From the Pictorial Turn to the Embodiment of Vision (original) (raw)
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Semiotic foundations of the study of pictures
Sign Systems Studies, 2003
Are pictures signs? That pictures are signs is evident in the case of pictures that “represent”, but is not “representation” a synonym of “sign”, and if so, can non-representational paintings be considered signs? Some semioticians have declared that such pictures cannot be signs because they have no referent, and in phenomenology the opinion prevails that they are not signs because they are phenomena sui generis. The present approach follows C. S. Peirce’s semiotics: representational and non-representational pictures and even mental pictures are signs. How and why pictures without a referent can nevertheless be defined as signs is examined on the basis of examples of monochrome paintings and historical maps that show non-existing or imaginary territories. The focus of attention is on their semiotic object and, in the case of non-representational paintings, on their interpretation as genuine icons, not in the sense of signs that represent most accurately, but in the sense of signs th...
The Phenomenological Semiotics of Iconicity and Pictoriality—Including Some Replies to My Critics1
Instead of rejecting the notion of iconicity, as has often been the case in semiotics, we should inquire deeper into its specific nature, and also into the peculiar way in which it is manifested by pictures. In order to show why Umberto Eco, Nelson Goodman, and others were fundamentally wrong in their classical critique of iconicity, we will pursue a close reading of Peirce, but we will interpret his work in accordance with more recent findings in cognitive and perceptual psychology, and we will modify the theory as a result of our interpretation. At the same time, we will rely on phenomenological insights, both those made explicit by Edmund Husserl in his studies of pictorial consciousness, and those which are implicit, notably in the work of the psychologist James Gibson. As a result, we will distinguish iconicity as such from iconic grounds and iconic signs, and we will delineate two very different kinds of iconic signs, which we will call primary and secondary iconic signs. Even so, pictorial iconicity has its peculiarities, which we will also try to elucidate. In so doing, we will consider to what extent the linguistic model is still helpful, and in which respects it is misleading.
2011
This book is about the nature of images. It begins with a theory about how semiotics is more or less ruined by images, even though parts of it can be recovered in an historically specific fashion. The book compares familiar Western images with less familiar objects in order to question what we take as natural properties of images. One chapter is about neolithic marking; another is about the prehistoric Balkan Vinca culture, which produced writing-like artifacts; a third is on Persian and Chinese texts about images. This chapter surveys concepts of figure and ground in a number of different disciplines, including cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and Gestalt psychology, in order to broaden and problematize the largely phenomenological and modernist senses of figure and ground that continue to dominate critical writing. Originally published as On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, reissued 2011).
The phenomenological semiotics of iconicity and pictoriality - including some replies to my critics
2016
Instead of rejecting the notion of iconicity, as has often been the case in semiotics, we should inquire deeper into its specific nature, and also into the peculiar way in which it is manifested by pictures. In order to show why Umberto Eco, Nelson Goodman, and others were fundamentally wrong in their classical critique of iconicity, we will pursue a close reading of Peirce, but we will interpret his work in accordance with more recent findings in cognitive and perceptual psychology, and we will modify the theory as a result of our interpretation. At the same time, we will rely on phenomenological insights, both those made explicit by Edmund Husserl in his studies of pictorial consciousness, and those which are implicit, notably in the work of the psychologist James Gibson. As a result, we will distinguish iconicity as such from iconic grounds and iconic signs, and we will delineate two very different kinds of iconic signs, which we will call primary and secondary iconic signs. Even...
Notes of epistemology of the images
This article has as its subject of analysis the images as they are perceived by the observer. As a heuristic symphony this work is a paradigmatic crossover of the phenomenology, the genetic epistemology and the hermeneutics, amalgamated by semiotics. In the first paragraph, a phenomenological reflection of the images is carried out, reaching a division between internal images and external images and between objective images and sign images. In the second paragraph, a genetic analysis of a thought in images is carried out, reaching a division of the sign images in signal images, index images, icon images, symbol images and sign images with its correspondingly levels of abstraction and societal. Finally, in the third paragraph, hermeneutics of the object images as a cultural unit or culturema is carried out. It ends by framing the present study in visual studies and highlighting their relevance in the context of visual culture.
On the Applicability of the Semiotics of Passions in Images
°Humanities Bulletin°, Vol.1; nr. 2, 2018
Recent research in semiotics has foreseen analyzable units on the basis of the context instead of the text. In addition to language-based and psychologically-based semiotics (Saussure 1959), today semiotics has introduced the epistemological grounds on visual signs as well. My aim in this paper shall be to introduce the acting subject into such a context, which in my opinion can transform the states of visual expressions, as shown in their various shapes, from one to another. In such a context I shall exemplify the applicability of the subjectivized objects for the purpose of interpreting images (exemplifying thus concrete works of art) which can produce passions as semantic results (A. J. Greimas and Fontanille 1993). The questions which I advance shall be the following: how can such passionate taxonomies, transformed into feelings and seen as feedback information, interact socially? And due to the openness of the work of art, as Eco (1962) claims, where do the limits of visual artistic expressions' interpretability lie?
This paper would like to explore the return of a new “culturalist approach” to language, particularly in relation to visual representation and the spatial dimension. First, we will present the concepts of vision and space as recently described by cognitive linguistics (eg Lakoff, Johnson, with the idea of “embodiment”, or Talmy). Secondly, we will investigate the links between this cognitive linguistic trend and the “culturalist” point of view, especially in its recent versions (for example, Palmer). Comparisons have been proposed with some models that come from the neuro-mathematics of perception and visual cognition (these investigations are linked to a return to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology; an influence that is also relevant inside cognitive linguistics). Finally we will try to highlight some possible convergence points of these studies.
Capítulo 8-Image, art and sensation in discourse analysis
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