Lecture 4: Semiotics

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Week 4: Semiotics


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. 

‘What one must paint is the image of resemblance—if thought is to become visible in the world. ‘        —Rene Magritte

This brings me to another love for Magritte as he uses semiotics in his artworks as well. 

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. 

The use of cloth in his works are very common. It is interpreted as a way where he mourns the death of his mother.


René Magritte
Oil Painting

Another artist that I know that uses semiotics in his artworks (and that I admire) would be Picasso. In Picasso's Guernica, there were many symbols that was used that described and laments the Spanish war. 

Pablo Picasso
Oil on Canvas

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