Page 39 - Studio International - September 1973

Malcolm

Hughes

and the open

book

Stephen Bann

Two pages from Izaak Walton The Complete Angler
(Nineteenth-century facsimile of original edition)

I obviously impure context of the book of Charles Peirce. Thus, on p. 177 we have a
The strategy of this article represents an illustration and the second pair being 'works of modulation from the conventional and
attempt to expose some of the polarities which art' of almost diametrically opposed types : a symbolic medium of typography to the iconic
arise in the semiological analysis of the 'visual' topographical etching and an 'environmental' engraving of the fish. On p. 172 the
sign, and to show how they may possibly be project in the constructivist tradition. typographical medium incorporates the purely
reconciled. In the first place, there is the Although I make no apologies for this indexical sign representing the 'small piece of
tension that arises from the need to use concepts strategic choice of material, I would like to Scarlet about this bigness'.
that are univocal or universally applicable, and emphasize from the start the peculiar aptness What I wish to emphasize at this point is not
yet simultaneously to acknowledge the of a semiological approach in cases where, as simply the presence of the three different types
paramount importance of what Michel Foucault with the book illustration, we are apt to overlook of sign within the single sequence, but the
has called the episteme of an epoch: the the specific problems of interpretation, or harmonious compatibility of these three types.
characteristic way in which signs are related indeed to suppose that they are unworthy of The emblem of the fish is inserted within the
and distributed at that particular historical close attention. Such an approach can be flow of discourse without even a break in the
stage. In the second place, there is the ambiguity invaluable in inducing what might be called a sentence. As an iconic sign, it represents that
that arises from the status of 'visual' sign itself. creative disorientation, that is to say a state in particular variety of fish in terms of its specific
Obviously the individual painting — much less which the perception of discontinuities is differences from the other fishes illustrated in the
the pictorial 'masterpiece' — is not the only unit, facilitated by the explicit use of manual : in other words, as a term in a paradigm.
or necessarily the most significant unit, for pre-established categories. There can scarcely Even the indexical sign, which departs from the
semiological analysis. In the argument which be any work which would appear less typographic and the paradigmatic sequences in
follows, the examples used to illustrate the problematic than Izaak Walton's The Complete being an exact and purposeful imitation, is at the
critical trajectory are chosen deliberately Angler, anything which would appear less same time accommodated within the linear
because of the ways in which they bear upon transparent, as it were, to criticism. sequence. We might redefine the point by saying
this problematic. They belong — or so it will be Nevertheless, from a semiological point of that the opposition between the conventional
argued — to three different systems of signs, to view, Walton's work is accessible to analysis. and the natural, between the coded message and
three successive epistemes. At the same time, It would seem to me, in effect, to offer a the real world (or between theory and practice),
they are dissimilar in kind, the first two fascinating paradigm of a total semiological is implicit: 'this Tench' draws our attention to a
examples being taken indeed from the system, in terms of the tripartite classification recognizable image of the fish, 'this bigness'
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