Lesson Four Notes.

Critical Studies Lesson Four: The Rhetoric of Images.

Saussure: Believed that the sign was a linguistic unit consisting of signifier (sound image) and signified (concept) in visual culture the signifier may be thought of as a physical object, which was been given a meaning.

Pierce: Is interested in how signs represent and relates to an object. Identifies 3 different types of signs icon, index and symbol.
Icon: Relation between sign and object is one of likeliness. Looks like the thing it is supposed to represent.
Index: Casual relations between sign and object. Indexical signs are really                                                                              affected by their objects. Fire alarm would be a signifier of fire or danger. How we pronounce things can alter the meaning of what we’re saying.

Arbitrary: How things have worked out, no particular reason.

Image analysis of a coin:

-Icon of the queen.

-Symbol of monetary value.

-Symbol of Britishness.

-Index of Britain.

-Index of its own usage, age.

-Symbol of monarchy.

-Symbol of power.

Roland Barthes- Denotations/connotations.

Panzani pasta advert analysis: Italian name therefore you are buying into the country, the real deal. Word panzani denotes a range of pasta products but also connotes the general idea of Italianicity. Colours used are red white and green, the colours of the Italian flag meaning the pasta must be more genuine. In the bag there is a lot of other fresh produces which makes us believe that the pasta is just as fresh as the other products there.

Barthes critiqued the possibility that the image might convey a non-coded message (to directly communicate its subject matter) and sought to demonstrate how all the different elements made up the image conspire the produce its meaning.

Robert Hughes, Richard prince, Vacility.

Barthes seems to be suggesting that at the centre of photographic images, where we expect to find the denoted meaning there is an absence, which is filled by rhetoric (persuasive speaking or writing) of associations.

Hughes does not like Warhol’s work, wants there to be more meaning to them.

Rosetta Brookes has identified 3 aspects to his practice.

1. Choice of common place banal imagery.
2. The authenticity of the artists own investment in the images.
3. The silence of his own intentions.

Emptiness.

There is an emptiness that lies at the hearts of prince’s work; he is re photographing the kinds of advertising imagery that Barthes analysed. Barthes associated advertising with persuasive rhetoric an architecture of connotations that generates the message perhaps we can consider prince to be examining the status of the advertising image and the ways in which it is meaningful for us.