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Semiotics and Structuralism in Art History

Semiotics poses a challenge to art history by introducing new methodologies. Art history has traditionally focused on empirical objects and their individual histories. However, semiotics uses signs and symbols to place art in its broader historical and cultural contexts. It views artworks as languages composed of visual signs. While art history decodes signs structurally, attributing meaning based on features, semiotics examines the process of signification itself. This theoretical bridge between structuralism and discourse allows art to be analyzed on multiple levels of meaning. For example, in Hindu temples, motifs like overflowing pots signify divinity but also provide empirical data about style, location, patronage, and time period. Therefore, semiotics enriches art history by introducing post

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40 views2 pages

Semiotics and Structuralism in Art History

Semiotics poses a challenge to art history by introducing new methodologies. Art history has traditionally focused on empirical objects and their individual histories. However, semiotics uses signs and symbols to place art in its broader historical and cultural contexts. It views artworks as languages composed of visual signs. While art history decodes signs structurally, attributing meaning based on features, semiotics examines the process of signification itself. This theoretical bridge between structuralism and discourse allows art to be analyzed on multiple levels of meaning. For example, in Hindu temples, motifs like overflowing pots signify divinity but also provide empirical data about style, location, patronage, and time period. Therefore, semiotics enriches art history by introducing post

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kaumari
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© All Rights Reserved
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Semiotics

How does semiotics as a new methodology pose a challenge to art history?


Art history found itself deeply embedded within a positivist framework. Since
the discipline of art history is largely based on empirical objects, there is a
very specific way in which the discipline has confined itself from the object
outwards. As the opposite of the cultural studies or anthropology method, Art
History attempts to prioritize the object and its individual history, also
understood as the biography of the object. In many ways, the discipline of art
history doesnt attempt to place art within the confines of history- but history
within the confines of art. This is how new histories can be created from
objects. The study makes this possible because of its empirical naturecertain designs, patterns, features and characteristic have identifiable
connotations that allow us to catalog objects with relative ease. Art historians
strive, as Daniel Preziosi says, to make the visible, legible.
The real question in this study is not the purpose of semiotics, but the
purpose of art history. On the basis of Preziosis work, one often asks whether
semiotics was anticipated by art history. Saussure describes structuralism
quite simply- every sign is bound by a signifier and a signified. In many ways,
art history is highly structuralist- the discipline is based in the structuralist
decoding of a certain specific index of signs. Instead of understanding
concepts of semiotics through language and linguistics, art history studies
the language created by visual signs- or as Saussure would refer to them,
iconic signs.
Semiotics as a method is primarily anti-realist. In the process of
understanding linguistics, Saussure termed the discipline categorical and
relative, although subscribing to its basic ethos. Saussure looked at both
schools as if they were a naming process- he was dissatisfied by this. He
believed that linguistics was not just a system of nomenclature. It is the same
vein of thinking that Preziosi adopts in his work- understanding the process of
signification is the job of the Art Historian. Yet at the very outset, the
acknowledgement of signification establishes a theoretical bridge between
the structuralist modality and art history discourse.
This is best examined through looking at an artwork. If one observes
walls of most medieval Hindu temples, one is likely to see purnaghata or a
kumbhapanjaram. This particular motif, translated loosely into overflowing
pot is a characteristic feature of the grace of divinity. Due to its widespread
prevalence, at first glance, we are only able to decipher to meaning of the
motif. But I argue, there is a second level of structuralism at play in the art
historical purview. Not only is the object a signifier of a certain qualitative
meaning, but it is also an empirical indicator of style. Therefore, the manner
in which the purnaghata is depicted might indicate the geographical location
of the temple, the dynasty under which the temple was patronized and time
period in which it was constructed. In this way, art history provides us with a
multi-dimensional structuralism that examines various fields of knowledge. As
Eric Fernie has pointed out, Art History at its very core is a composite

discipline, and it is for this reason that it is almost surprising how structuralist
its discourse can be. The size, shape, delineation, material and depth of the
sculpture are all empirical indicators of these larger cultural categories.
The broader question in this debate, however, is what happens to Art
History at the transition point between structuralism and post-structuralism.
It is at that moment, that one realizes that Art History is not merely
structuralist, contrary to previous assumptions, but it has always been
multifarious in its meaning making abilities. It is in these various fields of
knowledge production that discrepancies often happen, and these
discrepancies create entirely new fields of research- such as Orientalism.

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