The Semiotic Challenges of Art Criticism

Painting and art criticism are based on two different semiotic systems. The expression in painting is basically visual and in criticism is verbal. On the other hand, all expression is linguistic, that is expression and comprehension in all semiotic systems is basically linguistic. The art criticism, then, is situated between two poles: visual signs and verbal signs. It has as function to reorganise and to reconcile these two types of signs into a one and coherent schema. However, because of several reasons, which will be discused in this paper, this reconciliation is faced by challenges. Firstly, images and words are ireductible to each other and, therfore, the description of visual compositions by verbal signs, as the first constituent element of any art criticism, appeares as a challeng in itself. Thus, the art criticism is placed in a “critical” situation and is deeply concerned with the semiotic “crisis” of the conflict between words and images. For exemple, when the abstract painting uses the simplest plastic elements, the critic’s text must uses much more verbal signs to describe it. Secondly, the post-structuralists have shown that the language per se is full of ambiguity and opacity and, in spite of appearance, lacks of transparency and lucidity. These chracters permeate to the art criticism as a verbal text. Thus, it is hypothesized that art criticism must be constructed of four fundamental elemets (painting itself, spectator, art criticism’s text and the reader of this text) in order to reduce these effects. We will show that the interaction and the interconnection of these elements give to the art criticism a genuine character, different at the same time from visual compositions and pure verbal textes. Nevertheless, through this “betweenness” these two types of signs come closer to each other. The criticism is always a situated text. In other words, it is in a determined context that a text is written and, therefore, all historical, cultural, social features of this context will appeare in the texte of criticism. For post-structuralists, these features are fundamentally linguistic construction. Visual elements also have the same character: they are dependent to the linguistic context in which they are composed. In the art criticism, these two characters are combined and will build a new construction, which is verbally and visually dependent to its linguistic context. It is, then, the language, which determines the comprehension of the painting and its critic. Because of the inherent ambiguities of language, neither painting perception nor its critic comprehension is perfect. In fact, the interaction of verbal and visual signs make the art criticism a ground in which the painting itself, the text of criticism, the spectator and the reader participate in a paly. The laws and rules of this paly are stablished by the frame of language. The point is that different languages have different rules and the richness of art criticism is the result of these differences.