nature of this model would emphasize the sign status. It is important to keep in mind that narrative is not a one-sided structure. “Address” is the way in which the viewer is invited to participate. For example, Manet’s Olympia scandalized its viewers, unlike so many “nue” paintings. Because the body of the model was no longer objectified in an impersonal narrative; but the woman on the painting becomes the first person and addresses directly to the viewer. In this way, the nude Olympia, who was a prostitute-model in real life, was too much a scandal in its time.

In his essay Damisch questions the difference between iconography and semiotics and seeks to find where in art history semiotics can find a way to develop. The author thinks that there’s an equivocal relationship between semiotics and iconography. It can denote a union of meaning as well as opposition, adjunction as much as exclusion or even dependence.

The question here is to find out whether the semiotics’ attempts to analyze the products of art are valid. Or whether the work done by semiotics is original. Although mostly empirical, iconography has already achieved a large part of the analytical work with semiotics. But would that mean that semiotics is just a new label over iconography?

Iconography introduces the problematic of the sign into art. However, it imposes the idea that an art object is intended solely for perception and contemplation. It denies the effort of reading, let alone interpretation. Iconography attempts essentially to state what the images “declare” in their meaning. Iconography, according to the author, is above all an instrument of an art history which can no longer renovate its method and which cannot get help from the fields of linguistics, psychoanalysis and semiotics. He thinks that iconography is concerned with what is signified in images and that it reduces the art object (the signifier) to a question of treatment of style. What the image signifies cannot be reduced to what it gives us to “ see”: for there is often a superposed conventional, or an arbitrary meaning. Iconography implies a reference to pre-existing meanings, which pre-date the meaning, and this knowledge is not merely “anthropological”, inscribed at the mind of every people regardless of culture, on the contrary it is “cultural”, linked to the textual order. At this point semiotics is emerging as a specific discipline, implicit in the practice of iconography.

The author gives the example of “St Luke Painting the Virgin” by Rogier Van Der Weyden. If one looks closely, one will discover that ‘St. Luke’ is not painting, but drawing the Virgin.

Can there be two systems of organization for one figurative material is another question. There must be a split between the figurative level of denotation and symbolic level of connotation. Iconography has its roots deeply attached to the metaphysics of the sign. However, this theory brings the relationship between the image and its signified to that of body and soul- so the body should awaken in the spectator a wish to “know” the soul, however it poses the problem of the articulation of the legible or visible. The symbols within the object of art may not be put to logocentric language. According to Freud’s notion of regression, the image is not the perceptile manifestation of thought; it is both the locus and the product of an activity which allows impulses originating in the unconscious and which have been refused all possibility of verbalization. Peirce, on the other hand introduced a distinction between the icon and the hypoicon, the idea that there is a sign and that, it does not necessarily follow the representation.

Like in the past, the modern image imposes a different concept of “signification” of meaning, and a notion of taste that is irreducible to the norms of communication. Semiotics of art might have a chance to develop in this area.

In her essay about semiotics, Mieke Bal also tries to show how semiotics help to “ read” and art object as sets of signs carrying meaning, but not as realistically made representations of real life. Bal uses the theme of Judith Beheading Holofernes, as painted by Caravaggio and Gentileschi.

The author finds about the Caravaggio Judith that the image is not unified. First of all the age differential between the women is emphasized. There is a serene look in Judith’s face, but the servant woman seems to be excited of the cruel event. Judith is white and fresh; the servant is yellowish and morose.

There is also a tension between Judith and Holofernes. Holofernes is sometimes mentioned as a tragic hero. There is terror and surprise in Holofernes’ face; his open mouth signals us that he is screaming, or is just about to. His head is tracked behind in a difficult position, her fingers coiled in the white bed sheets. On the other hand, Judith is unreal. Her face is too serene, even meaningless if one regards the rest of the scene. Her white shirt is another signaling area in the painting. The whole light is on her and Holofernes’s head and the slaying action is deliberately put in a somewhat unreasonable position, so that the blood coming from the vein doesn’t stain Judith – is this a remark on the pudor of Judith? The blood sprays toward the sheets, parallel to the sword and signals the sword. The blood is iconic because it is red and the direction is indexical. Another red region in the painting is the curtain that is arranged as if there was a red smoke pertaining over Holofernes.

According to the author, because we see the blood, we see the sword. And the difference between Judith’s statuesque (even columnesque) stance and Holofernes’s dynamic one is not caused by stereotypical gender positions. Caravaggio’s female figure is even read as “ a sculpture of an ancient tombstone, a memorial to innumerable victims of violence”. Attie takes this element and turns it into a single index. There is no Judith in the painting; Judith exists, only as a sign.

Gentileschi’s Judith and Holofernes is visually much more difficult. Gentileschi changes the direction of blood. In fact, it is not realistic, because the vein carotis is at the left side of the neck and hence the blood should spur left. So we should look for a sign here. The blood threatens to stain Judith. The author thinks that it is only an index to the confusion of arms and jobs being done, but the blood that – is going to- stain Judith can be a sign implying Holofernes as a threat to Judith’s pudor. The head of Holofernes is at the center and the whirling of the arms frame the head. The arms express strength, labor and determination (just like the painter’s self-portrait). At the faces of the women, several signs can be read; horror, cruelty, and passion. These signs are totally absent in Caravaggio’s Judith.

The later Judith, by Gentileschi is completely different from the previous arrangements. The pose of Judith is interestingly interpreted as similar to Venus Pudica pose, with the hand that covers the genitals – and that holds the sword. We should also note that this time Gentileschi gave her heroine an oriental sabre, instead of a European style sword. This well-feared tool of the battlefields is a sign implying Judith’s ethnic origin.

In the painting, the main pointer is the hand. There is a candle giving light to the scene in a Caravaggio style, but the hand warns and directs the viewer. It is the best lightened object and it enables Judith to see her deed through the light, but it also enables us to see Judith from the shade.

This position of the hand means warning. Judith’s hand warns us that the dangerous task is not over, that the head should be carried off silently.

The servant and Judith are looking towards the same direction – probably towards the beheaded and very dead Holofernes. The body is not in the frame, the head, at the corner of the painting, attracts barely any attention. However, from the direction of the looks we feel that Holofernes is still there.