Semiotics Examples: Images of Nature

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Semiotics Examples Images of Nature

• In Some Landscape
• Paintings Ads

Source email ?????????
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Outline

• Two paintings before the 19th century

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Cabbage, melon and cucumber by Juan Cotán 1602

• (Ref. 1. textbook 29)
• How are natural objects of food presented? Do
  they look real?

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Cabbage, melon and cucumber by Juan Cotán 1602
--both near and far away

• (Ref. http//www.kfki.hu/arthp/html/s/sanchez/c
  otan/stillife.html )
• Near . . . on the parapet the slice of melon
  and the cucumber are placed so that they jut over
  slightly and thereby they seem to be almost
  within reach - a trompe l'oeil effect that was
  particularly popular in Netherlandish painting in
  the 17th century.
• Distanced the isolation of each object,
  heightened further by the black background, makes
  each of them seem extremely artificial and lends
  them a monumental, almost sculptural gravity. The
  centre of the picture is empty and the
  arrangement seems coincidental the dimension of
  the painted picture is denied. The disturbing
  evocation of the painted picture is the main
  theme.

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Jean Honore Fragonard The Swing (1767)

• How are the characters related to each other?
  And to the garden background?

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19th Century Nature as the Rustic and the
Sublime --

• Symbolizing ones growth or that of the empire
• Nature as the Rustic John Constable and Homan
  Hunt Jack Turner (1)
• Nature as Sublime Jack Turner (1)
• Nature in decline Holman Hunt

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John ConstableThe Cornfield 1826

• Apparently realistic only, but actually not about
  harvest
• e.g. sheep not sheared dog in the wrong
  direction only two workers
• The actual focus the boy (Cf. ???)

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John ConstableThe Cornfield 1826

• Popular among middle-class collectors of prints
• collected in English Landscape Scenery with the
  line Respiciens rura, laremque suum (Ovid,
  ???????)

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John ConstableThe Valley Farm 1835

• The New Gallery of British Art 1884???????????????
  ?????????The Valley Farm ????????,?????????????
  ,????????????????
• (Cf. ????

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Joseph Turner Snow Storm Hannibal Crossing
the Alps (1812)

• http//saucyjack.phys.columbia.edu/sjk/catalog/tur
  ner_hannibal.jpg

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Turner Joseph Crossing the brook

• Two girls crossing the brook
• The bridge as a connection between nature and
  civilization
• The cave darkness or the maternal space in
  nature.
• Direction of progress ?

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William Holman Hunt (as a contrast)

Our English Coasts (later renamed the painting
"Strayed Sheep")
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A Contrast to Our English Coasts

• Away From The Flock by Damien Hirst from his
  Natural History series, the works involving the
  animals preserved in formaldehyde(??)
• Damien says, "I want to make people feel like
  burgers. I chose a cow because it was banal
• 1994 glass, steel, formaldehyde, lamb (37¾ x 58½
  x 20 in)
• (intro http//dh.ryoshuu.com/biography.html )

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Myth of Nature Gender in Ads

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Three positions in reading a myth or an ad

• 1. producer of advertisement -- focus on an empty
  signifier, let the concept fill the form of the
  myth without ambiguity use a simple system of
  equation, where the signification becomes literal
  again the Negro who salutes French imperiality
• 2. reader of advertisement an inextricable whole
  made of meaning and form, amazed at its
  greatness, absorb its messages willingly.

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Three positions in reading a myth or an ad

• 3. Critic clearly distinguishes the meaning and
  the form, and consequently the distortion which
  the one imposes on the other, I undo the
  signification of the myth, the saluting Negro
  becomes the alibi of French imperiality.

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elements of an ad.

• 1. the slogan (or copy)
• 2. the visual image--with the slogan, it implies
  a story
• 3. supplementary --color, design where the
  product, the words are placed
• colour,
• size and position,
• texture
• celebrity endorsement

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Typical signs in Ads languages ---- examples
from Ways of Seeing

• The romantic use of nature (leaves, trees, water)
  to create a place where innocence can be found.
  (example 1)
• The posed taken up to denote stereotypes of
  women serene mothers (madonna), free wheeling
  secretary (actress, king's mistress), perfect
  hostess (spectator-owner's wife), sex-object
  (Venus, nymph surprised), etc.
• The special sexual emphasis given to women's
  legs.

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Ads languages -- from Ways of Seeing (2)

• The materials particularly used to indicate
  luxury engraved or shining metal, furs, polished
  leather, etc.
• The physical stance of men conveying wealth and
  virility.
• The equation of drinking or car and male success
  and power.
• The man as knight (horseman) become motorist.

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Examples

• Woman and
• Nature carefree,
• open, relaxing
• Supported by the dress,
• Gesture, and, definitely,
• the cigarette.
• Where is the distortion?

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Examples

• What are the signs used? Their connotations?
  Where is the distortion?

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Examples for analysis nature, gender identity

• 3. ???????????
• Sign ????ballet skating red vs. white ice
• 4. ?????????????????Samsung, ??????
• Signs castle, well-ornamented stairway,
  palace-like mansion, evening gown.
• 5. ???????????????

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Key words for Structualist and Semiotic
approaches

• I. Following language as a model
• II. Disclosing the deep/basic structure of a
  text, which is a (combination or selection)
  system of meaning composed of basic elements such
  as

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• -- binaries, or semiotic rectangles,
• -- roles/actant and functions,
• -- mytheme,
• -- narrator- narratee,
• -- signs or signification on different levels
  (signifier and signified).

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Questions

• Reductive? Disregarding meaning, textual
  complexities, or the authors intention?
• De-centering, dehumanizing?
• Do we really think in terms of binaries?

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Extensions and Connections

• How is our social existence modeled after
  language as a system of relations?
• From work to text (textuality) (e.g. Internet
  and the world of ads)
• From identity to system of relations (e.g.
  kinship gender)
• From myth to ideology
• Myth -- the complex system of images and beliefs
  which a society constructs in order to sustain
  and authenticate its sense of being.
• From structuralism/semiotics to
  postmodernism/poststructuralism (e.g.
  deconstruction textual undecidability--
  postmodern self-reflexivity everything is
  representation)

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Assignments for next week

• 1. chap 5

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Reference

• ??? ???? 29 (2000.6)
  6-48?(?????????????????????????,??????????????????