Semiotics II - Part 2, Contemporary Art in Context, - Lecture by Juliet MacDonald

Continuing the theme of our study of semiotics, this is the second part of the lecture, which Dr MacDonald commenced last week, into the study of signs and their meaning within contemporary art context.

We discussed the signified and the signifier.
This is the concept vs the material or physical form.

Symbol-for example, letters and text.
ICOM-for example paintings.
Index-footprint within the sand or snow, which means that somebody has been, or has passed by.

The French literary philosopher Roland Barths wrote extensively around the themes of semiotics and semiology.  To him, or language includes pictures, images, art, photography, film, and advertising.  He developed a theory called "myth" which is a second order of semiotics is diagram is as follows.

  

With his concept of semiotics.  He discusses that we have our own "passions" or contexts of certain things through memory.

 It is how this works at the mythical level, which is what Bath's explored.

For example, the Paris "Match" magazine showed a picture on its front cover of a young black boy giving a salute during the 1950s with a title to the magazine of "Les Nuits De L'Armie" (The nights of the Army(?)"... Or is it "Army nights" or is it something else?)...

Bath's was critical of France's colonisation of the North African continent, in particular in Algiers.  Esau, a very ideological significance of this saluting boy.

To further some of the points of the theory that he proposes a number of examples were provided of first-order and second-order significance.

The Guinness advert of the 1950s, with the quotes there are only two things a man cannot resist a one point of Guinness and another pint of Guinness.

Compare this with a much more recent advert from Ben & Jerry's ice cream, which says "with 90% more!"  This is a link an implied increase, which suggests almost double that 90%, of something happening.  It suggests as a fact, but in reality it is nothing, it is meaningless, it is a myth.

Both the images and words "imply"...

Even the type of font is a non-threatening, rounded, easy to read, almost chubby and soft in the example in the Ben & Jerry's advert.  The typography ties together with brand recognition.

In the Ben & Jerry's ice cream advert the background imagery is idealised, cartoon-ified and simplified.  There is no texture, no reality, it is wholesome.  They promote the ideal wholesome pure American value.  Motherhood and apple pie.  "Ben & Jerry's American brand" In reality, this small company of the time, grew into one of the largest ice cream manufacturers in the United States and is now a global operation.  They were bought out by the Unilever company in August 2000.  Since then, the corporate social responsibility machine has gone on overdrive.  What goes on un-said is actually more important.  What could be argued, is that according to Barth's, is that the mythical themes of the "motherhood and apple pie" are just not true...  In the case of Ben & Jerry's, there's been a number of court cases of unfair practices, citing extreme poverty among some of its subcontracted workers, particularly those in Mexico.  The corporate social responsibility of large corporations is quite often a sham for stockholders to invest eithically, - promotional literature that suggests and promotes "fact" about it's CSR, when in fact the opposite may be true.

Artists working in a contemporary field court this "subversion of the message", whereas advertisers create the messages themselves and this keeps them going in a commercial sense.   - Both parties, artists and advertisers are therefore sometimes to be considered at opposite poles of realities, but in truth, neither sits in any kind of true reality.  This is hard for somebody to get their head round, that is, the essence of the false realities that we live in, - in a contemporary and commercial capitalist world.