FORMALISM

Formalism is the study of art based solely on an analysis of its form – the way it is made and
what it looks like

Formalism describes the critical position that the most important aspect of a work of art is
its form – the way it is made and its purely visual aspects – rather than its narrative content or
its relationship to the visible world. In painting therefore, a formalist critic would focus
exclusively on the qualities of colour, brushwork, form, line and composition.

Formalism as a critical stance came into being in response to impressionism and post-
impressionism (especially the painting of Cézanne) in which unprecedented emphasis was
placed on the purely visual aspects of the work. In 1890 the post-impressionist painter and
writer on art, Maurice Denis, published a manifesto titled Definition of Neo-
Traditionism where he emphasised that aesthetic pleasure was to be found in the painting itself
not its subject. This became one of the most widely quoted texts in the history of modern art:

Remember, that a picture, before it is a picture of a battle horse, a nude woman, or some story,
is essentially a flat surface covered in colours arranged in a certain order.

In Britain formalist art theory was developed by the Bloomsbury painter and critic Roger
Fry and the Bloomsbury writer Clive Bell. In his 1914 book Art, Bell formulated the notion of
significant form – that form itself can convey feeling. All this led quickly to abstract art, an art
of pure form. Formalism dominated the development of modern art until the 1960s when it
reached its peak in the so-called new criticism of the American critic Clement Greenberg and
others, particularly in their writings on colour field painting and post painterly abstraction. It
was precisely at that time that formalism began to be challenged by postmodernism.
 ICONOGRAPHY

The iconography of an artwork is the imagery within it

The term comes from the Greek word ikon meaning image. An icon was originally a picture of
Christ on a panel used as an object of devotion in the orthodox Greek Church from at least the
seventh century on. Hence the term icon has come to be attached to any object or image that is
outstanding or has a special meaning attached to it.

An iconography is a particular range or system of types of image used by an artist or artists to

convey particular meanings. For example in Christian religious painting there is an
iconography of images such as the lamb which represents Christ, or the dove which represents
the Holy Spirit. In the iconography of classical myth however, the presence of a dove would
suggest that any woman also present would be the goddess Aphrodite or Venus, so the
meanings of particular images can depend on context.

In the eighteenth century William Blake invented a complex personal iconography to illustrate
his vision of man and God, and much scholarship has been devoted to interpreting it. In the
twentieth century the iconography of Pablo Picasso’s work is mostly autobiographical,
while Joseph Beuys developed an iconography of substances such as felt, fat and honey, to
express his ideas about life and society. Iconography (or iconology) is also the academic
discipline of the study of images in art and their meanings
 Marxist Aesthetics

Many attempts have been made to develop a specifically Marxist aesthetics, one that would
incorporate the Marxian theory of history and class consciousness and the critique of
bourgeois ideology, so as to generate principles of analysis and evaluation and show the place of
art in the theory and practice of revolution. William Morris in England and Georgy V.
Plekhanov in Russia both attempted to unite Marx’s social criticism with a conception of the
nature of artistic labour. Plekhanov’s Iskusstvo i obshchestvennaya zhizn (1912; Art and Social
Life) is a kind of synthesis of early Marxist thought and attempts to recast the practices of art and
criticism in a revolutionary mold. The ideology of “art for art’s sake,” Plekhanov argues,
develops only in conditions of social decline when artist and recipient are in “hopeless disaccord
with the social environment in which they live.” Drawing on Kant and Schiller, Plekhanov
presents a theory of the origins of art in play; play, however, must not be understood in isolation.
It is indissolubly linked to labour, of which it is the complementary opposite. An art of play will
be the “free” art of the revolution, of humankind returned to social harmony, but only because
play and labour will then be reunited and transcended. In place of their opposition will be a
harmonious whole in which art is continuous with labour.

The aesthetic theories of the Russian Revolution owe something to Plekhanov; something to the
school of Formalist criticism, typified by the proto-Structuralist M. Bakhtin; and something to
the anti-aesthetic propaganda of the Russian Constructivists, who believed in an art expressive of
human dominion over raw materials—an art that would be destructive of all existing patterns of
subordination. The official approach of the Soviets to art, however, was typified, first, by the
persecution of all those who expressed adherence to those theories, and, second, by the adoption
under Stalin of Socialist Realism (the view that art is dedicated to the “realistic” representation
of proletarian values and proletarian life) as the sole legitimate basis for artistic practice.

Subsequent Marxist thinking about art was largely influenced by two major central European
thinkers: Walter Benjamin and György Lukács. Both were exponents of Marxist humanism who
saw the important contribution of Marxian theory to aesthetics in the analysis of the condition of
labour and in the critique of the alienated and “reified” consciousness of human beings under
capitalism. Benjamin’s collection of essays Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen
Reproduzierbarkeit (1936; The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction) attempts to
describe the changed experience of art in the modern world and sees the rise of Fascism
and mass society as the culmination of a process of debasement, whereby art ceases to be a
means of instruction and becomes instead a mere gratification, a matter of taste alone.
“Communism responds by politicizing art”—that is, by making art into the instrument by which
the false consciousness of the masses is to be overthrown.
György Lukács

Lukács developed a multifaceted approach to literary criticism in which the historical condition
of society and the reality of class consciousness are singled out as the ideological agenda of
works of literature and the major source of their appeal. This position is set forth in such works
as Die Theorie des Romans (1920; The Theory of the Novel). Neither Lukács nor Benjamin
produced a coherent aesthetics as defined in this article, although each was immensely influential
on the practice of modern literary criticism whether Marxist or not in its ultimate inspiration.

Eastern Aesthetics

India

The disparagement of the sensory realm as mere illusion (“the veil of Maya”), characteristic of
much Indian religion, went hand in hand with a philosophy of embodiment (karma), which gave
a distinctive role to art both as an instrument of worship and as an earthly delight. The legends of
the great god Krishna abound in exaggerated fantasies of erotic and physical power; the art of the
temples testifies to a sensuality that belies the mystical gestures of renunciation which form the
commonplaces of Hindu morality. In providing theories of such art and of the natural beauty that
it celebrates, Indian philosophers have relied heavily on the concept of aesthetic flavour,
or rasa, a kind of contemplative abstraction in which the inwardness of human feelings irradiates
the surrounding world of embodied forms.

Krishna Lifting Mount Govardhana

The theory of rasa is attributed to Bharata, a sage-priest who may have lived about 500 CE. It
was developed by the rhetorician and philosopher Abhinavagupta (c. 1000 CE), who applied it to
all varieties of theatre and poetry. The principal human feelings, according to Bharata, are
delight, laughter, sorrow, anger, fear, disgust, heroism, and astonishment, all of which may be
recast in contemplative form as the various rasas: erotic, comic, pathetic, furious, terrible,
odious, marvellous, and quietistic. These rasas comprise the components of aesthetic experience.
The power to taste rasa is a reward for merit in some previous existence.

China

Confucius (551–479 BCE) emphasized the role of aesthetic enjoyment in moral and political
education, and, like his near contemporary Plato, was suspicious of the power of art to awaken
frenzied and distracted feelings. Music must be stately and dignified, contributing to the inner
harmony that is the foundation of good behaviour, and all art is at its noblest when incorporated
into the rituals and traditions that enforce the stability and order of social life.

Confucius
Lao-tzu, the legendary founder of Taoism, was even more puritanical. He condemned all art as a
blinding of the eye, a deafening of the ear, and a cloying of the palate. Later Taoists were
more lenient, however, encouraging a freer, more intuitive approach both to works of art and to
nature. The philosophy of beauty presented in their works and in the writings of the Ch’an (Zen)
Buddhists who succeeded them is seldom articulate, being confined to epigrams and short
commentaries that remain opaque to the uninitiated.

The same epigrammatic style and the same fervent puritanism can be discerned in the writings
of Mao Zedung, who initiated in the Cultural Revolution the most successful war against beauty
that has been waged in modern history.

Japan

The practice of literary commentary and aesthetic discussion was extensively developed in Japan
and is exemplified at its most engaging in the great novel Genji monogatari (c. 1000; Tale of
Genji), written by Murasaki Shikibu, lady-in-waiting to the empress. Centuries of commentary
on this novel, as well as on the court literature that it inspired, on the nō and puppet plays, and on
the lyrical verses of the haiku poets, led to the establishment of an aesthetics of supreme
refinement. Many of the concepts of this form of aesthetics were drawn from the writings
of Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443), a playwright and actor-manager. Zeami argued that the value
of art is to be found in yūgen (“mystery and depth”) and that the artist must follow the rule
of sōō (“consonance”), according to which every object, gesture, and expression has to be
appropriate to its context.

The Tale of Genji

Scroll painting depicting a funeral ceremony in a scene from The Tale of Genji.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1912, (12.134.11), www.
metmuseum.org
The domination of aesthetic scruples over Japanese life has, as its culminating instance, the tea
ceremony—a marvel of constrained social ballet—to the study of which whole lives have been
devoted. Associated with this triumph of manners is an art of mood and evocation, in which
significance is found in the small, concentrated gesture, the sudden revelation
of transcendent meaning in what is most ordinary and unassuming. In the late 18th
century Motoori Norinaga, a leading literary scholar, summed up the essence of Japanese art and
literature as the expression of a touching intimation of transience, which he captured in the
famous phrase mono no aware, meaning roughly “the sensitivity to the sadness of things.” Other
aesthetic qualities emphasized by classical scholars and critics
are en (“charming”), okashi (“amusing”), and sabi (having the beauty of old, faded, worn, or
lovely things). In all such aesthetic categories, we can sense the resonance of the Taoist and
Buddhist ideas of renunciation.
 What Do Marxists Have To Say About Art?

Richard Clarke introduces some of the main Marxist insights into the nature and value of art,
and its links to political and economic realities.

Most Marxists would say that the value of a work of art such as a painting, or the pleasure they
get from it - in its original or as a reproduction - is above all else an individual matter, not
something that ‘experts’ (Marxist or otherwise) can or should pronounce upon. At the same time
experts can enhance that pleasure, for example by explaining the technique and methodology of
the composition of a painting. Again, this is no more the exclusive province of a Marxist than
(for example) a commentary on the technical skills embodied in the design or manufacture of a
washing machine.

However a Marxist approach may help to deepen the appreciation or understanding of an art
work by revealing the historical context of its production and the relation of a work of art or of
an artist to society. Art, just as any other human activity, is always created within a specific
social and historical context, and this will impact on the art work itself. This is why Marxists
argue that one can only begin fully to appreciate and understand a work of art by examining it in
relation to the conditions of its creation.
Here a fruitful starting point for discussion is a materialist view – looking at the production and
consumption of art, the position of artists in relation to different classes, and the conflicts
embodied in a work of art and in the history of which it is a part. For example, Ernst Fischer’s
seminal essay The Necessity of Art (1959) is a Marxist exposition of the central social function
of art, from its origins in magic ritual through organised religion to its varied and contradictory
roles within capitalism and its potential in building socialism.

The Marxist art critic John Berger in his Ways of Seeing (a 1972 four-part television series, later
adapted into a book, Ways of Seeing) was hailed by many people for helping to deepen their
understanding of art. Berger argued that it was impossible to view a reproduction of ‘old
masters’ (generally paintings by European artists before 1800) in the way they were seen at the
time of their production; that the female nude was an abstraction and distortion of reality,
reflecting contemporary male ideals; that an oil painting was often a means of reflecting the
status of an artist’s patron; and that contemporary advertising utilises the skills of artists and the
latest artistic techniques merely to sell things for consumption in a capitalist market.

Berger’s work remains controversial and has been revisited many times, particularly since his
death in January 2017. Many have argued that he over-simplifies and that he incorporates the
deeper perceptions of others such as Walter Benjamin, working at the interface between
Marxism and cultural theory. Some have asked (for example) why there is no reference to
feminist theorists in Berger’s chapter on the ‘male gaze’. However Berger’s work needs to be
seen in context as a polemical response to the ‘great artists’ approach which characterises much
establishment art history and ‘art appreciation’ typified by Kenneth Clark’s (1969) Civilisation
television series.

What is clear is that cultural expression (art, lower case) is characteristic of all human societies
and that while art and society are intimately connected, the former is not merely a passive
reflection of the latter. The relationship is a dialectical one. As Marx declared in A Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy: ‘The object of art, like any other product, creates an artistic
and beauty-enjoying public. Production thus produces not only an object for the individual, but
also an individual for the object’.

A distinction is often made between the performing arts (including music, theatre, and dance)
and the visual arts (such as drawing, painting, photography, film and video). Performing arts are
of their nature ephemeral, and as Robert Wyatt, the communist percussionist of the ‘60s
psychedelic rock group Soft Machine, declared, ‘different every time’. The performance is the
initial product, although it may be recorded, reproduced and subsequently sold.

‘Art’ (as in painting, on canvas) is sometimes presented as the highest point in the development
of ‘civilised’ culture. Jean Gimpel, an historian, diamond dealer, and expert in art forgery,
attacked the concept of ‘high art’ in his book The Cult of Art (subtitled Against Art and Artists).
He argued that the concept of Art - especially oil paintings, on transportable framed canvas - is
specifically a product of capitalism, personified in the Florentine artist Giotto ‘the first bourgeois
painter’ of the Renaissance and his successors.

Under the patronage of the Medici and other nouveau riche Italian patrician families, the
‘artisan’ workmanship of frescos on church walls or decorated altarpiece was superseded by the
movable (and marketable) canvas. In short, it was commodified. ‘People no longer wanted a
'Madonna' or a 'Descent from the Cross' but a Leonardo da Vinci, a Michelangelo or a Bellini.’
The cult of art and the artist was born.

Yet it was not until the eighteenth century that the distinction between ‘artisan’ and ‘artist’
became fixed. Even today people can be heard asking – of everything from the Lascaux cave
paintings to some suburban topiary — ‘but is it Art?’ High art of course also produced its
supposed antithesis - the artist in his garret (women artists were to a degree excluded from the
equation), suffering, sometimes starving in the cause of art unless they are lucky enough to be
‘discovered’, often only after death. With capitalism, for the first time the artist became a ‘free’
artist, a ‘free’ personality, free to the point of absurdity, of icy loneliness. Art became an
occupation that was half-romantic, half-commercial.

Dire Straits’ ‘In The Gallery’ is a song about the conversion of use-value (the worth the artist or
her audience see in an art work or the pleasure they get from it) into exchange value. Harry is an
ex-miner and a sculptor, ‘ignored by all the trendy boys in London’ until after he dies, when,
suddenly, he is ‘discovered’ (too late for Harry, of course) – the vultures descend to make profit
from his work.

In The Gallery

Don Mclean’s ‘Starry Starry Night’ carries a similar message. The principal difference (beyond
the tempo of the songs) is that Harry is politically engaged, very much of this world whereas
tormented Vincent (Van Gogh) was ‘out of it’ - unlike his post-impressionist erstwhile friend,
Paul Gauguin, who asked his agent what
‘the stupid buying public’ would pay most
for and then adjusted his output
accordingly.

Vincent (Starry Starry Night)

Irrespective of their recognition or fame, art and artists are frequently presented as apart from,
sometimes above, society. For Marxists it is clear that the arts and artists are an integral part of
society. In terms of aesthetics and policy however, Marxists would suggest caution - the history
of art within socialism is a mixed one. The early flowering of post-revolutionary Soviet avant-
garde art is well known. Constructivism strived to put art at the service of the people. The
subsequent rise of socialist realism as ‘official’ art was an attempt to make art more accessible
(and it existed alongside a flourishing variety of unofficial art forms).

Left: Gustav Klutsis – Workers, Everyone must vote in the Election of Soviets! Right: Russian
Propaganda Poster

In the United States modern art was promoted as a weapon in a cultural cold war with the Soviet
Union and its ‘socialist realist’ art forms. In the 1950s and 1960s, through the Congress for
Cultural Freedom, the Farfield Foundation, and other covers, the CIA secretly promoted the
work of American abstract expressionist artists - including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning
and Mark Rothko - in order to demonstrate the supposed intellectual freedom and cultural
creativity of the US against the ideological conformity of Soviet art.

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)

Even when art is oppositional, capitalism has an uncanny knack of appropriating it. The Royal
Academy’s 2017 exhibition of Russian revolutionary art was accompanied by vicious and
ignorant curating – presumably to disabuse any who might otherwise have been inspired by the
works on display. Banksy’s graffiti, a determinedly uncommercial form of art ‘for the people’
(maybe a modern equivalent of the Lascaux cave paintings?) is now ‘in the gallery’ – decidedly a
collector’s item with a price tag to match. Another (dead) graffiti artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s
1981 depiction of a skull was auctioned in May this year for more than $100 million. Banksy’s
own comment on this is conveyed on a wall of the Barbican where a posthumous exhibition of
Basquiat’s work runs until January 2018 (admission £16). City of London officials are currently
considering whether (and how) this fresh graffiti might be preserved.

Within capitalism, as its crisis deepens, ‘high art’ (provided it is portable, saleable, in a word,
alienable) is – next to land and other property – one of the best investments that there is. A recent
example is Sir Edwin Landseer’s ‘Monarch of the Glen’, ‘saved’ for the nation in March 2017 at
a cost of £4 million, through a fund raising exercise to pay its owner, Diageo. This multinational
drinks conglomerate (profits last year £3 billion on net sales of £10.8bn, 15% up on the previous
year; CEO Ivan Menezes’ salary £4.4m) graciously agreed to accept just half of the paintings
‘estimated value’ of £8 million. More than half of this money came from the National Lottery -
itself sometimes described as a ‘hidden tax on the poor’.
Edwin Landseer,The Monarch of the Glen

Gaugin’s Nafea Faa Ipoipo? (‘When Will You Marry’?), painted in 1882 and, like his others,
presenting a romanticised view of Tahiti, sold for $300 million in 2015 — just topped by de
Kooning’s Interchange the following year. A 24ct gold bracelet, designed by Ai Weiwei, the
Chinese ‘dissident’ and ‘champion of democracy’, inspired by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake (the
deadliest earthquake ever, 90,000 dead, between 5 and 11 million homeless) sells for a modest
£45,500 from Elisabetta Cipriani, (ElisabettaCipriani). The majority of artists and their artworks
of course, never reach such dizzy heights.

The role of the artist in society remains a controversial subject. In the meantime it is clear that art
and artists can and do play a vital role and that artistic freedom and license are crucial. Perhaps a
good model is that followed in the former Yugoslavia and other socialist countries (as today in
Cuba). Artists were not paid or employed as such by the state, although the arts in general were
and are given generous state support. As in capitalist countries artists had to make their living
through commissions, though these would be more likely to come from community associations,
trades unions, local councils and the like, rather than from wealthy patrons or investors. Many
would have to supplement their incomes by teaching, or by doing other jobs. But their social
position was recognised and their social security contributions were paid so that on ill-health or
retirement they would not suffer.

In both the appreciation, understanding and, indeed, production of art, and whether you love or
loathe his own designs, one assertion that all socialists would surely agree with is that of the
communist William Morris, who declared ‘I do not want art for a few; any more than education
for a few; or freedom for a few...’, (Hopes and fears for art). What is certain is that art - of all
types - can enrich our lives. It can also be galvanising, a force for social progress. But it is also
clear that art that is subject to capitalist market forces involves a chronic distortion of the artistic
product and process in which art works are valued for their price tag rather than their intrinsic
quality. A Marxist approach can deepen our understanding of art provided that we avoid
dogmatism and accept that this is an area of debate - one to which we can all contribute.
 FEMINIST ART

Feminist art is art by artists made consciously in the light of developments in feminist art
theory in the early 1970s

In 1971 the art historian Linda Nochlin published a groundbreaking essay Why Have There
Been No Great Women Artists? In it she investigated the social and economic factors that had
prevented talented women from achieving the same status as their male counterparts.

By the 1980s art historians such as Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker were going further, to
examine the language of art history with its gender-loaded terms such as ‘old master’ and
‘masterpiece’. They questioned the central place of the female nude in the western canon,
asking why men and women are represented so differently. In his 1972 book Ways of
Seeing the Marxist critic John Berger had concluded ‘Men look at women. Women watch
themselves being looked at’. In other words Western art replicates the unequal relationships
already embedded in society.

In what is sometimes known as First Wave feminist art, women artists revelled in feminine
experience, exploring vaginal imagery and menstrual blood, posing naked as goddess figures
and defiantly using media such as embroidery that had been considered ‘women’s work’. One
of the great iconic works of this phase of feminist art is Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party,
1974–9.

Later feminist artists rejected this approach and attempted to reveal the origins of our ideas of
femininity and womanhood. They pursued the idea of femininity as a masquerade – a set of
poses adopted by women to conform to social expectations of womanhood.
 History and theory of feminism

The term feminism can be used to describe a political, cultural or economic movement aimed at
establishing equal rights and legal protection for women. Feminism involves political and
sociological theories and philosophies concerned with issues of gender difference, as well as a
movement that advocates gender equality for women and campaigns for women's rights and
interests. Although the terms "feminism" and "feminist" did not gain widespread use until the
1970s, they were already being used in the public parlance much earlier; for instance, Katherine
Hepburn speaks of the "feminist movement" in the 1942 film Woman of the Year.

According to Maggie Humm and Rebecca Walker, the history of feminism can be divided into
three waves. The first feminist wave was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the
second was in the 1960s and 1970s, and the third extends from the 1990s to the present. Feminist
theory emerged from these feminist movements. It is manifest in a variety of disciplines such as
feminist geography, feminist history and feminist literary criticism.

Feminism has altered predominant perspectives in a wide range of areas within Western society,
ranging from culture to law. Feminist activists have campaigned for women's legal rights (rights
of contract, property rights, voting rights); for women's right to bodily integrity and autonomy,
for abortion rights, and for reproductive rights (including access to contraception and quality
prenatal care); for protection of women and girls from domestic violence, sexual harassment and
rape;for workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; against misogyny; and
against other forms of gender-specific discrimination against women.

During much of its history, most feminist movements and theories had leaders who were
predominantly middle-class white women from Western Europe and North America. However,
at least since Sojourner Truth's 1851 speech to American feminists, women of other races have
proposed alternative feminisms. This trend accelerated in the 1960s with the Civil Rights
movement in the United States and the collapse of European colonialism in Africa, the
Caribbean, parts of Latin America and Southeast Asia. Since that time, women in former
European colonies and the Third World have proposed "Post-colonial" and "Third World"
feminisms. Some Postcolonial Feminists, such as Chandra Talpade Mohanty, are critical of
Western feminism for being ethnocentric. Black feminists, such as Angela Davis and Alice
Walker, share this view.

History

Simone de Beauvoir wrote that "the first time we see a woman take up her pen in defense of her
sex" was Christine de Pizan who wrote Epitre au Dieu d'Amour (Epistle to the God of Love) in
the 15th century. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi worked in the 16th
century. Marie Le Jars de Gournay, Anne Bradstreet and Francois Poullain de la Barre wrote
during the 17th.

Feminists and scholars have divided the movement's history into three "waves". The first wave
refers mainly to women's suffrage movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
(mainly concerned with women's right to vote). The second wave refers to the ideas and actions
associated with the women's liberation movement beginning in the 1960s (which campaigned for
legal and social rights for women). The third wave refers to a continuation of, and a reaction to
the perceived failures of, second-wave feminism, beginning in the 1990s.

First wave

First-wave feminism refers to an extended period of feminist activity during the nineteenth
century and early twentieth century in the United Kingdom and the United States. Originally it
focused on the promotion of equal contract and property rights for women and the opposition to
chattel marriage and ownership of married women (and their children) by their husbands.
However, by the end of the nineteenth century, activism focused primarily on gaining political
power, particularly the right of women's suffrage. Yet, feminists such as Voltairine de Cleyre and
Margaret Sanger were still active in campaigning for women's sexual, reproductive, and
economic rights at this time. In 1854, Florence Nightingale established female nurses as adjuncts
to the military.

In Britain the Suffragettes and, possibly more effectively, the Suffragists campaigned for the
women's vote. In 1918 the Representation of the People Act 1918 was passed granting the vote
to women over the age of 30 who owned houses. In 1928 this was extended to all women over
twenty-one. In the United States, leaders of this movement included Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, who each campaigned for the abolition of
slavery prior to championing women's right to vote; all were strongly influenced by Quaker
thought. American first-wave feminism involved a wide range of women. Some, such as Frances
Willard, belonged to conservative Christian groups such as the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union. Others, such as Matilda Joslyn Gage, were more radical, and expressed themselves within
the National Woman Suffrage Association or individually. American first-wave feminism is
considered to have ended with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution (1919), granting women the right to vote in all states.

The term first wave was coined retrospectively after the term second-wave feminism began to be
used to describe a newer feminist movement that focused as much on fighting social and cultural
inequalities as political inequalities.

Second wave

Second-wave feminism refers to the period of activity in the early 1960s and lasting through the
late 1980s. The scholar Imelda Whelehan suggests that the second wave was a continuation of
the earlier phase of feminism involving the suffragettes in the UK and USA. Second-wave
feminism has continued to exist since that time and coexists with what is termed third-wave
feminism. The scholar Estelle Freedman compares first and second-wave feminism saying that
the first wave focused on rights such as suffrage, whereas the second wave was largely
concerned with other issues of equality, such as ending discrimination.

The feminist activist and author Carol Hanisch coined the slogan "The Personal is Political"
which became synonymous with the second wave. Second-wave feminists saw women's cultural
and political inequalities as inextricably linked and encouraged women to understand aspects of
their personal lives as deeply politicized and as reflecting sexist power structures.

Simone de Beauvoir and The Second Sex

The French author and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir wrote novels; monographs on
philosophy, politics, and social issues; essays; biographies; and an autobiography. She is now
best known for her metaphysical novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins, and for
her treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract
of contemporary feminism. Written in 1949, its English translation was published in 1953. It sets
out a feminist existentialism which prescribes a moral revolution. As an existentialist, she
accepted Jean-Paul Sartre's precept existence precedes essence; hence "one is not born a woman,
but becomes one." Her analysis focuses on the social construction of Woman as the Other. This
de Beauvoir identifies as fundamental to women's oppression. She argues women have
historically been considered deviant and abnormal and contends that even Mary Wollstonecraft
considered men to be the ideal toward which women should aspire. De Beauvoir argues that for
feminism to move forward, this attitude must be set aside.

The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) criticized the idea that women could only find
fulfillment through childrearing and homemaking. According to Friedan's obituary in the The
New York Times, The Feminine Mystique “ignited the contemporary women's movement in
1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States and countries
around the world” and “is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the
20th century.” In the book Friedan hypothesizes that women are victims of a false belief system
that requires them to find identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and children.
Such a system causes women to completely lose their identity in that of their family. Friedan
specifically locates this system among post-World War II middle-class suburban communities.
At the same time, America's post-war economic boom had led to the development of new
technologies that were supposed to make household work less difficult, but that often had the
result of making women's work less meaningful and valuable.

Women's Liberation in the USA

The phrase "Women’s Liberation" was first used in the United States in 1964 and first appeared
in print in 1966. By 1968, although the term Women’s Liberation Front appeared in the
magazine Ramparts, it was starting to refer to the whole women’s movement. Bra-burning also
became associated with the movement, though the actual prevalence of bra-burning is debatable.
One of the most vocal critics of the women's liberation movement has been the African
American feminist and intellectual Gloria Jean Watkins (who uses the pseudonym "bell hooks")
who argues that this movement glossed over race and class and thus failed to address "the issues
that divided women." She highlighted the lack of minority voices in the women's movement in
her book Feminist theory from margin to center (1984).
Third wave

Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s, arising as a response to perceived failures of the
second wave and also as a response to the backlash against initiatives and movements created by
the second wave. Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the second
wave's essentialist definitions of femininity, which (according to them) over-emphasize the
experiences of upper middle-class white women.

A post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality is central to much of the third wave's
ideology. Third-wave feminists often focus on "micro-politics" and challenge the second wave's
paradigm as to what is, or is not, good for females. The third wave has its origins in the mid-
1980s. Feminist leaders rooted in the second wave like Gloria Anzaldua, bell hooks, Chela
Sandoval, Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many other black
feminists, sought to negotiate a space within feminist thought for consideration of race-related
subjectivities.

Third-wave feminism also contains internal debates between difference feminists such as the
psychologist Carol Gilligan (who believes that there are important differences between the sexes)
and those who believe that there are no inherent differences between the sexes and contend that
gender roles are due to social conditioning.

Post-feminism

Post-feminism describes a range of viewpoints reacting to feminism. While not being "anti-
feminist," post-feminists believe that women have achieved second wave goals while being
critical of third wave feminist goals. The term was first used in the 1980s to describe a backlash
against second-wave feminism. It is now a label for a wide range of theories that take critical
approaches to previous feminist discourses and includes challenges to the second wave's ideas.
Other post-feminists say that feminism is no longer relevant to today's society. Amelia Jones
wrote that the post-feminist texts which emerged in the 1980s and 1990s portrayed second-wave
feminism as a monolithic entity and criticized it using generalizations.

One of the earliest uses of the term was in Susan Bolotin's 1982 article "Voices of the Post-
Feminist Generation," published in New York Times Magazine. This article was based on a
number of interviews with women who largely agreed with the goals of feminism, but did not
identify as feminists.

Some contemporary feminists, such as Katha Pollitt or Nadine Strossen, consider feminism to
hold simply that "women are people". Views that separate the sexes rather than unite them are
considered by these writers to be sexist rather than feminist'.'

In her book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, Susan Faludi argues that
a backlash against second wave feminism in the 1980s has successfully re-defined feminism
through its terms. She argues that it constructed the women's liberation movement as the source
of many of the problems alleged to be plaguing women in the late 1980s. She also argues that
many of these problems are illusory, constructed by the media without reliable evidence.
According to her, this type of backlash is a historical trend, recurring when it appears that
women have made substantial gains in their efforts to obtain equal rights.

Angela McRobbie argues that adding the prefix post to feminism undermines the strides that
feminism has made in achieving equality for everyone, including women. Post-feminism gives
the impression that equality has been achieved and that feminists can now focus on something
else entirely. McRobbie believes that post-feminism is most clearly seen on so-called feminist
media products, such as Bridget Jones's Diary, Sex and the City, and Ally McBeal. Female
characters like Bridget Jones and Carrie Bradshaw claim to be liberated and clearly enjoy their
sexuality, but what they are constantly searching for is the one man who will make everything
worthwhile.

French feminism

French feminism refers to a branch of feminist thought from a group of feminists in France from
the 1970s to the 1990s. French feminism, compared to Anglophone feminism, is distinguished by
an approach which is more philosophical and literary. Its writings tend to be effusive and
metaphorical, being less concerned with political doctrine and generally focused on theories of
"the body." The term includes writers who are not French, but who have worked substantially in
France and the French tradition such as Julia Kristeva and Bracha Ettinger.

In the 1970s French feminists approached feminism with the concept of ecriture feminine, which
translates as female, or feminine writing. Helene Cixous argues that writing and philosophy are
phallocentric and along with other French feminists such as Luce Irigaray emphasizes "writing
from the body" as a subversive exercise. The work of the feminist psychoanalyst and
philosopher, Julia Kristeva, has influenced feminist theory in general and feminist literary
criticism in particular. From the 1980s onwards the work of artist and psychoanalyst Bracha
Ettinger has influenced literary criticism, art history and film theory. However, as the scholar
Elizabeth Wright pointed out, "none of these French feminists align themselves with the feminist
movement as it appeared in the Anglophone world.

Theoretical schools

Feminist theory is an extension of feminism into theoretical or philosophical fields. It

encompasses work in a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, economics,
women's studies, literary criticism, art history, psychoanalysis and philosophy. Feminist theory
aims to understand gender inequality and focuses on gender politics, power relations and
sexuality. While providing a critique of these social and political relations, much of feminist
theory focuses on the promotion of women's rights and interests. Themes explored in feminist
theory include discrimination, stereotyping, objectification (especially sexual objectification),
oppression and patriarchy.

The American literary critic and feminist Elaine Showalter describes the phased development of
feminist theory. The first she calls "feminist critique," in which the feminist reader examines the
ideologies behind literary phenomena. The second Showalter calls "gynocriticism," in which the
"woman is producer of textual meaning" including "the psychodynamics of female creativity;
linguistics and the problem of a female language; the trajectory of the individual or collective
female literary career and literary history." The last phase she calls "gender theory," in which the
"ideological inscription and the literary effects of the sex/gender system" are explored. The
scholar Toril Moi criticized this model, seeing it as an essentialist and deterministic model for
female subjectivity that fails to account for the situation of women outside the West.

Movements and ideologies

Several submovements of feminist ideology have developed over the years; some of the major
subtypes are listed below. These movements often overlap, and some feminists identify
themselves with several types of feminist thought.

Anarcha

Anarcha-feminism (also called anarchist feminism and anarcho-feminism) combines anarchism

with feminism. It generally views patriarchy as a manifestation of involuntary hierarchy.
Anarcha-feminists believe that the struggle against patriarchy is an essential part of class
struggle, and the anarchist struggle against the State. In essence, the philosophy sees anarchist
struggle as a necessary component of feminist struggle and vice-versa. As L. Susan Brown puts
it, "as anarchism is a political philosophy that opposes all relationships of power, it is inherently
feminist".

Important historic anarcha-feminists include Emma Goldman, Federica Montseny, Voltairine de

Cleyre and Lucy Parsons. In the Spanish Civil War, an anarcha-feminist group, Mujeres Libres
("Free Women") linked to the Federacion Anarquista Iberica, organized to defend both anarchist
and feminist ideas.

Contemporary anarcha-feminist writers/theorists include Germaine Greer, L. Susan Brown and

the eco-feminist Starhawk. Contemporary anarcha-feminist groups include Bolivia's Mujeres
Creando, Radical Cheerleaders, the Spanish anarcha-feminist squat La Eskalera Karakola, and
the annual La Rivolta! conference in Boston.

Socialist and Marxist

Socialist feminism connects the oppression of women to Marxist ideas about exploitation,
oppression and labor. Socialist feminists think unequal standing in both the workplace and the
domestic sphere holds women down.[59] Socialist feminists see prostitution, domestic work,
childcare and marriage as ways in which women are exploited by a patriarchal system that
devalues women and the substantial work they do. Socialist feminists focus their energies on
broad change that affects society as a whole, rather than on an individual basis. They see the
need to work alongside not just men, but all other groups, as they see the oppression of women
as a part of a larger pattern that affects everyone involved in the capitalist system.

Marx felt when class oppression was overcome, gender oppression would vanish as well.
According to some socialist feminists, this view of gender oppression as a sub-class of class
oppression is naive and much of the work of socialist feminists has gone towards separating
gender phenomena from class phenomena. Some contributors to socialist feminism have
criticized these traditional Marxist ideas for being largely silent on gender oppression except to
subsume it underneath broader class oppression. Other socialist feminists, many of whom belong
to Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party, two long-lived American organizations,
point to the classic Marxist writings of Frederick Engels and August Bebel as a powerful
explanation of the link between gender oppression and class exploitation.

In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century both Clara Zetkin and Eleanor Marx
were against the demonization of men and supported a proletarian revolution that would
overcome as many male-female inequalities as possible. As their movement already had the most
radical demands of women's equality, most Marxist leaders, including Clara Zetkin and
Alexandra Kollontai, counterposed Marxism against feminism, rather than trying to combine
them.

Radical

Radical feminism considers the male controlled capitalist hierarchy, which it describes as sexist,
as the defining feature of women’s oppression. Radical feminists believe that women can free
themselves only when they have done away with what they consider an inherently oppressive
and dominating patriarchal system. Radical feminists feel that there is a male-based authority and
power structure and that it is responsible for oppression and inequality, and that as long as the
system and its values are in place, society will not be able to be reformed in any significant way.
Some radical feminists see no alternatives other than the total uprooting and reconstruction of
society in order to achieve their goals.

Over time a number of sub-types of Radical feminism have emerged, such as Cultural feminism,
Separatist feminism and Anti-pornography feminism. Cultural feminism is the ideology of a
"female nature" or "female essence" that attempts to revalidate what they consider undervalued
female attributes. It emphasizes the difference between women and men but considers that
difference to be psychological, and to be culturally constructed rather than biologically innate. Its
critics assert that because it is based on an essentialist view of the differences between women
and men and advocates independence and institution building, it has led feminists to retreat from
politics to “life-style” Once such critic, Alice Echols (a feminist historian and cultural theorist),
credits Redstockings member Brooke Williams with introducing the term cultural feminism in
1975 to describe the depoliticisation of radical feminism.

Separatist feminism is a form of radical feminism that does not support heterosexual
relationships. Its proponents argue that the sexual disparities between men and women are
unresolvable. Separatist feminists generally do not feel that men can make positive contributions
to the feminist movement and that even well-intentioned men replicate patriarchal dynamics.
Author Marilyn Frye describes separatist feminism as "separation of various sorts or modes from
men and from institutions, relationships, roles and activities that are male-defined, male-
dominated, and operating for the benefit of males and the maintenance of male privilege – this
separation being initiated or maintained, at will, by women".
Liberal

Liberal feminism asserts the equality of men and women through political and legal reform. It is
an individualistic form of feminism, which focuses on women’s ability to show and maintain
their equality through their own actions and choices. Liberal feminism uses the personal
interactions between men and women as the place from which to transform society. According to
liberal feminists, all women are capable of asserting their ability to achieve equality, therefore it
is possible for change to happen without altering the structure of society. Issues important to
liberal feminists include reproductive and abortion rights, sexual harassment, voting, education,
"equal pay for equal work", affordable childcare, affordable health care, and bringing to light the
frequency of sexual and domestic violence against women.

Black

Black feminism argues that sexism, class oppression, and racism are inextricably bound together.
Forms of feminism that strive to overcome sexism and class oppression but ignore race can
discriminate against many people, including women, through racial bias. The Combahee River
Collective argued in 1974 that the liberation of black women entails freedom for all people, since
it would require the end of racism, sexism, and class oppression. One of the theories that evolved
out of this movement was Alice Walker's Womanism. It emerged after the early feminist
movements that were led specifically by white women who advocated social changes such as
woman’s suffrage. These movements were largely white middle-class movements and had
generally ignored oppression based on racism and classism. Alice Walker and other Womanists
pointed out that black women experienced a different and more intense kind of oppression from
that of white women.

Angela Davis was one of the first people who articulated an argument centered around the
intersection of race, gender, and class in her book, Women, Race, and Class. Kimberle
Crenshaw, a prominent feminist law theorist, gave the idea the name Intersectionality while
discussing identity politics in her essay, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity
Politics and Violence Against Women of Color".

Postcolonial and third-world

Postcolonial feminists argue that oppression relating to the colonial experience, particularly
racial, class, and ethnic oppression, has marginalized women in postcolonial societies. They
challenge the assumption that gender oppression is the primary force of patriarchy. Postcolonial
feminists object to portrayals of women of non-Western societies as passive and voiceless
victims and the portrayal of Western women as modern, educated and empowered.

Postcolonial feminism emerged from the gendered history of colonialism: colonial powers often
imposed Western norms on colonized regions. In the 1940s and 1950s, after the formation of the
United Nations, former colonies were monitored by the West for what was considered "social
progress". The status of women in the developing world has been monitored by organizations
such as the United Nations and as a result traditional practices and roles taken up by women—
sometimes seen as distasteful by Western standards—could be considered a form of rebellion
against colonial oppression. Postcolonial feminists today struggle to fight gender oppression
within their own cultural models of society rather than through those imposed by the Western
colonizers.

Postcolonial feminism is critical of Western forms of feminism, notably radical feminism and
liberal feminism and their universalization of female experience. Postcolonial feminists argue
that cultures impacted by colonialism are often vastly different and should be treated as such.
Colonial oppression may result in the glorification of pre-colonial culture, which, in cultures
with traditions of power stratification along gender lines, could mean the acceptance of, or
refusal to deal with, inherent issues of gender inequality. Postcolonial feminists can be described
as feminists who have reacted against both universalizing tendencies in Western feminist thought
and a lack of attention to gender issues in mainstream postcolonial thought.

Third-world feminism has been described as a group of feminist theories developed by feminists
who acquired their views and took part in feminist politics in so-called third-world countries.
Although women from the third world have been engaged in the feminist movement, Chandra
Talpade Mohanty and Sarojini Sahoo criticize Western feminism on the grounds that it is
ethnocentric and does not take into account the unique experiences of women from third-world
countries or the existence of feminisms indigenous to third-world countries. According to
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, women in the third world feel that Western feminism bases its
understanding of women on "internal racism, classism and homophobia". This discourse is
strongly related to African feminism and postcolonial feminism. Its development is also
associated with concepts such as black feminism, womanism, "Africana womanism",
"motherism", "Stiwanism", "negofeminism", chicana feminism, and "femalism".

Multiracial

Multiracial feminism (also known as “women of color” feminism) offers a standpoint theory and
analysis of the lives and experiences of women of color. The theory emerged in the 1990s and
was developed by Dr. Maxine Baca Zinn, a Chicana feminist and Dr. Bonnie Thornton Dill, a
sociology expert on African American women and family.

Libertarian

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Classical liberal or libertarian feminism

conceives of freedom as freedom from coercive interference. It holds that women, as well as
men, have a right to such freedom due to their status as self-owners."

There are several categories under the theory of libertarian feminism, or kinds of feminism that
are linked to libertarian ideologies. Anarcha-feminism (also called anarchist feminism or
anarcho-feminism) combines feminist and anarchist beliefs, embodying classical libertarianism
rather than contemporary conservative libertarianism. Anarcha-feminists view patriarchy as a
manifestation of hierarchy, believing that the fight against patriarchy is an essential part of the
class struggle and the anarchist struggle against the state. Anarcha-feminists such as Susan
Brown see the anarchist struggle as a necessary component of the feminist struggle. In Brown's
words, "anarchism is a political philosophy that opposes all relationships of power, it is
inherently feminist". Recently, Wendy McElroy has defined a position (which she labels
"ifeminism" or "individualist feminism") that combines feminism with anarcho-capitalism or
contemporary conservative libertarianism, arguing that a pro-capitalist, anti-state position is
compatible with an emphasis on equal rights and empowerment for women. Individualist
anarchist-feminism has grown from the US-based individualist anarchism movement.

Individualist feminism is typically defined as a feminism in opposition to what writers such as

Wendy McElroy and Christina Hoff Sommers term, political or gender feminism. However,
there are some differences within the discussion of individualist feminism. While some
individualist feminists like McElroy oppose government interference into the choices women
make with their bodies because such interference creates a coercive hierarchy (such as
patriarchy), other feminists such as Christina Hoff Sommers hold that feminism's political role is
simply to ensure that everyone's, including women's, right against coercive interference is
respected. Sommers is described as a "socially conservative equity feminist" by the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Critics have called her an anti-feminist.

Standpoint

Since the 1980s, standpoint feminists have argued that feminism should examine how women's
experience of inequality relates to that of racism, homophobia, classism and colonization. In the
late 1980s and 1990s postmodern feminists argued that gender roles are socially constructed, and
that it is impossible to generalize women's experiences across cultures and histories.

Post-structural and postmodern

Post-structural feminism, also referred to as French feminism, uses the insights of various
epistemological movements, including psychoanalysis, linguistics, political theory (Marxist and
post-Marxist theory), race theory, literary theory, and other intellectual currents for feminist
concerns. Many post-structural feminists maintain that difference is one of the most powerful
tools that females possess in their struggle with patriarchal domination, and that to equate the
feminist movement only with equality is to deny women a plethora of options because equality is
still defined from the masculine or patriarchal perspective.

Postmodern feminism is an approach to feminist theory that incorporates postmodern and post-
structuralist theory. The largest departure from other branches of feminism is the argument that
gender is constructed through language. The most notable proponent of this argument is Judith
Butler. In her 1990 book, Gender Trouble, she draws on and critiques the work of Simone de
Beauvoir, Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan. Butler criticizes the distinction drawn by previous
feminisms between biological sex and socially constructed gender. She says that this does not
allow for a sufficient criticism of essentialism. For Butler "woman" is a debatable category,
complicated by class, ethnicity, sexuality, and other facets of identity. She states that gender is
performative. This argument leads to the conclusion that there is no single cause for women's
subordination and no single approach towards dealing with the issue.

In A Cyborg Manifesto Donna Haraway criticizes traditional notions of feminism, particularly its
emphasis on identity, rather than affinity. She uses the metaphor of a cyborg in order to construct
a postmodern feminism that moves beyond dualisms and the limitations of traditional gender,
feminism, and politics. Haraway's cyborg is an attempt to break away from Oedipal narratives
and Christian origin-myths like Genesis. She writes: "The cyborg does not dream of community
on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not
recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust."

A major branch in postmodern feminist thought has emerged from the contemporary
psychoanalytic French feminism. Other postmodern feminist works highlight stereotypical
gender roles, only to portray them as parodies of the original beliefs. The history of feminism is
not important in these writings - only what is going to be done about it. The history is dismissed
and used to depict how ridiculous past beliefs were. Modern feminist theory has been extensively
criticized as being predominantly, though not exclusively, associated with Western middle class
academia. Mary Joe Frug, a postmodernist feminist, criticized mainstream feminism as being too
narrowly focused and inattentive to related issues of race and class.

Environmental

Ecofeminism links ecology with feminism. Ecofeminists see the domination of women as
stemming from the same ideologies that bring about the domination of the environment.
Patriarchal systems, where men own and control the land, are seen as responsible for the
oppression of women and destruction of the natural environment. Ecofeminists argue that the
men in power control the land, and therefore they are able to exploit it for their own profit and
success. Ecofeminists argue that in this situation, women are exploited by men in power for their
own profit, success, and pleasure. Ecofeminists argue that women and the environment are both
exploited as passive pawns in the race to domination. Ecofeminists argue that those people in
power are able to take advantage of them distinctly because they are seen as passive and rather
helpless. Ecofeminism connects the exploitation and domination of women with that of the
environment. As a way of repairing social and ecological injustices, ecofeminists feel that
women must work towards creating a healthy environment and ending the destruction of the
lands that most women rely on to provide for their families.

Ecofeminism argues that there is a connection between women and nature that comes from their
shared history of oppression by a patriarchal Western society. Vandana Shiva claims that women
have a special connection to the environment through their daily interactions with it that has been
ignored. She says that "women in subsistence economies, producing and reproducing wealth in
partnership with nature, have been experts in their own right of holistic and ecological
knowledge of nature’s processes. But these alternative modes of knowing, which are oriented to
the social benefits and sustenance needs are not recognized by the capitalist reductionist
paradigm, because it fails to perceive the interconnectedness of nature, or the connection of
women’s lives, work and knowledge with the creation of wealth.”

However, feminist and social ecologist Janet Biehl has criticized ecofeminism for focusing too
much on a mystical connection between women and nature and not enough on the actual
conditions of women.
Society

The feminist movement has effected change in Western society, including women's suffrage;
greater access to education; more nearly equitable pay with men; the right to initiate divorce
proceedings and "no fault" divorce; and the right of women to make individual decisions
regarding pregnancy (including access to contraceptives and abortion); as well as the right to
own property.

Civil rights

From the 1960s on the women's liberation movement campaigned for women's rights, including
the same pay as men, equal rights in law, and the freedom to plan their families. Their efforts
were met with mixed results. Issues commonly associated with notions of women's rights
include, though are not limited to: the right to bodily integrity and autonomy; to vote (universal
suffrage); to hold public office; to work; to fair wages or equal pay; to own property; to
education; to serve in the military; to enter into legal contracts; and to have marital, parental and
religious rights.

In the UK a public groundswell of opinion in favour of legal equality gained pace, partly through
the extensive employment of women in men's traditional roles during both world wars. By the
1960s the legislative process was being readied, tracing through MP Willie Hamilton's select
committee report, his Equal Pay for Equal Work Bill, the creation of a Sex Discrimination
Board, Lady Sear's draft sex anti-discrimination bill, a government Green Paper of 1973, until
1975 when the first British Sex Discrimination Act, an Equal Pay Act, and an Equal
Opportunities Commission came into force. With encouragement from the UK government, the
other countries of the EEC soon followed suit with an agreement to ensure that discrimination
laws would be phased out across the European Community.

In the USA, the US National Organization for Women (NOW) was created in 1966 with the
purpose of bringing about equality for all women. NOW was one important group that fought for
the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). This amendment stated that “equality of rights under the
law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.” But
there was disagreement on how the proposed amendment would be understood. Supporters
believed it would guarantee women equal treatment. But critics feared it might deny women the
right be financially supported by their husbands. The amendment died in 1982 because not
enough states had ratified it. ERAs have been included in subsequent Congresses, but have still
failed to be ratified.

In the final three decades of the 20th century, Western women knew a new freedom through
birth control, which enabled women to plan their adult lives, often making way for both career
and family. The movement had been started in the 1910s by US pioneering social reformer
Margaret Sanger and in the UK and internationally by Marie Stopes.

The United Nations Human Development Report 2004 estimated that when both paid
employment and unpaid household tasks are accounted for, on average women work more than
men. In rural areas of selected developing countries women performed an average of 20% more
work than men, or an additional 102 minutes per day. In the OECD countries surveyed, on
average women performed 5% more work than men, or 20 minutes per day. At the UN's Pan
Pacific Southeast Asia Women's Association 21st International Conference in 2001 it was stated
that "in the world as a whole, women comprise 51% of the population, do 66% of the work,
receive 10% of the income and own less than one percent of the property".

CEDAW

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)
is an international convention adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Described as an
international bill of rights for women, it came into force on 3 September 1981. Several countries
have ratified the Convention subject to certain declarations, reservations and objections. Iran,
Sudan, Somalia, Qatar, Nauru, Palau, Tonga and the United States have not ratified CEDAW.
Expecting a U.S. Senate vote, NOW has encouraged President Obama to remove U.S.
reservations and objections added in 2002 before the vote.

Language

Gender-neutral language is a description of language usages which are aimed at minimizing

assumptions regarding the biological sex of human referents. The advocacy of gender-neutral
language reflects, at least, two different agendas: one aims to clarify the inclusion of both sexes
or genders (gender-inclusive language); the other proposes that gender, as a category, is rarely
worth marking in language (gender-neutral language). Gender-neutral language is sometimes
described as non-sexist language by advocates and politically-correct language by opponents.

Heterosexual relationships

The increased entry of women into the workplace beginning in the twentieth century has affected
gender roles and the division of labor within households. Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in
The Second Shift and The Time Bind presents evidence that in two-career couples, men and
women, on average, spend about equal amounts of time working, but women still spend more
time on housework. Feminist writer Cathy Young responds to Hochschild's assertions by arguing
that in some cases, women may prevent the equal participation of men in housework and
parenting.

Feminist criticisms of men's contributions to child care and domestic labor in the Western middle
class are typically centered around the idea that it is unfair for women to be expected to perform
more than half of a household's domestic work and child care when both members of the
relationship also work outside the home. Several studies provide statistical evidence that the
financial income of married men does not affect their rate of attending to household duties.

In Dubious Conceptions, Kristin Luker discusses the effect of feminism on teenage women's
choices to bear children, both in and out of wedlock. She says that as childbearing out of
wedlock has become more socially acceptable, young women, especially poor young women,
while not bearing children at a higher rate than in the 1950s, now see less of a reason to get
married before having a child. Her explanation for this is that the economic prospects for poor
men are slim, hence poor women have a low chance of finding a husband who will be able to
provide reliable financial support.

Although research suggests that to an extent, both women and men perceive feminism to be in
conflict with romance, studies of undergraduates and older adults have shown that feminism has
positive impacts on relationship health for women and sexual satisfaction for men, and found no
support for negative stereotypes of feminists.

Religion

Feminist theology is a movement that reconsiders the traditions, practices, scriptures, and
theologies of religions from a feminist perspective. Some of the goals of feminist theology
include increasing the role of women among the clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting
male-dominated imagery and language about God, determining women's place in relation to
career and motherhood, and studying images of women in the religion's sacred texts.

Christian feminism is a branch of feminist theology which seeks to interpret and understand
Christianity in light of the equality of women and men. Because this equality has been
historically ignored, Christian feminists believe their contributions are necessary for a complete
understanding of Christianity. While there is no standard set of beliefs among Christian
feminists, most agree that God does not discriminate on the basis of biologically-determined
characteristics such as sex. Their major issues are the ordination of women, male dominance in
Christian marriage, and claims of moral deficiency and inferiority of abilities of women
compared to men. They also are concerned with the balance of parenting between mothers and
fathers and the overall treatment of women in the church.

Islamic feminism is concerned with the role of women in Islam and aims for the full equality of
all Muslims, regardless of gender, in public and private life. Islamic feminists advocate women's
rights, gender equality, and social justice grounded in an Islamic framework. Although rooted in
Islam, the movement's pioneers have also utilized secular and Western feminist discourses and
recognize the role of Islamic feminism as part of an integrated global feminist movement.
Advocates of the movement seek to highlight the deeply rooted teachings of equality in the
Quran and encourage a questioning of the patriarchal interpretation of Islamic teaching through
the Quran, hadith (sayings of Muhammad), and sharia (law) towards the creation of a more equal
and just society.

Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to improve the religious, legal, and social status of
women within Judaism and to open up new opportunities for religious experience and leadership
for Jewish women. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened
up within all major branches of Judaism. In its modern form, the movement can be traced to the
early 1970s in the United States. According to Judith Plaskow, who has focused on feminism in
Reform Judaism, the main issues for early Jewish feminists in these movements were the
exclusion from the all-male prayer group or minyan, the exemption from positive time-bound
mitzvot, and women's inability to function as witnesses and to initiate divorce.
The Dianic Wicca or Wiccan feminism is a female focused, Goddess-centered Wiccan sect; also
known as a feminist religion that teaches witchcraft as every woman’s right. It is also one sect of
the many practiced in Wicca.

Theology

Feminist theology is a movement found in several religions to reconsider the traditions,

practices, scriptures, and theologies of those religions from a feminist perspective. Some of the
goals of feminist theology include increasing the role of women among the clergy and religious
authorities, reinterpreting male-dominated imagery and language about God, determining
women's place in relation to career and motherhood, and studying images of women in the
religion's sacred texts. In Wicca "the Goddess" is a deity of prime importance, along with her
consort the Horned God. In the earliest Wiccan publications she is described as a tribal goddess
of the witch community, neither omnipotent nor universal, and it was recognised that there was a
greater "Prime Mover", although the witches did not concern themselves much with this being.

Architecture

Gender-based inquiries into and conceptualization of architecture have also come about in the
past fifteen years or so. Piyush Mathur coined the term "archigenderic" in his 1998 article in the
British journal Women's Writing. Claiming that "architectural planning has an inextricable link
with the defining and regulation of gender roles, responsibilities, rights, and limitations," Mathur
came up with that term "to explore...the meaning of 'architecture" in terms of gender" and "to
explore the meaning of "gender" in terms of architecture"

Culture

Women's writing

Women's writing came to exist as a separate category of scholarly interest relatively recently. In
the West, second-wave feminism prompted a general reevaluation of women's historical
contributions, and various academic sub-disciplines, such as Women's history (or herstory) and
women's writing, developed in response to the belief that women's lives and contributions have
been underrepresented as areas of scholarly interest. Virginia Balisn et al. characterize the
growth in interest since 1970 in women's writing as "powerful". Much of this early period of
feminist literary scholarship was given over to the rediscovery and reclamation of texts written
by women. Studies such as Dale Spender's Mothers of the Novel (1986) and Jane Spencer's The
Rise of the Woman Novelist (1986) were ground-breaking in their insistence that women have
always been writing. Commensurate with this growth in scholarly interest, various presses began
the task of reissuing long-out-of-print texts. Virago Press began to publish its large list of
nineteenth and early-twentieth-century novels in 1975 and became one of the first commercial
presses to join in the project of reclamation. In the 1980s Pandora Press, responsible for
publishing Spender's study, issued a companion line of eighteenth-century novels written by
women. More recently, Broadview Press has begun to issue eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
works, many hitherto out of print and the University of Kentucky has a series of republications
of early women's novels. There has been commensurate growth in the area of biographical
dictionaries of women writers due to a perception, according to one editor, that "most of our
women are not represented in the 'standard' reference books in the field".

Another early pioneer of Feminist writing is Charlotte Perkins Gilman, whose most notable work
was The Yellow Wallpaper.

Science fiction

In the 1960s the genre of science fiction combined its sensationalism with political and
technological critiques of society. With the advent of feminism, questioning women’s roles
became fair game to this "subversive, mind expanding genre". Two early texts are Ursula K. Le
Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and Joanna Russ' The Female Man (1970). They serve
to highlight the socially constructed nature of gender roles by creating utopias that do away with
gender. Both authors were also pioneers in feminist criticism of science fiction in the 1960s and
70s, in essays collected in The Language of the Night (Le Guin, 1979) and How To Suppress
Women's Writing (Russ, 1983). Another major work of feminist science fiction has been
Kindred by Octavia Butler.

Riot grrrl movement

Riot grrrl (or riot grrl) is an underground feminist punk movement that started in the 1990s and is
often associated with third-wave feminism (it is sometimes seen as its starting point). It was
Grounded in the DIY philosophy of punk values. Riot grrls took an anti-corporate stance of self-
sufficiency and self-reliance. Riot grrrl's emphasis on universal female identity and separatism
often appears more closely allied with second-wave feminism than with the third wave. Riot grrrl
bands often address issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, and female empowerment.
Some bands associated with the movement are: Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Excuse 17, Free Kitten,
Heavens To Betsy, Huggy Bear, L7, and Team Dresch. In addition to a music scene, riot grrrl is
also a subculture; zines, the DIY ethic, art, political action, and activism are part of the
movement. Riot grrrls hold meetings, start chapters, and support and organize women in music.

The riot grrrl movement sprang out of Olympia, Washington and Washington, D.C. in the early
1990s. It sought to give women the power to control their voices and artistic expressions. Riot
grrrls took a growling double or triple r, placing it in the word girl as a way to take back the
derogatory use of the term.

The Riot Grrrl’s links to social and political issues are where the beginnings of third-wave
feminism can be seen. The music and zine writings are strong examples of "cultural politics in
action, with strong women giving voice to important social issues though an empowered, a
female oriented community, many people link the emergence of the third-wave feminism to this
time". The movement encouraged and made "adolescent girls’ standpoints central," allowing
them to express themselves fully.
Pornography

The "Feminist Sex Wars" is a term for the acrimonious debates within the feminist movement in
the late 1970s through the 1980s around the issues of feminism, sexuality, sexual representation,
pornography, sadomasochism, the role of transwomen in the lesbian community, and other
sexual issues. The debate pitted anti-pornography feminism against sex-positive feminism, and
parts of the feminist movement were deeply divided by these debates.

Anti-pornography movement

Anti-pornography feminists, such as Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Robin Morgan

and Dorchen Leidholdt, put pornography at the center of a feminist explanation of women's
oppression.

Some feminists, such as Diana Russell, Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Susan
Brownmiller, Dorchen Leidholdt, Ariel Levy, and Robin Morgan, argue that pornography is
degrading to women, and complicit in violence against women both in its production (where,
they charge, abuse and exploitation of women performing in pornography is rampant) and in its
consumption (where, they charge, pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation, and
coercion of women, and reinforces sexual and cultural attitudes that are complicit in rape and
sexual harassment).

Beginning in the late 1970s, anti-pornography radical feminists formed organizations such as
Women Against Pornography that provided educational events, including slide-shows, speeches,
and guided tours of the sex industry in Times Square, in order to raise awareness of the content
of pornography and the sexual subculture in pornography shops and live sex shows. Andrea
Dworkin and Robin Morgan began articulating a vehemently anti-porn stance based in radical
feminism beginning in 1974, and anti-porn feminist groups, such as Women Against
Pornography and similar organizations, became highly active in various US cities during the late
1970s.

Sex-positive movement

Sex-positive feminism is a movement that was formed in order to address issues of women's
sexual pleasure, freedom of expression, sex work, and inclusive gender identities. Ellen Willis'
1981 essay, "Lust Horizons: Is the Women's Movement Pro-Sex?" is the origin of the term, "pro-
sex feminism"; the more commonly-used variant, "sex positive feminism" arose soon after.

Although some sex-positive feminists, such as Betty Dodson, were active in the early 1970s,
much of sex-positive feminism largely began in the late 1970s and 1980s as a response to the
increasing emphasis in radical feminism on anti-pornography activism.

Sex-positive feminists are also strongly opposed to radical feminist calls for legislation against
pornography, a strategy they decried as censorship, and something that could, they argued, be
used by social conservatives to censor the sexual expression of women, gay people, and other
sexual minorities. The initial period of intense debate and acrimony between sex-positive and
anti-pornography feminists during the early 1980s is often referred to as the Feminist Sex Wars.
Other sex-positive feminists became involved not in opposition to other feminists, but in direct
response to what they saw as patriarchal control of sexuality.

Relationship to political movements

Socialism

Since the early twentieth century some feminists have allied with socialism. In 1907 there was an
International Conference of Socialist Women in Stuttgart where suffrage was described as a tool
of class struggle. Clara Zetkin of the Social Democratic Party of Germany called for women's
suffrage to build a "socialist order, the only one that allows for a radical solution to the women's
question".

In Britain, the women's movement was allied with the Labour party. In America, Betty Friedan
emerged from a radical background to take command of the organized movement. Radical
Women, founded in 1967 in Seattle is the oldest (and still active) socialist feminist organization
in the U.S. During the Spanish Civil War, Dolores Ibarruri (La Pasionaria) led the Communist
Party of Spain. Although she supported equal rights for women, she opposed women fighting on
the front and clashed with the anarcho-feminist Mujeres Libres.

Revolutions in Latin America brought changes in women's status in countries such as Nicaragua
where Feminist ideology during the Sandinista Revolution was largely responsible for
improvements in the quality of life for women but fell short of achieving a social and ideological
change.

Fascism

Scholars have argued that Nazi Germany and the other fascist states of the 1930s and 1940s
illustrates the disastrous consequences for society of a state ideology that, in glorifying
traditional images of women, becomes anti-feminist. In Germany after the rise of Nazism in
1933, there was a rapid dissolution of the political rights and economic opportunities that
feminists had fought for during the prewar period and to some extent during the 1920s. In
Franco's Spain, the right wing Catholic conservatives undid the work of feminists during the
Republic. Fascist society was hierarchical with an emphasis and idealization of virility, with
women maintaining a largely subordinate position to men.

Scientific discourse

Some feminists are critical of traditional scientific discourse, arguing that the field has
historically been biased towards a masculine perspective. Evelyn Fox Keller argues that the
rhetoric of science reflects a masculine perspective, and she questions the idea of scientific
objectivity.

Many feminist scholars rely on qualitative research methods that emphasize women’s subjective,
individual experiences. According to communication scholars Thomas R. Lindlof and Bryan C.
Taylor, incorporating a feminist approach to qualitative research involves treating research
participants as equals who are just as much an authority as the researcher. Objectivity is
eschewed in favor of open self-reflexivity and the agenda of helping women. Also part of the
feminist research agenda is uncovering ways that power inequities are created and/or reinforced
in society and/or in scientific and academic institutions. Lindlof and Taylor also explain that a
feminist approach to research often involves nontraditional forms of presentation.

Primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy notes the prevalence of masculine-coined stereotypes and
theories, such as the non-sexual female, despite "the accumulation of abundant openly available
evidence contradicting it". Some natural and social scientists have examined feminist ideas using
scientific methods.

Biology of gender

Modern feminist science challenges the biological essentialist view of gender, however it is
increasingly interested in the study of biological sex differences and their effect on human
behavior. For example, Anne Fausto-Sterling's book Myths of Gender explores the assumptions
embodied in scientific research that purports to support a biologically essentialist view of gender.
Her second book, Sexing the Body discussed the alleged possibility of more than two true
biological sexes. This possibility only exists in yet-unknown extraterrestrial biospheres, as no
ratios of true gametes to polar cells other than 4:0 and 1:3 (male and female, respectively) are
produced on Earth. However, in The Female Brain, Louann Brizendine argues that brain
differences between the sexes are a biological reality with significant implications for sex-
specific functional differences. Steven Rhoads' book Taking Sex Differences Seriously illustrates
sex-dependent differences across a wide scope.

Carol Tavris, in The Mismeasure of Woman, uses psychology and sociology to critique theories
that use biological reductionism to explain differences between men and women. She argues
rather than using evidence of innate gender difference there is an over-changing hypothesis to
justify inequality and perpetuate stereotypes.

Evolutionary biology

Sarah Kember - drawing from numerous areas such as evolutionary biology, sociobiology,
artificial intelligence, and cybernetics in development with a new evolutionism - discusses the
biologization of technology. She notes how feminists and sociologists have become suspect of
evolutionary psychology, particularly inasmuch as sociobiology is subjected to complexity in
order to strengthen sexual difference as immutable through pre-existing cultural value judgments
about human nature and natural selection. Where feminist theory is criticized for its "false beliefs
about human nature," Kember then argues in conclusion that "feminism is in the interesting
position of needing to do more biology and evolutionary theory in order not to simply oppose
their renewed hegemony, but in order to understand the conditions that make this possible, and to
have a say in the construction of new ideas and artefacts."
Male reaction

The relationship between men and feminism has been complex. Men have taken part in
significant responses to feminism in each 'wave' of the movement. There have been positive and
negative reactions and responses, depending on the individual man and the social context of the
time. These responses have varied from pro-feminism to masculism to anti-feminism. In the
twenty-first century new reactions to feminist ideologies have emerged including a generation of
male scholars involved in gender studies, and also men's rights activists who promote male
equality (including equal treatment in family, divorce and anti-discrimination law). Historically a
number of men have engaged with feminism. Philosopher Jeremy Bentham demanded equal
rights for women in the eighteenth century. In 1866, philosopher John Stuart Mill (author of
"The Subjection of Women") presented a women’s petition to the British parliament; and
supported an amendment to the 1867 Reform Bill. Others have lobbied and campaigned against
feminism. Today, academics like Michael Flood, Michael Messner and Michael Kimmel are
involved with men's studies and pro-feminism.

A number of feminist writers maintain that identifying as a feminist is the strongest stand men
can take in the struggle against sexism. They have argued that men should be allowed, or even be
encouraged, to participate in the feminist movement. Other female feminists argue that men
cannot be feminists simply because they are not women. They maintain that men are granted
inherent privileges that prevent them from identifying with feminist struggles, thus making it
impossible for them to identify with feminists. Fidelma Ashe has approached the issue of male
feminism by arguing that traditional feminist views of male experience and of "men doing
feminism" have been monolithic. She explores the multiple political discourses and practices of
pro-feminist politics, and evaluates each strand through an interrogation based upon its effect on
feminist politics.

A more recent examination of the subject is presented by author and academic Shira Tarrant. In
Men and Feminism (Seal Press, May 2009), the California State University, Long Beach
professor highlights critical debates about masculinity and gender, the history of men in
feminism, and men’s roles in preventing violence and sexual assault. Through critical analysis
and first-person stories by feminist men, Tarrant addresses the question of why men should care
about feminism in the first place and lays the foundation for a larger discussion about feminism
as an all-encompassing, human issue.

Tarrant touches on similar topics in Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power
(Routledge, 2007).

Pro-feminism

Pro-feminism is the support of feminism without implying that the supporter is a member of the
feminist movement. The term is most often used in reference to men who are actively supportive
of feminism and of efforts to bring about gender equality. The activities of pro-feminist men's
groups include anti-violence work with boys and young men in schools, offering sexual
harassment workshops in workplaces, running community education campaigns, and counseling
male perpetrators of violence. Pro-feminist men also are involved in men's health, activism
against pornography including anti-pornography legislation, men's studies, and the development
of gender equity curricula in schools. This work is sometimes in collaboration with feminists and
women's services, such as domestic violence and rape crisis centers. Some activists of both
genders will not refer to men as "feminists" at all, and will refer to all pro-feminist men as "pro-
feminists".

Anti-feminism

Anti-feminism is opposition to feminism in some or all of its forms. Writers such as Camille
Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, Jean Bethke Elshtain and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese have been
labeled "anti-feminists" by feminists. Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge argue that in this way
the term "anti-feminist" is used to silence academic debate about feminism. Paul Nathanson and
Katherine K. Young's books Spreading Misandry and Legalizing Misandry explore what they
argue is feminist-inspired misandry. Christina Hoff-Sommers argues feminist misandry leads
directly to misogyny by what she calls "establishment feminists" against (the majority of)
women who love men in Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women. Marriage
rights advocates criticize feminists like Sheila Cronan who take the view that marriage
constitutes slavery for women, and that freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition
of marriage.

Readings on Semiology/Semiotics

Iconography

Iconography was developed by art historian Erwin Panofsky, as a means of expanding beyond
formal analysis, and focusing on analyzing subject matter in artwork, specifically symbols whose
meaning is understood by a people or culture in that specific time (Rose 202, Sayre 32). For
example, in the Western world we are familiar with what a Buddha statue looks like, but most
Western people likely have no idea that the position of the hands in the statue carries symbolic
meaning (Sayre 33). If you are a Buddhist however, you would read a specific meaning into the
hand gesture and position. Symbolic meanings in artwork may also be lost over time even within
the culture that created them (Sayre 35).
 Jan van Eyck, Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, oil on canvas. Work is in the public domain.

Jan van Eyck’s painting, Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife Giovanna Cenami, from 1434, is often
used as a prototype example for iconographic analysis, and the conflicts that arise within it. As a
painter, Van Eyck was revered for his incredible ability to mimic realism and the effects of light.
The painting’s many symbols, some of Christian origin, have been a source of some debate. It
was widely accepted as a painting representing a marriage, but recent controversy suggests it is
more a record of engagement than a wedding portrait. In van Eyck’s time, a woman laying her
hands in the palm of a male, as she so conspicuously does in the painting, was understood to be
an agreement to wed (Sayre 35). Above the mirror in the center of the background are the words
“Jan van Eyck has been here, 1434.” To contemporary ears this almost sounds like a bit of
playful graffiti, but it also clearly establishes the painter as a witness to the event being painted
(Sayre 35).

Iconography shares similarities to semiotics in interpreting signs (in semiotics signs can be
symbols) on both a denotive and connotative level. Iconography is typically used in analyzing
works from the past, as Gillian Rose notes, typically Western figurative images from the 16th
through 18th centuries (202). While semiotics is more often used to analyze more contemporary
visual culture, like advertising.

Artists continue to use symbolic visual language. Though artist Jean-Michele Basquiat’s life and
career were tragically cut short by a drug overdose, he developed a rich vocabulary of symbolism
that mixed private and public meanings. Using his neo-expressionist style he drew inspiration
from prominent African Americans, such as Dizzy Gillespie, Muhammad Ali, and Sugar Ray
Robinson (Rosenberg). As Sayre points out, central to his personal iconography was a three
pointed crown, a symbol he related to himself, but also his African American heroes (37). He
was familiar with the Symbol Sourcebook: An Authoritative Guide to International Graphic
Symbols, by Henry Dreyfuss, and was drawn to the section on “hobo signs,” in particular the “X”
which within the hobo culture was a signal that a place was okay (Sayre 37). Of course, the ‘X’
is a common symbol with multiple meanings. An “X” could be used to mark a spot and
constitute its importance, or in essence, to eliminate something by crossing it out. And, according
to Sayre, this is often the difficult and ambiguous position Basquiat’s African American heroes
found themselves in, in 20th century America (37). In his 1982 painting Charles the First,
Charles is a reference to both Charlie Parker and Charles I of England, who was beheaded by
Protestants (Sayre 37). Included in the painting is the text, “Most kings get their head cut off.”

Semiotics

The formalism you practiced in module two is focused on compositional analysis by being
descriptive. Semiotics offers another way of analyzing images, be they found in artwork or
another type of visual culture, like advertising. Semiotics is the study of signs. In semiotics the
basic unit is the sign. Signs are representations that have meanings beyond what they literally
represent. Signs can come in visual or auditory form- as in language or sounds. Signs are
everywhere, not just in art. Semiotics offers a way to break an image into its constituent parts- its
signs, and trace how they relate to each other, and other systems of meaning (Rose 105).

Signified and Signifier

In semiotics the image itself is the focus and the most important site of meaning (Rose 108). The
signs in an image are analyzed into two parts, the signified and signifier. The signified is the
concept or thing the representation stands in for. The signifier is the representation. For example,
in a photograph with a baby in it— the baby is the signifier, and the signified could be youth, or
the future, or some other association that we make with the representation of a baby.

Icon, index, symbol

There are three basic types of signs: icon, index, and symbol. Icons bear a very close visual
relationship to the thing they represent. An icon of a woman might be a photograph of an actual
woman. An indexical sign points to the thing it represents or bears some relationship to the thing
it represents, but is one step removed. An example of an indexical sign of a woman is the simple
illustration of a woman that you find on restrooms designated for women. A symbol is arbitrary,
and bears no relation to the thing it represents. An example of a symbol for women is the
circle/cross shape that signifies the female gender.

Female gender symbol

Another example of a symbol is the American flag. If you were raised in America, you are taught
that it stands for the country America and national pride, and possibly other meanings like
freedom, but how the flag looks is arbitrary. It could just as easily have taken on some other
graphic representation, and still have been coded with those meanings, just like the flags of other
countries share a similar national significance in those other cultures.

Denotative and Connotative meanings

Signs can have denotative, or literal meaning, and connotative meanings that are in addition to
their literal meaning. Signs exist in relationship to other signs. Signs also connect to wider
systems of meaning that are conventionalized meanings shared by particular groups of people or
cultures (Rose 128). This is referred to as codes. Because signs can often be polysemic, or have
multiples meanings, unpacking their meanings fully can be very complex. It is accepted,
however, that within specific groups/cultures, and particular times, there are often preferred or
dominant readings of signs that are interpreted in ways intended to retain the
institutional/political/idealogical order imprinted on them for that time (Rose 133).

Advertisers make design choices with transference in mind. They intend for specific meanings to
be transferred from one sign to another. Think of how often you have seen a new car ad where
the car and some kind sexualized representation of a woman are paired together. What is the
intended transference of meaning between these two signs, the car and the woman? Consider
how focus groups are used to figure out what will be the most effective tactic to use in selling a
product to the target consumer. Focus groups are a way of researching the target consumer’s
codes. What signs will they pay attention to and interpret in such a way that will ultimately
manufacture desire for that product?

Steps in Conducting a Basic Semiotic Analysis:

• Decide what the signs are.

• Decide what they signify ‘in themselves’.
• Consider how they relate to other signs.
• Explore their connections to wider systems of meaning, from codes to ideologies.
Styles of dress are kinds of signs. In Western culture we consider the suit to be a visual signal for
business. In connection, people who work in white collar jobs are sometimes referred to
informally as “suits.” In the ad there is a man in a suit, presumably a white collar worker. We
might infer by other signs like the limousine that he is wealthy or powerful. How does the
treatment of the man in the suit compare with the other figures who appear in the ad? The neon
sign of the word “America” is partially submerged. What does this signify? Through out the ad
their are loud banging sounds. What do these auditory signs signify? Considering the signs in
this ad, what do you think Levi’s wants you to associate with their brand and products?
 Semiotics of Art Reception:
In Between Semiotic Translation
and Synesthetic Response
kathleen Coessens
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium)

Abstract
Humans — and artists — are capable of complex semiotic and experiential translations: we can
translate
reality, be it nature or culture, into an experience of sound, image, touch, smell, mime, emotion.
We
speak about ‘semiotic’ translation when we translate artistic work into another semiotic medium,
when
we translate the outer conditions of the experience — e.g. translating a novel into a movie, a
painting into
a song, a performance into a narrative. But before experiencing semiotic translation, humans
experience
‘synesthetic’ translation, moving beyond different possibilities of inner responses towards an
artistic setting:
for example by way of feeling, smelling, or hearing what can be seen. One holistic perception of
artistic
expression can be transposed into different modes, each one enriching the other. Both
translations originate
in the human possibilities of multimodal experience (e.g. blending theory of Turner and
Fauconnier),
cognitive fluidity (Mythen 1998) — both theories referring to complex neurological responses.
Since long,
semiotics has analyzed translation on the level of the sign or sign system, neglecting the
(neurological)
origins/counterparts of these processes. This presentation will consider the importance of the
human
synesthetic possibilities and integrate these into a broader account of semiotic theory (Kress
1998, p76).
It will analyse the complex experience of an artistic manifestation realized by way of an ‘outer’
and an
‘inner’ semiotic translation: at one hand an ‘outer’ complex comprehension which encompasses
memory,
cultural and aesthetic conventions, personal narratives, knowledge and expectations (Zeki &
Lamb 1994),
at the other hand the ‘inner’, rich synesthetic and multimodal cognitive and kinesthetic responses
in body
and brain acknowledged by recent neuropsychological and cognitive research (Spence 2001,
Edelman &
Tononi 2000, Thibault 2004).
CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
Provided by Repositorio da Universidade da Coruña
328

1. INTRODUCTION: THE qUEST FOR UNIVERSAL TRANSLATION IN THE OUTER

WORLD
Humans — and artists — are capable of complex semiotic and experiential translations. Every
encounter with reality, every experience of sound, image, touch, smell, movement, be it from
nature or culture, can and most of the time will be translated into a meaning, an understanding,
an emotion. But every experience as such already implies some human transformation or
creation, bound to our biological constitution and cultural context: an inner semiotic translation
which backs up the outer semiotic translation. It is this last kind of translation or integration this
article will consider: the inner cognitive and perceptual human means of meaning-making.
Since long, even before the advent of the discipline of semiotics, humans dreamed of a
universal and complete translatability of different perceptions, intuitions, experiences, of
‘perfect’ translation between semiotic systems. In the 18th century, French intellectuals like
Court
de Gébelin, trying to complete an encyclopedia on world languages, claimed that all the senses
can be expressed in language. A painter only reproduces visual perception, a musician is
limited to the auditory, but language, even if it does not represent vision, touch or audition
directly, can reflect these by offering different descriptions referring to a multiplicity of sensory
feelings. Gébelin wanted to go even further, to fnd in the language itself the reason of its
multiple sensory representations. This was his point of departure for writing a discourse on the
origins of language. He broadened the limited phenomenon of onomatopeia (sound-imitation
of form or audition), to analyses of phonomimetism, thus allowing language to go beyond the
limitations of other semiotic systems, to fnd synesthetic correlations, to reproduce our experience
of nature in all its sensory dimensions (Nye 2000: 142). The underlying supposed principle was
that our senses can be readily ‘translated’ from one sense to another. As we will see
not a bad idea, and a current idea in 1th century thoughts: the idea that art and nature were
very near, were linked in some sense. But it was liable to their search for all art as a faithful
‘imitation’ of nature and less to an analysis of the biological, physiological or cognitive
structures of the human being.
Today, language still is regarded by many as an ‘interlingua’, a ‘higher-order’ strand of
semiotic systems, a resource for fusing information from different semiotic systems (Matthiesen
2001: 66). This means that language is considered as an overarching system or medium in which
different semiotic systems can be expressed as well as an open feld which can give birth to
different perceptual sensations and semiotic representations. I indeed can describe a painting
in language as well as I can have a visual impression of something I read.
Even if de Gébelin’s tentative failed, ending in quite esoteric thoughts about tarot and
long dictionary lists of languages of the world, his presupposition remains interesting. The
problems of outer translation are indeed still present. All artists, all translators, and even, on a
daily
basis and in different communication situations, all of us, are confronted with these problems
when going from one semiotic system to another, when translating the outer conditions of an
experience — e.g. translating a novel into a movie, a painting into a song, a performance into
a narrative, a dialogue into gestures.
In a previous article, I remarked that, since long, semiotics has analyzed translation on
the level of the sign or sign system, neglecting the origin of these processes (Coessens 2009).
kathleen Coessens
329
There is an urgent need to consider the importance of the human synesthetic possibilities and
integrate these into a broader account of semiotic theory: «A new theory of semiotics will have to
acknowledge and to account for the process of synaesthesia, the transduction of meaning from
one semiotic mode in meaning into another semiotic mode, an activity constantly performed by
the brain.» (Kress 1998: 76). This article wants to make one step into that direction.
Indeed, many theories have analysed the problem of outer intersemiotic translation
— between different sign systems. But what happens behind the apparent semiotic separation
present in our cultural world, in our ways of conveying messages, in expressing ourselves by
different ways or channels of communication, separating our senses, feelings, acts and thoughts
following the availing semiotic categories? Can we fnd some underlying conditions? The inner
semiotic processes in the brain are the subject of only quite recent research in cognitive and
brain sciences but can offer interesting background to semioticians struggling with the problem
of translation. My hypothesis offers a revision of de Gébelin’s hypothesis, reconsidering the
meaningful integration of different sensory spaces from a different angle, relying on recent
cognitive, evolutionary, psychological and archeological research. But I will have to rely on
the semiotic system of language to convey these thoughts.

2. EXPLANATIONS OF INNER SEMIOTIC TRANSLATION

Artefacts and symbols, meaning, translation and understanding in the world are but the external
realisations of a complex inner semiotic translation that continuously takes place by way of
the integration and interpretation of different sensory input in our brain and its collaboration
through/with our body. Two lines of discourse starting in different domains — anthropologists,
evolutionary theorists, cognitive scientists, psychologists — have offered interesting accounts of
how humans developed this flexible ability of inner translation and external creation of material
culture. The frst line is rather cognitively directed and aims at an explanation of the creation
of material culture, the second line is concerned with perceptual information and integration.
Both insights offer a basis towards a tentative approach of inner semiotic translation, which
then can explain the further interactions between outer material and symbolic tools and inner
meaning-making processes.

2.1. Cognitive fluidity

On the level of ontogenetic development, the group-selection theory of Edelman points to the
inherent flexibility of the human brain and its possibilities for adapting to outer conditions after
birth: «higher brain functions are mediated by developmental and somatic selection upon
anatomical and functional variance occurring in each individual animal» (Edelman 1989: xvii).
For Edelman, the phylogenetically developed possibilities ft into the ontogenetic development
and maturation of the human brain and nervous system. Otherwise said: culture flls in
some of the possibilities of nature. The potential basis for organisation of and adaptation to
the environment is the presence of numerous groups of cells in different parts of the brain that
are variants of each other. As in many other mammals, a frst selection of groups of neurons
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takes place before birth. But in humans, a second, very important and intervening organisation
and reorganisation of other groups of neurons, happens after the human being is in contact with
the world. A frst prenatal arrangement indeed is followed by a second or postnatal
arrangement when the individual shows attitudes of observation and interaction. Further
selection continues by the influence of the experiences, the contingencies of and exchanges with
the environment This clearly happens at a higher level than in other species and has a deep
impact. This second neuronal selection guarantees potential organisation to the environment
(Reeke & Edelman 1988). Thus a fundamental adaptation of the human body and brain to a
relatively changing and polymorphic world can take place. This human ontogenetic development
excludes models and structures that are strongly predetermined and ensures that every
top-down pre-disposition, be it genetic, modular or other, is always tributary to bottom-up
impact — cultural and human environment. Biological evolutionary flexibility makes cultural
creativity possible (Coessens 2006).
Thus, even if the brain has some modular or very structured predispositions, there remains
a lot of flexibility to adapt to different environments. But there is more.
Steve Mithen beliefs that modular parts of the brain became intertwined at a certain point
of evolution. Searching for an explanation for the explosion of human culture between 60 000
and 30 000 years ago, he coined the notion of ‘cognitive fluidity’ as an important development
for the human species (Mithen 1998). It meant the human possibility of escaping a purely
biological, instinctive way of life. Cognitive fluidity is the capacity to integrate ways of thought
and items of knowledge perviously restricted to isolated cognitive domains: «modern human
(…) minds will have a natural propensity to view materials from different perspectives.» (Mithen
2005: 190). They made «the transition from a domain-specifc to a cognitively fluid mentality»
(Mithen 2006: 56). Mithen points to the fact that different domains as the social, the natural
and the technical became intertwined as intercommunication between different autonomous
mental modules started, fulflling the need to process information about other social beings
and their relationships.
Cognitive fluidity evolved from three acquisitions: a theory of mind, language and
material culture. In the frst place, humans possess a theory of mind. This means they have the
capacity of intentionality: the «ability to attribute a full range of mental states to other
individuals as well as oneself, and then to use such attributions to predict and understand
behavior.»
(Mithen 1998: 170). We will consider this point further when exploring the theory of mirror
neurons. Secondly, by acquiring language and representational faculties, knowledge and
intentionality could be shared, exchanged, tested and augmented and, as such, led to treasures of
cultural knowledge which individual endeavour could never attain (Clark 1996: 206). Thirdly,
material culture, as an extension of both mental and bodily capacities, increased information
storage as well as creative interpretation and practical knowledge that could be used in different
contexts by different individuals (Mithen 1998: 184). Cognitive fluidity, combining different
ways of processing knowledge and using tools, is a domain-crossing capacity in which
the human being can not only explore and transform, but as well cross and link elements and
thoughts concerning social, material and natural worlds. As such, it is a very creative capacity,
which acknowledges for crossroads between the real and the unreal and from which emerge
new, imaginative and/or metaphysical meanings and worlds (Coessens 2009). The possible
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mental translations and inputs from one domain to another, be it the social, the natural or the
technological, enriched ways of being, behaving and meaning-making. This cognitive fluidity
has become part of human ontogenetic and cultural development: from birth, children are
surrounded with material and symbolic artefacts that are the result of as well as lead to cognitive
fluidity — like dolls or bears.
Our world is flled with objects and artefacts full of meaning and creation, realised out
of these human flexible potentialities. Human creation and its cognitive fluidity thus led to
what is called by evolutionary theorists the ratchet effect. But, once launched in the world,
artefacts seem to become independent, loose from their makers and as such leading to outer
problems of translation.
The development of cognitive fluidity is an evolutionary step allowing flexibility of
crossmodularity or multimodal integration. Cognitive fluidity developments as Mithen describes,
are
then realised in two domains of materialisation: in language and in material culture.
In linguistics, different authors point to the blend of different domains and inputs into
creative sentences. Humans can dig out of two or more different source domains or cognitive
spaces new outputs, with new meaning, thus creating a new cognitive space and new types
of conscious thoughts. The cognitive blending theory, developed by Mark Turner and Gilles
Fauconnier, accounts for the complex integration of distinct pre-existing conceptual input
spaces into a single, new rich conceptual space (Turner 2006, Turner & Fauconnier 1995). By
blending the concepts from different domains, more than just (re-)composition of this arises:
new meaning emerges, an addition is made — a cognitive compression takes place and at the
same time, meaning augments. New and dynamic meaning is constructed, relying on existing
mental spaces with their own central and background meaning, but integrating these in a
new way such that the integration gives rise to more than the sum of its parts. This happens
in symbolical and meta-thought as well as in jokes or poetry. Verbal language as such seems
to depend on the interaction between different domains, the flow from one cognitive space to
another, realizing a new blended space.
But cognitive fluidity is also present in material creations. Andy Clark with his concept
of scaffolding, and before him Popper with his exosomatic means, refer to the extra-ordinary
integration of and interaction between human outer creations and inner thoughts and acts.
Material culture, as an extension of both mental and bodily capacities, easily increases
information storage as well as creative interpretation: «the potential for the same item of material
culture to generate multiple cognitive spaces (…) multiple meanings (…) interpreted differently
by different individuals in different contexts.» (Mithen 1998: 184).
These accounts of cognitive fluidity and the cognitive integration of different spaces in
the mind already point to a flexibility in human minds of possible translations which apparently
act more as a blending of different domains or inputs. The boundaries between the material
and the symbolical, between thoughts and acts, between the outer and the inner are blurred,
or at least become vague. Cognitive and embodied connotations easily arise as the result of
new experiences. Metaphors are often understood without explicit explanation — at least in
adults. As such, cultural and other stimuli for human beings not necessary imply unique or
predefned responses, they lead to a horizon of possible interpretations and creations, linking
together different cognitive spaces and material/symbolical domains.
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But there is another part of experience which remains in the margins of these views,
namely the enormous amount of sensory input, of the different perceptual modalities and their
integration in the neuronal circuitry.
2.2 Sensory or synesthetic fluidity
Edelman’s theory of group selection theory is also concerned with the sensory organisation and
integration in the brain, as perceptual input is primordial in experience. Moreover, studies of
impaired persons show that the human nervous system has an enormous plasticity and leaves
open an immense potential of different functions. Nervous channels, suited for eyesight, are
used by blind people for more accurate hearing and fnger-reading. Young children under four
can, after severe injury of parts of the brain, continue their normal development because other
parts of the brain just take over tasks to avoid a loss of function (Gazzaniga et.al. 1998).
But haven’t we all some propensity of sensory integration and translation, of transgressing the
borders of our senses? Remember de Gébelin’s quest of an interrelated sensorial space
which would become clear by analysing language. How is it possible that we have an evocation
of visual imagery when we read a book? How do we internalise the space and time as well as
understand and feel the bodily impressions of the leading character? Why do we feel sad or
emotioned looking at the picture of an unhappy child?
Let us start from Thibault’s observations on what he calls ‘connotative’ non-linguistic
semiotics (Thibault 2006). In his research, Thibault argues for a biologically and ecologically
sustained view on semiotics. Apparently, humans are inherently able to fnd a solution to the
problems of local coherence of a sign system. This solution can be found in the integration
of and exchange between apparently separated perceptual, cognitive and corporeal spaces.
Human meaning-making indeed needs a multimodal and embodied activity in which humans
deploy a cooperative synergy of sensori-motor modalities: «simulated inner movement
crosscouples with other perceptual and semiotic modalities.» (Thibault 2006: 82). Thibault
presumes
an integration of different levels of organization — neural, sensorimotor, biokinematic and
expressive — into larger scale synergies. This integration is the result of the combination of
at one hand perceptual, somatic and cognitive capacities together with the corporeal traces of
previous social interaction — what he names the expression plane — and at the other hand the
syntax and semantics of the socially developed semiotic system — the content plane of semiosis.
Material and semiotic processes are always merged with complex and never wholly predictable
meaning-making activity, be it socially acceptable translation or inner integration.
But let us look at the internal semiotic actions that precede the possible external interpretation of
semiotic objects or events. The brain integrates different channels with their respective
messages into coherent meaning. It partakes in the human effort to create a unifed or stable
experience of meaning in which patterns emerge, as meaning is impossible in a world which
is chaotic and totally unpredictable.
Firstly, in cognitive science, there is growing evidence of multisensory integration in
which «the information processed by each of the sensory modalities — visual, auditory,
somatosensory, vestibular, olfactory and gustatory — is highly susceptible to influences from the
other
senses» (Calvert e.a. 2004, p243). Beneath the primary unique sense-related neuronal pathways,
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there is evidence of multisensory areas containing mixtures of neurons. The best known site
is the superior colliculus, containing convergence patterns in which all possible varieties of
sensory neurons are maplike distributed. Electrophysiological studies show overlap of different
convergence zones in the representations of visual, auditory and somatosensory space (Calvert
e.a. 2004: 247). Multisensory neurons are involved in many different behavioral, perceptual
and emotive processes, leading to a unifed percept or experience of an event or object. These
convergence zones and multisensory areas make it possible also to complete missing senses
or add to senses. Our brain flls in the missing pieces, sometimes adds pieces. Human activity
implies continuously intersensory and multisensory cooperation in the brain: «Although the
information arriving at the various sensory epithelia are initially processed independently,
converging neural pathways rapidly lead to extensive multisensory integration in a variety of
neural structures. (…) Given this extensive multisensory convergence it would make sense for
our attentional mechanisms to be coordinated across the modalities as well.» (Spence 2001:
231). Moreover, humans can transgress not only the borders of their own perceptions, but also,
by doing this, transgress the borders of different worlds, as I mentioned with the capacity of
cognitive fluidity, merging aspects of the social, the natural, the material, the living and the
non-living.
As Merleau-Ponty wrote: «Synaesthetic perception is the rule, and we are unaware of
it only because scientifc knowledge shifts the centre of gravity of experience, so that we have
unlearned how to see, hear, and generally speaking, feel, in order to deduce, from our bodily
organization and the world as the physicist conceives it, what we are to see, hear and feel.»
(Merleau-Ponty 1962: 229). Synesthesia is here considered as the multisensory horizon in which
the different senses trigger each other, integrate on a neuronal level and unite in meaning-making
activity. Adding meaning to the world will again augment the world of meaning. Thus,
looking at a painting, humans can have the experience of walking around in the painting, of
hearing noises coming from the painting, experiencing the feeling of the brushstrokes, and so
on. This synergy which takes place in human experience, in the exchange between the human
being and its environment, as a multi-modal input and arousal, makes movies so ‘moving’ and
poignant, music so emotive, stories so tactile and visual (Coessens 2009).
But the activities of neuronal sensory integration go unnoticed by the perceiver, as long
as there are no discrepancies between the senses. Moreover, by analysing and cognitively
classifying our experiences, we often lose the awareness of a multisensory input and originally
synesthetic experience in which a simultaneous emergence and intercommunication of the
various perceptive and cognitive senses took place. By privileging the verbal in our analyses
and descriptions, important and seemingly obvious embodied, perceptual and kinetic aspects
of human experiences remain hidden for discourse and science.
Secondly, a very related system of integration is the mirror neuronal system. The mirror
neuron system is a multisensory system as it integrates different sensory stimuli and converts
these into sensorimotor representation (Pineda 2008: 46). Mirror neurons have the ability to
remap other’s motor states onto the observer’s motor representations. This means that, being
a pianist myself, seeing a pianist playing, the same neuronal zones will be activated as if I
played myself. Hearing somebody being very sad will activate the same neuronal pathways and
areas as when I am sad. As such, the mirror neuron system shows that multisensory neuronal
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processes integrate also bio-kinematic and sensorimotor processes and realise a synesthetic
link with corporeal traces or embodied memories of previous social and individual actions
and interactions. The mirror neuron system also provides a cue for some basic intentionality,
understanding what the other does, thinks, feels, even if it is as yet not clear how the human
mirror neuron system sustains complex human cultural behavior.

3. COGNITIVE AND SENSORY FLUIDITY IN ART RECEPTION

Before experiencing semiotic translation, humans experience ‘synesthetic’ translation, moving

beyond different possibilities of inner responses towards an artistic setting: for example by way
of feeling, smelling, or hearing what can be seen. One holistic perception of artistic expression
can be transposed into different modes, each one enriching the other. These translations originate
in the human possibilities of multisensory integration and cognitive fluidity.
Artworks are results of cognitive fluidity, cultural artifacts and social triggers for broader
experiences which encompass memory, cultural and aesthetic conventions, personal narratives,
knowledge and expectations (Zeki & Lamb 1994). At the same time, artworks are embedded in
personal, cultural, natural and material worlds. Cultural codes and spaces help us to enter this
liminal space. By way of learned experience, humans have internalised material settings as the
museum, the ritual of a performance, as important meaning-triggering spaces. They are outer
social structures which afford for complex synesthetic inner dimensions of experiencing art in
which the borders of different worlds and domains are continuously transgressed. The objects
or settings of artistic creation contain latent perceptual and aesthetic stimuli and can intensify
phenomenal experience. The receiver ‘flls in’, ‘projects’ an own metaphysical art-world of
experience by a subjective meaningful rearrangement of cultural values and personal memories,
narratives and embodied feeling, fetishism and spirituality. Encounters with art work or art
manifestation thus realize situations of transgression, liminal experiences, sometimes against or
despite the intentions of the artist, sometimes recognizing and absorbing traces of the artist.
My hypothesis then leads to the assumption that cognitive fluidity, and even more human
sensory fluidity with its synesthetic and mirror aspects, play an important role in our
confrontation with art, not only stimulating our habitual perceptions, but surpassing them. When
encountering an artwork, the profane suddenly takes a sacred aspect: it is no more the pure object
or
manifestation we encounter — as it is in and for itself — but our experience of it. Something
matters behind, beyond the matter, an addition or unknown depth to the material world, we,
as human perceptual and meaning-making beings, add. A process of signifcation comes to
the foreground, a process which reaches out across the frame, the form and the content of the
representation, a potential force of opening intense situations. The setting and stimulation,
inherent in the manifestation of the art object or subject, moves the receiver, offering intense
emotional and aesthetic information.
The semiotic categories of the outer world and the inner integration of different sensorial
and cognitive input should be looked at as complementary aspects of human understanding and
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expression. The artwork apparently realizes a ‘resonance’, not experienced by other species.
The dog will jump over the artwork or smell it, while the horse may recoil from it. Humans,
however, by way of their synesthetic and multisensory capacities, are captured, moved by an
artwork, and enter a situation of transgression, on the liminal regions of embodiment and
cognition, of perception and language, reality and imagination, realising complex inner semiotic
translations.

Semiotics for beginners

The science behind semiotics may make your head spin, but it's essential you know the power of
the messages your images convey. Mark Penfold gets to grips with the relationship between
images and their meaning.
Designers, illustrators and typographers all practise semiotics on a daily basis, but rarely is the
subject discussed in isolation. Perhaps because of this, it's seen as slightly esoteric, a discipline
reserved for academics and thinkers rather than gritty urban designers.

However, conceived as a science capable of explaining the relationship between systems of

images and meanings, semiotics deals with the same raw material as the graphic professions; it
just uses a different vocabulary.

"In this country, what we need is more intellectual input into design," says typographer and
designer Jonathan Barnbrook, voicing a belief common among thinking professionals. Creative
professionals need to give themselves credit for the work they're already doing if they are to
avoid becoming "stylists".

Sign Language
The dictionary describes semiotics as "the study of signs and symbols" and goes on to highlight
the relationship between written signs and the concepts they represent in the real world, either as
ideas or objects. For the designer, the creative mark maker, it's therefore about the complex
relationship between images and their meanings.

Graphic artists take various visual fields and fill them with constantly changing symbols and
signs to convey meaning. As Andrew Foster, an illustrator and lecturer at Central Saint Martins
College of Art and Design, points out: "Illustrators are visual thinkers, not stylists."

Yet, despite this dry reputation, Andrew Stiff, head of the Digital Arts MA at London's
University of the Arts, says, "[Semiotics] has allowed us to re-evaluate our surrounding systems
and processes. No-one in a visual profession can ignore this subject's importance."

Barnbrook backs him up: "Deconstruction is the reason I'm a typographer," he says. "There's
always a difference between the signified and the signifier." A f rm believer in the potential
semiotics can unlock, Barnbrook believes: "Letterforms are full of cultural inconsistencies,
flukes of history and contradictions."

The creative possibilities that emerge from the gaps between meaning and object are open to
exploitation by the clever designer. According to Barnbrook, half the fun comes from playing
with relationships, which are, "Often unconsciously understood by the viewer." As Foster notes,
"Illustration can change people's opinions."

The viewer's unconscious ability to make connections is effectively the b-side of semiotics.
"There may be a desired meaning in the relationship between signifier and signified on behalf of
the creator, but it is the audience that has to interpret the meaning," says Stiff.

Context is paramount
Ferdinand de Saussure, Swiss linguist and philosopher, is widely credited with the invention of
semiotics. His concept? A science capable of understanding all possible systems of signs, from
language to music and, of course, the visual arts.

Although de Saussure concentrated his efforts on linguistics, he and many of his followers
believed that sign systems worked in similar ways, regardless of their particular make-up. One
such follower was the radical French thinker Roland Barthes, whose seminal work in the field,
Mythologies (1957), exposed the relationship between visual communication and the status quo
as a kind of myth-building project.

Taken as a whole, the signs form a spider's web of interlinked meanings and symbols, concepts
and the images that suggest them. But these relations cannot be taken in isolation. Context is of
paramount importance. Essentially, an image relies on context to bring out subtle meanings, and
an understanding of the viewer's context will enable the image's creator to better code meaning
into his work.

Reading the signs

Signifier and signified - together, they constitute a sign, the basic object studied by the science of
semiotics. The image is the signifier, the concept or object the signified. But for graphics
professionals, there's just one question - how are the two linked?

Where language is involved, it's clear that the link between either spoken or written symbols and
the signified object is itself completely arbitrary. Different languages operate on the same
objects, for example. A cat could have been called a dog or an abacus, it's just a convention.

However, where the meaning of visual symbols is concerned, the story gets a little more
complicated. At the most basic level there's a common understanding of the meaning held by
images: "There are certain symbols that have a generic meaning to us all," explains Barnbrook.
"These can be manipulated just enough to make the conveyance of information or the putting
over of an idea achievable."

Foster highlights the grim reaper as a symbol of death: "At this level, the basic symbolism relies
on clich©," he says. "Good illustration should go beyond that. All forms of communication have
a level of eloquence, but good illustration should challenge the viewer."

An obvious, up-to-date counterexample comes in the shape of the World Wide Web where signs
and symbols should be unambiguous and accessible to all. "The answer is to make them as
generic as possible," says John Denton, creative director at Bloc media. "As soon as you imbue
an icon or image with any cultural reference, you immediately start to dilute its effectiveness," he
says. It seems that playing around with meanings in this situation would be counter-productive.
Creative misunderstandings
According to Stiff, "An artist or designer is someone who experiments with our understanding of
objects and meaning." This experimentation is made possible because images can have multiple
associations, but this can be a hindrance. The meaning can easily become buried or lost.

Barnbrook gladly welcomes the complication: "Thankfully, there is the unknown factor.
Everybody brings their own universe of experience to the perception of a piece of work. That
misunderstanding can be one of the most creative acts a person can do."

But how does this help when you're trying to decide how to convince an audience of a client's
message? Stiff suggests we take a broader view: "Perhaps," he says, "we should enjoy the
situation and experiment with greater freedom."

"If you're producing work for a billboard, then the viewer will only have a second or two to take
it all in," says Foster. "In this situation, your image has to scream its message if it's going to
succeed." So the first thing to look at is the likely effect it will have on your audience.

"I'm an illustrator because I enjoy it," says Foster. "Visual play is all-important - without it, your
work becomes average." But as Foster ruefully points out, "One of the hardest things is trying to
mix the public and the private."

Foster suggests that the real job is to match our personal set of visual meanings with those of our
anticipated viewer. In a commercial setting, this is further complicated by competing messages:
"This is both its great strength and its great weakness," says Foster candidly.

Understand your needs

The process of choosing images and placing them in a context that will convey your intended
meaning was termed by Barthes as "coding". But as we've seen, this project is fraught with diffi
culty if your goal is to control the exchange between viewer and image, to narrow the
permutations so that only a single interpretation is allowed.

Instead, we should take pleasure in the fact that, as Barnbrook says, "There can be both positive
and negative misunderstandings."

Once free of the desire to exert control, we can start to properly explore possibilities within the
work we create. "It's about understanding your own needs", says Foster. Barnbrook is of a
similar mind: "I could never accept the Modernist notion of a typographer being just a
communicator of the client's message." There must, it seems, be an element of personal
communication.

"The method of placing signs and symbols in a piece of work - an advert, painting or film - will
always be about craft," says Stiff. Which brings us, at last, to one element of a composition that
can be controlled with some degree of accuracy - the production values.

"No matter how good an idea is, the craft has to hold me," admits Foster. And he's not alone in
insisting that the images he consumes are of a certain quality. At least in part, this feeds back into
the idea of layered meaning.
It's a balancing act, but talent is a visual language of your own which others find attractive. As
Foster puts it: "With flair, you can take a subject somewhere else."

How useful is semiotics as a method for analysing works of art?

Semiotics is the study of works of art signs and symbols, either individually or grouped in sign
systems that can give us more insight from the work source and meaning. All painters work in a
pictorial language by following a set of standards, basics and rules of picture-making. There is a
big resemblance between pictorial image making and the creation of written language, the study
of this nature of what consists and the individual components of pictorial and written language is
known as Semiotics.

Semiotics can translate a picture from an image into words. Visual communication terms and
theories come from linguistics, the study of language, and from semiotics, the science of signs.
Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things
have no natural meaning and become signs only when we provide them with meaning.

The semiotic theories are not definite but constantly being reviewed, extended and developed to
become more precise and improve the significance of the information gathered when these
theories are applied to works of art.

Visual Art consumers have become highly sophisticated readers of signs and signals, decoding
subconsciously art work compositions. Everything surrounding us human beings today,
including our own identities are all moulded and manipulated by signs, words, images and our
visual language.

Communication can be a form of mind control; the one that has the power to speak higher and
have the right speech can have a power over others in a certain way by making the individual
point stand above all. The same happens with artworks with a conceptual meaning that stand and
activate other people’s minds.

Different media carries different meanings despite the message content. Each form of media
explores these meanings in the way the subject is represented and the context in which it appears.
Visual language covers a whole range of different social mediums from low culture advertising,
comic books and television to high culture like galleries and theatres. Visual signs look for the
possibility of a language that already exists and is used already by a large amount of people
connected or not with the arts and the media. The linguistic sign consists of content like sense
and meaning of an expression like letters or sounds. Language is ruled by strong codes or rules
and becomes complicated when we look at it in the form of visual artworks. It becomes a
translation from linguistic to visual expression and the forms are as random as in linguistic signs.

Icons as a form of semiotics are all kinds of pictures representing an object like photos, drawings
and paintings. Most pictures have a double meaning; visual and symbolic, conventional and
arbitrary. Everyone knows, for example, that a picture of an old woman with a broom it is just a
picture of an old woman but it can be perceived as a picture of a witch. Modern advertising is
filled with this type of signage that holds double meanings.

Normally it is thought of as language in relation to pictures, very straight forward and clear
where the visual language is an expression of emotional, deeper thoughts or even ambiguous
ideas. It is then that visual expression needs the linguistic explanation to clear up the superfluous
meaning. For example, in advertising, a linguistic message always comes attached to the
advertisement in order to help establish the picture being shown.

So this form of anchorage of meaning opens us up to not only one, but several meanings without
unsettling the main indented meaning; it forces the mind to interpret the media in a most
complex and accurate way.

Pictorial Semiotics is often concerned with the study of pictures into a more constructive verbal
description while maintaining confidence in the objectivity of the practice. A linguistic
community that speaks the same language is a group of people making verbal agreements,
speaking similarly as long the community lasts. Small changes are easily adopted and taken
positively and are adjustable. The idea of representation by chance, where things do not follow
rules but are used as signs is however very explored in the visual arts. This is where the
principles of semiotics come in use; to map out and decode as a discipline.

The paintings of Rene Magritte for example in his series called ‘ The key of dreams (1930)’
show a collection of objects illustrated and labelled just like in a child’s learning picture book.
They are all incorrectly described except for one of them. the As another example he paints a
standard side view of a head of a horse against a black background with white writings and
labels it ‘a door’, all of this with a primary aesthetic. These violations of representation are
playing up with our early impingement teaching of associating names with the correct class
objects that are part of our visual culture since childhood. Of course we grow up taking this for
granted but Magritte with this illustration is showing us in a great way how resemblance,
symbols and signs are often just representations of the real things.

Magritte in ‘The Betrayal of Images‘(1929) makes a painting of a simple pipe, a side view well
illustrated with the phrase underneath saying’ This is not a pipe’. This text is neither true nor
false and explores a new science of representation and signing. Is the painting a pipe or a
depiction of a pipe? Yes, it is not the physical reality of a pipe, it is a representation of a pipe, a
painting of it, a signifier for it but not the real thing. Would that still make it a pipe or should we
call it something else?

Magritte had a special talent to make objects look mysterious and magical, and his objects are
carefully chosen and depicted in a school textbook way. The ‘Pipe’ painting is a good example
of how conventional imagery often betrays us all by making everyone realize that it is just a
convention and not a real object. In my opinion I think Magritte was trying to make us all aware
of the signs and symbols we often take for granted in our everyday lives.
This is a classical association for artists to make out the difference between the signifiers and the
signified. A sign is something that stands for something other than itself; we interpret things as
signs naturally by relating them to familiar systems or conventions.

Semiotics and Visual Representation

Brian Curtin
Semiotics and Visual Representation
Brian Curtin, PhD
International Program in Design and Architecture
semiotics: general definitions
1. Semiotics is concerned with meaning; how representation, in the broad
sense (language, images, objects) generates meanings or the processes by
which we comprehend or attribute meaning. For visual images, or visual and
material culture more generally, semiotics is an inquiry that is wider than the
study of symbolism and the use of semiotic analysis challenges concepts such
as naturalism and realism (the notion that images or objects can objectively
depict something) and intentionality (the notion that the meaning of images or
objects is produced by the person who created it). Furthermore, semiotics can
offer a useful perspective on formalist analysis (the notion that meaning is of
secondary importance to the relationships of the individual elements of an
image or object). Semiotic analysis, in effect, acknowledges the variable
relationship[s] we may have to representation and therefore images or objects
are understood as dynamic; that is, the significance of images or objects is not
understood as a one-way process from image or object to the individual but the
result of complex inter-relationships between the individual, the image or
object and other factors such as culture and society.

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Semiotics and Visual Representation
semiotics: defined through semiotic terms
2. To introduce the language used in discussions of semiotics; we say
that semiotics is the study of signs and signifying practices. A sign can be
defined, basically, as any entity (words, images, objects etc.) that refers to
something else. Semiotics studies how this referring results from previously
established social convention (Eco 1976, 16). That is, semiotics shows how
the relationship between the sign and the ‘something else’ results from what
our society has taught us. Semiotics is concerned with the fact that the
reference is neither inevitable nor necessary. The image of the swastika, for
example, can have radically different meanings depending on where and how it
is viewed.
3. Signifying practices simply refers to how, rather than what, meaning is
produced and, finally, the social convention which links signs with meanings is
called a code (Potts 1996, 21). The cross is coded in Christian cultures.
Meaning does not, as such, inhere in images and objects. The significance we
give images and objects is other to what the image or object literally is. In other
words, images and objects can operate like signs and, importantly, the meaning
we attribute to the sign relates to cultural ideas that we have learned, and may
or may not be aware of. Further, Alex Potts wrote that images and objects are
not only mediated by conventions, but meaning is largely activated by cultural
convention (Potts 1996, 20). How is it possible not to recognize an image or
object? When we recognize an image or object, how do we recognize it?
historical notes
5. The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) founded
semiology early in the 20th century, as well as linguistics, as a science which
studies the role of signs as part of social life. The origins of semiotics can
be linked to structuralism, which also has its origins in Saussure’s thinking.
Structuralism is a method of analysis that seeks to study and reveal the ‘deep’
structure behind the appearance of phenomena; that is, the hidden rules which

53
organize anything from how people interact in particular social contexts to how
stories are written or told. Given phenomena has generally been understood on
the model of language, or as a language, and academics and theorists since
Saussure have variously modified, altered and challenged the insights and uses
of linguistics, alongside the relevance of structuralism.
6. Saussure defined the sign, as we have seen, as the relationship
between a signifier (that which carries or produces meaning) and the signified
(the meaning itself). His primary insight was that the relationship between
them is arbitrary; within language the signifier ‘red’, for example, is not in itself
red and, further, different languages of course have different words for the
same thing. In effect, Saussure emphasized the fact that entities do not
precede or determine their naming, otherwise a name would mean the same
thing in every language. Eskimos, for example, have many more words for ‘snow’
than English speakers, who only have one.
7. This idea was rendered more complex by the American philosopher
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who challenged the notion that a sign
simply generates its idea, however arbitrary. In Peirce’s model, semiosis
functions through three, rather than two, positions. There is the sign (that
which stands for something else) and the interpretant (also called meaning or
meaning-effect, and basically means interpretation or the mental image the
individual forms of the sign) and the object (or referent, the thing for which the
sign stands).
semiotics and visual culture
8. For studies in visual and material culture, Peirce’s classification of
signs in terms of icon, index and symbol are useful, though these are not the
only classifications he created. An icon, simply put, is a sign that is linked to a
signifier through similarity in appearance. Examples here include portraits or
abstract paintings where color is, for example, black; the painting is black,
refers to the color black and can then be interpreted differently. The point is
Brian Curtin

54
Semiotics and Visual Representation
that we can gain information (or think we can!) about the signified by looking at
the sign. Think, for example, of computer icons. An indexical sign ties, as such,
the signifier to the signified; the index has been described as visible sign which
points to the invisible, though this may be too general. I would describe the
indexical sign as the registration of the real; the sight of smoke, for example,
can indicate fire, a bullet hole would refer to a specific act, or the sight of tears
suggests sadness. Further, think of words such as ‘this’ or ‘big’ and ‘small’.
Finally, a symbol links the signifier and the signified in a purely arbitrary or
conventional way; unlike the icon or index, the link is not physical or logical. We
are taught by our society to make the link between the symbolic sign and it’s
signified. For example, flags, dollar signs or the most obvious example, verbal
language itself. Pierce’s ideas can be useful but should not be understood
uncritically. Like objects and images, these classifications are best understood
as dynamic when applied to images and objects.
9. The contemporary semiotician Mieke Bal used the example of a
still-life painting of a fruit bowl to illustrate the relationship between these
positions; the painting is, among other things, a sign of something else (fruit),
and the viewer shapes an image in their mind of what he/she associates with
that something else. This mental image is the interpretant and points to
an object which is different for each viewer; real fruit for some, other similar
paintings for others, beautiful sensual skin etc. etc. (Bal 1998, 75). The point
is that the interpretant (mental image) actually becomes a new sign which
produces new interpretants and an infinite process unfolds, where no aspect
can be isolated from another. Hence Saussure’s pairing of two elements is
undermined.
10. Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was the first to apply ideas of semiotics,
as it developed from linguistics, to visual images, for example, food advertise
ments, photography and motion pictures. Barthes’ work offers a useful
summary of the important aspects of semiotics discussed above. Essentially,
he sought to analyze how the meanings we attribute to images are not a
“natural” result of what we see; that is, images are not self-evident and
universal in how we understand what we see. For example, it is very difficult to

55
attribute meaning to a photograph without a caption or accompanying text.
Further, the meanings that we do give to images are linked to culturally specific
associations, though it is very necessary to note that culture can not entirely
determine our response (Potts 1996, 31).
11. Barthes called the immediate visual impact denoted meaning (or first
order or basic meaning) and the cultural meaning we attach to it connoted
meaning (or second-order meaning). In other words, denoted meaning refers
to the recognition of what is registered by the image or photograph (e.g. a
 photograph of a monk) and connoted meaning refers to the possible invitation
of the image to interpret, give meaning to, the forms even against or beyond the
authors’ intention. This provides a useful backdrop to look at the application of
semiotics to visual and material culture and, furthermore, in terms of considering
cultural meanings, we may also usefully note Barthes’ influence on post
structuralist thinking. Post-structuralism does not view language as a structure
but rather a structuring process in terms of the relationship of the reader, or
viewer, or consumer (Ribere 2002, 60). In this respect, there is a greater
emphasis on the impact of language and the role the individual plays in creating
meaning.
semiotics and visual representation in visual art
12. Given the root of ‘representation’ in notions of resemblance and
imitation, among other factors, visual images have often been thought of as
more direct and straightforward in their meaning than language itself, which
varies from culture to culture. Or, in other words, there has been a strong
tendency to think of visual images as not a language, as un-coded and possibly
universal in their meaning. Furthermore, as a result of a pervasive link between
visual art and the idea of expression, art has been thought of as more intuitive,
unconscious and basic than language; therefore transcending the specifics of
the culture[s] it emerges from. This, of course, is not true.
Brian Curtin

56
Semiotics and Visual Representation
13. In this respect it can be useful to think of visual images as text-like,
though one necessarily needs to be wary of linguistic models dominating our
understanding of visual representation. In the first instance, the elements of
images do not have established rules, unlike words, which require them to be
combined in certain ways to form a sign. Furthermore, images and meanings
are not entwined as a dictionary links words with their signified; while images
are linked with particular meanings, for example, allegories or images of
Buddha, the meaning doesn’t require a distinctly or distinct visual language.
Or, the meanings of particular images can also be explained in words and
therefore we can conceive many different visual forms, none where the
meaning is intrinsic (Potts 1996, 24-26). From any number of examples, the
artworks that visualize the biblical story of the Temptation of Saint Anthony
point to the same narrative but in very different ways. Each painting depicts the
scene in a landscape and while two, Bosch and Dali, are fantastical they
are very different with the Bosch being realistically grotesque while Dali’s is
dream-like. Cezanne’s approach is naturalistic and focuses a particular as
pect of the narrative - sexual temptation.
14. Moreover, the very possibility of visual art being understood as a sign,
of being readable, was challenged by, for example, the Impressionists and,
later, abstraction. The Impressionists aimed to put visual representation on a
par with visual perception and abstraction could aim to act in a direct emotional
manner on the viewer, free of text-like qualities (Potts 1996, 27). Such aims,
 however, are problematic because we inevitably seek significance and meaning
Picture 1-3: Various visual representations of ‘The Tempatation of Saint Anthony’
by three artists
Left: Hieronymous Bosch(1505-6), Middle: Paul Cezanne(1873-7) Right:
Salvador Dali(1946)

57
as we would from the most explicitly coded image, think of the fact that Jackson
Pollock’s drip abstractions evoke the “real” of landscape painting, among other
signs. Even the very act of acknowledging and describing the supposed
absence of meaning and codes envelopes us in language, as a cultural screen
between us and the paintings. Barthes’ distinction between denoted and
connoted meaning is relevant here; we can all agree on what we are essentially
looking at (without interpretative meaning), be it the abstraction of Jackson or
the water lilies of Monet but what meaning or signifieds and further signs do we
attribute and create? Moreover, what sense does it ultimately make to talk of
‘we can all agree on…’? Prominent artworks produced since the impact of
critical theory (Barthes et al) in Western contexts have been somewhat
self-conscious about the understanding of visual art in terms of language, or
signs, signifiers and codes.
15. Before looking at examples of these artworks, Mieke Bal (1998)
offered an interesting use of semiotics as a means of reading images to
challenge prevailing orthodoxy. The Baroque painter Caravaggio’s Judith
Beheading Holofernes (1598-9) has been subject to various interpretations
within feminist criticism that see the painting as an allegory of inequality
between men and women: though Judith is beheading him, Caravaggio, it is
said, painted Holofernes with a greater level of human interest (i.e. sympathy)
than Judith and therefore rendered him as a tragic hero. This is in contrast to
the rendering of Judith as supposedly lacking any sense of humanity or personality.
The reason for this, it has been proposed, is simply that Caravaggio was male
and therefore could not identify strongly with the female Judith.
Picture 4: Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da, Judith Beheading
Holofernes, c. 1598, Oil on canvas, 56 3/4 x 76 3/4 in.,
Galleria Nazionale dell’Arte Antica, Rome
Brian Curtin

58
Semiotics and Visual Representation
16. Mieke Bal goes against this interpretation by focusing on a particular
sign, the blood spurting from Holofernes’ neck. In the first instance, Bal points
out that the sign of blood is conjunction of icon, index and symbol; the sign, in
other words, is iconic because of a relation between paint and blood, indexical
because it relates clearly to Holofernes body, and symbolic because of general
associations with passion and violence. Further, the symbolic nature of
the sign appears to reinforce the realism of the painting. Bal, however, is
interested in how the sign actually undermines the supposed realism because
the blood implausibly travels in straight lines and is so separate from Holofernes
body that it casts a shadow, rather than splashing unpredictably. The shadow
creates a perspective that encourages us to read the blood as preceding the
sword, the cut; this, Bal points out, goes against more a more logical organization
of visual elements.
17. In other words, we would usually understand that blood follows the
movement of a sword. Consequently, the painting becomes somewhat
enigmatic because we begin to seek to solutions - reasons why - in the details
for this apparent ‘error’. Bal’s interpretation plays on this question of causality
- how actions cause something to occur - to disturb the issue that Caravaggio
painted Holofernes with a sense of humanity in order to “cause” Judith’s sense
of stillness, or robotic appearance. This appearance is otherwise interpreted as
a sign of objectification on a continuum with other sexist imagery. In effect, the
sign of the blood helps us to read the painting in terms of a challenge to how we
may understand and the question of how it is we can know. Furthermore, a
semiotic reading can put us in the “here and now” of interpretation, not relying
on traditional academic analysis. Again, we may emphasize the role of the
viewer in particular contexts. However, another reason to use Bal’s interpretation
is to point to possible dangers in semiotic analysis; in this example, what may
make sense grammatically does not always make sense visually. Bal makes
much use of the word ‘causality’; it is an open question whether or not her
reading of Caravaggio’s painting is actually convincing in this respect.

59
18. Mieke Bal’s interpretation is an example of the use of semiotics for
art historical analysis. With other artists an awareness of semiotics actually
precedes the creation of artworks. The Irish painter Elizabeth Magill produced a
series of landscapes that addressed the 19th century notion of the sublime, as
this notion had been rendered in art allied to Romanticism. The sublime is a
concept concerned with how a great sense of awe can be produced by, among
other things, the sight of nature and this sense would not be describable in
language. Magill’s paintings re-create the general appearance of Romantic
painting, and therefore evoke notions of the sublime, but also carry a generic
quality that doesn’t quite deliver what we believe such paintings should deliver.
In looking at Magill’s work we become aware of how notions of the sublime can
be linked to particular visual languages, how, in other words, the denotation of
the sublime precedes our supposed experience of it. Here it is necessary to
note that language ‘screens’ experience, puts us at a distance, language is not
a means to experience. Her painting Burma is curiously evocative. In linking the
written signifier with a visual signified, Magill plays on certain preconceptions,
assumptions, about the nature of a country which, factually speaking, is not
depicted. The painting is of a landscape that could be anywhere. In other
words, Magill challenges us to consider how we understand the signifier ‘Burma’
by consciously manipulating certain codes (the color red, hazy view, sense of
distance, generalized sense of the exotic etc.). Formally speaking, I would like
 to keep as an open question how she actually achieves this.
Picture 5: Elizabeth Magill, Burma, oil on canvas, size unknown.
Brian Curtin

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Semiotics and Visual Representation
19. Cindy Sherman’s photographs examine the idea of ‘woman’ as sign.
That is, signs of femininity which have been pervasive in North America media.
In the first instance, Sherman acknowledges an understanding of visual imagery
as a language because she appropriates a particular visual rhetoric, or style,
from 50s Hollywood movies (titled film noir, meaning ‘black movies’). It is
testament to the visual strength of these movies that audiences have assumed
that Sherman’s photographs are stills, fragments, from existing movies; but, of
course, they are not. With this absence of a narrative and the fact that Sherman,
who is always central, is both present and absent (we are not perceiving the
‘real’ her) the photographs encourage us to consider their very status as signs.
Or, in other words, insofar as the photographs can not be understood as
self-portraiture (which traditionally aims at the ‘real’) and are not essentially
part of a narrative (though we can invent one) they begin to refer back to
themselves. (What are these photographs saying?) Therefore what we
ultimately see, or recognize, are the ways by which images can generate
particular ideas; in this instance, ideas about women. Note that Sherman’s
photographs evoke typically ‘female’ scenarios (e.g. woman-as-temptress or
‘woman in danger’) but, moreover, the suggestion of stereotyping is also
rendered complex as the sign of ‘woman’ cannot be strictly linked to a signified
in this respect. This is because we know Sherman is the author as well as the
subject of her photographs and insofar as she appears to be engaged in
various performances of identity, the sign of ‘woman’ is not fixed on a particular
meaning, or meanings.
Picture 6: Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #21, 1978

61
semiotics and visual representation in design
21. To briefly recap; we can say that semiotics is concerned with the
nature and function of language (be it the relatively ambiguous status of visual
language) and the processes by which meaning is generated and understood.
Semiotic analysis acknowledges the position, or role, of the individual in terms
of a challenge to any notion of fixed or unitary or universal meaning and
therefore subjectivity can be engaged dynamically with the image or object. A
significant way that subjectivity is acknowledged is in the fact that our
perception, or reading, of images and objects can be revealed as socially
conditioned. Central to semiotic analysis, in this respect, is the recognition of
how visual and material culture is coded; the social conventions which link signs
with meanings. Insofar as visual and material culture is coded, meaning is not
intrinsic to the image or object and therefore not self-evident.
22. In design terms the architectural company COOP Himmelblau’s roof
 conversion for a legal practice in Vienna (1983-4) is an explicit attack on
traditional languages of architecture. The roof, as an aggressive intervention in
a neoclassical building, calls on us to consider the very nature of architectural
language. A definition of classicism would include ideas of harmony, balance,
integration, sense of the grand etc. and the roof represents its opposite,
dis-harmonious, disturbing, asymmetrical and modern. Further, any notion of
the development of architectural style in terms of linear progression - one style
superceding or replacing another - is upset by the fact that here two styles
co-exist side-by-side. In effect, what we otherwise think we ‘know’ about
architectural style - classicism as a singular, definable, self-evident entity -
and the relation of time, in terms of the modern or the contemporary, is
challenged. Differences, oppositions, have been collapsed in order to create
new signs, new ways of looking.
Brian Curtin

Readings on Structuralism

STRUCTURALISM

Structuralist Analysis

In order to address this project, it is first necessary to investigate what is meant by structuralist
analysis.

Pooke and Newall (2008: 102) define structural analysis as the way semiotic theories have been
used to develop the sign systems within a text or social practice. The aim being to reveal the
signifying relationships, values and/or assumptions within the world they represent.

Chandler (2008: 4) asserts that Saussaurian theories constituted the starting point for
structuralist methodologies and that these represent an analytical method involving the
application of the linguistic model to a wide range of cultural phenomena.

A key point in Saussure’s conception of meaning was emphasising the difference between signs
– language for him was a system of functional differences and oppositions. The concept of the
relational identity of signs is the heart of structuralist theory and Saussure emphasised in
particular negative, oppositional differences between signs. Concepts are not defined positively
(i.e. In terms of content) but negatively (i.e. By contrast with items in the same system: “what
characterises each most is being whatever the others are not.” (Chandler, 2008: 21) To illustrate
this Chandler uses the example of how we might teach someone who did not share our language
the meaning of the term red: the point would not be made by showing a number of red objects,
however, success would be more likely showing a number of objects that are identical except for
colour, thus, emphasising the red object.

Syntagm and paradigm

Distinction is key in structuralist semiotic analysis, two structural axes are seen as applicable to
all sign systems:

Syntagmatic: the horizontal axes, concerning positioning. Syntagmatic relations are possibilities
of combination and refer intratextually1 to signifiers present in a text.
Paradigmatic: the vertical axis, concerning substitution. Paradigmatic relations are functional
contrasts and involve differentiation and refer intertextually2 to signifiers absent from the text.

The ‘value’ of a sign is determined by both the paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations – they
provide the structural context within which signs make sense and are the structural forms through
which signs are organised into codes. (Chandler, 2008: 83-4)

Syntagm

Chandler (2008: 85-6) defines syntagm as the orderly combination of interacting signifiers which
form a meaningful form within a text – sometimes called a ‘chain.’ They are made within
syntactic rules and conventions, for example, a sentence is a syntagm of words (also –
paragraphs, chapters.) The ways which various elements within a text may be related to each
(syntagmatic relations) are created by linking signifiers from paradigm sets. These are chosen
based on whether they are conventionally regarded as appropriate, for example grammar.

Crow (2010: 39) describes syntagm as a collection of signs organised in a linear sequence. For
example, a sentence: words are arranged in a syntagmatic sequence, each sign having a
syntagmatic relationship with the sign before and after, the value of the sign being affected by
the other signs around it. A visual example could be clothing: a syntagm made up of individual
garments whose value is affected by combination with other signs, these combinations are
governed by convention for dressing ourselves which could be termed taste.

Paradigm

Chandler (2008: 87) states that paradigmatic analysis seeks to identify pre-existing signifiers
which underlie a texts content. This involves consideration of the positive/negative connotations
of each signifier, which is revealed through the use of one over another. This is referred to as
‘binary oppositions’, an example would be public/private.

The issue of why a particular signifier is used over another is termed ‘absence’ – signs take their
value from what they are not. Two examples of this are ‘what goes without saying’ (what is
assumed/taken for granted/obvious.) and ‘conspicuous by its absence.’ (the flaunting of
convention or making a statement.)
For Crow, (2010: 40) paradigms have two basic characteristics: the units of the set have
something in common and each unit in the set is obviously different from the rest. Meaning does
not come from linear signification alone, when making combinations of signs we are faced with
a series of individual choices where one can be substituted for another in the same set. For
example – letters of the alphabet. We understand letters as paradigms of the same set, the choices
of combinations made create words which in turn can become other sets of paradigms such as
nouns and verbs. Changing combinations can also completely change meaning. This direction of
thought can seemingly be extended indefinitely: the way language is used can create further
paradigms such as jargon or rhyming words in poetry can be described as paradigms based on
sound.

Barthes analysed the syntagmatic and paradigmatic implications of clothing in ‘The Fashion
System.’ The paradigm was items which could not be worn at the same time on the same part of
the body while the syntagm represented how these different elements came together to form an
ensemble.
1
intratextually: relates to internal relations within a text.
2
intertextually: refers to links in form and content which binds a text to other texts.

Find two examples of naturalistic paintings of a particular genre – landscape, portraiture

or whatever – and annotate them to discover the similar conventions of representation:
medium, format, allusion, purpose, etc.

Naturalism is defined as “an attempt to create life-like representations of people and objects in
the world by close observation and detailed study.” (Pooke and Newall, 2008: 224) In my
research I found that naturalism as an art movement was not easily defined with examples being
given across the ages.

Gustave Courbet: The Stone Breakers (1849)

Jean-François Millet: The Gleaners (1857)

The artists for the two pictures I have chosen are both contemporaries of the Barbizon school of
early 19th century French artists who were concerned with minutely observing natural settings
and actively rejected the conventions of academic art in their choice of subject matter.

Similarities:

Seemingly depict everyday activities of rural workers.

No eye contact, in fact The Stone Breakers in Courbet’s picture are facing away. This gives the
figures in each painting an everyman feeling, the pictures are about the activities that are being
engaged in rather than abou individuals.

Subject matter – everyday working activities not usually depicted in paintings.

Both oil paintings.

Show physical labour.

The protagonists are common people – not the traditional subjects of oil paintings.

The pictures are situated outside.

Non idealised representations, the depictions are distinctly unromantic.

The labour depicted seems to be difficult although the protagonists of both paintings seem
committed and focused on the tasks they are engaged in.

The figures in both paintings are clearly the subjects rather than to add interest to the landscape.

Both paintings invest a certain nobility to the figures depicted and the tasks they are engaged
with – they have an air of quiet dignity.

Find two examples of portrait photography, one formal and one informal, and annotate
them to see what conventions from the formal are observed in the informal and give your
thoughts on why this might be so.

For this part of the project I have chosen two photographs from the series ‘Marine Wedding’ by
American photographer Nina Berman and represent the informal and formal sides of wedding
photography.
Picture one (here) is a portrait of a man and a woman. The clothing they wear suggests that they
are a newly married couple: the woman is wearing a white wedding dress and veil and holds a
red bouquet of roses – clearly she is the bride. She is young and beautiful, there has been a great
deal of care taken in her appearance from the way her hair is styled to a detail like the necklace
she is wearing which seems specifically chosen for the occasion and to compliment the rest of
her clothing. Her skin is tanned which may be her natural colouring but could also have been
accentuated by visits to tanning salons in the lead up to wedding which shows the weeks of
preparation that have gone in to her looking her very best for her wedding day.
The man is in military uniform so it is not immediately clear if he is the groom or a relative of
the bride, for example brother or even father. It can be assumed he is the groom however based
on the convention of servicemen wearing their forces uniforms to get married. The red piping of
the uniform also matches the red detail of the brides dress and the wedding bouquet, it is also a
convention for elements and colours used in the bride and grooms clothing to be repeated in
other aspects of the entire wedding design. The man appears to have been severely burned and is
disfigured – it is difficult to ascertain his expression and even age because of this. Combined
with the uniform it would be logical to think that he has suffered these injuries in service, the
medals her wears would also indicate that he has seen active duty. It is impossible to tell if he has
any other injuries but he seems to be standing in a slightly awkward and rigid way which would
suggest he has further ailments we cannot see – the facial burns are to such a degree that it seems
unlikely the injuries would be confined to his face alone.

Formal portraits of two people at a wedding are normally reserved for the bride and groom so it
would seem logical to assume this is what we are looking at, it is possible that the man could be
a relative or even friend of the bride but seems unlikely – if this was the brides brother for
example you would expect to see someone else in the picture as well, such as a partner or other
family members. The other main clues that this is a formal wedding photograph are the posing
which is deliberate and rigid which suggests the couple have been closely directed to pose in this
way, their rigidity also suggests they are uncomfortable and maybe even self conscious to be
standing this way. Neither faces the camera but look to the side out of frame, if this was a natural
portrait we would expect the sitters to be looking straight at the lens, and by extension the viewer
of the photograph, but this does not happen here. The dappled background is clearly one used by
professional photographers and the lighting, although subtle, appears to be artificial and the
photograph looks like it has been shot indoors which would indicate a professional photographer
using studio lighting has taken the shot.

The expressions that the couple have on their faces prove problematic to our reading of the
photograph – the bride seems serious, even solemn, and it is impossible to read any information
from the groom because of his disfigurement. A simple explanation of the brides expression
could be that she is nervous, being put centre stage at a wedding as the bride is daunting. Being
closely directed on how to pose by the photographer, as it appears she has been here, does not
lead to a relaxed posture – perhaps she is concentrating on maintaining the pose so the image
required by the photographer can be captured. On another level however, the bride could be
mirroring her groom – he is unable to show expression due to his facial injuries and it would
seem natural that as his bride she would be acutely aware of this and would subconsciously
appear this way herself. Another reading could be that the bride is not enjoying the event and
possibly even regretting being married. She appears very young and we are left to wonder about
the possible circumstances of the wedding. How long have the couple been together? They could
either be childhood sweethearts or have been together for a much shorter length of time. Either
way, the bride must have felt a sense of duty to go through with the wedding. If the wedding was
planned before the event that has led to the grooms injuries then she would feel duty bound to go
through with it out of both pity for her partner and fear of how not doing so would appear.
Likewise, if the wedding was planned following the grooms injury she would feel similarly duty
bound to go through with it.

The second photograph (here) is a candid/unposed shot of a two people taken from behind the
larger figure of the two who almost completely obscures the figure behind him. The faces of
neither figure are visible in the picture and there is very little information to suggest there
identity and what they are doing – in fact, the image is predominately of an upper body shot from
the rear. Key indicators to inform what we are looking at are largely missing, for example facial
expressions, background detail – despite this, I believe a great deal of information can be gained
through close analysis:
The figure in the foreground is a man: he is taller than the figure behind, he wears a formal jacket
which is traditionally male attire, his head is bald.

The figure in the background is a woman: her nails are long and neatly manicured with small red
jewel details stuck onto two of them, her arms are bare – although we cannot see what she is
wearing this suggests she is wearing some sort of dress, she is wearing a number of rings which
are of a feminine style – men are more likely to wear fewer rings and they would be of a plain
design.

Once we arrive at the conclusion that we are looking at a picture of a man and woman we can
begin to explore both their relationship and the activity they are engaged in – this also adds
weight to our initial reading of gender. The couple appear to be dancing, the arms of the woman
around the man’s neck is the conventional way couples slow dance together, the closeness of
their bodies combined with this reading would suggest they are a couple. There is slight motion
blur in the photograph which suggests they are moving (dancing) rather than stood still in an
embrace. The conclusion that this is a photograph of a couple who are romantically engaged
dancing together leads to the conclusion that this is a picture of their first dance at their wedding.
A number of clues lead to this: we have already noticed that the man is wearing a formal jacket
and that the woman has taken care of her appearance by having her nails carefully manicured.
The small, red jewels on two of her nails match the red piping that is just visible in the man’s suit
– it is conventional for the clothing worn at weddings to have a unified theme. The bare arms of
the woman suggest she is wearing a formal dress, probably a wedding dress. Although the
woman has a number of rings on her fingers, the left hand is the closest to us and we notice she is
wearing a wedding ring – although this could be unconscious this seems significant – our
attention is being drawn towards the ring – in fact, it is the closest point to the camera lens. And
finally there is the cultural knowledge of the significance of a couple’s first dance at their
wedding combined with the fact that it is perhaps the only time that it would be appropriate to
photograph a couple dancing.

The two images here are from the same series ‘Marine Wedding’ by Nina Berman, the
knowledge of this changes our reading of each image significantly. Separately and with no other
knowledge, I believe the preferred reading of each image is of a couple on their wedding day.
Clearly photograph one is the more obvious to read of the two, however, the relationship
between the couple is not completely explicit and requires assumptions to be made. Photograph
two requires more work for us to arrive at the reading that what we are viewing is a couple
having their first dance on their wedding day, although more implicit I believe close reading
makes this as evident as photograph one. Both pictures are linked by the need to understand the
cultural conventions being displayed. Taken together, the pictures represent the narrative of the
couples special day – the formal, posed, studio lit picture one and the candid picture two which
although unposed is as unnatural as the first. The knowledge that these pictures are part of a
larger series by photo-journalist Nina Berman which has the intent of showing how injured
American serviceman adjust to life when returning from war changes our reading significantly.
Picture one becomes a pastiche of the wedding photographer’s style with picture two
representing the documentary mode of the photographer. It could be argued that wedding
photography is a form of documentary in itself representing a factual record of the couples day,
the unusual angle of picture two gains more gravitas – this is no longer a ‘grab shot’ but an
image taken, and selected, by a professional photo-journalist which suggests there was intent
involved.

Thoughts…

I initially thought that this would be a quick project to complete as there are no readings
involved. I soon found more to try and understand than I first bargained for, although I do think I
have gone some way to put a boundary on my research as I will detail below.

Firstly, structuralist analysis. Although I now have a better understanding of what this means
(which is also necessary for assignment 3) I am struggling to see how this can be applied
practically. The problem is linked to that of semiotic analysis – while there are guidelines about
how to go about this there is not a definitive explanation or consensus about what structural
analysis means. I did not come across an example that put structuralist analysis into practice
during my research and experiencing this would help me understand what is meant more clearly.
What I have taken from my reading however is the understanding that structuralism focusses on
what is represented within the image. The concepts of syntagm and paradigm are interesting and
the more I think about these the more I understand that it is about how different signifiers work
together to make signs that is key. The notion that what is missing from a text being a key driver
in our ability to understand is something that seems to make perfect sense and be completely
obvious once it has been pointed out. Also, the idea of ‘what goes without saying’ is powerful
and shows how cultural knowledge is critical to being able to decode texts. (This also leads onto
the concept of myths which is the basis of the next project.)

I quickly found that naturalism is an artistic style that has many varying interpretations over
history and is also used as a synonym for realism although this is perhaps not the best definition.
I was very much in danger of falling down the rabbit hole at this point and get carried away with
researching naturalism and become preoccupied with this rather than concentrating on what the
project was asking for.

Writing about each of the images I undoubtedly felt more comfortable with the photographs – as
this is the form I am most interested in this is hardly surprising. It is of note however that I found
the photograph much easier to identify with as a representation of reality rather than the
paintings. Clearly the fact that these are not contemporary works is also a factor – my knowledge
and comfort at being able to discuss art rather than photographs is something for me to consider
and work on.

M5-Critical Perspectives

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
From the first forms of art criticism in ancient Greece, the discussion of meaning in art has taken
many directions. As we realized in module 2, the professional art critic is one of the gatekeepers
who, through their writing, endorse or reject particular kinds of art, whether in style, artistic
ability or message. In fact, a study of the different ways to look at art can tell us much about
changing times and philosophies: the role of aesthetics, economics and other cultural issues have
much to do with the origin of these philosophical positions. Of course, none of them are
completely true but simply different types of discourse. People approach meaning from different
perspectives. The artworks sit silent while all around them the voices change. We are at a time
when there are several, sometimes greatly conflicting, ways of thinking about meaning in art.
Here are six different perspectives art critics use as compasses to interpreting meaning:
Structural Criticism: We started this course with a discussion of what art is. That discussion
was actually based on one of the ways to look at art: what is known as structuralism.
Structuralism is based on the notion that our concept of reality is expressed through language and
related systems of communication. On a larger scale, visualize culture as a structure whose
foundation is language, speech and other forms of communication. When this approach is
applied to the visual arts, the world of art becomes a collective human construction, where a
single work needs to be judged within the framework supported by the whole structure of art.
This structure is still based in language and knowledge and how we communicate ideas. I often
use the example of the word "cowboy".
In your head: visualize a cowboy: then describe what you saw. What gender was your person?
What race was this person? Now let’s apply those answers to historical fact. The fact is
upwards of 60% of the historical cowboys in the United States were black slaves freed after the
civil war. Did you see your cowboy as white?
Your idea of cowboy might have come from film, which is an extremely different form of
reality. The structural idea manifests itself when we look for meaning in art based on any
preconceived ideas about it we already have in our mind. These preconceptions (or limitations)
are shaped by language, social interaction and other cultural experiences.
Deconstructive Criticism goes one step further, and posits that any work of art can have many
meanings attached to it, none of which are limited by a particular language or experience outside
the work itself. In other words, the critic must reveal (deconstruct) the structured world in order
to knock out any underpinnings of stereotypes, preconceptions or myths that get in the way of
true meaning. Taking the perspective of a deconstructive critic, we would view a portrait
of Marilyn Monroe (Links to an external site.) by pop artist Andy Warhol as an imaginary
construct of what is real. As a popular culture icon, Marilyn Monroe the movie star was
ubiquitous: in film, magazines, television and photographs. But Marilyn Monroe the person
committed suicide in 1962 at the height of her stardom. In truth, the bright lights and celebrity of
her Hollywood persona eclipsed the real Marilyn, someone who was troubled, confused and
alone. Warhol’s many portraits of her –each one made from the same publicity photograph –
perpetuate the myth and cult of celebrity.
Formalist criticism is what we engaged in when we looked at the elements and principles of
art. Formalism doesn't really care about what goes on outside the actual space of the work, but
finds meaning in its use of materials. One of the champions of the formalist approach was
Clement Greenberg. His writing stresses “medium specificity”: the notion there is inherent
meaning in the way materials are used to create the artwork. As is relates to painting and works
on paper, the result is a focus on the two-dimensional surface. This is contrary to its traditional
use as a platform for the illusion of depth. Formalism allows a more reasoned discussion of
abstract and nonrepresentational art because we can approach them on their own terms, where
the subject matter becomes the medium instead of something it represents. This is a good way to
approach artworks from cultures we are not familiar with, though it has the tendency to make
them purely decorative and devalue any deeper meaning. It also allows a kind of training in
visual seeing, so it is still used in all studio arts and art appreciation courses.
Greenberg was a strong defender of the Abstract Expressionist style of painting that developed in
the United States after World War 2. He referred to it as “pure painting” because of its insistence
on the act (Links to an external site.) of painting, eventually releasing (Links to an external
site.) it from its ties to representation.
Ideological criticism is most concerned with the relationship between art and structures of
power. It infers that art is embedded in a social, economic and political structure that determines
its final meaning. Born of the writings of Karl Marx (Links to an external site.), ideological
criticism translates art and artifacts as symbols that reflect political ideals and reinforce one
version of reality over another. A literal example of this perspective would view the Lincoln
Memorial in Washington, D.C. as a testament to a political system that oppressed people because
of race yet summoned the political will to set them free in the process of ending a Civil War.

The Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.

Photo by Jeff Kubina and licensed through Creative Commons
In contrast, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s painting Franzi in Front of a Carved Chair (below) from
1910 is also considered a symbol of artistic (hence, political) freedom. His Expressionist art –
with its strong, sometimes arbitrary colors and rough approach to forms, was denounced by Nazi
Germany as being “degenerate”. The Degenerate Art Show (Links to an external site.) of 1937
was a way for the German political establishment to label modern art as something evil and
corrupt. Hitler’s regime was only interested in heroic, representational and idealistic images,
something Kirchner was rebelling against. Kirchner and other Expressionist artists were
marginalized and many of their works destroyed by the authorities.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franzi In Front of A Carved Chair,

1910, oil on canvas,
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid
This item is in the public domain
Psychoanalytic criticism is the way we should look at work if
we feel it is only about personal expression. The purest form of
this criticism ranks the work of untrained and mentally ill artists
as being just as important as any other art. It is in this way that
the artist “inside” is more important than any other reason the
art happens or the effect the art has. When discussing
Vincent van Gogh (Links to an external site.) you will often
hear people make mention of his mental state more than his
actual artwork, experience, or career. This is a good example of
psychoanalytic criticism. One of the problems in this type of
criticism is that the critic is usually discussing issues the artist themselves may be totally
unaware of (and may deny these issues exist).
Feminist criticism began in the 1970's as a response to the neglect of women artists over time
and in historical writings. This form of criticism is specific to viewing art as an example of
gender bias in historical western European culture, and views all work as a manifestation of this
bias. Feminist criticism created whole movements in the art world (specifically performance
based art), and has changed over the last few years to include all underrepresented
groups. Examples of feminist art include Judy Chicago’s large-scale installation The Dinner
Party (Links to an external site.) and the work of Nancy Spero (Links to an external site.).
In reality, all of these critical perspectives hold some truth. Art is a multifaceted medium that
contains influences from most all the characteristics of the culture it was created in, and some
that transcend cultural environments. These perspectives, along with the different levels of
meaning we explored in this module, help us to unravel some of the mysteries inherent in works
of art, and bring us closer to seeing how art expresses feelings, ideas and experiences that we all
share. In our search it is important to be aware of all the issues involved, take aspects of each
critical position depending upon the work being viewed, the environment (and context) you’re
seeing it in, and make up our own mind.

Readings on Psychoanalysis

An Extreme Tolerance for the Unknown: Art, Psychoanalysis and the

Politics of the Occult

Fig.1
Susan Hiller
From the Freud Museum 1991–6
Glass, 50 cardboard boxes,
paper, video, slide, light bulbs
and other materials
Displayed: 2200 x 10000 x 600
mm
Since Sigmund Freud’s brief but much discussed correspondence with surrealist writer André
Breton in 1932–3,1 the relationship between art and psychoanalysis has been plagued by
mutual incomprehension and suspicion, with a few notable exceptions.2 Freud feigned the
modesty of the amateur in his writings on art and literature, which are among his most
criticised but also most widely and passionately debated, especially ‘The “Uncanny”’
(1919).3 Psychoanalytically informed scholarship in art history, theory, and visual and media
culture proceeds not on the basis of Freud’s ideas about art but almost despite them, body-
swerving them more often than not, in favour of other, thematically unrelated insights and
methodologies suggested in Freud’s writings. The work of Susan Hiller – her art practice in
installations such as From the Freud Museum 1991–6 (Tate T07438; fig.1) and related
projects,4 as well as her teaching and her textual interventions – is in constant dialogue, both
critically and sympathetically, with psychoanalysis. Hiller focuses on the cultural
manifestations of a collective unconscious and also on the ways in which such manifestations
are themselves the target of repression. This essay will discuss the under-explored and possibly
censored relationship between psychoanalytic thought and the occult, but before doing so it
will focus on an intrinsically psychoanalytic dimension of Hiller’s practice that inflects how
audiences relate to works such as From the Freud Museum: that of transference.

Writer and psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche describes transference as the most transferable
feature of psychoanalysis outside the clinic. 5 It is also less well understood than other aspects
of psychoanalytic therapy and yet without transference the specificity of the contribution of
psychoanalysis can be misconstrued. The aggressive retrieval of repressed memories and
wishes by an expert and dispassionate analyst from a passive analysand’s unconscious may
have become a typical representation of Freudian methods (as in the conclusion of Alfred
Hitchock’s 1964 film Marnie, for instance), but such narratives only perpetuate damaging
misunderstandings. As Freud made clear in Wild Analysis (1910),6 for psychoanalytic
treatment to have any chance of success, the analyst and the analysand must take time and
make a mutual investment towards forming a relationship. Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand
Pontalis describe transference as the ‘process of actualisation of unconscious wishes’ during
which the analysand forms an attachment to the analyst that guarantees their commitment to
therapy even when the going gets tough; this constitutes ‘the terrain on which all the basic
problems of a given analysis play themselves out: the establishment, modalities, interpretation
and resolution of the transference are in fact what define the cure’. 7 Similarly, the mining of
the cultural unconscious which drives Hiller’s practice has to be a collaborative operation if it
is to work at all, and a mutual investment of psychic energy from both parties, the artist and
her audiences, is necessary. Far more important than bringing the culturally repressed to light
is the act of taking the viewer to the site of repression and provoking its recognition as such.
The process is not altogether manifest nor primarily intellectual. As the critic Jan Verwoert
has stated:

[W]hat Hiller can be seen to enact in her work is a form of criticality in art that comprises yet
also goes beyond a critique of representation, by proposing terms for the critical engagement
with those forces of transference that partially elude the visible and therefore can only be
accessed in terms of a politics of sentience. 8
One of the few scholarly works to address the relationship between psychoanalysis and the
occult is described by its editor George Devereux as a contribution to psychoanalytic technique
and specifically the problem of transference and countertransference (the analyst’s counter-
attachment to the analysand). More broadly, it also has the potential to address ‘the
sociological problem of human relations in general and of the social “dyad” in particular’. 9 In
some sense the occult is not external to psychoanalysis but located at its very core, within
transference, its most essential feature. It is therefore not surprising that in ‘Psychoanalysis and
Telepathy’ (written in 1921 and published in 1941), Freud found some ‘reciprocal sympathy’
between psychoanalysis and the occult and even the promise of an alliance, since they ‘have
both experienced the same contemptuous and arrogant treatment by official science’; the two
of them stand ‘in opposition to everything that is conventionally restricted, well-established
and generally accepted’. 10 Furthermore, and most strikingly, psychoanalysis has often lent a
helping hand to ‘the common people against the obscurantism of educated opinion’.11 Their
shared denigration, courageous knowledge-seeking and populism puts them on the same side.
Their collaboration is possible not thanks to common beliefs but because, if psi phenomena
such as extrasensory perception (ESP), precognition and psychokinesis were to be taken as
facts, they would then fall under the remit of psychoanalysis and the laws of the unconscious
would be assumed to apply to them. 12 After all, as psychotherapist and writer Nick Totton
notes, ‘[p]sychoanalysis has by necessity an extreme tolerance for the unknown’. 13

Considering the extensiveness of the work he left behind Freud did not formally devote much
attention to this potential ally. Yet it is not lack of interest that accounts for this relative
negligence, but fear of being dismissed and ridiculed himself and of stoking the ‘contemptuous
and arrogant treatment’ of psychoanalysis by the psychiatric establishment. In a 1926 letter to
his friend and fellow psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, who openly discouraged him from pursuing
his interests in the paranormal, Freud responded facetiously but revealingly, clustering together
personal issues which are however inherently political: ‘My adherence to telepathy is my
private affair, like my Jewishness, my passion for smoking, and other things, and the theme of
telepathy – inessential for psychoanalysis.’14 Jones took this statement with more than a pinch
of salt and in his biography of Freud cites the latter’s correspondence with psychical researcher
Hereward Carrington in which Freud reportedly confessed: ‘If I had my life to live over again I
should have devoted myself to psychical research rather than psychoanalysis.’ 15 Freud
subsequently denied ever having made this statement, which Jones interpreted as classic
repression: ‘In the eight years that had passed he had blotted out the memory of that very
astonishing and unexpected passage.’ 16 That Jones should find Freud’s statement so ‘very
astonishing and unexpected’, despite Freud’s avowed interest and their ongoing disagreement
on the value of the occult, itself bears the mark of repression.

Freud’s bravery in his acceptance of psychic phenomena as legitimate objects of systematic

investigation did not take him far enough. Here, as in the development of some key
psychoanalytic concepts, his revolution remained unfinished, trumped by biologism – the
interpretation of human life from a purely biological standpoint – and social and scientific
pressures to conform.17 Yet the foundations for some important work had already been laid and
such work has not always (nor, perhaps, primarily) been undertaken by psychoanalysts.
Elaborating on Freud’s own characterisation of the cultural impact of his work in his lecture ‘A
Difficulty in the Path of Psychoanalysis’ (1917), 18 Jerome Bruner located the key intervention
of psychoanalysis in the elimination of long-established discontinuities, including notably that
between the primitive/infantile/archaic and the ‘evolved’/‘civilised’/rational, and that between
mental illness and mental health. 19 The purposeful transgression of boundaries (between
content and context, among the boxes whose contents consist of an accumulation of contexts)
is one of the most important effects of From the Freud Museum and Hiller’s work in general,
as has been argued elsewhere in this In Focus project. 20 Established theories and codes tend to
defend the lines that multidisciplinary, scripto-visual conceptualist art finds easier to cross. As
Hiller notes, although the distinction between rationalism and irrationalism may have been
diversely and successfully challenged in both cultural and scientific practice, we remain
‘linguistically committed’ to it.

Fig.2
Susan Hiller
Homage to Joseph Beuys 1969– (ongoing)

On a studio visit some years ago, I observed Susan Hiller meticulously cleaning dozens of
antique bottles of various shapes and sizes, for possible use in Homage to Joseph
Beuys (collection of the artist; fig.2), an ongoing work begun in 1969 that consists of a
growing collection of labelled bottles filled with water sourced from holy wells and displayed
in a felt-lined recycled cabinet alongside felt squares. I thoughtlessly joked that I would be
tempted to fill the bottles from the tap, were I in the artist’s shoes, but was immediately
assured that adequate deposits of the holy waters were available and would be used for the
work. According to gallerist Andreas Leventis, Homage to Joseph Beuys ‘simultaneously
honour[s] and scrutinise[s] the ways in which [Beuys] attributed symbolic use to matter-of-fact
materials, sacramentalised everyday activities and claimed to store up energy in ordinary
objects.’22 Yet this difficult balancing of honouring and scrutiny does not necessitate or justify
the trouble of sourcing and storing the water samples. The bottle labels are not merely
signifiers but also accurate and honest descriptions of each bottle’s contents across the
different works in which such bottles have been used, including From the Freud Museum. Nor
is their symbolic value limited to Beuys or the paradigm of the artist-shaman, but shared, to
different degrees and intensities, among wide communities beyond the art world. There are
numerous photographs of the artist collecting water from the holy wells herself: among them
from the spring of Lethe in Greece in 1990 and from Doon Well in Ireland the following
year.23 Correspondence in 2000 between the artist and Linda Kaye, the Tate conservator
of From the Freud Museum, confirms the authenticity of the waters’ sources. Two years after
Tate’s purchase of the work lichen started to appear in the corked and wax-sealed bottles of
some of the boxes, including 011 Eaux-de-vie/spirits (annotated, 1993) (fig.3) and 033
Vision/viz’hun (clarified, 1994), which needed to be cleaned as they had to remain enticing,
like the ‘Drink Me’ bottles from Alice in Wonderland.24 The artist offered to undertake the
water replacement herself, this time with sterilised samples from her personal supplies.

Another issue that cropped up in the conservation report of 2000 related to the devotional light
bulbs with filaments in the shape of religious symbols in 043 Illumination/enlightenment
(situated, 1995), which darkened due to accelerated carbon build-up in the high temperature of
the vitrine interior. Tate ended up purchasing Hiller’s personal stock as the light bulbs were
increasingly difficult to come by. A side-effect of the conservation work in this case is to chart
the changing material supports of religious rituals and observance, as well as consumer culture
more broadly: when Hiller included these devotional light bulbs in the work in the mid-1990s,
incandescent bulbs were still the norm and devotional versions with shaped
filaments were not hard to source on the high street, particularly in an urban
capital as diverse as London.

Fig.3
Susan Hiller
From the Freud Museum, box 011 Eaux-de-vie/spirits (annotated, 1993)
Fig.4
Susan Hiller
Psi Girls 1999

The artist’s insistence not only on naming the holy wells on the bottles’ labels, but ensuring the
authenticity of each water sample, deserves exploration. Is Hiller a believer? Could she or
anyone believe in the powers of all of these diverse holy wells, which criss-cross and override
different established religions and realms of spirituality? These, it turns out, are not the most
apposite questions to ask. Hiller’s respect for spirituality and its manifestations is indicative of
her artistic interest in the culturally repressed and intellectually maligned and should be
understood in profoundly political terms. For instance, in Psi Girls 1999 (Tate T12447; fig.4),
a video installation of five screens showing scenes from feature films in which girls display
telekinetic powers, Hiller creates an immersive and ambiguous spectacle, suggestive of the
widespread cultural fear of young womanhood and its disruptive potential. The soundtrack
from each scene has been removed and replaced with a recording of the Gospel Choir of
Canon’s Cathedral, Charlotte, North Carolina, consisting of handclaps and non-verbal singing.
The added soundtrack simultaneously enhances the eerie quality of the sourced and
manipulated scenes and seems to be cheering the girls on, in feminist celebration of their
powers and the still unmined potential of their talents. Hiller’s Draw Together 1972, a mail art
project inspired by experiments into ESP, referenced the telepathic investigations of Upton and
Mary Craig Sinclair, whose sustained interest in direct mind-to-mind communication was
entirely concurrent with their commitment to socialism. 25

Political radicalism and spiritualism have historically been closer collaborators than
psychoanalysis and the occult. As Hiller observes: ‘The spiritualist movement in particular
made visible unacknowledged issues of gender and class relations, and, in fact, most of these
otherwise varied groupings enabled women to take leadership roles and develop very public
profiles.’26 When invited by an art magazine to write about what she had been reading, one of
the books Hiller chose was Independent Spirits: Spiritualism and English Plebeians, 1850–
1910 by Logie Barrow,27 which charts the history and debates of ‘working class empiricism’
and working-class attitudes towards science, religion, education and politics that, in Hiller’s
words, ‘combined to create a complex, radical, visionary version of socialism’. 28 Among the
reasons why spiritualism survived the secularism of left-wing movements, Barrow cites the
‘plebeian concern to assert or retain control over one’s life’ and the right to self-
education,29 especially in a country where social inequalities are so obviously sustained and
reinforced through controlling access to educational institutions.
 Fig.5
Susan Hiller
From the Freud Museum, box 003
Panacea/cure (filed, 1991)

In From the Freud Museum, box 003

Panacea/cure (filed, 1991) (fig.5) focuses on
the eighteenth-century mystic Joanna
Southcott, a farmer’s daughter who acquired
a large following thanks to her prophecies
and her alleged pregnancy with the new
Messiah at the age of sixty-four. In 1919
some of her followers formed the Panacea
Society, according to whom Southcott had
left a sealed box of writings to be ritually
opened by a public convocation of all
twenty-four bishops of England and Wales.
The box is believed to contain a panacea, a
universal cure that would revoke the sin of
Eve and whose opening would usher in a
new order. The bishops refused to gather together and open the box, despite repeated
invocations by the Panacea Society, who took out annual newspaper advertisements urging
them to do so up until the 1990s. Hiller’s box includes a copy of one such advertisement on the
inside of its lid, alongside a biography of Southcott annotated and ‘extended’ by the artist, who
added to it a bunch of dried flowers which she picked at Southcott’s grave in London. Hiller
originally ‘collected’ the fragments of Southcott’s story when she was researching paranormal
pregnancy for 10 Months 1977–9 (Moderna Museet, Stockholm), a series of ten composite
photographs and texts exploring the implications of human reproduction for female
subjectivity. Like Southcott’s pregnancy, the promise of her boxed prophecies never came to
fruition: according to Hiller, ‘The moment of opening the box, of disclosing its revelation and
(perhaps) bringing a new world into being, remains in abeyance, maybe forever.’ 30 Yet the
legend of the farmer’s daughter-prophetess lives on in one of Hiller’s boxes, to be
(re)discovered by each viewer.

The unanswered call of Joanna Southcott and her followers, commemorated in and perpetually
disseminated through From the Freud Museum, captures something essential in this work and
Hiller’s practice in all its manifestations: ‘an extreme tolerance for the unknown’ 31 and the
unknowable; an unflinching commitment to unsettling the known; and a defiantly ‘reciprocal
sympathy’ with all those who dare question ‘the obscurantism of educated opinion’. 32 From the
Freud Museum releases Freud’s contested legacies from the clinic, the museum and the gallery
into sites of cultural and social possibility, where the unconscious activates a visionary politics.
 Psychoanalytic Theory of Art and Literature

Read this article to learn about the psychoanalytic theory of art and literature:
In the words of Sandar Lorand “Once there was a man, who set out to seek a lost she ass, and
found instead a kingdom. Once a neurologist set out to cure his neurotic patients, but enriched
the society with his findings, psychological, social as well as biological.”

Freud, a revolutionary, the great doctor of human mind, the preacher of psychoanalysis, did not
only study the minds of neurologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychotics, but
philosophers, writers, poets. Strangely enough, he did not leave any stone untouched.

Being a great intuitive teacher of mankind, by his ingenious and deep insight he realised that
wherever man goes and wherever he stays, certain kinds of human conflicts are inevitable to
prevail. Thus, Freud also realised that man’s feelings and emotions, thoughts and wishes, joys
and sorrows, frustrations and disappointments are likely to cloud every bit of his expression
whether creative or destructive.

This pregnant idea of Freud motivated him to give a glance at the creative work of writers, poets
and artists and analyse their unconscious motives. Freud already applied psychoanalysis to
economics, politics and religion. But when he turned forward to apply psychoanalysis to art and
literature, it created a great stir and tension among the artists and literates who were not ready to
recognise their unconscious motivation and tabooed feelings. However, some held it to be quite
illuminating.

In-spite of the criticisms from several quarters, Freud boldly marched forward with his work and
he had never second thoughts to look back. His contributions to art and literature thoroughly
began with the publication of ‘Leornado Vensi’.

Freud’s analysis of art and literature depicts that such activities, creative or re-creative, provide
considerable relief from tension by a discharge of energy through socially acceptable channels.
Such artistic and literacy activities offer opportunities for sublimation of impulses of various
kinds.

Psychoanalytic observation does not explain why one is gifted with art and not the other; but its
business is to explain, why an individual turns to art and literature. Childhood experiences,
fantasies and day dreams instead of being expressed in an un-channelized manner are expressed
through art and literature. This is known as sublimation.

The child sometimes, instead of expressing his desire in action may express it in a story or
poetry. By this he gains control over his traumatic experience and moreover, it brings enjoyment
satisfying the need for self expression. A day dream or wishful thinking might be depicted in a
novel which involves all the fantasies, wishes and unfulfilled desires. Whenever life experiences
induce frustration, they pen such feelings and disappointments in their creative work.
Literature, beyond doubt is the mirror of life. The unconscious motives, feelings and emotions,
joys and sorrows, frustrations and stresses and strains of life are depicted in the literary or
creative work. Poets and writers unconsciously project their motives, wishes and fantasies thus
giving a free expression to their repressed and suppressed urges and wishes.

It was, of course, not Freud who introduced unconscious motives to art and literature.
Shakespeare, for instance, did not know a bit of psychology. But in his plays like Hamlet,
Othello we find the classical oedipus tragedy, castration anxiety, repression, homosexuality and
what not.

These are depicted very subtly through his poetic genius. In Hamlet repression has made a
considerable progress. Hamlet cannot love Ophelia because he has mother fixation. According to
Freud’s in-genius interpretation Hamlet cannot revenge his father, cannot fulfill the Ghost’s
command to kill his step father; because murder of his father was a deed which Hamlet long
harboured in his unconsciousness. He hesitates and hesitates until it is too late and Hamlet lies
dead on the stage.

In many art and literature latent homosexuality is also revealed. Novelists and playwrights,
sometimes present characters where many men value their best friend more than their wife.
Psychoanalysis also reveals the narcissistic hidden core in elements of literature. Women of
destructive beauty like Helen of Troy, Delilah, Cleopatra etc. represent the dangerous women,
the antisocial, amoral, sterile and of eternal youth. Emile Zola’s Nana or Shakespeare Cressida
all are narcissistic women. Passive and exhibitionistic tendencies are also found in Nana. It is
therefore obvious that sex was there long ago, but it required only a Freud to bring it to limelight.

Moreover, many French novelists like Marshall, Maupassant etc. have dealt with ambivalence,
and castration anxiety. In D.H. Lawrence’s “Sons and Lovers”, we find a beautiful depiction of
Oedipus complex and many other emotional complexes.

Psychoanalysis, more than any other form of psychology perceives that art is deeply rooted in the
unconscious depth of the artist. What a man has experienced earlier, becomes not only the
content of his dreams, but of his creative work as well. Shelley’s secret relationship with men is
well evident in his writings.

In addition to the novels and dramas, analysis of the famous ancient mythologies indicates that
the unconscious motivation, wishes and desires are expressed symbolically in their creative
work. Freud thus found that art and literature are not free from the scope of psychoanalysis
because art and literature sufficiently deal with the deeper aspects of human life.

Freud recognised a very significant factor in art and literature which is called dream work. A
piece of art is not only the symbol of one’s unconscious motives, but also the expression of many
socially undesirable wishes and fantasies just like dream.

Thus Sandar Lorand comments “Freud recognises the primary processes in art and literature like
dream and delusion, that process in which many thoughts are condensed into one sign, in which
emotions become mobile, metaphorical expressions retain literal meaning and dangerous and
immoral is disguised in symbols.”

While in dreams, the manifest content aims at concealing the latent thought of the dream, in
artistic creation the ego function has the additional goal of moulding thoughts into a form which
will be understood. In art and literature, in other words, we find a corroborator of dream work.
Like the repressed unsatisfied and unconscious desires are expressed in dreams, similarly, the
unsatisfied wishes and rejected feelings are pened in art and literature through various symbols,
puns, humours and the like. Just as dream is sad to be the gateway to unconscious, similarly art
and literature can be called to be the royal road to the unconscious mind of the artist or poet.

Freud’s interpretation of art and literature psychologically sounds quite reasonable. He shows a
comparison between art and literature and dream work which are in many respects quite
identical. Freud has pointed out that all the products of creativity are symbols of underlying
conflicts. It is the ego of the artist which has the capacity to give expression to unsatisfied
desires. Underlying all these the inner conflict of the artist is hidden. Though literature differs
from person to person, everyone has an underlying motive behind his creation.

Through identification with the character of the novel or drama the creator tries to express his
own wishes and conflicts in symbolic forms. So it has been said that most of the artists and
writers are neurotics. Even if the creator soars high in his imagination, builds castles in the air,
yet like a neurotic, he has to keep touch with the reality where imagination and day dreams have
but little value.

Thus, unlike a psychotic, he is a man of the real world, doing his business alright, still floating
high in imagination deep down the level of consciousness. Almost all people meet frustration.
From them a few become neurotic expressing their unsatisfied desire and emotional conflicts in
an undesirable, socially unacceptable manner.

They become the curse of the society, they are antisocial or mentally ill persons. But there are
also some who have the inherent capacity to express their feelings, dejected, suppressed and
coloured with stresses, and strains of life in art and literature.

The main purpose of psychoanalysis here is therefore to study the underlying unconscious
motive of the artist and find out what it is that compels the artist to express himself in this
manner. Analysis of the contemporary feature of art and literature from a psychoanalytic point of
view indicates the angry rejection of the world. The poets, writers and artists by and large, are in
revolt with the things that exist in the world to-day. Thus Elliot has remarked, ‘This is the way,
the world goes, this is the way, the world goes, not with a bang but a whimper”.

Such dissatisfaction with the modern life is also found in symbolism and in impressionism.
Though the modem writer has rejected the world, he sometimes tries to capture the reality just
like the Schizophrenic patient who tries to capture and get back to the rejected world.

There is a sharp contrast between art and literature of renaissance and modern age. Current age is
a period of great anxiety and frustration. All around there is aggression, sorrow, depression and
pathos. Most of the creative works to-day are either pessimistically depicted or aggressively
done. Even they are depicted more pathetically, more aggressively than what is real, what is
really found.

But why there is such angry rejection of the world? This is most probably because of the
disorganisation of the ego of the members of the society and particularly of those who write or
paint. It may be due to some traumatic experiences; some sense of insecurity and rude shock.
Man has gone to the extent of showing that he is not as gentle and kind as he appears from the
surface. In fact, man is quite savage and aggressive. The strength of the superego has reduced
because of the rejection of old values and beliefs, and hence the id tendencies have got a free
flow in literature.

The reason why some works of art and literature have received universal appeal is that they deal
with common human conflicts expressed in a symbolic manner. The psychoanalytic theory of art
and literature of Freud, hence has a widespread significance. Since art and literature have been
created by man, here the basic human conflicts get full-fledged expression.

Though some critics feel that Freud has gone beyond limit by turning his attention to art and
literature, the real significance of art and literature would not have come to the surface if Freud
would not have made people conscious about the symbolic representations of the creators which
reflect their basic conflicts and emotions.

Analysis of art and literature also helps in treating mental illness, particularly neuroses. Freud,
really deserves tremendous credit for his deep insight into the field of art and literature and clear
cut analysis of the unconscious motives.
Readings on Deconstruction

DECONSTRUCTION

Deconstruction is a form of criticism first used by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the
1970s which asserts that there is not one single intrinsic meaning to be found in a work, but
rather many, and often these can be conflicting.

Joseph Kosuth
Clock (One and Five), English/Latin Version 1965
Tate

A deconstructive approach to criticism involves discovering, recognising and understanding

the underlying and unspoken and implicit assumptions, ideas and frameworks of cultural forms
such as works of art.

In Derrida’s book La Vérité en peinture (1978) he uses the example of Vincent van Gogh’s
painting Old Shoes with Laces, arguing that we can never be sure whose shoes are depicted in
the work, making a concrete analysis of the painting difficult.

Since Derrida’s assertions in the 1970s, the notion of deconstruction has been a dominating
influence on many writers and conceptual artists.
 The Art of Deconstruction

How can you go from being a consumer of great work to being someone who makes it? How do
you learn to break anything down and understand how it works so you can apply it to your own
work or business?

I’ve been a creative professional for over 15 years working in branding, advertising, and design.
With every project I’ve been a part of, I’m presented with new challenges I’ve never faced
before. Needless to say, creative problem-solving has been the most common theme of my
career.

One of the most valuable approaches to my work has been The Art of Deconstruction. This
method helps me rapidly develop new skills and techniques to meet the demand of just about
anything; like this interactive music video I created for Coldplay, or this viral video I made on
YouTube that’s amassed over 3 million views.

I share the above two examples not to flex, but to tell you that I didn’t have the tools or
knowledge before I started those projects. Instead, I had a meticulous approach to dissecting
similar examples out there and applying what I learned directly to my work.

In short: I figured it out

My goal in this article is to share this process with you so you can develop your analytical lens to
break down, understand, and learn from the success of others before you.

Here is the Art of Deconstruction in 5 Steps

1. Identify the goal

2. Research the subject and platform
3. Deconstruct, Analyze, & Understand
4. Emulate & Apply
5. Improve Upon
1. Identify Your Goal

What do you want to do? It’s very important to identify your goal before you start anything. (I
talk all about this in another article.) This will help you hyper-focus, save time, and give you a
clear filter to help you evaluate your efforts

Here are a Few Examples of Goals:

• Take great portrait photos

• Paint like an Impressionist

• Remodel my home office

• Give a presentation

2. Research

Find the top performers or best examples on a subject and particular platform.

• Who else has done this before?

• What do you like?

• What does everyone else like?

• What metrics are valuable to measure?

Once you’ve done a deep dive and can pick up on trends and patterns, select the cream of the
crop. Pick the top 3-5 examples and include at least one anomaly—the example that performs as
well as the rest, but breaks the common threads that link the others together. Anomalies will help
to challenge the conclusions you might have from your findings to help you form a better
hypothesis moving forward.

3. Deconstruct, Analyze, & Understand

If you’ve gone to art school, you might be familiar with the “masterwork copy” assignment. You
take a popular piece of art and simply copy it. Stroke by stroke. Color to color. The purpose is to
help students develop their skills quickly by understanding how the masters made such great
pieces of art. Through this process, they train their eyes on how to see and their hands how to
make. Students add new tools to their toolbox as they solve the challenges of their own work.
Whenever I Seek To Understand The Success Of Something, I Ask Myself A Few Questions:

• What are the main components and ingredients that make this up?

• What specific attributes make it effective?

• How did the person make it?

• How would you go about making that?

If We Were To Apply This Line Of Questioning To A Van Gogh Painting, You Might Analyze
It This Way:

• The main components that make this up: the subject, Van Gogh, slightly off-center of the
frame. He’s facing us 3/4 and is lit with a single key light.

• What makes it effective (beautiful): its organized rhythmic brush strokes, subtle muted
split-complementary color palette, and high contrast at its focal point: his eyes and
expression.

• How did he make it: Using oil paints, Van Gogh created his self-portrait using repeating
patterns of brushstrokes that follow the contours of the shapes of the subject.

Become A Reverse Engineer

Being able to reverse engineer something is one of the most effective ways to understand how
great things are made and why they work. This is The Art of Deconstruction and can be applied
to anything:

•A dish from a Michelin star restaurant can be broken down into raw ingredients,
seasoning, and cooking techniques.

• When studying a successful business, you can research their industry, the need they fill
for their consumers, and their perceived brand in the marketplace.

• With a beautiful website, you can take note of the colors, typography, and hierarchy. You
can even open the page source, and see every line of code it took to build it.

• When watching a film, you can break down the story arc, its characters, themes,
cinematography, visual effects, and editing style.
 • Forcomedy, you can analyze a standup artist’s jokes: their stories, cadence, and method
of delivery.

Self-Portrait, September
1889. Musée d’Orsay,
Paris via Wikipedia.

4. Emulate & Apply

When you can decode the

ingredients that makeup
something great, you
demystify its genius into
elements you can
understand. From there, you can begin to emulate and adopt these pieces into your own work.

To fully understand how something works, try to copy it. Just like the Masterwork assignment I
mentioned, use each ingredient and follow each step until you’ve recreated one part or all of the
work you’re studying. Based on the learning retention pyramid, this method of active learning
will help you cement the information for you to use later.

“Isn’t that stealing?” – Every Creative Person

At this point, some of you might feel a little apprehensive towards this. Watch “Everything is a
Remix”, then I’ll meet you back here.

5. Improve Upon

Don’t just take from culture; contribute to it. The last step of this process is to apply your
newfound knowledge towards the goal you’ve identified in step 1. Take the most relevant
elements of the best things you’ve consumed and improve them. Combine them together. Make
something new built off of what came before you.
Here Are A Couple Of Ways To Do That:

• Add your POV. What’s your unique perspective on the subject matter? What can you add
to the conversation?

• Remix it. “This meets that”. “It’s the Uber for…”

• Go more in-depth. If you’ve found an article that’s 2000 words on how to tidy up, then
write an article that’s 5000 words and get into the nuances of organizing and color-
coding your shirts.

• Find the white space. What aren’t they doing?

Prove It. Show Me.

At the beginning of this article, I shared a link to a video I made earlier in the year. It’s a really
simple desk tour video where I walk people through my home office. The video was the third
piece of content I released on my channel when I had just a few hundred subscribers. Since
uploading, it’s earned over 3 million views, 44,000 subscribers, and surpassed every expectation
I could have set for it.

I hope this breakdown of The Art of Deconstruction was helpful for you. While this process can
greatly improve the quality of your work, there’s no guarantee of success. You still have to pray
to the algorithm gods for that—just kidding.

In all seriousness, I’ve used this approach throughout my life towards so many things:
commercials, content, branding, business, cooking, fitness, and beyond. I hope that by applying
these steps into your life and creative process, you can make great work!

Here’s How I Made This Video Using The Art Of Deconstruction:

1. Identify the goal: My goal was to clean up my messy workspace, and I was inspired to
document the process.

2. Research the subject and platform: I started to look for ideas on YouTube and Pinterest and
found that there was a whole community of people who openly shared their spaces and ideas
around interior design. Upon discovering a well of great videos on YouTube, I decided that I
could probably make own.
3. Deconstruct, Analyze, & Understand: In my research, I found dozens of examples that
inspired me. I took the chill vibes and practical information of David Zhang’s videos. I looked to
the amazing storytelling and cinematography of Matt D’Vella, and formed a script similar to his
writing style. The practical organization of Casey Neistat’s New York studio helped me sort my
gear, while I fell in love with the dark grey aesthetic of Becki & Chris’ living spaces. I realized
that with much of this content, the ones that performed well all showcased components of DIY
building and used very affordable (IKEA) furniture.

4. Emulate & Apply: With all the pieces of new information and examples I gathered, I began
the process of designing my home office and crafting a video around it. I took all the best
qualities that I liked from my research and applied them to my work. I also took into
consideration all of the keywords and tags used to describe all of the popular videos in this space.
Given that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, I wanted to optimize my
video’s performance in search.

5. Improve Upon: I took the “remix” approach and applied all the best parts of the content I
admired. I also found some “white space” in the genre of desk tours. Outside of this video
from Chari Marie TV, there weren’t many videos that were created for or by designers. I decided
to appeal to that niche when crafting my video and explaining how I organized my space.

I also wanted to “go more in-depth” because I realized that outside of YouTube, there weren’t
many other resources covering the desk tour space. So I wrote a companion article to the video
and created a page on Kit, all to help with Google rankings.
 Deconstructivism in Art: Theory & Characteristics

What Is Deconstructivism?
What do you think about the building in the picture below?

It seems like the walls are wrapped around each other, doesn't it? The structure is impressive,
and confusing, and breaks with what we often think of as architecture - and such an uncommon
building houses a mental health institution. That is deconstructivism, challenging of tradition and
often controversial.
Deconstructivism is an artistic movement that started in architecture by the end of the 1980s. It
criticizes the rational order, purity, and simplicity of modern design and developed a new
aesthetic based on complex geometries. It's often considered a current of postmodernism.

Deconstructivism Origins
Bernard Tschumi's design for the Parc de la Villette in Paris is a pioneer of deconstructivism.
This large project combined plenty of green open spaces conceived as surfaces, walkways, and
roof structures treated as lines, and red structures scattered on the terrain as dots. The iconic red
structures were designed by transforming (deconstructing) simple cubes into complex forms. The
different spaces allow for many recreational and cultural activities.
The architectonic movement gained exposure with the exhibition 'Deconstructivist Architecture,'
held in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) of New York in 1988. It was not meant to establish
a new style, but it presented and grouped the outstanding work of several architects who had
approached architecture in a similar way and had produced somewhat comparable designs.
However, some of these architects have rejected their work being labeled, and each of them has
their own design process.
There are likely theoretical influences on the movement. The philosophical critiques of Jacques
Derrida, known as deconstruction, are thought to have influenced the development of
deconstructivism. His analysis questions traditional models of thought and, among other things,
proposes a duality in which words have meaning only because they contrast with other words,
making the task of deconstruction to find and overturn those oppositions. For the artist, this
means that an accepted 'construction' is necessary for creating and highlighting a deconstructed
counterpart.
The Russian constructivism movement of the early 20th century was also an
influence. Constructivism embraced new technologies and proposed that art was a practice of
social purpose. In its forms, abstraction and simple geometries prevailed. The role of form as the
main artistic matter is also present in deconstructivism, but the approach is significantly
different.

Deconstructivism Characteristics
One of the most defining characteristics of deconstructivism is that it challenges conventional
ideas about form and order, as if the designs tried to liberate architecture and art from
preconceived rules. The forms often disturb our thinking and evoke uncertainty and
unpredictability. Through the controlled chaos, they challenge our own preconceptions.
The designs consist of irregular complex geometries, and the objects are often formed by several
different fragments put together without any apparent order.
In many of the architectural pieces, we see a manipulation of the building's surface (traditionally
thought of as facades) like a skin that is intentionally deformed for creating uncommon forms.
Therefore, folds and twists are common, and they define the exterior shape and interior spaces.
The diagonals, curves, and pointed corners are also frequent elements, while right angles are
almost nonexistent. The designs lack symmetry, which is usually associated with traditional
architecture and, therefore, is intentionally avoided.
The complexity and peculiarity of the forms are often impressive to the viewer. However, they
also raise controversy. While the visual impact is high, the functionality repeatedly seems
compromised in favor of the intricate geometries. The detractors of this movement consider it to
be a pretty pretentious search for forms without any social content.

Deconstructivist Examples
We can find several amazing pieces that evidence the characteristics of this movement. As you
could expect, most examples come from architecture. Others are furniture and small objects
created by those architects commonly associated with deconstructivism.
………….. (di ko makuha yung katuloy, may bayad)
 Deconstruction

Deconstruction, form of philosophical and literary analysis, derived mainly from work begun in
the 1960s by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, that questions the
fundamental conceptual distinctions, or “oppositions,” in Western philosophy through a close
examination of the language and logic of philosophical and literary texts. In the 1970s the term
was applied to work by Derrida, Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, and Barbara Johnson, among other
scholars. In the 1980s it designated more loosely a range of radical theoretical enterprises
in diverse areas of the humanities and social sciences, including—in addition to philosophy and
literature—law, psychoanalysis, architecture, anthropology, theology, feminism, gay and lesbian
studies, political theory, historiography, and film theory. In polemical discussions
about intellectual trends of the late 20th-century, deconstruction was sometimes used
pejoratively to suggest nihilism and frivolous skepticism. In popular usage the term has come to
mean a critical dismantling of tradition and traditional modes of thought.
Deconstruction In Philosophy

The oppositions challenged by deconstruction, which have been inherent in Western philosophy
since the time of the ancient Greeks, are characteristically “binary” and “hierarchical,” involving
a pair of terms in which one member of the pair is assumed to be primary or fundamental, the
other secondary or derivative. Examples include nature and culture, speech and writing, mind
and body, presence and absence, inside and outside, literal and metaphorical, intelligible and
sensible, and form and meaning, among many others. To “deconstruct” an opposition is to
explore the tensions and contradictions between the hierarchical ordering assumed (and
sometimes explicitly asserted) in the text and other aspects of the text’s meaning, especially
those that are indirect or implicit or that rely on figurative or performative uses of language.
Through this analysis, the opposition is shown to be a product, or “construction,” of the text
rather than something given independently of it.

In the writings of the French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example,
society and culture are described as corrupting and oppressive forces that gradually develop out
of an idyllic “state of nature” in which humans exist in self-sufficient and peaceful isolation from
one another. For Rousseau, then, nature is prior to culture. Yet there is another sense in which
culture is certainly prior to nature: the idea of nature is a product of culture, and what counts as
“nature” or “natural” at any given historical moment will vary depending upon the culture of the
time. What this fact shows is not that the terms of the nature/culture opposition should be
inverted—that culture is really prior to nature—but rather that the relation between the terms is
not one-sided and unidirectional, as Rousseau and others had assumed. The point of the
deconstructive analysis is to restructure, or “displace,” the opposition, not simply to reverse it.

For Derrida, the most telling and pervasive opposition is the one that treats writing as secondary
to or derivative of speech. According to this opposition, speech is a more authentic form of
language, because in speech the ideas and intentions of the speaker are immediately “present”
(spoken words, in this idealized picture, directly express what the speaker “has in mind”),
whereas in writing they are more remote or “absent” from the speaker or author and thus more
liable to misunderstanding. As Derrida argues, however, spoken words function as linguistic
signs only to the extent that they can be repeated in different contexts, in the absence of the
speaker who originally utters them. Speech qualifies as language, in other words, only to the
extent that it has characteristics traditionally assigned to writing, such as “absence,” “difference”
(from the original context of utterance), and the possibility of misunderstanding. One indication
of this fact, according to Derrida, is that descriptions of speech in Western philosophy often rely
on examples and metaphors related to writing. In effect, these texts describe speech as a form of
writing, even in cases where writing is explicitly claimed to be secondary to speech. As with the
opposition between nature and culture, however, the point of the deconstructive analysis is not to
show that the terms of the speech/writing opposition should be inverted—that writing is really
prior to speech—nor is it to show that there are no differences between speech and writing.
Rather, it is to displace the opposition so as to show that neither term is primary. For Derrida,
speech and writing are both forms of a more generalized “arche-writing” (archi-écriture),
which encompasses not only all of natural language but any system of representation whatsoever.

The “privileging” of speech over writing is based on what Derrida considers a distorted (though
very pervasive) picture of meaning in natural language, one that identifies the meanings of words
with certain ideas or intentions in the mind of the speaker or author. Derrida’s argument against
this picture is an extension of an insight by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. For
Saussure, the concepts we associate with linguistic signs (their “meanings”) are only arbitrarily
related to reality, in the sense that the ways in which they divide and group the world are not
natural or necessary, reflecting objectively existing categories, but variable (in principle) from
language to language. Hence, meanings can be adequately understood only with reference to the
specific contrasts and differences they display with other, related meanings. For Derrida,
similarly, linguistic meaning is determined by the “play” of differences between words—a play
that is “limitless,” “infinite,” and “indefinite”—and not by an original idea or intention existing
prior to and outside language. Derrida coined the term différance, meaning both a difference and
an act of deferring, to characterize the way in which meaning is created through the play of
differences between words. Because the meaning of a word is always a function of contrasts with
the meanings of other words, and because the meanings of those words are in turn dependent on
contrasts with the meanings of still other words (and so on), it follows that the meaning of a
word is not something that is fully present to us; it is endlessly deferred in an infinitely long
chain of meanings, each of which contains the “traces” of the meanings on which it depends.

Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure, c. 1900.
Derrida contends that the opposition between
speech and writing is a manifestation of the
“logocentrism” of Western culture—i.e., the
general assumption that there is a realm of
“truth” existing prior to and independent of its
representation by linguistic signs. Logocentrism
encourages us to treat linguistic signs as distinct
from and inessential to the phenomena they
represent, rather than as inextricably bound up
with them. The logocentric conception of truth and reality as existing outside language derives in
turn from a deep-seated prejudice in Western philosophy, which Derrida characterizes as the
“metaphysics of presence.” This is the tendency to conceive fundamental philosophical concepts
such as truth, reality, and being in terms of ideas such as presence, essence, identity, and
origin—and in the process to ignore the crucial role of absence and difference.
Deconstruction In Literary Studies

Deconstruction’s reception was coloured by its intellectual predecessors, most

notably structuralism and New Criticism. Beginning in France in the 1950s, the structuralist
movement in anthropology analyzed various cultural phenomena as general systems of “signs”
and attempted to develop “metalanguages” of terms and concepts in which the different sign
systems could be described. Structuralist methods were soon applied to other areas of the social
sciences and humanities, including literary studies. Deconstruction offered a powerful critique of
the possibility of creating detached, scientific metalanguages and was thus categorized (along
with kindred efforts) as “post-structuralist.” Anglo-American New Criticism sought to
understand verbal works of art (especially poetry) as complex constructions made up of different
and contrasting levels of literal and nonliteral meanings, and it emphasized the role
of paradox and irony in these artifacts. Deconstructive readings, in contrast, treated works of art
not as the harmonious fusion of literal and figurative meanings but as instances of the intractable
conflicts between meanings of different types. They generally examined the individual work not
as a self-contained artifact but as a product of relations with other texts or discourses, literary and
nonliterary. Finally, these readings placed special emphasis on the ways in which the works
themselves offered implicit critiques of the categories that critics used to analyze them. In the
United States in the 1970s and ’80s, deconstruction played a major role in the animation and
transformation of literary studies by literary theory (often referred to simply as “theory”), which
was concerned with questions about the nature of language, the production of meaning, and the
relationship between literature and the numerous discourses that structure human experience and
its histories.

Deconstruction In The Social Sciences And The Arts

Deconstruction’s influence widened to include a variety of other disciplines. In psychoanalysis,

deconstructive readings of texts by Sigmund Freud and others drew attention to the role of
language in the formation of the psyche; showed how psychoanalytic case studies are shaped by
the kinds of psychic mechanisms that they purport to analyze (thus, Freud’s writings are
themselves organized by processes of repression, condensation, and displacement); and
questioned the logocentric presuppositions of psychoanalytic theory. Some strands
of feminist thinking engaged in a deconstruction of the opposition between “man” and “woman”
and critiqued essentialist notions of gender and sexual identity. The work of Judith Butler, for
example, challenged the claim that feminist politics requires a distinct identity for women.
Arguing that identity is the product or result of action rather than the source of it, they embraced
a performative concept of identity modeled on the way in which linguistic acts (such as
promising) work to bring into being the entities (the promise) to which they refer. This
perspective was influential in gay and lesbian studies, or “queer theory,” as the academic avant-
garde linked to movements of gay liberation styled itself.

In the United States, the Critical Legal Studies movement applied deconstruction to legal writing
in an effort to reveal conflicts between principles and counterprinciples in legal theory. The
movement explored fundamental oppositions such as public and private, essence and accident,
and substance and form. In anthropology, deconstruction contributed to an increased awareness
of the role that anthropological field-workers play in shaping, rather than merely describing, the
situations they report on and to a greater concern about the discipline’s historical connections to
colonialism.

Finally, the influence of deconstruction spread beyond the humanities and social sciences to the
arts and architecture. Combining deconstruction’s interest in tension and oppositions with the
design vocabulary of Russian constructivism, deconstructivist architects such as Frank
Gehry challenged the functionalist aesthetic of modern architecture through designs using radical
geometries, irregular forms, and complex, dynamic constructions.

Influence And Criticism

In all the fields it influenced, deconstruction called attention to rhetorical and performative
aspects of language use, and it encouraged scholars to consider not only what a text says but also
the relationship—and potential conflict—between what a text says and what it “does.” In various
disciplines, deconstruction also prompted an exploration of fundamental oppositions and critical
terms and a reexamination of ultimate goals. Most generally, deconstruction joined with other
strands of poststructural and postmodern thinking to inspire a suspicion of established
intellectual categories and a skepticism about the possibility of objectivity. Consequently,
its diffusion was met with a sizeable body of opposition. Some philosophers, especially those in
the Anglo-American tradition, dismissed it as obscurantist wordplay whose major claims, when
intelligible, were either trivial or false. Others accused it of being ahistorical and apolitical. Still
others regarded it as a nihilistic endorsement of radical epistemic relativism. Despite such
attacks, deconstruction has had an enormous impact on a variety of intellectual enterprises.