Word of the Week: Semiotics

By Kari Schmidt

To begin with a quote by Mieke Bal, “Semiotics is the theory of signs and sign use, including seeing signs… Semiotics focuses on construction and representation, considering ‘texts’ as specific combinations of signs yielding meaning.”[1] Semiotics originated in linguistics but it can also be used to assist us in understanding visual images in that it recognises that what is depicted in a painting, for example, functions as a code – we see a certain object, depicted in a certain way (a sign/signifier) and in our minds it refers to a real object (the signified) with certain connotations. In regards to art, semiotics challenges traditional approaches to art history and image analysis, in that it encourages us to think about our act of looking, to not take anything for granted in an image and to question historically made assumptions about the meaning in any given work.

In this respect, semiotics encourages a sustained, detailed analysis of what is actually in the painting. So too, it also recognises that in interpreting a work and making meaning, we don’t need to be absolutely limited by the artist’s intentions, or by what would historically have been considered the meaning at the time of the painting’s production. One example of this is Girodet’s The Sleep of Endymion (Fig. 1) which, while it may not have been perceived as homoerotic in its time, can – according to semiotics - be said to have that connotation in the present day.

Fig. 1 The Sleep of Endymion, Anne-Louis Girodet, 1791

In this sense I think semiotics is supremely useful – as opposed to an empirical approach to history, it recognises that meaning making is a fluid, evolving process and accounts for the subjectivity inherent in the art-viewing experience – at the same time as recognising that the meaning we ascribe to an image is to some extent social and based on a common ground. For example, Bal interprets Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes (Fig. 2), as symbolising castration – in this interpretation Holofernes’ head is actually his penis. While initially this may seem a tenuous interpretation, when you consider the image as a part of a lineage of Judith paintings where women are associated with fear it starts to seem more tenable, and also allows us a richer metaphorical insight into/experience of the painting.

Fig. 2 Judith Slaying Holofernes, Artemisia Gentileschi, 1611-1612

In this way the meaning-making which semiotics facilitates for us is a playing, which can result in a confusion of contradictory meanings but which also recognises the inherent complexity of visual images, and makes richer our experience of reading them. 

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[1] Mieke Bal, ‘Seeing signs: The use of semiotics for the understanding of visual art’ in Cheetham, Mark; Holly, Michael Ann; and Keith Moxey (eds). The subjects of art history: Historical objects in contemporary perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 74.