Abstract
During the 20th century, a theory transformation brought about by semiotics has inserted profound impact on almost all the disciplines of humanities, including anthropology, literary theory and art history. Starting with the aim at theorizing these studies, the movement has evolved into a capitalized Theory during its development that shifts its focuses to the ethical and political functions of literature and art and sacrifices the aesthetic values of literary texts. When Meyer Schapiro introduced semiotic methods into his art history studies, he could avoid the hazard. His introduction of semiotics into art history study, by bypassing the essentialist or metaphysical claims, enriches and opens more alternatives in the analysis of artworks. Due to its foundation on the image-sign semiotics, it could also overpass the notion of meaninglessness of artworks and the idea of pure form, so that the iconological intelligibility from representational art to abstract art can be constructed. The introduction of semiotics into the study of art does not, however, mean to give up analyzing the aesthetic qualities and the formal aspects of artworks.
First Page
180
Last Page
188
Recommended Citation
Gao, Xin. 2015. "Schapiro, Semiotics and Iconography." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 35, (2): pp.180-188. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol35/iss2/14
