by Jon Lackman | 16 March 2006 | Theory
In his new book Vom Bild zum Kunstsystem, Beat Wyss combines semiotics, systems theory and classical psychoanalysis into a model of artistic meaning, writes Niklas Maak in the Frankfurter Allgemeine. Wyss historicizes C. S. Peirce’s semiotic system, arguing that image structure is affected by local forms of knowledge and communication. For example, when Marc Bloch and Oskar Schlemmer encountered aerial photography working as surveyors in World War I, its lack of central perspective changed their conception of abstract painting. Wyss contests the reputation of semiotics as rationalistic and disembodied; he argues that it better explains “visual signals” than supposedly transhistorical pathos formulae or the learned obscurity of iconology. (He criticizes Warburg, but especially loathes Panofsky.)
