This document provides an overview of semiotic analysis and key concepts in semiotics. It discusses Ferdinand de Saussure's concept of the sign as consisting of a signifier and signified. It also explains Charles Sanders Peirce's three types of signs: icons, which resemble what they signify; indexes, which are physically connected to what they signify; and symbols, which are socially constructed representations. The document uses several artworks as examples to illustrate how semiotic analysis can help determine different possible meanings that signs and images may communicate depending on their context.

1. Module 6.2
Semiotic Analysis
A r t 1 0 0
U n d e r s t a n d i n g V i s u a l C u l t u r e

2. Ferdinand de Saussure

3. sign
Sign=signifier + signified
Signifier (discrete visual element)
Signified (meaning)

4. signifiers on the left, and possible signifieds on the right.
signifiers signifieds

5. Semiotic analysis is as good a way as any—and perhaps a better way—of
determining meaning.
What does the art REALLY mean?
does it mean what the artist thinks it means?
or what the artist says it means?
or does it mean what it says it mean?

6. How do these insights help
us to understand the
language of visual imagery?
Let’s work with an example: the semiotics of the color red.

7. What does red
mean in this
context?

8. What does red mean in this
context?

9. What does red mean in this
context?
Jessica Alba for Campari
Limited edition calendar, 2009

10. There is no simple equation (signifier (red)=signified (x).
The signified depends in part upon the context in which you
find the signifier.

11. So, what do you think red means in these next examples?

12. Mark Rothko
Untitled, 1960
oil on canvas
56 1/8 x 54 1/8
inches

13. Gerhard Richter, Party, 1963
Oil, nails and cord on canvas and newspaper
72 x 60 inches

14. Charles Saunders PEIRCE (“purse”) (1839-1914)
American thinker, mathematics, science, logic, semiotics
http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/

15. three types of signs
types
icon: represents the
object through some
similarity or
resemblance
index: represents the
object by being a
physical trace of it
symbol: represents the
object by convention
(social agreement)
examples
example of icon: smiley
face, representational
art
example of index:
fingerprint
example of symbol:
pretty much all of
language, in which words
have no necessary

16. explanation of three of Peirce’s sign types

18. index: a type of sign that is physically connected
to its making

19. index: a type of sign physically connected to its making

20. Robert RAUSCHENBERG, Automobile Tire Print, 1953
paint on 20 sheets of paper mounted on fabric, 16 1/2 in. x 264 1/2 inches, SFMOMA,
© Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
use of indexical marks in art

21. Gabriel OROZCO
Chicotes (Whips)
2010
installed at the Tate Modern
use of
indexical
marks in art

24. Christoph NIEMANN, Coffee, New York Times blog, December 2, 2008