On Some Problems in The Semiotics of Visual Art - Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs
On Some Problems in The Semiotics of Visual Art - Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs
On Some Problems in The Semiotics of Visual Art - Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs
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to accent the depth of simulated space in the picture and conveyed the
idea of the preciousness of the work of art through its gilded mount. They
are thin discreet borders often flush with the plane of the canvas, and in
their simplicity they assert also the respect for frankness and integrity
in the practice of the art. Without a frame, the painting appears more
completely and modestly the artist's work. A parallel to the frameless
painting is the modern sculpture without a pedestal; it is either suspended
or placed directly on the ground.
Our conception of the frame as a regular enclosure isolating the field
of representation from the surrounding surfaces does not apply to all
frames. There are pictures and reliefs in which elements of the image cross
the frame, as if the frame were only a part of the background and existed
in a simulated space behind the figure. Such crossing of the frame is
often an expressive device; a figure represented as moving appears more
active in crossing the frame, as if unbounded in his motion. The frame
belongs then more to the virtual space of the image than to the material
surface; the convention is naturalized as an element of the picture space
rather than of the observer's space or the space of the vehicle. In medieval
art this violation of the frame is common, but there are examples already
in classical art. The frame appears then riot as an enclosure but as a
pictorial milieu of the image. And since it may serve to enhance the
movement of the figure, we can understand an opposite device: the frame
that bends and turns inward into the field of the picture to compress
or entangle the figures (the trumeau of Souillac, the Imago Hominis in
the Echternach Gospels, Paris, Bibl. nat. ms. lat. 9389).
Besides these variants of the frame-field relation in art I must mention
another that is equally interesting: the frame is sometimes an irregular
form that follows the outlines of the object. It is no longer a pre-existing
feature of the image-vehicle or ground but an added one that depends on
the contents of the image. The image comes first and the frame is traced
around it. Here the frame accents the forms of the signs rather than
encloses a field on which the signs are set. As in the examples where the
figure bursts through the frame, the independence and energy of the
sign are asserted in the detours forced upon the frame by the image
(Vfaelay).
We learn from these works that although the strictly enclosing rectangular frame seems natural and satisfies a need for clarity in isolating the
image for the eye, it is only one possible use of the frame. The form can
be varied to produce quite opposite effects, which also satisfy some need
or concept. All these types are intelligible as devices of ordering and
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Fig. 1.
Though formed of the same parts the rectangle with small A over large B
is expressively not the same as the one with the same B over A. The
composition is non-commutative, as architects recognize in designing a
facade. The same effect holds for single elements; the cubist painter,
Juan Gris, remarked that a patch of yellow has a different visual weight
in the upper and lower parts of the same field. Nevertheless, in judging
their work, artists often invert the painting in order to see the relationships of forms or colors, their balance and harmony, without reference
to the objects represented. But this is only an experimental abstraction
of one aspect; the unity is finally judged in a scrutiny of the work in its
proper mimetic (or non-mimetic) orientation. However, abstract painters
today discover new possibilities through that inversion, even a preferred
form. The late Fernand Loger conceived as a goal of figurative painting
an image equally valid in all positions of the rotated canvas; this idea
inspired his paintings of divers and swimmers, seen from above, and
has an obvious application in a floor mosaic.
The representation of movement calls into fuller play a cryptesthesia
with respect to qualities of the different axes and directions in a field.
We live more in the horizontal dimension than the vertical and we are
not surprised to learn that the same line looks shorter when horizontal
than when vertical. The felt space of everyday experience is anisotropic
though we learn to use the metric properties of an objective uniform space
in accommodating physical objects to each other.
Where representation is of figures in movement and of successive
episodes, the image may be extended in broad and superposed bands
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See Heinrich Schfer, Grundlagen der gyptischen Rundbildnerei und ihre Verwandschaft mit denen der Flachbildnerei (Leipzig, 1923), p. 27.
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of the vital importance of left and right in ritual and magic, which has
influenced the meaning of these two words, their metaphorical extensions
in everyday speech as terms for good and evil, correct and awkward,
proper and deviant. The significance of the deity's or ruler's right side
in pictures and ceremony as the commonly, though not universally,
more favored side, determines, however, a representation in which,
from the observer's viewpoint, the left part of the picture surface is the
carrier of the preferred values. This reversal in the field, which is also
that of the self-image in the mirror, is a good example of the conflict that
may arise between the qualitative structure of the field, whether inherent
or acquired, and that of the represented objects. In the Middle Ages one
debated the significance of the variable positions of Peter and Paul at the
left and right of Christ in old mosaics in Rome (Peter Damian). Where
there is no dominant central figure to which left and right must be referred, the viewer's left and right determine by direct translation, rather
than by reflection, the left and right of the field, just as in actual life. In
both cases the parts of the field are potential signs; but the field is open
to reversal in submitting to an order of values in the context of the represented objects or in the carrier of the image.
The lateral asymmetry of the field may be illustrated by another
peculiarity of pictures and of buildings. If we pair two forms, one tall,
the other short (as in Fig. 2), reversal alters their appearance noticeably.
Fig. 2.
Like the vertically joined unequal rectangles considered earlier, the lateral
grouping is non-commutative. The and in "A and B", where the two
elements differ decidedly in size or form or color, is adjunctive, not conjunctive; and the position in the field expresses this relationjust as the pair
Father and Son has a quality lacking in Son and Father. If we grant this
difference, the problem is whether the dominance of one side in the visual
field is inherent or contingent. In asymmetrical compositions of figures
or landscapes the choice of one or the other side for the more active or
denser part of the picture affects the expression; the reversal gives a
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strange aspect to the whole, which may be more than the shock of reversal
of a familiar or habitual form. Yet it must be said that some good artists
in our time, like the early engravers of wood blocks, have been indifferent
to the reversal of an asymmetrical composition in the printing of an
etched plate, and have not bothered to anticipate it by first reversing the
drawing on the plate. Picasso has often disregarded even the reversal
of his signature in the print. It is an assertion of spontaneity, made all
the more readily as the value of a drawing or print has come to be
lodged in its energy and freedom and in the surprise of its forms rather
than in the refinement of detail and subtlety of balance. One can doubt
that the artist would accept the reversal of a carefully composed painting.
(I may note here as an evidence of the sophisticated and acquired in
the perception of the different visual quality of the leftward and rightward directions in asymmetrical wholes, the frequent reversal of capital
N and S in the writing of children and unpracticed adults. These same
two letters are also often reversed in early medieval Latin inscriptions.
Apparently the difference in quality of the two diagonal directions is
not enough to fix the correct one firmly in mind without continued motor
practice. )
How shall we interpret the artist's tolerance of reversal if left and right
are indeed different in quality? In certain contexts the choice of the
supposedly anomalous side may be deliberate for a particular effect
which is reinforced by the content of the representation. If the diagonal
from lower left to upper right has come to possess an ascending quality,
while the reversed counterpart has a descending effect, an artist who represents figures ascending a slope drawn from the upper left to the lower
right gives thereby a more strained, effortful quality to the ascent. Reversal of the composition will disturb or weaken this effect. Yet in the reversal of a picture new qualities emerge that may be attractive to the artist
and many viewers.
Besides these characteristics of the field the prepared surface, the
boundaries, the positions and directions we must consider as an
expressive factor the format of the image-sign.
By format I mean the shape of the field, its proportions and dominant
axis, as well as its size. I shall pass over the role of proportions and
shape of the field, which is a vast problem, and consider size.
The size of a representation may be motivated in different ways: by
an external physical requirement, or by the qualities of the object represented. Colossal statues, painted figures larger than life, signify the
greatness of their subjects; and the tiny format may express the intimate,
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the delicate and precious. But size may also be a means of making a sign
visible at a distance, apart from the value of the content, as on the film
screen and in the gigantic signs in modern publicity. Or a sign may be
exceedingly small to satisfy a requirement of economy or ease of handling. (These different functions of size may be compared roughly with
the functions of volume and length in speech.) It is obvious that they are
not unconnected; a colossal statue serves both functions. We distinguish,
at any rate, two sets of conditions in the size of visual signs: on the one
hand, size as a function of value and as a function of visibility; on the
other hand, the size of the field and the size of different components of
the image relative to real objects which they signify and relative to each
other. A work may be large like a lengthy picture scroll because it represents so many objects all of average height; or it may be small like
a miniature painting and utilize the limited space to express differences
of value in the figures by differences of size.
In many styles of art, where objects of quite different size in reality
are represented in the same work, they are shown as of equal height. The
buildings, trees and mountains in archaic arts look no larger than the
human figures and sometimes smaller, and are thereby subordinated to
them. Here value or importance is more decisive for virtual size than the
real physical magnitude of the objects represented. I am not sure that
this is a convention, for the dominance of the human figure over the
environment appears independently in the art of many cultures and
among our own children in representing objects. One does not suppose
that the artist is unaware of the real differences in size between man and
these objects of his environment. The sizes of things in a picture express a
conception that requires no knowledge of a rule for its understanding.
The association of size and a scale of value is already given in language:
the words for superlatives of a human quality are often terms of size
greatest, highest, etc., even when applied to such intangibles as wisdom
or love.
Size as an expressive factor is not an independent variable. Its effect
changes with the function and context of the sign and with the scale and
density of the image, i.e., with the natural size of the objects, their number
and range of types; it varies also with the signified qualities. An interesting evidence of the qualitative non-linear relation of the size of the
sign to the size of the signified object is given in an experiment: children
who were asked to draw a very little man and a big man together, first
on a small and then on a large sheet of paper, enlarged the big man but
re-drew the small man as before on the large sheet.
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gradations and strong contrasts that bring out the volume, modeling
and illumination of the object. Produced by different techniques, the
signs for these qualities may vary greatly in their small and large structure
and still form a whole that corresponds sufficiently to the recognizable
natural appearance. One discovers through such elements of execution
another aspect of size in the image-signs, the variable scale of correspondence. Just as the small map shows nothing of the irregularities of
terrain below a certain size, so in a picture the technical-artistic means
of suggesting modeling and illumination affect the scale of correspondence. There is in the hatched lines a small unit that does not represent
anything by itself through its form, yet when repeated in great numbers
in the proper context vividly evokes a particular quality of the object.
On the other hand, in Impressionist paintings fairly large elements have
acquired a non-mimetic aspect. An extensive object-space, a landscape, is
represented on a small field, with a consequent increase in the relative size
of the units, i.e., relative to the whole complex sign of which they are a
part. In the picture the parts of the painted tree are flecks without clear
resemblance in shape or color to the parts of the real tree. Here the
painting seems to approach a feature of verbal signs. The tree-sign as a
whole is recognized as a tree, often through its context; but the parts are
hardly like leaves and branches. Yet no basic change has taken place
here in the semantic relation of image to object. The Impressionist has
chosen to represent a particular appearance of the real tree in which the
anatomical parts look indistinct as if fused with each other and with
neighboring objects. They have been experienced in nature as distant
things veiled by the atmosphere and as variations of light and color
rather than as shapes. Perspective vision discerns such objects through
the broad silhouette, the tone and context, without discriminating details.
Though they do not clearly resemble objects, certain spots of color in
the image correspond to sensations, and some of these are not of the
local colors of objects but are induced contrast colors and effects of
illumination.
It is this shift of interest to another aspect or content of reality that
led painters to criticize the arbitrariness of the outline as a distinct entity,
although every inflection of the line represents a known and recognizable
part of its object. In asserting with the support of scientists that there are
no lines in nature and that we see only colors, they undertook to represent
the visible world more truly by juxtaposing patches of color without
defining outlines. But if their system was defended as truer to the semblance of things and if it introduced into picture-making new signs for
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