EUR €146.40EUR €122.00 excl. VAT
Motifs in Art as Agents of Meaning
Series: - Semiotics, Signs of the Times, Volume: 4
Author:
Departing from a metaphorical comparison by Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti between the underlying principles of drawing and weaving, this book will show how seemingly abstract motifs in their realization already acquire the potential to refer to content. This opens a new perspective on the so-called distinction between ‘abstract’ and ‘representational’ and the extent to which various motifs in art can be regarded as representations. Based on recent insights from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, psychology and semiotics, it will furthermore become clear how the essentially abstract elements of art motifs can set in motion processes of meaning-making and as such function as agents, which implicitly emphasize that abstraction exactly shows how representation works.
Dr. Arthur Crucq, Ph.D. (2018) is Assistant Professor in art history at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. He publishes on representation, style and reception amongst which an eye-tracking study on linear perspective in the Journal of Eye Movement Research (2021).
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Tables
1 Introducing Drawing and Weaving as Semiotic Processes
1 Abstract and Representational in Relation to Form
2 Meaning and Interpretation
3 Towards an Anthropological-Semiotic Inspired Approach
4 The Structure of the Argument
2 On the Relation between the Agent and the Index
1 Representation as a Philosophical Problem
2 Pictures as Representations
3 The ‘Problem’ Around Mimesis
4 Mimetic Behaviour
5 Signs within Representational Contexts
6 Signs in Relation to Objects
7 Material Indexes and Abduction
8 Agent and Intention
9 Agent and Agency
10 Material Indexes as Agents
11 Affective, Energetic, and Representational Interpretants
12 Representational Competence and Agency
13 To Draw Inferences from Graphic Signs about Agents
3 Naturalistic, Stylistic, and Abstract Indexes
1 Representation in the Decorative Arts
2 The Motif as the Recursive Element of a Decorative Pattern
3 Naturalistic and Stylized Motifs
4 Plant and Flower Motifs
5 Motifs of Animals and Human Beings
6 Motifs from Objects and Architecture
7 Abstract Geometrical Motifs
8 The Building Block of Geometric Motifs
9 The Regular Arrangement
10 Patterns and Complexity
11 Patterns as Agents: Apotropaic Patterns
12 Patterns as Semiosis
4 About Points and Lines: from Patterns to Images to Pictures
1 Linear Perspective, Making Patterns, and Pattern Recognition
2 Practical Geometry
3 The Plane and the Illusion of Depth
4 How Shapes and Patterns Can Represent
5 Two-Dimensional Grid Patterns: Floors and Maps
6 The Practice of Surveying
7 Optics, Geometry, and the Vanishing Point
8 Perception and Representation
9 Pattern Recognition as a Universal Disposition
5 About Threads and Knots: the Agency of the Surface Dressing
1 Semper Contextualized
2 Industrialization
3 Art’s Analogy with Nature
4 The Surface as a Dressing
5 Semper and Motifs
6 Moments of Configuration
7 The Role of Textiles
8 From Contour to Line (through Dots), to Thread, to Knot
9 From Threads to Surface (through Knots)
10 Patterns and Imposing Order
11 Masking and Dressing
12 A Representational Competence Animal
6 Connecting the Threads
1 Interdisciplinary Threads
2 The Agency of the Material Index
3 Aristippus’s Cry
Bibliography
Encyclopaedias of Ornament (A Selection)
Literature
Index
List of Figures and Tables
1 Introducing Drawing and Weaving as Semiotic Processes
1 Abstract and Representational in Relation to Form
2 Meaning and Interpretation
3 Towards an Anthropological-Semiotic Inspired Approach
4 The Structure of the Argument
2 On the Relation between the Agent and the Index
1 Representation as a Philosophical Problem
2 Pictures as Representations
3 The ‘Problem’ Around Mimesis
4 Mimetic Behaviour
5 Signs within Representational Contexts
6 Signs in Relation to Objects
7 Material Indexes and Abduction
8 Agent and Intention
9 Agent and Agency
10 Material Indexes as Agents
11 Affective, Energetic, and Representational Interpretants
12 Representational Competence and Agency
13 To Draw Inferences from Graphic Signs about Agents
3 Naturalistic, Stylistic, and Abstract Indexes
1 Representation in the Decorative Arts
2 The Motif as the Recursive Element of a Decorative Pattern
3 Naturalistic and Stylized Motifs
4 Plant and Flower Motifs
5 Motifs of Animals and Human Beings
6 Motifs from Objects and Architecture
7 Abstract Geometrical Motifs
8 The Building Block of Geometric Motifs
9 The Regular Arrangement
10 Patterns and Complexity
11 Patterns as Agents: Apotropaic Patterns
12 Patterns as Semiosis
4 About Points and Lines: from Patterns to Images to Pictures
1 Linear Perspective, Making Patterns, and Pattern Recognition
2 Practical Geometry
3 The Plane and the Illusion of Depth
4 How Shapes and Patterns Can Represent
5 Two-Dimensional Grid Patterns: Floors and Maps
6 The Practice of Surveying
7 Optics, Geometry, and the Vanishing Point
8 Perception and Representation
9 Pattern Recognition as a Universal Disposition
5 About Threads and Knots: the Agency of the Surface Dressing
1 Semper Contextualized
2 Industrialization
3 Art’s Analogy with Nature
4 The Surface as a Dressing
5 Semper and Motifs
6 Moments of Configuration
7 The Role of Textiles
8 From Contour to Line (through Dots), to Thread, to Knot
9 From Threads to Surface (through Knots)
10 Patterns and Imposing Order
11 Masking and Dressing
12 A Representational Competence Animal
6 Connecting the Threads
1 Interdisciplinary Threads
2 The Agency of the Material Index
3 Aristippus’s Cry
Bibliography
Encyclopaedias of Ornament (A Selection)
Literature
Index
Academic institutes, libraries, lecturers, specialists and students in art, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology and semiotics; art academies and visual artists; art teachers.