Sonesson G., Pictorial Semiotics

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Pictorial semiotics, Gestalt theory, and the ecology of perception
Article · January 1994

DOI: 10.1515/semi.1994.99.3-4.319
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Göran Sonesson
Lund University
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Göran Sonesson:
Pictorial semiotics, Gestalt

theory, and the ecology of
perception *
In at least one important respect, pictorial semiotics differs from most other fields and sub-
domains included in the study of signification: it is not only a new discipline; it does not
merely establish different limits and an altered focus for age-old preoccupations; it inhabits a
field which has almost never been laboured before. For, if we take pictorial semiotics to be
involved with the study of pictorial signs per se, of some general property, more peculiar to
pictures than iconicity, which may be termed pictorality, or picturehood, and if we suppose
it to apply empirical methods to this study, then it is certainly a novel endeavour, far more
so than linguistics and literary theory, more, in fact, than film semiotics and the semiotics of
architecture. For the only other domain properly devoted to pictures, art history, always has
been, and mostly continues to be, fascinated by the singularity of the individual work of art.
For the purpose of the present essay, pictorial semiotics may be described as that part
of the science of signification which is particularly concerned to understand the nature and
specificity of such meanings (or vehicles of meaning) which are colloquially identified by the
term ’picture’. Thus, the purview of such a speciality must involve, at the very least, a
demonstration of the semiotic character of pictures, a study of the peculiarities which
differentiate pictorial meanings from other kinds of signification (particularly from other
visual meanings, and/or other meanings based on iconicity, or intrinsic motivation), and a
assessment of the ways (from some or other point of view) in which the several species of
pictorial meaning may differ without ceasing to inhere in the category of picture.
To insist that pictorial semiotics, in its particular enterprise, has no precedents, is not
to deny that the knowledge compiled by other scientific endeavours could still be capable of
enriching our domain. Pictorial semiotics may indeed have something to learn from, for
instance, perceptual psychology in general, and Gestalt theory in particular. But, in assessing
the claim, made in Fernande Saint-Martin's (1990) latest book, that Gestalt psychology
should constitute at least part of the foundational layer of contemporary pictorial semiotics,
we have to undertake the arduous task of determining the relevance of this branch of
learning to the study of pictorial meaning. This, in turn, requires us to investigate, not only
the bearings which Gestalt psychology may have upon the peculiar domain of problems that has
evolved within the contemporary discipline of pictorial semiotics , but also the position occupied by
Gestalt theory inside present-day perceptual psychology.
1
Sonesson, Pictorial semiotics, Gestalt theory, and the ecology of perception
Whatever we may think about the present-day value of Gestalt psychology, there
remains a much more fundamental claim, which is at the basis of Saint-Martin's book, and so
must be addressed first: the assumption that pictorial meanings are, in some way of other, of
an intrinsically perceptual nature. This is indeed a second way in which pictorial semiotics
may turn out to be peculiar: for, no matter what may be the particular character of pictorial
meanings, there is no denying the fact that they are conveyed to us by means of visual
perception. If this is taken to mean that we must rely for our information on the knowledge
base assembled by perceptual psychology, then we shall have to abandon the autonomy
postulate, so dear to many of the exponents of present-day semiotics. As a consequence,
however, we are also faced with the task of picking out one among several available
perceptual psychologies.
Rather than offering a regular review of Saint-Martin's most recent book, what we
would like to bring here are some reflections on pictorial semiotics generally, highlighting
some sectors of the domain as they present themselves posterior to the publication of Saint-
Martin's work, until, and including, her Gestalt theory book. In the process, we will note the
challenges posed by Saint-Martin's contribution to earlier versions of pictorial semiotics,
while pinpointing such questions of our domain, which, in the light of these confrontations,
stand out as being the central issues destined to dominate all further research. As matter of
fact, we will, on one hand, agree with Saint-Martin as far as the necessity of breaking out of
semiotic autonomy is concerned, as well as on the fundamental importance of perception to
pictorial signs, yet we will, on the other hand, propose an appreciably different view of the
relationship between semiotics and the other sciences, and we will sketch a much more
comprehensive approach to perceptual psychology.
After determining the place occupied by Saint-Martin's work within the contemporary
domain of pictorial semiotics, we will turn first to the issue opposing semiotic autonomy to
mere interdisciplinary. This will permit us to broach the more general problems pertaining to
the specific character of semiotics as a science. Then we will review a set of questions
brought into view by pictorial semiotics, which turn out to be better elucidated by schools
of perceptual psychology other than Gestalt theory; and finally, we will relate the discoveries
of Gestalt psychology to some further intrinsic concerns of pictorial semiotics.
Elements of a history of pictorial semiotics

Whereas linguistics derives from the ancient practice of grammar and philology, and while
literary theory figured, though less prominently, as an ingredient of the study of literature,
well before semiotics came to its own, the inquiry into the nature of pictorial meanings has
had few real precedents, before it was initiated in the sixties as part of the structuralist
project. Even though the inception of art history and art criticism dates back to Antiquity,
or at least to the Renaissance, this enduring tradition has contributed surprisingly little, if
anything, to the investigation of pictorial signification. Moreover, in the pioneering works of
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early semiotics, from Leibniz and Degerando to Peirce and Saussure, and from Russian
formalism to the Prague school, pictures are rarely discussed on their own terms.
In the early sixties, the art historian E.H. Gombrich declared the creation of a
’linguistics of the visual image’, paralleling art history, to be an urgent task; and yet, in the
late seventies, the psychologist J.J. Gibson was still complaining over the fact that nothing
even approximating a ’science of depiction’, comparable to the science of language, had been
developed. In the meantime, it is true, Gibson and his disciples and colleagues had been
making important contributions towards a psychosemiotics of picture perception. More
explicitly semiotic work on pictorial meaning had been accomplished, with some influence
from Gombrich but without any connection to Gibson, by Barthes and the French
Structuralists. Goodman, Eco, and a few others had discussed the semiotic nature of the
pictorial sign. The Greimas school, the Belgian Groupe µ, and Fernande Saint-Martin were
just beginning their work.
Since then, we have perhaps not resolved any of the issues. But we have begun to see
which might be the questions.
Structuralist beginnings and the pseudo-linguistic turn
A few members of the Prague school, most notably Mukar&ovsky!! and Veltrusky!!, early
on concerned themselves with the sign character of the pictorial work of art, but to them,
on the main, the latter only served to exemplify the same properties that they had so
abundantly discussed elsewhere in the case of poetry, literature, and drama. The real origin
of pictorial semiotics is to be found in a small article by Roland Barthes, written in 1964, in
which an analysis of a publicity picture boosting the delights of Panzani spaghetti is
attempted, using a few ill-understood linguistic terms taken over from Saussure and
Hjelmslev (cf. Sonesson 1989a,II.1). Beginning with a few general observations, the article
then turns into a regular text analysis concerned with one particular photograph, defined
both as to its means/ends category (publicity) and, somewhat more loosely, its channel
division (magazine picture). In spite of the confusion to which Barthes testifies in his
employment of Saussurean and Hjelmslevian terms, and although the usage to which he puts
these terms is in itself incoherent, the article marks a real breakthrough, both intrinsically,
because of its attempt to use a simple model permitting to fix the recurring elements of
pictorial signification, and, in particular, because of the influence it was to exercise on
almost all later analyses.
In the Panzani article, as well as in an earlier text (1961), Barthes proclaims his famous
paradox, according to which the picture is a message deprived of a code. The term ’image’ in
fact alternates in the same paragraph of the article with the more particular term
’photographie’, as if this were the same thing, but later on the photograph is opposed in this
respect to the drawing. Yet many followers of Barthes retain the wider interpretation, using
it to defend the inanalyzability, or ineffability, of paintings and other works of art. Actually,
neither Barthes, nor his followers make any real effort to analyze the picture: they are really
3
discoursing all the time on the referent, that is, on the depicted scene.
Another parti pris of Barthes's, which becomes clear already in the Panzani article, and
which has had devastating consequences for pictorial semiotics, is the idea that no picture is
capable of conveying information by itself or, alternatively, that it contains so much
contradictory information that a verbal message is needed to fix its meaning. Pictorial
meaning must, in either case, be supposed to depend on linguistic meaning. No doubt
pictures offers us much less linguistic information than verbal texts, except in those cases in
which the picture itself contains the reproduction of written messages (as is in part the case
in the Panzani picture); but the picture much better conveys another kind of information
that resembles the one present in the perceptual world. It is clear, however, that to Barthes
and to many of his followers, information itself is erroneously conceived to be something
that is verbal in nature (cf. Sonesson 1989a,II.1. and 1989d).
Barthes's Panzani article stands at the origin of two diverging developments inside
semiotics, one of which is the semiotics of publicity, which, in addition to the pictorial
aspects, attends to verbal and other components of advertisements, but which has in fact
been to an appreciable degree concerned with pictures (for an excellent critical survey, cf.
Pérez Tornero 1982). Until recently, this speciality has continued to be largely derivative on
Barthes's achievement, continuing to thrive on his fairly fragile theoretical contribution. This
constitutes a problem, for what is confused in Barthes's works tends to become even more
so in that of his followers, who, moreover, inherit his exclusive attention to the content side
of the pictorial sign, or more exactly, to the extra-signic referent and its ideological
implications in the real world, even to the point of ignoring the way in which the latter are
modulated in the picture sign.
The other current to which Barthes's work has given rise is more properly at part of
pictorial semiotics, mainly preoccupied with the study of art works, and notably paintings. Its
pioneers were, among others, Louis Marin, Hubert Damisch, Jean-Louis Schefer, etc.
However, in actual fact, the Panzani model, as applied to paintings, immediately tends to
become indistinguishable from an ordinary art historical approach. Damisch (1979) also
rapidly improvised a critique (which Saint-Martin 1987a:xi approves of) of semiotics as
applied to the study of pictorial art, simply identifying the former with the linguistic model.
Such a limited view of semiotics may have been partly justified at the time; yet Damisch is
subject to a much more serious confusion in comparing the merely intuitive, pre-theoretical
notion of the picture with the concept of language as reconstructed in linguistic theory (just as
Metz did in the case of the notion of film; cf. Sonesson 1989a,I.1.2.).
Although Umberto Eco was not, on the whole, a contributor to the study of pictures,
he must certainly be mentioned here, because of the extensive discussions of iconical signs
(which he tends to identify with pictures), occupying an appreciable portion of his central
works during the sixties and seventies. Just like Bierman and Goodman before him, Eco was
intent on showing that there could be no iconical signs (signs motivated by some kind of
4
similarity between expression and content), since all signs must be conventional. There is
now every reason to think that Eco, as well as Bierman and Goodman, was basically wrong
in his conclusions; but his work remains of seminal importance.
Less influential than Barthes, but certainly at least as important for the development of
pictorial semiotics, is René Lindekens (1971, 1973, 1976, 1979), whose early death, a few
years ago, was an irreparable loss for pictorial semiotics. Although his first book (1971) is
explicitly concerned with photography, whereas the second one (1976) claims to treat of
visual semiotics generally, both really discuss questions pertaining to the basic structure of
the pictorial sign per se (e.g., conventionality and double articulation), and both use
photography as their privileged example. It is in order to demonstrate the conventionality of
pictures, and to show the way in which they are structured into binary features, that
Lindekens (1971; 1973) suggests, on the basis of experimental facts (and common sense
experience), the existence of a primary photographic opposition between the shaded-off and
the contrasted; but the same publication (1971) also turns to experiments involving
geometric drawings which have the function of brand marks, in order to discover the
different plastic meanings (which Lindekens calls ’intra-iconic’) of elementary shapes. In
fact, Lindekens would seem to argue for the same conventionalist and structuralist thesis as
applied to pictures as the early Eco (1968), but while the latter tends to ignore the
photograph as the most embarrassing apparent counter-example, Lindekens attacks its
frontally from the beginning.
In at least two respects Lindekens is exemplary. He has employed an array of different
methods: system analysis and experimental tests, which enter a fruitful symbiosis in his two
books, but also text analysis (which will be defined below). In the second place, he
theoretical baggage is complex: Hjelmslevian semiotics, of which he has a much more solid
knowledge than Barthes, with just an inkling of the Greimas school approach, in spite of the
fact that he wrote his thesis for Greimas; phenomenology, which unfortunately affected him
in the subjectivist misinterpretation due to Sartre and the existentialists generally; and
experimental psychology of perception, most notably on the side of the Gestalt school. Yet,
the different theoretical elements of Lindekens' approach remain badly integrated, much
knowledge present in these perspectives is insufficiently exploited, and most of Lindekens'
basic tenets may well turn out to be unjustified (cf. Sonesson 1989d).
Three contemporary approaches
In the late seventies and in the eighties, pictorial semiotics has made something of a new
start, or, rather, it has offered us three fairly different, new beginnings. Although these three
approaches are largely incompatible, there can be no doubt that, in future, any serious theory
of pictorial semiotics must take account of them all, starting out from a synthetic and critical
analysis of their divergent contributions.
The first of these approaches is that of the Greimas school, as it has been applied to
pictures, in particular in the works of Jean-Marie Floch and Felix Thürlemann. These
5
scholars and their followers accept the basic tenets of the Greimas school, and make use of
its abundant paraphernalia, albeit with unusual restraint. Thus, like all contributions from
the Greimasian camp, their articles employ an array of terms taken over from the linguistic
theories of Saussure, Hjelmslev, Chomsky, and others, but given quite different meanings.
The real problem resulting from this approach, therefore, it not, as it is often claimed (by,
among others, Saint-Martin), that it deforms pictures and other types of non-linguistic
meanings by treating them as being on a par with language, but that, in attributing quite
different significations to terms having their origin in linguistic theory, it renders any serious
comparison between linguistic and nonlinguistic meanings impossible. Greimasians will
obviously not accept this piece of criticism; they claim to be studying meaning located so
deep down, that it is all of a kind. This arbitrary postulate never receives any justification
(cf. Sonesson 1989a).
It should be obvious, then, that, from the point of view of the Greimas school, the
specificity of pictorial meaning is of no account. This is also what Floch (1986b) affirms
(though Thürlemann 1990 would seem to take a somewhat different stand, as we will see
shortly). Yet, the interest of this approach derives not only from the fact that, unlike those
of earlier scholars mentioned above, it involves the application of a model having fairly well-
defined terms, which, at least to some extent, recur in an array of text analyses, but also is
due to the capacity of this model to account for at least some of the peculiarities of pictorial
discourse. Thus, for example, Floch and Thürlemann have noted the presence of a double
layer of signification in the picture, termed its iconic and plastic levels. On the iconic level
the picture is supposed to stand for some object recognizable from the ordinary perceptual
Lifeworld; while concurrently, on the plastic level, simple qualities of the pictorial expression
serve to convey abstract concepts. Floch, it is true, has tried to generalize these notions to
other domains, most notably to literature, but they are clearly much better adapted to
pictorial discourse (cf. the critical observations of Sonesson 1989e).
The second approach to pictorial semiotics that is of seminal importance is that of the
Groupe µ, or Liege group, the most constant members of which are the linguists Jean-Marie
Klinkenberg and Jacques Dubois, the chemist Francis Edeline and the aesthetician Philippe
Minguet. Starting in the late sixties, this Belgian group produced a book of ’general’ rhetoric
(1970), in which they analyzed in a novel way the ’figures’ appearing in the elaborate
taxonomies of classical rhetoric, using linguistic feature analysis inspired in the work of
Hjelmslev, as well as the mathematical theory of amounts. A rhetorical figure only exists to
the extent that there is a deviation from a norm. The latter is understood as redundancy, and
thus identified with the Greimasian concept of isotopy, which henceforth becomes one of
the essential building-blocks of the theory (cf. Groupe µ 1977). At this stage, Groupe µ
seems heavily dependent on a set of Hjelmslevian concepts (which they may not interpret
quite correctly; cf. Sonesson 1988,II.1.3.7., and 1989a,II.3-4.), as well as on the notion of
isotopy as conceived by Greimas (which in itself may be incoherent, cf. Sonesson
6
1988,II.1.3.5).
In spite of being general in import, the theory is to begin with mostly concerned with
figures of rhetoric as they appear in verbal language. In a short study of a coffee pot
disguised as a cat, Groupe µ (1976) tries to implement its theory also in the pictorial domain.
Over the years, the theory has been continuously remodelled, so as to account better for the
peculiarities of pictorial meaning. Recently, Groupe µ rhetoric appears to leave behind at
least part of the linguistic strait-jacket inherited from Hjelmslev, in order to incorporate ’a
certain amount of cognitivism’ (Klinkenberg, personal communication). Yet, the theory still
seems far from integrating the perceptual and sociocultural conditions that constitute the
foundations of all rhetorical modulations.
The third conception of importance brought forward in the domain of pictorial
semiotics is the one propounded by Fernande Saint-Martin. Her early collection of essays
(1968) on the structure of pictorial space already attends to the perceptual process as applied
to the work of art (understood à la manière de Rorschach), and contains a forceful plea for
the creation of an experimental branch of aesthetics. On the other hand, no explicit concern
with semiotics is visible here. In a number of later publications (1985, 1987a), however,
Saint-Martin starts elaborating a theory of visual semiotics which is based on the conviction
that a picture, before being anything else, is an object offered to the sense of visual
perception. Visual meaning, according to this conception, is analyzable into six variables,
equivalent to a set of dimensions on which every surface point must evince a value:
colour/tonality, texture, dimension/quantity, implantation into the plane,
orientation/vectorality, and frontiers/contours generating shapes. The surface points,
specified for all these values, combine with each other, according to certain principles,
notably those of topology, and those of Gestalt theory. The nature and use of topology, and
its employment in children's drawings and art, were studied by Saint-Martin (1980) in an
earlier work. Her recent book, on the other hand, is given over to an inquiry into the nature
and employment of Gestalt relations.
The importance of Saint-Martin's contribution consists in her radical rejection of the
linguistic model, and her insistence on perception's being the basis on which pictorial
signification must repose. Members of the Prague school already pointed to the essentially
perceptual nature of the sign, and insisted on the necessity of its being transformed into a
perceptual object, requiring the active collaboration of the addressee involved in the
signifying act, but the consequences of these insights for the character of the picture sign
were never spelled out. As compared to the binary opposition, which is the regulatory
principle of the Greimas school approach, as well as to the norm and its deviations, which
determines the conceptual economy of Groupe µ rhetoric, Saint-Martin's theory offers a
much richer tool-kit of conceptual paraphernalia, more obviously adapted to the analysis of
visual phenomena. Yet this very richness may also, in the end, turn out to constitute the
basic defect of the theory, as we shall suggest below.
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In our own extensive, critical review of pictorial semiotics (Sonesson 1989a), devoted
to an analysis of the linguistic heritage preserved by this science, as it appears in the
conceptions of, most notably, Barthes, Floch, Thürlemann, and Groupe µ, we have
emphasized, just as did Saint-Martin, but quite independently of her work, the basically
perceptual nature of the picture sign, and we have tried to expound some of the
consequences of this observation, invoking the testimony of contemporary perceptual
psychology, as represented by, among others, James Gibson, Julian Hochberg, John Kennedy,
and Margaret Hagen, as well as that of a few philosophical theories of perception,
exemplified by the work of, for instance, Edmund Husserl, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Nelson
Goodman, and Richard Wollheim. It remains for us, then, to compare our conception of
perception, and of its conditions and consequences, to the one defended by Saint-Martin,
and to determine, in the process, what may be learnt from this confrontation.
The relation of pictorial semiotics to other semiotic and non-semiotic

sciences
Fernande Saint-Martin quite rightly rejects (mostly by implication) the postulate of
autonomy so popular with semioticians, notably those of the Greimas school. And yet, when
it is at last explicitly articulated, in the Gestalt theory book, this rejection apparently has the
effect of placing semiotics in a position quite impossible to defend crowded in by the other
sciences occupying the same field. Although she employs a few metaphorical terms like
’visual language’, ’visual syntax’, and so on, Saint-Martin most of the time marks her
distance to the so-called linguistic model, perhaps more so than would be justified.
Moreover, when it comes to the question of what sort of science pictorial semiotics is, she
passes over the issue all too rapidly. Finally, some queries concerning the relation of pictorial
to visual and iconic semiotics stand in urgent need of being ventilated.
The peculiar character of the semiotic approach
The first question that must be elucidated is whether pictorial semiotics is a particular
discipline, having its own goals, objects of study, models and methods, or if it is simply just
another, perhaps better, way of accomplishing the goals, and studying the objects of, art
history. In particular, we must examine whether that which is studied by pictorial semiotics
is a series of unique works of arts, or the class of all pictures, that is, pictures in general, or
pictorality.
Fernande Saint-Martin certainly appears to take the latter position, although she is
never very explicit about it. Her thorough theoretical studies of the notions of topology and
of Gestalt relations (Saint-Martin 1980; 1990) would seem to suggest a generic approach, as
would the abstract character of her book on visual language (Saint-Martin 1987a). In fact,
the very idea of studying ’the elements of visual language’, of searching for its grammar and
its ultimate constituents, formulated in the first chapter of the latter book, as well as the
references made in this context to Saussure and Chomsky, indicate that the object of study
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envisioned must be pictorality per se. On the other hand, most of Saint-Martin's books
contain elaborate analyses of works of art (never of any other kinds of pictures, with the
exception of some children's drawings in the topology book), the status of which is never
discussed. Thus, for instance, it never becomes clear whether these analyses are to be taken
as the ultimate result of the theoretical elucidation, or merely as a partial illustration of some
of the main points.
In contrast, Floch directly tackles this problem, but his stance seems contradictory,
and, on at least one interpretation, is seriously flawed. On one hand, he sees it as his task to
account for the minute particularities of a given photograph (1986b:11); and on the other
hand, he argues that semiotics should define categories which cross-cut those which are
socially accepted, like ’picture’, ’art’, and ’photography’ (1984a:11; 1986b:12f). Both these
opposed alternatives to a study of photography and other socially accepted pictorial kinds
are explicitly present in Floch's concrete analyses, but it is not at all clear how they could be
reconciled. And while the first interpretation seems to make nonsense of semiotics as a
science, the second appears to opt for a positivistic approach of the most gratuitous kind.
We will take care of the first part of this conundrum here, keeping the remainder for
the next sub-section. According to Floch (1984a:11), semiotics cannot tell us anything
about sociocultural categories such as ’photography’. Instead it should attend to the
particular properties of a given photograph. This is a legitimate claim if it is construed as an
argument tending to favour a text analytic approach over other conceivable methods. But if
it implies that a particular picture must constitute, not only the objected studied, but the
object of study, of a semiotic investigation, it would seem to deprive the semiotic approach
of its peculiarity, making it just another method which may be used within art history,
communication studies, and so on. That is, if the object of study characteristic of semiotics is
not specificity (of pictorality, of pictorial kinds, or whatever), then semiotics itself will lose
its specificity. We may still argue for semiotics on the grounds that it builds models, that it
uses certain constellation of methods, etc., but in any case, its originality certainly comes out
diminished.
Our own definition of pictorial semiotics derives from the view we have taken
elsewhere on general semiotics, because we believe that the former should share the goals,
models and procedures which the latter applies to the wider domain of signification, which
includes, among other things, the objects studied by pictorial semiotics (cf. Sonesson
1989a,I.1.). It is impossible to establish a consensus among all semioticians on what
semiotics is all about; and many semioticians will not even care to define their discipline.
However, if we attend less to definitions than to real research practice, and if we leave out
those would-be semioticians who simply do not seem to be doing anything very new (those
who merely go in doing art history, literary history, philosophy, logic, or whatever), it seems
possible to isolate the smallest common denominators of the discipline.
In the following, then, semiotics will be taken to be a science, the point of view of
9
which may be applied to any phenomenon produced by the human race. This point of view
consists, in Saussurean terms, in an investigation of the point of view itself, which is
equivalent, in Peircean terms, to the study of mediation (cf Parmentier 1985). In other
words, semiotics is concerned with the different forms and conformations given to the
means through which humankind believe itself to have access to ’the world‘.
The very term ’point of view’ is, as Saint-Martin (1988:202) notes, a visual metaphor.
Yet the point, which is a standpoint, matters more than the sense modality. For, in studying
these phenomena, semiotics should occupy the standpoint of humankind itself (and of its
different fractions). Indeed, as Saussure argues, semiotic objects only exist as those points of
view which are adopted on other, ’material’ objects, which is why these points of view
cannot be altered without the result being the disappareance of the semiotic objects as such.
Taking the point of view of the users, and trying the explain their particular use, we
cannot, like the philosopher Nelson Goodman, reject the folk notion of picture because of
its incoherence, but must discover its peculiar systematicity. But it does not follow, as Prieto
would claim, that we must restrict our study to the knowledge shared by all users of the
system, for it is necessary to descend at least one level of analysis below the ultimate level of
which the user is aware, in order to take account of the presuppostions underlying the use of
the system. Semiotics must go beyond the standpoint of the user, to explain the workings of
such operative, albeit tacit, knowledge which underlies the behaviour constitutive of any
system of signification (cf. Sonesson 1989a,I.1.4).
Moreover, semiotics is devoted to these phenomena considered in their qualitative
aspects rather than the quantitative ones, and it is geared to rules and regularities, instead of
unique objects. It is not restricted to any single method, and it is certainly not dependant on
a model taken over from linguistics, but it is a peculiarity of the approach that it tends
construct models which are then applied to the objects analyzed.
Pictorial semiotics, in turn, is that part of the science of signification which is
particularly concerned to understand the nature and specificity of such meanings (or vehicles
of meaning) which are colloquially identified by the term ’picture’. Thus, the purview of
such a speciality must involve, at the very least, a demonstration of the semiotic character of
pictures, as well as a study of the peculiarities which differentiate pictorial meanings from
other kinds of signification, and a assessment of the ways (from some or other point of
view) in which pictorial meanings are apt to differ from each other while still remaining
pictorial.
In the present context, we will insist on the fact that pictorial semiotics, like all
semiotic sciences, including linguistics, is a nomothetic science, a science which is concerned
with generalities, not an idiographic science, comparable to art history and most other
human sciences, which take as their object an array of singular phenomena, the common
nature and connectedness of which they take for granted. Just like linguistics, but contrary
to the natural sciences and the social sciences (according to most conceptions), pictorial
10
semiotics is concerned with qualities, rather than quantities — that is, it is concerned with
categories more than numbers. Being nomothetic and qualitative, pictorial semiotics has as
its principal theme a category that may be termed pictorality, or picturehood — which is not, as
we shall see, simply the same thing as iconicity.
Unlike those other semioticians which we have mentioned above, who do not start
out from art history, or at least do not seem to carry with them any essential pieces of its
intellectual heritage, Saint-Martin often merely seems to summarize the inspirations and
preoccupations which have beset this discipline during the last century. Moreover, she does
not, as we noted above, present us we any real definition of semiotics as a science. Yet we
must accept her claims to be doing semiotics, for she does certainly not form part of those
’who simply do not seem to be doing anything very new’. One of her merits undoubtedly is
to have made the multifarious theoretical heritage of art history available to semiotics. It is,
however, because of the nomothetic format in which it is presented in Saint-Martin's work
that this heritage now appears transfigured into a tool-kit for semiotics.
Thus, what Saint-Martin tells us about Gestalt forms and topological relations, and
about pictorial units and visual syntax, must be taken as claims about the nature of
pictorality, and should be evaluated as such.
The domain of pictorial semiotics
According to Ferdinand de Saussure, semiotics (or semiology as he called it) was to study
’the life of signs in society’; and the second mythical founding-father, Charles Sanders Peirce,
as well as his forerunner John Locke, conceived of semiotics as being the ’doctrine of signs’.
Later in life, however, Peirce came to prefer the wider term ’mediation’ as a description of
the subject matter of semiotics (cf. Parmentier 1985). And Saussure not only argued that in
the semiotic sciences, there is no object to be studied except for the point of view that we
adopt on other objects (see Sonesson 1989a,I.1.4. and above), but also claimed the sign to
the ’a relatively superficial phenomena’ resulting from the interplay of values. More recently,
Greimas has rejected the notion of sign, and his followers Floch (1984a) and Thürlemann
(1982: 1990) have argued the case in the domain of pictorial semiotics. In a similar fashion,
Umberto Eco (1976), at the end of his tortuous critique of iconicity, substituted the notion
of sign process for the traditional sign concept.
Whatever we may think of this critique, the sign certainly does not appear to be
comprehensive enough to delimit the field of semiotics: rather, the domain of semiotics is
meaning (or ’mediation’), in some wider, yet to be specified sense. Given a suitable
definition of the sign (to which we will turn below), we may ask if the picture, which
certainly conveys meaning, is also, more in particular, a sign. If so, we may continue
inquiring into the possibility that the picture is made up of units which are meanings
themselves, but not signs (which is not simply the old issue of double articulation; cf.
Sonesson 1989a,III.4.2. and 1989c, 1990f). Furthermore, we may want to ask the same
questions about perception per se, which is undoubtedly endowed with meaning, but which
11
does perhaps not, as we will suggest, take on the character of a sign. On these issues, Saint-
Martin takes a stand that appears unacceptable to us, which is why we will return to this
discussion below.
Since semiotics is not merely concerned with signs, but more generally with meanings,
pictorial semiotics, as a subdivision of the former, will be involved with pictorial signs, but
also with all other kinds of pictorial meanings, to the extent that there are any such things.
Not only should pictorial semiotics study all kinds of pictorial meaning, but it should
also be concerned to determine which are, so to speak, the pictorial kinds existing in a
particular society, being part of that study of ’the life of signs in society’, advocated by
Saussure. And this brings us back to the second reading of what Floch says on the nature of
semiotics, discussed in the last section.
According to this view, semiotics is indeed devoted to the study of general facts, but
these facts or not of the kind designated by terms like ’picture’, ’photography’, ’painting’,
’publicity’, ’art’, etc. These latter terms serve to label categorizations of semiotic resources
which are ’merely’ sociocultural, that is, historical and relative (’le découpage socio-culturel
donc relatif et historique des moyens d'expression’; 1986b:13); but if we are going to
understand how, in a particular picture, meaning comes into being, Floch affirms, we must
instead develop a general theory of discourse, which includes all kinds of discourses,
architectural ones, linguistic ones, and so on, apart from the pictorial ones (ibid.).
It is difficult to understand why such ’merely’ sociocultural division blocks should be
despised, for in all their historical relativity, they are probably the only ones we have.
Indeed, as we pointed out (in Sonesson 1989a,I.4. and above) following Prieto, who
himself quoted Saussure, semiotic objects only exist for their users, that is, they have only
the kind of existence that they are accorded by their use in a given social group; and thus,
once we pretend to go beyond sociality, there is nothing left to study. It is true that Floch's
master Greimas, following his master Hjelmslev, has argued that a semiotic theory should be
arbitrary — but also adequate; and we have already (ibid.) noted the paradoxes of this
pronouncement. We seem to be faced, once again, with that kind of gratuitous thinking that
makes Goodman substitute a picture concept of his own making for the one commonly
employed – when the real task is to account for the hidden systematicity of the common
Lifeworld notion of a picture (cf. Sonesson 1989a,III.3.). But, as we shall see, there may
actually be a somewhat more interesting sense to Floch's argument.
Floch (1986b:12) actually rejects the doctrine of signs in favour of another study, that
of ’les formes signifiantes, les systèmes de relations qui font d'une photographie, comme de
toute image ou de tout texte, un objet de sens. La sémiotique structurale qui est nôtre ne
vise pas à élaborer une classification des signes, ni selon les conditions de leur production, ni
selon les rapports qu'ils entretiennent avec la ”réalité”.’ We will not enter once again into the
quarrel over the nature of signs, but a few points must be made before we go on. In the first
place, it is curious that Floch should claim the old epithet ’structural’ for his (and Greimas')
12
conception of semiotics, for nothing could really be more contrary to the spirit of
structuralism (that of Saussure and Hjelmslev, notably), than the idea, presupposed here and
vindicated by Greimas elsewhere, that content and expression may be freely combined, so
that, in the present case, the same sense may be produced, not only in different pictorial
genres, but in a picture and in a piece of literature. Indeed, in a structure, (as we noted in
Sonesson 1989a,I.3.4.) the parts interact and so mutually modify each other, or even
constitute each other, as is the case of the phonological oppositions. Thus, if the sign
function is structural, as it certainly was to Hjelmslev, content and expression cannot be
freely exchanged and recombined, as the Greimasians think.
In the second place, there may nevertheless be a place in semiotics for a study of
’significant forms’ which cut across the divisions of photography and painting, and even of
visual and other discourses. The case for the latter, however, is not very convincing. Thus,
for instance, if we define iconicity as ’un effet de sense de ”réalité” ’ (Floch 1984a:12), we
may be able to find instances of it even in verbal discourses; but by admitting this definition,
we have already given up the specificity of iconicity, and we have deprived ourselves of the
possibility of discovering that which is peculiar to pictorality, within the limits set by
iconicity generally (Cf. Sonesson 1989a,III. ). Furthermore, although it remains uncertain
whether there are properties shared by a set of verbal and a set of pictorial discourses, which
do not also belong to all verbal and pictorial discourses, there certainly are categories of
pictures, which have no name in our language, as suggested by that fact that some pictures
are informatively analyzed by Floch's model, others, which do not conform to this model, by
that of Groupe µ, while a third group, which do not lend themselves to either kind of
analysis, may be elucidated using Saint-Martin's approach (for example, cf. Sonesson 1989g,
1990d; 1992a,IV).
However, even though there may actually exist other pictorial categories than those
which are explicitly recognized in our culture, it is not to be understood why we should
study these at the expense of the former categories, which are certainly the primary ones on
a social scale. The exceptional existence of such similarities as obtain between photographs
and certain hand-made pictures does in no way diminish the importance of characterizing
the socially received categories.
In this respect, the standpoint of Felix Thürlemann (1990:9) seems much less radical:
he makes a plea for a ’semiotic science of art’, conceived as a praxis of artistic interpretation
taking Greimasian semiotics as its fundamental methodological basis; and this certainly must
imply an acceptance of ’art’ as a category. Unlike Floch, he does not apply his analytical
tools indifferently to art works, advertisement pictures, and comic strips. Yet he does not
explicitly discuss the nature of pictorial art (although there is some suggestions about it in his
discussion of synaesthesia and semi-symbolicity, as in Floch's corresponding passages).
Just like Thürlemann, Saint-Martin is only concerned with pictorial works of art, to
the exclusion of all other kinds of pictures (with the exception of a few analyses of
13
children's drawings, in Saint-Martin 1980). This is curious, for she does not discuss this
preference: indeed, since she conceives of pictorial semiotics as being a part of visual
semiotics, comprising, in addition, the semiotics of sculpture and of architecture, the neglect
of all ’non-artistic’ pictures appears to be particularly unjustified. Perhaps she would argue
that artistic pictures exemplify pictorial visuality in better and/or more interesting ways than
other pictures, but there is no reason to accept such a claim a priori. Most advertisement
pictures are in fact visually much more complex than, for instance, the art works produced
by minimalists. Of course, knowing the latter to be works of art, we will probably be much
more prone to project our personal feelings and experiences onto them than to the former.
What this shows, however, is that the notion of artistic picture is basically a sociosemiotical
category (as was already the case of the aesthetic function according to Mukar&ovsky!!),
and thus artistry is a point of view which may in principle by adopted on any picture.
Alternatively, Saint-Martin may be taken to conceive of pictorial semiotics as being
merely an ancillary science, that is, a servant of art history, as Thürlemann clearly does. That
would be a pity. In present-day information society, large quantities of the information
which reaches us is in fact pictorially conveyed, and it is becoming more important every day
to investigate all the different modes of pictorial meaning employed in the process. Not only
must pictorial semiotics, like the one of Floch and of Groupe µ, attend to examples of the
several pictorial kinds, but it should also be concerned to determine their specificity. It
should determine the different rules of construction separating, for instance, paintings from
photographs (on the latter, cf. Vanlier 1983; Dubois 1983; Schaeffer 1987; Sonesson
1989d); it should recognize the different categories separated by the effects they are socially
expected to produce, such as advertisement pictures, pornography, or caricature (cf.
Sonesson 1988, 1990a); and it should differentiate pictures on the basis of the channels
through which they circulate, such as the poster, the wall painting, the post card, and so on.
Beyond autonomy and interdisciplinarity
In semiotics, those who followed Saussure and Hjelmslev (and some of those who followed
Peirce) have transferred the Saussurean postulate of ’autonomy’ or ’purity’ from linguistics
to the wider of domain of signification studies. Such a conception is today particularly
characteristic of the Greimas school approach, as exemplified in the work of Floch and
Thürlemann (for a defence, see ’Hors du texte, point de salut’, in Floch 1990:3ff). In
linguistics, the study of ’purely linguistic’ phenomena was undoubtedly productive for a
time, but have long since been played out. Today, linguistics is a very ’impure’ science
indeed, tending to fuse with cognitive psychology, philosophy, and computer science. To
retain such a restriction in semiotics, which has to span many more and much more complex
phenomena, certainly seems absurd.
Two opposite, but complementary, requirements could therefore be imposed on a
semiotic approach. First, when analyzing an object which has been studied by other
disciplines, it should take full account of what has been learnt so far. But in the second
14
place, in so doing, it should retain its proper point of view, and not simply merge with one
or another of the other disciplines studying the object in question. It is a great merit of
Saint-Martin's work generally, and of the Gestalt theory book in particular (1990:3ff), that
it speaks out clearly against the autonomy postulate, showing in addition the profit which is
to be gained from an interplay with other sciences, notably in the case of Gestalt theory and
the genetic psychology of Piaget. Yet, we can only regret that, on one hand, Saint-Martin
neglects a lot of information on perception which is readily at hand and which should have
important consequences for a theory of picture perception, and that, on the other hand, her
sense of the peculiarity of the semiotic approach seems to get lost on the way.
If there is one thing which is particularly characteristic of semiotics, then it is the
determination to take the point of view of the sign user himself, that is, to describe the
expression merely to the extent that it conveys a content, an vice-versa. Prieto, repeatedly
quoted by Saint-Martin, has often insisted on this point. But if Saint-Martin had taken this
requirement seriously, we could have been spared the long and tortuous discussion (23 pages
in Saint-Martin 1987a) of what kind of colour analysis is relevant to semiotics (and we
could have had a little more an all the other variables instead, now treated together on
another 20 pages). More importantly, she should not have come up with a list of visual
variables, in the definition of which perceptual, physical and physiological criteria are used
indiscriminately. It is true that Jakobson has often been accused of an equivalent confusion
in his famous definition of phonological features, but (to put it in the terms of a classical
doctrine of art) even the faults of giants are faults, and should not be imitated.1
As for the other requirement, Saint-Martin turns out to be remarkably unfamiliar with
at least some aspects of recent psychology which would seem to be of importance to her
theme. She fails to mention the important inquiries into the psychology of picture
perception accomplished recently by Gibson, Hochberg, Hagen, Kennedy, and others; for
although the names of the first two do appear in the Gestalt theory book (1990), they are, as
we shall see later, treated in an altogether inadequate fashion. She never attends to recent
advances in cognitive psychology, some of which tend to put the work of Piaget, on which
she relies heavily, into critical perspective. Nor does she stoop to consider the critique
directed to Gestalt theory, by, among others, Gibson and Hochberg.
The consequences of this omission are not always serious: thus, for instance, in
suggesting that colours must be conceived as ’chromatic poles’, Saint-Martin (1987a) seems
to rediscover for herself the important concept of the prototype, introduced by Eleanor
Rosch (1975; 1978), which could be described as the use, for the determination of category
membership, of approximations to the best instances, taking the place of sufficient and
necessary criteria (cf. also Sonesson 1989a,I.3.1.). It is unfortunate, in any case, that lacking
a clear notion of prototype, she fails to make any real use of it in the sequel, in particular in
the Gestalt theory book. Indeed, it is regrettable that Saint-Martin should ignore Rosch’s
(1973) demonstration that ’good forms’ are kinds of prototypes Rosch's interpretation has
15
actually the advantage of saving some Gestaltist intuitions from the antiquated epistemology
of the Gestalt school. The prototype concept also serves to elucidate some of the properties
of ’good forms’ mentioned in Saint-Martin's (1990) recent book, such as their function as
reference points, epitomized in the tendency to render good forms better (’la
boniformisation’; pp. 74ff), as well as the deviations from the good form (pp. 104ff).
Much more damaging is her neglect of recent psychology of perception. At one point
this neglect even becomes somewhat embarrassing: Bishop Berkeley’s old conception,
according to which depth is not seen, but somehow cognitively reconstructed using clues
derived from touch, is quoted with approval from the art historians Riegl, Wölfflin, and
Worringer, who still propounded this theory around the turn of the century. However, if the
idea of depth being a merely tactile sensation has by now been unacceptable in psychology
for almost a century, even the more general notion that is has to be constructed, instead of
being directly perceived, at present seems incompatible with the facts. The late James
Gibson rediscovered the old insight of Husserlean phenomenology, according to which it is
the thing itself, not some two-dimensional perceptual field which is directly seen. Yet the
opposite, erroneous, conception turns out to be fundamental to much of Saint-Martin’s
(1987a) reasoning, in particular in her discussion of perspective and in the analysis which she
performs of the potential cube supposedly defining sculpture; as well as, at numerous points
in the Gestalt theory book (1990), where it serves to justify her recourse to Gestalt
psychology
More will be said about these issues as we go on to ponder the way in which to choose
a perceptual theory which is apt to constitute a basis for pictorial semiotics. It remains for us
to consider, in the present context, the problematical character which Saint-Martin's
rejection of the semiotic autonomy postulate acquires in the Gestalt theory book (1990:3ff).
She starts out very well, rightly taking a number of earlier semioticians to task for not
paying any attention to relevant psychological knowledge, notably that of Gestalt
psychology, and for refusing all serious discussion of this knowledge, even when it is invoked
in passing, as in the work of Thürlemann. But, in opposing a requirement of universal
interdisciplinarity to the Greimasian autonomy postulate, she is naturally frightened by the
immensity of the task set before the semioticians, who would have to have a perfect
command of numerous other sciences, and in particular of their most recent developments.
In order to reduce the requirement of interdisciplinarity to manageable proportions, Saint-
Martin imposes a double limitation, pertaining to time and to the nature of competence
called for. First of all, a set of propositions stemming form other sciences is claimed to go
into the constitution of any new science, but as soon as the problem domain of this
particular science has been clearly delineated, no further recourse to these sciences is
supposedly necessary. Once we think we know what pictorial semiotics is all about, we are
free to close it off again to all influences from psychology and the other sciences. The
autonomy lost at the beginning is rapidly regained as we proceed.
16
In the second place, the semiotician is not required to accomplish for himself the
operations of verification which are presumed to ascertain the hypotheses on which he
builds his theory. Nor should he intervene in the debates opposing the representatives of the
sciences from which he takes over his fundamental hypotheses. He is simply supposed to
pick out a set of propositions established by these sciences, on the basis of which he goes on
to develop more specific assumptions pertaining to his particular domain.
Saint-Martin's problem is a real one, and her reaction to it is quite understandable, but
this should not keep us from noting the inadequacy of her solution, or the inappropriate
consequences it is likely to have. The idea of letting interdisciplinary have its way in
semiotics only until the proper problem domain of the latter has been constituted seems ill-
advised. In the first place, it is not at all obvious that we could agree on when the
constitution of the domain has been accomplished. In fact, Floch could argue that the
relevant domain has already been delimited, so that, on her own terms, Saint-Martin's work
is superfluous. Secondly, it seems to us that a scientific endeavour will only remain vital, as
long as its interchange of facts and theories with other sciences continues. It might in fact be
argued that linguistic structuralism at its beginning incorporated a set of hypotheses taken
over from psychology and sociology, but was then closed off to all further influences, just as
Saint-Martin advocates. When later structuralism appeared to be inadequate, it was
therefore rejected cavalierly, and primitive reactions, such as post-structuralism and post-
modernism, followed. Had structuralism remained open to the interdisciplinary dialogue, it
would have been much more easy to move on to a position, from which the knowledge
which it produced could be retained, and in the context of which its accomplishments could
still be given their (limited) due (cf. Sonesson 1989a,I.).
It is, however, the restriction imposed on the semiotician's competence in the
interdisciplinary domain which is the most disquieting aspect of Saint-Martin's argument.
Although she does mention the problem of choosing the set of propositions needed from
those propounded by other sciences, Saint-Martin seems unaware of the difficulty of this
task. In the case of perceptual psychology, for example, which is the domain with which
Saint-Martin is particularly concerned, there are at present at least three completely
incompatible theories purporting to explain more or less the same facts (and we will
consider some of their differences below). Interestingly, Saint-Martin herself turns out to be
unable to follow the imposition, not to intervene in the internal quarrel of the other
sciences, even to the point of polemizing violently with James Gibson in numerous passages
of her book.
To the extent that we are willing to learn from perceptual psychology, therefore, we
will be in need of criteria for choosing the ’best’ theory. To do this, we may even have to
accomplish some operations of verification ourselves. If this is taken to imply the use of the
experimental method, then we can point to the fact (to which we will return in the next
subsection) that is has already been employed by a number of semioticians, and that, in the
17
future, as the particular problem domain of pictorial semiotics begins to emerge, we will
anyway be forced to formulate our own experiments, in order to obtain the results adequate
to the questions we stand in need of asking. But this is not all. If semiotics is a science, it
must be in possession of its own operations of verification, and thus it should be possible to
apply semiotic methods to the results of psychology and the other sciences, and so to verify
them, from the point of view of semiotics.
The prize of interdisciplinary, to Saint-Martin, is passivity. Just as, when it comes to
the chosen domain of semiotics, Saint-Martin tends to think of it as a mere servant of art
history, so, in the interdisciplinary interplay of sciences, she would seem to reduce it to
playing a purely receptive part. In contradistinction to this conception, we think, as we
indicated above, that semiotics should stake out its own domain, much larger than that of
art history, and that when, starting out from this independent position, it goes
interdisciplinary, it should have something to teach, as well as something to learn.
The dialectics of semiotic methodology
Semiotics is often thought to be a method that may be employed in a number of sciences.
Yet this conception is untenable, because there is an array of methods which have been used
in semiotics so far, and no single one of them is properly speaking peculiar to semiotics.
There may be a more general methodological strain, of course, which characterizes semiotics,
a particular way of viewing things, perhaps the point of view geared to meaning, as indicated
above. In the more strict sense of a series of operations applied to a set of phenomena,
yielding a number of general conclusions, there are three or four methods in semiotics: text
analysis, system analysis, experiment, and text classification (cf. Fig.1.).
Textual analysis consists in treating any meaningful phenomenon occurring in a culture,
e.g. a sentence, a work of art, a piece of behaviour, and so on, as being the ’text’ of a given
’system’, i.e. as being exhaustively (at least from a certain point of view) reducible to a series
of repeatable elements and the rules for their combination. The issue here is not whether
pictures are made up of fixed, detachable units (as denied, in one or other form, by
Benveniste, Goodman, Eco, and Thürlemann) or whether the rules are really concerned with
transformation and/or construction rather than combination (as Eco may be taken to say,
and as Sonesson 1989a certainly argues). We may put the basic assumption of textual
analysis more succinctly by stating that behind all phenomena there is a categorical
framework the instantiations of which are seen (from one or other point of view) to recur
all through a series, which, as such, is characterized by a constellation of categories. It does
not follow, of course, that that which is repeated is in any way comparable to a phoneme, a
word, or even a rule of syntax. Indeed, Saint-Martin will argue that what recurs in the
pictorial text is something else which she terms a set of coloremes (as well as their several
constellations).
In this sense, textual analysis is certainly not peculiar to the semiotic approach; it has
been employed in many other disciplines, such as sociology (’natural history approach’) and
18
cognitive psychology (’protocol analysis’). Structuralism, in the primary, linguistic sense,

requires, in addition, that the ’system’ should be studied, and the categories derived, by
means of the application of operations to a set of ’texts’; and that the identity of the
elements in the ’texts’ should be determined through recourse to the relations which the
elements contract with each other in the ’system’. This supposes a complex dialectic
between the ’system’ and its ’texts’ which is not explicitly present in other textual
approaches.
Given these assumptions, it becomes necessary, not only to study a sizable set of texts
pertaining to the same system, but to adjust all earlier analysis of a phenomenon each time a
new analysis of other phenomena of the same general type is made, for instance as far as the
limits between units, or the identification of variants for an invariant, are concerned. But
neither Barthes nor any other exponent of structuralism have ever analyzed more than one
picture ’of the same type’ (of course, the notion of ’type’ here is problematical); and if we
take all pictures to be in some sense of type-identical, it is easy to ascertain that no
researcher has ever cared to revise earlier analyses in the light of later ones.
Most of the work accomplished in pictorial semiotics relies on the textual method.
This is true of the work of Barthes, Marin, Schefer, Gauthier, Floch, Thürlemann, etc., as
well as of many of the analyses performed by Lindekens and Tardy. Most of these
investigators identify themselves with the structuralist movement, or once did so; but it
seems clear from what has been said above that, if text analysis retains any heuristic value,
this must be for reasons foreign to structuralism.
Saint-Martin's text-analytical method is not structural in this sense; yet it is, as we shall
see, based on a set of potentially recurrent elements or variables. Most of her analyses are
only sketched out, without there being any rigourous application of the model to the text.
This is understandable, for the list of variables introduced by her model is too vast for the
analytical operations to be exhausted in a reasonable amount of time. In fact, only two full
analyses would seem to have been carried through by Saint-Martin (1986; 1990) so far: one
pertaining to Pellan's ’Mascarade’, and another one concerned with Leduc's ’Masses’. They
are reasonably similar, although the emphases are, as is natural, differently placed. In
addition, there are a series of, published and unpublished, analyses executed by her disciples
(for instance, Carani 1986a).
Groupe µ denies all value whatsoever to textual analysis (Francis Edeline, personal
communication). In the opinion of these scholars, text analysis tends to get lost in
idiosyncratic detail. Contrary to text classification which is, as we will see, the method
favoured by Groupe µ, it requires an exhaustive account, from one or other point of view,
of the entire text. It seems to us that such a requirement of exhaustiveness imposes a
constraint on the analysis, which may at least have some heuristic value. To the extent that
semiotics is really a nomothetic science, however, we should be wary of taking individual
text analyses to constitute its end results, contrary to what is suggested by the placement of a
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text analyses on the final pages of Saint-Martin's Gestalt theory book.

For our purpose, the experimental method may be described as an approach in which a
fragmentary ’text’ is constructed by the investigator and completed (or, alternatively,
evaluated) under strictly limited and controlled conditions by the experimental subjects, the
’system’ being deduced on the basis of majority reactions. In this way, Tardy with
collaborations studied the procedures of picture perception. Lindekens investigated what
different values where attributed to shapes such as triangles and circles, as well as the way in
which the relative degree of contrast and nuance of a photograph modified the manner in
which its referent was interpreted. Espe, apparently independently, approached the same
problem, and later went on to study the effects of photographic angle on interpretation. The
latter theme was independently addressed by Bengtsson, Bondesson, & Sonesson, in the
particular case in which the subject matter of the photographs were facial expressions of
emotion. The linguistic commutation test, in which one expression feature is exchanged for
another in order to study the effect on the content plane (or the reverse), was transferred to
pictorial semiotics, and transformed into a psychological procedure by Porcher and Gauthier.
Krampen, Espe, and other collaborators obtained experimental information on the degree to
which different signs where judged to be iconical.
Both the experimental and the semiotical sophistication of these studies is extremely
varied. Experiments of this kind, whether performed by psychologists or semioticians, are
important for our understanding of the pictorial sign. They have, however, the disadvantages
found in all experimental studies: either they are based on artificial, instead of actual ’texts’;
or, when they involve real texts, they expose them to experimental subjects in situations
which are in some or other way artificial. In pictorial semiotics, very few problems have
been treated experimentally (as listed above). Instead, questions bearing on the semiotic
nature of pictures or concerning the existence of iconical signs, the possibility of dividing up
the picture into units having or not having independent meaning, the layers into which the
picture sign may be dissolved, the presence of indexicality in pictures, the question as to
what makes up the specificity of particular picture types, and the paradox connected with
pictures lacking depiction, have all been analyzed (to the degree that they have not simply
been the object of pronouncements) by means of system analysis.
In a weak sense, we shall take system analysis to mean an attempt to account for, and
systematize, the researcher’s own intuitions pertaining to a semiotic system, of which he is
also a user in his everyday life. But we shall also introduce a stronger sense of the term
system analysis, in which it means a systematic variation of features contained in the system,
to detect the limits of their variability, and their possibilities of combination. Both
Husserlean ’ideation’ and Hjelmslevean ’commutation’ are varieties of this general kind, in
spite of their differences, as is the Chomskyan judgment of grammaticality and synonymity.
In its ideal form, then, system analysis gives rise to a table having (at least) double entries,
and permitting the cross-classification of a number of categories according to the possibility
20
of putting certain features together. The Peircean apparatus for classifying signs, which, in its
most simple version, involves three times three categories, is a good illustration of this type
of analysis. Eco's work could be ranked with system analysis in the weaker sense. What we
find most of the time in Saint-Martin's books is also a kind of system analysis, largely
informed by psychological studies.
There is, however, yet another method of pictorial semiotics (cf Sonesson 1989b,d,g),
which is a kind of hybrid between system analysis and text analysis, and which might well be
the second most common approach to our domain. Text classification, as it will be called in
the following, is similar to system analysis in its developed form in that it is based on a
intersection of two or more conceptual series, the compatibilities of which are tried out in
the analysis. But these compatibilities are not tested on a purely conceptual basis, but by
means of spotting actual examples of pictures, answering to that particular constellation of
features defining each single case. The result of a text classification is thus a series of analyses
of pictorial texts, but unlike what occurs in real text analysis, there is no attempt to account
completely for the given picture; indeed, it is characterized only to the extent that it realises
that particular constellation of features which is contained in the conceptual series defining
the cross-classification. It is clear that, should we be able to inscribe a given text in a
sufficient number of such categorical frameworks, we will have ended up with a text
analysis, but this prospect is not only utopian; it also goes beyond the intentions of those
who have recourse to this method.
The most significant contribution of this kind inside pictorial semiotics is now doubt
the one given us by Groupe µ (1979; 1980; 1989b,c); but also Sonesson (1989a,I.2.5.)
constructed a skeleton for the analysis of indexicality, in which an array of pictorial
examples are similarly inscribed. In these cases, each picture is treated as the representative
of a class, but there is no claim that the category classified is the dominant one in the
definitional hierarchy of the picture. Normally, we would also expect one picture to appear
in just one square of the table, and this seems true of all the implementations mentioned
above. However, when the present author tried out the most recent version of the Groupe µ
(1989b,c) model on new examples, he managed to place a single picture in a number of
squares (see Sonesson 1989g). This, too, would of course be a way of approaching text
analysis.
System analysis claims to have direct access to the system, whereas the latter is attained
indirectly by the experimental method making a detour over artificial texts. In the case of
text analysis, on the other hand, the object studied is the text(s), while the object of study,
in which we are interested, remains the system. Since it is impossible to start from zero, the
researcher will have to construct a model before he embarks on the analysis, and since this
model cannot be completely arbitrary (in spite of Hjelmslev and Greimas), he must rely on
his intuitions as a user of pictures and, ideally, on his system analysis of these intuitions; he
will then modify the model as he goes along. If the analysis is to be a test of the model, we
21
must retain the requirement of exhaustivity (as far as the parameters defined by the model
are concerned).
As we noted above, most studies of pictorial semiotics are of the general type of text
analysis, and many of them have, in one or other form, the additional presumption of being
structural. There is, however, a certain dialectical relationship between the three approaches:
we need to have some notion of the system, before we can set the procedures of text
analysis to work; system analysis need to be elucidated using real texts, and the artificial
texts of the experimental approach must be constructed by comparison with texts which can
really be observed ’out there’ in culture. It is a curious fact that, so far, even those exponents
of pictorial semiotics, who have employed all three methods, as for instance Lindekens, or at
least two of them (as Tardy, in the case of experiment and text analysis) 2, have never
brought the results of one of these methods to bear on the other ones. Thus, for instance,
Lindekens did not have recourse to the results of his experimental analysis of triangles and
rectangles in order to build a model for realising a text analysis of a more complex picture
(but using Lindekens’ results, Sonesson 1988 and 1989d did just that).
This sets the scene for Saint-Martin's attempt: denying herself the possibility of having
recourse to experimental evidence, she would have to show, using the system analytical or
the text analytical method, that Gestalt theory is somehow better equipped to explain the
nature of pictorial meaning than any of the other available doctrines pertaining to the nature
of perceptual processes.
Ontological and epistemological pan-linguisticism
Like all semiotical sciences, including linguistics, pictorial semiotics is a nomothetic science,
which, just like linguistics, but contrary to the natural sciences and the social sciences, is
concerned with qualities, rather than quantities. To admit this parallel to linguistics is not
the same thing as embracing the so-called linguistic model, which consists in transposing
concepts and terms derived form the (structural) study of language to the analysis of
pictures. In fact, for the last 15-20 years, numerous exponents of pictorial semiotics have
marked their distance to the linguistic model, but this has often meant a return to a
prestructuralist (paradoxically called poststructuralist), and even pretheoretical, stage of
reflexion, as is the case of the late Barthes, and in part of the work of Damisch, Marin,
Schefer, and Lyotard. Fortunately, it can also result in a more relevant critique of the
linguistic model, and an attempt to establish new kinds of models, as in the case of Saint-
Martin's work (cf. also Carani 1986b, 1988).
Indeed, it is seldom appreciated that the outright rejection of the linguistic model must
be at least as naive, and as epistemologically unsound, as its unqualified acceptance; for, the
use of one science as a metaphor for another involves such a long series of choices and
comparisons, on different levels of abstraction and analysis, that there can be no rational
way of undoing them all at one stroke (cf. Sonesson 1989a,I.1.2. and 1989c). This is not,
however, the kind of criticism which could be addressed to Saint-Martin's work. Although
22
she often seems to deny all relevance to linguistic comparisons, she actually retains some of
the more current metaphors ("syntax", and so on), without ever inquiring into the value of
such parallels. Thus, she does accept some of the comparisons, but she fails to justify her
particular choice.
We may well doubt that, in a deeper sense, there has even been a linguistic model in
pictorial semiotics. Barthes, Marin, and many of their followers in different countries did
certainly have recourse, in their attempts to analyze pictures, to a number of terms taken
over from Saussure, Hjelmslev, and Jakobson. When closely scrutinized, these analyses
generally turns out to be concerned with very abstract notions like connectedness (in the
guise of syntagms, syntax, and metonymies) and categorical identity (epitomized as
paradigms and metaphors). Even connotational language, as it is misinterpreted by Barthes,
is introduced as a means of establishing complex networks of meaning (see Sonesson
1989a,II.1.). The notion of sign is never highlighted, although the terms ’expression’ and
’content’ appear abundantly. Structure is certainly essential to Lévi-Strauss' analysis of,
among other things, the Northwest Coast masks, but it is actually easy to show (as we did in
Sonesson 1989a,I.1.3/5.; 1990d, 1991b, 1992a) that methodologically, Lévi-Strauss is really
putting the structure concept of linguistic structuralism on its head. In fact, it is only when
the ultimate constituents of pictures are compared to those of verbal language that
linguisticism looms large, and this happens, in particular, in the approach of Umberto Eco
(cf. Sonesson 1989a,III.2. and 1989c).
Of course, Barthes, Marin, and others, did think they were making use of the linguistic
model. They failed, however, both because they did not manage to construct anything
sufficiently explicit to qualify as a model, and because their linguisticism had essentially the
derived form characteristic of literary critics and other non-specialists. The latter remains
basically true about the current approach of the Greimas school. No matter which may be
the deformations which the linguistic model imposes on pictorial significations, they stem
less from the linguistic terms as such, than from the distortions which the latter have
suffered in the hands of non-linguistics. With few exceptions, linguists cannot legitimately
be accused of having imposed their model on other brands of meaning. On the contrary, they
should be held responsible for having treated the analysis of all non-linguistic significations
as something spurious, either denying the interest of their study altogether, or citing these
meaning types only in the guise of simplistic examples at the beginning of introductory
courses to linguistics.
As we have noted elsewhere (in Sonesson 1989a,II.1.1), the pan-linguisticism
characteristic of French structuralism seems to be of at least two kinds. While the Greimas
school would seem to adopt, to some extent, the linguistic model, because all meaning is
considered to be similar to the linguistic kind, or to admit of the same treatment, that is, for
ontological reasons, the justifications Barthes appears to have for the same choice are rather
epistemological, and basically opposed to those of the Greimas school. Actually, Barthes seems
23
to think that semiotical systems other than verbal language are inaccessible to analysis, and
thus can only be attained indirectly, through the way language refers to them and describes
them. To reject ontological pan-linguisticism, we will have to show that pictures or other
meanings are, in some essential respects, fundamentally different from verbal language. To
reject epistemological pan-linguisticism, on the other hand, it is necessary to demonstrate
that there are meanings which are accessible to us independently of verbal language, for
instance before it is even acquired.
Curiously, Saint-Martin at numerous places seems to attribute such an epistemological
panlinguisticism to representatives of the Greimas school, notably to Floch. She takes it to
be responsible for the tendency to study merely what the picture represents, without caring
for other meanings which less easily lend themselves to linguistic expression. Actually, even
Floch (1978) attacks this tendency in the work of Barthes, for the very same reason (which
is not to say that he may not also be guilty of the same error on other occasions). But even
Saint-Martin (1987a,b; 1990) accepts, to some extent, epistemological pan-linguisticism: the
iconic function of the picture is repeatedly treated not only as being conventional, along the
lines suggested by Eco's argument, but as deriving essentially from a verbal act of
nomination. Yet there is really no reason, as we shall see when turning to perceptual theory,
to accept this brand of epistemological pan-linguisticism.
Models in pictorial semiotics
As pointed out above, pictorial analyses must, in order to be semiotical, make explicit use of
a model. A model will be understood to be a scheme made up of interconnected, recurrent categories
which are sufficiently explicit to permit its coherent application to a series of ’texts’ (that is,
in our case, pictures), thereby engendering a description of the ’texts’, in the process of
which the model is further enriched.
Barthes seems to be using a kind of model in his Panzani analysis, at least when
positing the existence of pictorial denotations and connotations. Unfortunately, no clear
meaning can be attached to these terms, since Barthes only rarely have recourse to
Hjelmslev’s understanding of this terminological couple, and since very different phenomena
are subsumed under the term connotation (cf. Sonesson 1989a,II.1.). What is transposed
from Barthes’ famous article into a disturbing number of analyses conducted in several
languages is therefore not a model, but a family of expressions.
In the following, we will distinguish three models: the Greimas school model, the Groupe
µ model, and Saint-Martin’s model. Henceforth, they will be called the G model, the µ model,
and the SM model, respectively.
According to the earlier version of the µ model, the picture contains a number of
layers, each having its particular norm: roughly, the matter, substance, and form of both
expression and content and of both the plastic and the iconic level, (cf Groupe µ
1979:178ff)3. On the iconic level, the picture stands for some object recognizable in the
ordinary perceptual world; whereas, on the plastic level, expression appears to be conveyed
24
by simple qualities of the picture thing itself, which tend to have abstract concepts as their
content. In the case of plastic discourse , the norm is said to be isotopicality, or more precisely,
isomateriality of the expression matter, and allotopicality, which is to say, allograduality of the
expression graduality — more simply put, the norm requires there to be a single type of
material employed in the composition of the picture, while at the same time distinctions are
expressed between the intervening signs so as to make it possible to hold them apart (cf.
Groupe µ 1978:17ff). The purpose of the analysis is to establish a repertory of different
rhetorical figures, or deviations from the norms, and there are two standards from which the
figures may diverge: the so-called generic and local degree zero. While the first is defined
already in the system, the second is separately produced in each particular ’text’ (cf. Groupe
µ 1980:252).
In its more recent version, the µ model apparently dispenses with all the different
layers, retaining only the distinction between iconic and plastic language, as well as the two
kinds of norms. Rhetorical figures may now be purely iconic, or purely plastic; or they may be
iconico-plastic, in which case a divergence from what is expected in one layer of the sign is
reduced to normality with the aid of information contained in the other layer. Both plastic
and iconic figures are divided according as they are in absentia or in praesentia, and conjoint or
disjoint; whereas they iconico-plastic figures can be disjoint or conjoint, and either plastic with
iconic redundance, or the reverse. The possibility of distinguishing separately such units as
have present or absent, as well as conjoint or disjoint, elements, results from the
multidimensionality of pictures not found in verbal language: two entities are susceptible of
appearing together, without occupying the same place. 4 Here, the norm is supposed to
prescribe the coincidence of plastic units with iconic ones, a well as the concurrence of the
three kinds of elements pertaining to shape, colour, and texture (see Groupe µ 1989b; for a
systematization and examples, also cf. Sonesson 1989g).
In both its variants, the µ model is a text classification. Although it equally starts out
from a separation of the iconic and plastic layers, the G model has been designed to guide text
analysis. The second operation of this model thus involves the partition of the entire pictorial
field into two parts, according to some or other criteria (In some cases, an immediate
separation into more than two fields is later reduced to the twofold division). One of the
parts, or both of them, will then be further divided into smaller division blocks, and the
procedure may sometimes continue on still further levels. All these segmentations are then
justified by means of listing bundles of binary oppositions, the relata of which are manifested
in different fields resulting from the earlier division. At some point of the analysis, a
proportionality of the kind familiar from Lévi-Strauss’ myth studies tends to appear, and it is
shown that, inside the plastic layer, or between the iconic and plastic layers, or elsewhere,
there is some A which relate to some B, in the same way as some C is related to some D (for
further discussion, cf. Sonesson 1989a,II.3.).
This description corresponds mainly to the Greimas model as used by Floch. The
25
fundamental difference between Floch and Thürlemann is really one of method: although
both the approaches differ from one article to another, Floch generally tends to begin from
global configurations and work his way down to features and feature oppositions, whereas
Thürlemann, in particular in the Klee analyses, takes his point of departure in supposedly
minimal elements, using them to build up larger configurations. Moreover, binary divisions
appear to play a much less preponderant part in Thürlemann's work.
The SM model, too, would seem to be intended to function text analytically, but its
coverage is much more extensive. From the very start, Saint-Martin imposes on the picture a
grid containing five times five division blocks, to which is added, inside each of the resulting
squares, a fivefold segmentation separating the four sides and the central part. Each one of
these 125 portions of the picture, called coloremes, must be assigned a value on six different
dimensions: colour/tonality, texture, dimension/quantity, implantation into the plane,
orientation/vectorality, and frontiers/contours generating shapes. Moreover, the coloremes
are connected with each other by means of three kinds of rules determining visual syntax:
the interaction of colours; topological relations, such as proximity, separation, encasing,
envelopment, and orders of succession; and finally Gestaltian relations, such as
figure/ground, contiguity, similarity, closure, good forms, vectorality and familiarity.
The visual variables, when appearing in a picture, are further constrained by the
energetic potentialities of the basic plane , which is supposed to contain four formative
angles, two diagonals, which give rise to two pairs of partly overlapping triangles, a
cruciform, and a lozenge. In addition, the model attends to the variable denominated
implantation into the plane, distinguishing around two dozen different perspective and
distance effects. This description concerns the syntactic part of the model; a projected book
on visual semantics is still to be published (for a full critical review, cf. Sonesson 1992a)
It should be clear from our description that Saint-Martin’s model offers a much more
exhaustive analysis than the models suggested by Floch, Thürlemann, and Groupe µ: it
actually scrutinizes every single point of the pictorial surface. From one point of view, this is
certainly an advantage of the model: such a procedure may constitute a good check on many
an overly adventurous hypothesis Yet, it also constitutes a problem: the model seems to
engage us in a procedure which has no natural stopping point, and it does very little to guide
us in the selection of relevant traits, presupposed not only be every picture analysis, but even
by the plain perception of a picture. What is lacking, then, a a principle of pertinence,
determining what to attend to in the picture under analysis (No doubt Saint-Martin may be
reserving this surprise for us in her forthcoming semantics book). Such principles of
pertinence may well turn out to be too restricted, and too ambiguous, as we have shown to
be the case of the binary divisions favoured by Floch (Cf. Sonesson 1990d; 1992a). Or they
may be geared merely to react to exceptional pictures, and only to isolated properties of the
picture, as could be true of the norm and deviation model propounded by Groupe µ. Yet, a
model which leaves us such a freedom as the SM variety is very close to being pointless.
26
Although the idea is nowhere clearly stated, some kind of principle of pertinence may
well be embodied in Saint-Martin's description of the pictorial base plane. Moreover, we
may take the very fact that she has cared to write an entire book about topological relations,
and another one about Gestalt theory, to mean that she would consider topology and
Gestalt relations to occupy a particularly important position among the configurations of
visual meaning. These are possibilities which we will have to explore in the following.
The semiotics of iconicity and visuality
So far, we have been supposing that Saint-Martin's work is concerned with pictorial
semiotics; and it is, in actual fact, mostly devoted to the study of pictures. Yet, as the titles
of some of her books suggest, Saint-Martin is actually intent on studying a much wider
domain, that of visual semiotics, which, in her view, should comprise architecture and
sculpture, in addition to pictures. In one of her books (1987a:98), she claims that they are all
characterized by the same visual variables, which are then differently constrained, according
as they are inserted into the basic planes of pictures, the virtual cube of sculpture, or the
environmental cube singularizing architecture.
Unfortunately, Saint-Martin does not further discuss architecture. She has, however,
the merit of having studied almost for the first time the essential coordinates determining
sculptural meaning. Even earlier, Dora Vallier compared sculpture, painting, and
architecture in a series of articles, but her approach is based on badly understood linguistic
analogies, in addition to being entirely aprioristic in character. In contrast, Saint-Martin's
approach seems much closer to the subject matter. We must however address a much more
fundamental issue: is there, or could there be, such a domain as visual semiotics?
Even Preziosi (1983) conceives of architecture as being a kind of visual semiosis,
which he then opposes to linguistic meanings, identified with auditive semiosis. Roman
Jakobson has treated of the differences between visual and auditive signs, and Thomas
Sebeok has divided up semiotics according to the sense modalities. On the other hand, from
the point of view of Hjelmslevean semiotics, we would normally not expect visuality, being
a mere ’substance’ or even ’matter’, to determine any relevant categorisations of semiotic
means.
Although this type of argument is often made, it is based on a confusion of the terms
’substance’ and ’matière’, as employed by Hjelmslev, and in their ordinary usage. Thus, the
term ’matière’, to Hjelmslev, is simply that which is unknowable, and, as a consequence, not
susceptible of being analyzed; that is, it is the residue of the analysis; and ’substance’, which,
in the earlier texts, is the term used for ’matière’ in the above-mentioned sense, stands, in
the later works, for the combination of ’matière’ and ’form’. Thus, ’substance’, in the early
works, and ’matter’ later, simply means ’that which is not pertinent relative to the other
plane of the sign’ (see discussion in Sonesson 1989a,II.4. and 1988); it does not necessarily
stand for matter in the sense of ordinary language, the material of which something is made,
the sense modality (as Groupe µ, for instance, must supposes when making ’allomateriality’
27
into one of the possible characterizing traits of the collage). If the material or the sense
modality turns out to be relevant in relation to the other plane of signification, it becomes
form.
More importantly, the psychology of perception certainly seems to suggest the
existence of some common organization which puts all or most visually conveyed meanings
on the same level.. If, as we have argued, all signs must also be objects of perception, there is
every reason to believe that the modality according to which they are perceived determine at
least part of their nature. There may, of course, be other, perhaps more fundamental division
blocks of semiosis, of which pictures form a part (that of iconicity, for instance). If we
accept the legitimacy of the domain of visual semiotics, another problem is brought into
view: why should such a domain merely comprehend pictures, buildings, and sculptures? No
doubt, in suggesting such a list, Saint-Martin is influenced by the traditional divisions of fine
art. From a semiotical standpoint, visual semiotics should have to comprise much more.
Some significations are only partly visual, as those of theatre communication. Others might
be considered not to have an intrinsically visual organization, such as writing, the
conformation of which depends in part on spoken language. But all kinds of gestures and
bodily postures, objects, dummies, logotypes, clothing, and many other phenomena must be
counted as visual signs and significations. In fact, even visual perception per se supposes a
pick-up of meaning of sorts. We therefore have to face the arduous task of determining the
ways in which the various kinds of visual semiosis differ.
Even though pictures may form part of the division of visual signs, they are no doubt
also members of the category of iconic signs — and yet they are not the only kind of iconic
signs there is. Iconicity is often wrongly taken to be that which is peculiar to pictures.
Indeed, Eco’s plaidoyer against the existence of iconical signs most of the time reads like an
argument against the specificity of pictures. To Peirce, an icon is a sign which is based on
similarity; or, more strictly, a sign consisting of an expression which stands for a content
because of properties which each of them possess intrinsically.5 ; This means that, not only
do iconic signs abound in sense modalities other than vision, but there may also be visual,
iconic signs which are not pictures.
Peirce only distinguished three subtypes: the image, the diagram, and the metaphor.
Without any claim to exhaustivity, we have opposed the picture to a set of other iconically
motived signs, including the metaphor, the dummy, other self-identifications and
exemplifications; and the symbol, in the traditional European sense, that is, as preserved in
the name for the artistic movement ’symbolism’ (see Sonesson 1989a,II.2.2. and III.6.).
A primary requirement which should be imposed on pictorial semiotics is to determine
the categories of which pictorial signs are subcategories, and to show that the latter are in
fact so related to the former. In the second place, we need to specify the differences
between pictorial signs and other members of the same superior categories. Thus, although it
may be evident that pictures are indeed visual signs, we need to show that they are
28
intrinsically visual, that is, that visuality is part and parcel of their Hjelmslevian form, that
which could not be exchanged without the sign becoming another sign having a different
meaning. And we have to determine in which way pictures differ from other, intrinsically
visual signs, not only (if that is really another, intrinsically visual, sign) from sculpture. Also,
we have to show (against Eco, Goodman, and others), that pictures are, in one or another
sense, iconical signs, and that pictorality is a peculiar modification of iconicity (see, in
particular, Sonesson 1989a,III.3.).
From psychologies of perception to theories of signs and iconicity

Fernande Saint-Martin is right, we believe, in claiming that pictorial signs are inherently
perceptual, that is, visual, in nature. The model of the sign as an object of perception
deployed by the Prague school seems much more obviously relevant in the analysis of
pictures than in that of literature, for which it was essentially developed. Not only must
such a claim be justified from a discussion of perceptual theory, but some criteria must also
be proposed for choosing as a foundation one among the several conflicting theories
occupying the contemporary scene of perceptual psychology. In selecting this perceptual
theory, we will not be able to share entirely the convictions of Saint-Martin. Moreover, if all
perception turns out to carry meaning, we are faced with the further task of determining in
what way visual signs, such as pictures, differ from mere meanings conveyed be visual
means. In working out such a distinction, we will again have to part company with Saint-
Martin.
On the choice of a perceptual theory
Even granted that the pictorial sign is an object of perception, it remains to be determined
whether it is a Gibsonian object of perception, a Gestaltist one, a constructivist one, or
perhaps even something else. The choice of a perceptual theory which is to serve as a
foundation to pictorial semiotics is by no means as easy to accomplish as Saint-Martin would
like to think.
There are, in present-day psychology, basically three ways of conceiving the
relationship between that which is perceived and the cause of the perception: and the three
corresponding theories are those of constructivism, Gestalt psychology, and direct
registration theory, or Gibsonianism (Hagen 1980:4ff; 1979; Winner 1982:84ff; Sonesson
1989a,III.3.3.). It is the contention of the latter theory, that all information needed is
available directly in the light coming from the environment, and is determined by this light,
although only if we take into account all the higher-order variables of the environment and
their invariants over time. According to Hagen, constructivists like Gregory and Gombrich
claim that reality lacks all intrinsic organization, and so must be set in order by a hypothesis
on the part of the perceiving subject; but the resulting arrangement is only given with a
certain degree of probability, and may have to be further revised. Again according to Hagen,
Gestaltists such as Arnheim and Hochberg (sic!) would agree with the constructivists in
29
affirming that reality is fundamentally ambiguous, and so must be supplemented by the

beholder's share, but, in their view, the perceived organization results deterministically from
the Gestalt laws, built into the human mind. Also, while the Gestalt laws, or at least the
simplicity principle on which they are based, are supposedly innate, constructivists rather
tend to suppose that the hypotheses employed in perception are either explicitly posited as
conventions, or derive in a more tacit fashion from earlier experience of the world (cf.
Winner 1982:108). Surprisingly, Saint-Martin (1990:86 ) affirms, on unclear evidence, that
no such innateness is required by Gestalt theory.
Hagen maintains that all three theories are descriptively inadequate: constructivism
because no criteria have been proposed for when a hypothesis is confirmed; Gestalt
psychology, because its laws are mysterious; and Gibsonianism, because no list of the
invariants picked up from the environment can at present be given (p.21ff). In spite of these
observations, however, Hagen herself clearly remains within the bounds of direct
registration theory. This is precisely the theory which Winner (1982:98ff) declares to be
descriptively inadequate. On the other hand, she argues that there are cases in pictorial
perception, in which simplicity may be shown to override familiarity, thus favouring Gestalt
psychology, as well as other cases in which familiarity gains the upper hand, which is a result
favouring constructionism. Contrary to Hagen, Winner thus concludes that reality is
ambiguous, but may be supplemented in various ways.
It is natural that, in her book on Gestalt theory, Saint-Martin should neglect
constructionism and direct registrations theory in favour of the Gestalt school. However, it
is as pity that these movements are never ever mentioned as such, and thus are never
presented as the alternative conceptions which in fact they are. Gibson is even introduced as
a continuator of Gestalt theory (1990:58), only to be later attacked as the apostate he must
thus appear to be. Having never tired, in his numerous publications, of criticizing Gestalt
psychology, Gibson would have been surprised and shocked by this suggestion. On the other
hand, it is true that he has always recognized in Koffka one of the most important influences
on his thinking.
In fact, there seems to be no real Gestalt psychologists left, except for those who are
rather to be counted among the students of pictorial art, as, for instance, Arnheim. There is
undoubtedly an array of phenomena, discovered by the Gestalt psychologists, which are still
with us, but which now are in need of new explanations. The theoretical stance taken by
Hochberg, who Hagen treats as a Gestaltist, is, in actual fact, that of constructivism, as he
himself affirms. He has, on the other hand, undertaken a critical appraisal of the Gestalt
tradition. Sometimes, he claims, the most natural three-dimensional interpretation of a
picture is not the simplest one, as Gestalt theory would make us expect (Hochberg
1972:59f). Gestalt phenomena are really peculiar cases of Helmholtz' law, according to
which we perceive that which is most probable, given the pattern of stimulation (Hochberg
1980:58f; cf. 1974;196ff). The ’minimum principle’ cannot be due to a built-in perceptual
30
mechanism that makes us perceive always the simplest object fitting the overall stimulus
pattern, Hochberg (1978a) claims, and goes on to suggest that, instead, it may be an effect of
putting together fragmentary sensory data, in a manner corresponding to the most likely
object, or that it may result from the arrangement that has the best chance of being seen and
remembered from one momentary glance to another.
Indeed, Hochberg (1972:60) even claims that the very fact that perceptual objects
must be grasped in a long series of momentary glances imposes limitations on the validity of
Gestalt organization, since different parts of the whole will fall on the fovea at different
moments. Saint-Martin (1990:28f), who notes this last points, takes Hochberg to task for
neglecting the coherence which Gestalt psychology takes to persist from one glance to
another, and for supposing only that portion which is reflected in the fovea to be actually
perceived. In other writings of his, not quoted by Saint-Martin, Hochberg certainly gives due
attention to peripheral seeing. Yet it may be true, as we have argued in discussing pictures of
impossible objects (in Sonesson 1989a,III.3.4.), that Hochberg exaggerates the importance
of foveal perception. The same could be said, however, about the notion of coloreme,
defined by Saint-Martin (to which we will turn below).
In perceptual psychology, the really interesting discussion nowadays takes place
between constructionism and direct registration theory. But why should Gregory, Hochberg,
and others think that ’inferences’ are necessary to explain what is actually perceived, when
Gibson, Kennedy, and Hagen feel they can dispense with them altogether? Among the facts
to be explained by perceptual psychology, figure prominently, in Gregory's view
(1966:1974), such things as the pick-up of non-optical properties, gaps in the stimuli, visual
illusions, ambiguities, illusory contours, and the perception of logically impossible objects.
To Gibson, on the other hand, most of these phenomena are simply curiosities, of very little
weight to everyday perception, and therefore to perceptual psychology. Thus, one of the
differences between the theories lies in the choice of facts which they consider worth-while
explaining. Yet, it is perhaps not beside the point to argue about which facts we should care
to explain.
One of the most celebrated pioneers of constructionism, Ulric Neisser, has lately
recognized the necessity of accounting for the fact that ordinary perception usually proves
right. Just like Gibson claims, information is picked up from light, Neisser (1976: 16, 20ff)
grants, but this pick-up only serves to start a perceptual cycle taking place in time:
anticipatory schemes generate generic, rather than specific, hypothesis which are modified by
the information available, engendering subsequently more detailed schemes, which guide the
further exploration of the optic array. In his latest publications, Neisser (1987) seems even
more convinced of the fact that, as Gibson affirms, information for that which is perceived
is present in the array of light available to the eye, as soon as we attend to higher-order
variables, and their modification over time. Even categorisation is now said to be
ecologically grounded, though somewhat ’less direct’. A theory which has made a convert, a
31
rare occurrence in any scientific community, is not so easily refuted as Saint-Martin

(1990:58ff) appears to believe.
There thus seems to be a fourth alternative in perceptual psychology, not recognized
neither by Hagen nor by Winner, which amounts to a blend of direct registration theory
with some facets of constructionism. This is Hochberg's position, as it was that of Neisser at
least as late as in 1976. Although Saint-Martin often quotes Piaget to help buttressing the
common bias of constructivism and Gestalt theory, the latter's general conception, according
to which both assimilation and accommodation are involved in our ordinary experience of
reality, certainly seems to suggest that he, too, would favour a mixed approach. In the next
subsection will will suggest some reasons for taking this alternative seriously.
Thus far, it will be noted, we have been mainly concerned with the perception of the
world, and with the relation between the assumed physical cause and the resulting percept,
not with picture perception. No doubt, the whole issue appears to be roughly analogous to
that of pictorial iconicity, the relation between the picture and ordinary perceptual reality
reproducing, in that order, that between the ordinary percept and its physical cause. We
should therefore expect constructionists and Gestaltists to favour a version of a
conventionalist theory of picture perception, and Gibson to defend a similarity theory, but
the opposite turns out to be closer to the truth.
Not only do Gestaltists and constructivists (with the exception of Hochberg) treat
pictures and reality as being of a kind, but most of their reasoning is based on pictorial
examples, although their conclusions concern the perception of the real, three-dimensional
world. Gibson actually argues that their theories are artefacts of their having studied pictures
rather than reality. And he goes on to claim that pictures are not at all based on similarity.
Yet he certainly does not want to maintain that they are conventional, in the way
semioticians would use that term: instead, because of being so different from the perceptual
environment, they must render the invariants of perception, and convey them to us, in a
very different way from that in which they become manifest in the real world. It is thus
misleadingly that Saint-Martin (1990:15) quotes Gibson as saying, like Piaget, that depicted
objects are not perceived: they are indirectly perceived, as he continues the phrase elsewhere.
No doubt, Saint-Martin is not interested in the analogy between physical cause and
percept, on one hand, and picture and reality, on the other: her concern with perceptual
psychology has nothing to do with pictorial iconicity. We will later discuss Gestalt theory
from the point of view which preoccupies Saint-Martin. Yet, it is important to pursue the
discussion also according to the facets neglected in her argument.
From the Gibsonian environment to the Husserlean Lifeworld
One peculiar thing about the so-called ecological psychology devised by James Gibson is that
it is, on so many counts, remarkably similar to the phenomenological philosophy conceived
around the turn of the last century by Edmund Husserl. Gibson, is has been reported, was
very interested in philosophy; he was even accused of trying to resolve philosophical puzzles
32
empirically (cf. Lombardo 1987; Reed 1988:45). Apparently, Gibson had some knowledge
of Husserl's work. Yet, from reading Lombardo and Reed, one gets the impression that
neither they nor Gibson have any idea of the degree to which their conceptions coincide. No
doubt, apart form being a good psychologist, Gibson was also an excellent phenomenologist.
Scientists organize experiments and execute analyses, which establish the limits of
what may be reasonably thought about a particular subject, but no amount of facts will ever
engender a theory on its own. Facts are like indices of reality; but they have to be bound
together by abductions, in Peirce's sense: general rules and regularities which are taken for
granted and which link one singular fact with another. The Ancient Greeks and the Chinese
may have observed at least in part the same stars; yet each group put the starts together
according to the fashion of their particular sociocultural Lifeworld, the first forging 48
constellations, and the second 283. In the same way, given the same facts, there may be
Greek abductions, and there may be Chinese abductions.
Peirce wondered how it was possible that so many abductions prove right, postulating
a natural instinct as an explanation. Actually, there is an infinite number of ways to relate
starts, and facts, but most of them would seem to be humanly inconceivable. It is difficult to
say if they are therefore right, in an absolute sense. The limited number of alternative
abductions being really proposed may be due, not to a natural instinct, but to the
commonality of the most general organizational framework of the Lifeworld, in Husserl's
sense, that is, of the ’world taken for granted’, as Husserl's discipline Alfred Schütz also
called it. And psychologists, like philosophers, inhabit the common Lifeworld; sometimes,
they ar even more or less aware of it.
There are differences between the constructivists, the Gestaltists, and the Gibsonians,
which have to do with which experiments they consider relevant, and to which properties
of the experimental results they attribute most importance, but this in turn must be due to
the way they, as laymen, inhabit our common Lifeworld, and how consciously they relate to
it. This does not necessarily mean that the differences between these psychologists are mere
disparities of taste and personal predispositions; for they could as well be explained by their
different aptness for the difficult task of doing phenomenology.
This is not the place to describe in details the organizational framework of the
Lifeworld (cf. Sonesson 1989a,I.2.1.), or the similarities between Husserl's Lifeworld and
the Gibsonian environment (cf. op.cit.,III.3.2.). Suffice-it to point to a single, importance
coincidence. When Gibson (1978:228) observes that, when we are confronted with the-cat-
from-one-side, the-cat-from-above, the-cat-from-the-front, etc., what we see is all the time
the same invariant cat, he actually recovers the central theme of Husserlean phenomenology,
according to which the object is entirely, and directly, given in each one of its noemata (see
Husserl 1939, etc.). Husserl's cube and Gibson's cat exemplify the same phenomenal fact —
for it remains a phenomenal fact, and not an experimental one, also in Gibson's work.
Whereas Husserl called into question the conception of his contemporary Helmholtz,
33
according to which consciousness is like a box, in which the world is represented by signs
and pictures, from the fragmentary pieces of which we must construct our percepts,
Gibson's strawmen are the followers of this same Helmholz, who claim that hypotheses are
needed to build up perceptions from the scattered pieces offered us by the sensations (cf.
Sonesson 1989a,III.3.). The two arguments appear to proceed along different lines, but
converge at the end. Husserl rejects what has been termed ’the picture metaphor of
consciousness’, showing Brentano and Helmholz to have an erroneous conception of the
very pictures and other signs to which they compare consciousness, when they ignore the
transparency of their expression to the content. Gibson (1971; 1978), on the other hand,
emphasizes the dissimilarity between the picture and the real-world scene, to show that
conclusions dealing with the real world which are based on experiments with picture
perception are seriously misguided. Yet, to both Husserl and Gibson, normal perception
gives direct access to reality, and while Gibson thinks pictures represent a kind of indirect
perception, Husserl tells us that they are ’perceptually imagined’. Indeed, this is the sense in
which Gibson's phrase, quoted by Saint-Martin, according to which depicted objects are not
perceived, should be taken.
It is precisely this phenomenal observation, to the effect that perceptual objects, rather
than piecemeal perceptions, are that which is perceived, which Saint-Martin (1990:58ff)
finds unacceptable. Not surprisingly, she finds the same faults (p. 27) with a disciple of
Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, who also claims that perception is of the object, not of its
appearances. In a way, she is right in affirming that this proposition cannot be verified in a
laboratory; but it is verified by each and every instance of human perception. Children's
drawings at first render ’things’ (and abstract properties) instead of their appearances,
because the capacity to see appearances must be laboriously acquired (cf. Sonesson
1989a,III.3.2.). In the ’naive attitude’, Gibson (1971:31f) affirms, we look through a series
of perspectives in movement to the invariant features of the object, while in the
’perspectival attitude’, we fix a single perspectival view in order to consider it in its own
right. Roughly the same opposition exists between the ’natural attitude’ and
’phenomenological reflection’ in Husserl's work.6 Moreover, Husserl would argue, just like
Gibson (quoted by Lombardo 1987: 350), that what is ’seen-now’ and ’seen-from-here’
specify the self rather than the environment.
It is an misunderstanding to believe, as Saint-Martin (1990:11) does, that Gibson
supposes there to by any kind of ’pre-established similarity’ between human knowledge and
the objects of this knowledge. This description is based the idea, defended by constructivism
and Gestalt theory alike, that the communication between the world and the mind is
somehow interrupted. Constructivists and Gestaltists assumed that something must be added
to the information given, because it seemed to them that only impoverished information
could be available. It is the merit of Gibson (and here he goes well beyond phenomenology)
to have shown that all the information needed is actually there to be picked up, once we
34
realize that the perceptual system is able to attend to higher-order properties of the array of
light, in particular as they change over time. In terms more familiar to semioticians, it is a
question of determining what kinds of units form the pertinent input to the perceptual
system.
After some hundred odd years of discussion about what must be add to the stimuli, in
order for perception to occur, the claim that reality is perceived directly may appear much
too Gordian a solution. Also, Husserl's position is, on the face of it, more sophisticated,
since what is directly perceived in his view is some kind of object internal to consciousness
(although the difference is ’reduced’ away), in fact a Lifeworld object, not a physical one.
Indeed, Gibson (1982:106) observes that he is concerned with properties noticed by
phenomenologists, but that he assumes them also to be real. On the other hand, although he
was certainly committed to some kind of psychophysical parallelism in the earlier versions of
his theory, he later (1982:217) argued that ’ecological physics’ must be distinct from the
ordinary one, and that its invariants were of a quite different order. Indeed, the kind of
’implicitly known regularities’ prevailing in the world of Gibsonian ecology are not very
different from the ’customary ways things have of behaving’ in Husserl's Lifeworld.
The similarities between Husserlean phenomenology and Gibson's ecological
psychology are not merely of anecdotal interest. For, whatever we may think of its ultimate
philosophical postulates, phenomenology constitute a exceptionally careful description of
reality as it appears to us, when closely scrutinized. As a consequence, the coincidence
between this description, and that offered by Gibson, guaranties that ecological psychology
is really concerned to explain perceptual reality as it is, and not some artifact of the
historically evolved theories of perception.
The real problem with Gibson's and Husserl's conceptions, is that they do not take the
argument far enough. Not only do we not see sensations, but real objects, but we do not
perceive geometrical volume as such, but a cultural-laden object, not a cube but a dice, not
the tea cup formula but the tea cup itself, not the cat as a geometrical shape in movement,
but that peculiar domestic animal of the Occidental Lifeworld (cf. Sonesson 1989a,I.2.2.
and III.3.2.). In an interesting discussion of the changing meaning given by Gibson to the
notion of direct perception through the years, Costall (1989:10ff) makes a similar
observation, concluding that no example of human perception could ever count as direct on
Gibson's terms. Yet, the only world we could ever directly perceive is the world of our own
culture. Just as some disciples of Husserl, as for instance Schütz, discovered the sociocultural
character of the Lifeworld, Costall thus points to the cultural overlay of the Gibsonian
environment. In a way, therefore, constructions and unconscious inferences are really there:
they are only much more deeply embedded.
Plastic and iconic layers of the picture.
There is presently a kind of consensus for distinguishing the plastic and iconic layers of the
picture. Earlier made in other terms by Lindekens, the distinction is now incorporated into
35
two of the leading models of pictorial semiotics, that of the Greimas school and of Groupe
µ. Only Saint-Martin would ignores the distinction. It is indeed problematical, in a number
of ways, only one of which will be discussed here, and yet it should no doubt be made, in
one way or another.7.
According to this conception, roughly, the picture stands, on the iconic level, for some
object recognizable from the ordinary perceptual Lifeworld; whereas, on the plastic level,
the expression is conveyed by simple qualities of the picture thing itself, which tend to
correspond to increasingly abstract concepts. As used in semiotics, on the other hand,
iconicity is unavoidably connected, in some way of other, with Peirce’s concept of icon,
even when, as in the Greimas school approach, is has been redefined to mean something like
’the illusion of reality’, or to correspond to ’verisimilitude’, as it is also found in literature.
But the iconicity of the iconic layer is not the same at that of the general sign theory
formulated by Peirce: notably, plastic features, in the sense of the µ and G models, may well
be iconic in Peirce’s sense!
In order to avoid some of the problems posed by Peirce’s definition, it will be
suggested here that two items may share an iconic ground, being thus apt to enter, in the
capacity of being its expression and content, into a semiotic function forming an iconic sign,
to the extent that there are some or other set of properties which they possess independently
of each other, which are identical or similar when considered from a particular point of
view, or which may be perceived or, more broadly, experienced as being identical or similar,
where similarity is taken to be an identity perceived on the background of fundamental
difference (cf. Sonesson 1989a,III.1-3. and below).
There are many varieties of iconic grounds, however. If a particular iconic sign gives us
an illusion of literally seeing in the twodimensional surface of the expression plane the pro-
jection of a scene extracted from real world of threedimensional existence (with or without
a suggestion of lineal perspective), then it is more particularly a pictorial sign. The symbol, in
the sense in which this term is ordinarily used, not by Peirce, but in the European tradition,
is also a kind of iconic sign, having in addition certain indexical traits: it reposes on the
isolation of an abstract, not necessarily perceivable, property, connected with a
generalization from the object serving as an expression, and a particularization from the
object serving as a content (a dove standing for peace, scales signifying justice, etc.). There
are other types of iconical signs as well (cf. Sonesson 1989a,III.6.).
A pictorial sign is a sign the primary allofunctional relation of which is pictorial, in the
sense defined above. Pictures also tend to manifest a secondary function, which, following
Floch and Groupe µ, we will call plastic, in the case of which meanings are derived from the
properties which the expression plane of the picture really possesses, when considered as
made up of mere twodimensional shapes on a surface. In this sense, however, the plastic
layer may well function iconically. Thus, for instance, if the circle is seen to convey softness,
and the rectangle signifies hardness, to pick up some of the results obtained by Lindekens
36
(1971) in one of his experiments, then there must be some properties mediating
synaesthetically between the visual and tactile sense modalities. When the circle is declared
to be feminine, on the other hand, and when the triangle is said to be calculating, and the
rectangle mathematical, much more conventional elements would seem to enter the semiotic
function.
This certainly suggests that the meanings conveyed by pictures are much more varied
and complex than what present-day models admit: for the moment, however, we would be
well-advised to distinguish, not the plastic and the iconic layers, but perhaps the plastic and
pictorial ones, both of which may have an iconic function (for the full argument, cf.
Sonesson 1990e). In this sense, the problem of iconicity, as customarily discussed in
semiotics, is mainly concerned with the pictorial function. There could be a problem of
iconicity also in the case of the plastic function, yet other issues may have to be resolved
before it comes into view. In the rest of this section, we will attend to some problems of
pictorial iconicity, and in the next we will turn to the questions involved with plastic
language. The latter are central to Saint-Martin's concern, whereas the former appears to be
largely neglected.
The critique of pictorial iconicity
Since we have discussed pictorial iconicity extensively in other contexts (in particular in
Sonesson 1989a,III; 1990e,f, 1992a), we will only summarize relevant aspects of the
argument here. Saint-Martin (1987a: xvi; 1990: 2ff) always passes over the question rapidly,
apparently subscribing to some version of Eco's conception, but insisting that pictorial
iconicity is linguistically determined (cf. Saint-Martin 1987b).8 She is thus subject, like
Barthes, to some variant of epistemological linguisticism, although she is eager to
demonstrate that what we (following the Greimasians and Groupe µ) have termed plastic
meanings, are differently conveyed. If it can be shown that Eco's conventionalist theory is
mistaken, Saint-Martin's linguisticism will also appear to be dispensable.
Bierman, Goodman, and Eco, have all argued against using similarity as a criterion in
the definition of iconical signs and/or pictures; and even Burks and Greenlee have
introduced some qualifications on Peirce’s view which serve to emphasize conventionality.
To an important extent, these arguments are erroneous, among other things because they are
based on an identification of the common sense notion of similarity with the equivalence
relation of logic. Differently put, they are inadequate because they suppose man to live in
the world of the natural sciences when in fact he always inhabits a particular sociocultural
Lifeworld. The most immediate consequence of this fact is that many of the
conventionalities attributed to pictures turn out to be inherent in the particular Lifeworld.
This means that, whenever some peculiarities of an individual or a thing, some traits of the
woman or the zebra, are locally given importance, they also make up the features given
primary importance in a picture (cf, Sonesson 1989,III.2.2/6.).
But some more general principles will also follow. Pictures, being a kind of visual
37
thinking, are required to follow the phenomenological rule of all thinking, according to
which an object can only be seized each time from a particular point of view, and not in its
entirety, which means a choice has to be made among the proper parts, the perceptual parts,
and the attributes of the object. Moreover, much thinking, also that which occurs in
pictures, occurs in terms of prototypes, that is to say, by means of construing an object as an
approximation to a more characteristic instance of the same class; and even abductions and
simple structures often intervene in the constitution of pictorial sings (ibid.,III.2.2. and
III.2.7.).
Similarity, then, is really asymmetric and irreflexive. Indeed, this fact is not only
intuitively obvious, but has now been experimentally demonstrated (notably by Rosch &
Tversky; cf. also Sonesson 1989a,III.2.1. and III.6.2.). It should not be confused with
identity: indeed, between two pictures there is identity, according to a principle of pertinence,
and on the basis of this property a picture, just as any other object, may be used as a self-
identification or an exemplification (as, for instance, in an art exhibition, or in front of the
artist’s workshop; see ibid.,III.2.3.). There is similarity, on the other hand, only on the basis
of a fundamental dissimilarity. It is certainly not in their ’important’ properties, if that means
the attributes defining them as ’selves’, that the picture and its referent (or content) are
similar. In fact, the hierarchically dominant categories of the picture and its referent must be
different; for a picture which is just a picture of the picture-of-X, is indistinguishable from a
picture of X.
Although the sign relation is thus not needed in order to render similarity asymmetric
and irreflexive, it is required in order to distinguish similarities which are signs from those
which are not. At this stage, then, it would seem that the picture could be defined by the
sign relation, together with similarity; but Eco rightly observes that, on closer inspection.,
there is really no similarity between the painted nose, and the nose of a real person.
Yet we must account in some way for the impression of similarity, which is
immediately given, and which persists as long as we do no choose to scrutinize the details of
the composition. If similarity is a perceptual effect, then the impression of similarity simply
is similarity. But similarity then appears to be a result of the sign relation, instead of its
motivation (cf. ibid.,III.1.4.). This is possible only if there is some other property held in
common by all pictures, and by no other objects, which somehow precedes the sign relation.
Gibson (1971:33), who also rejects the similarity theory of pictures, apparently thinks there
is some kind of identity between the picture and the real-world scene, rightly insisting that
identity is not the maximum of similarity. To Gibson, this identity relies on higher-order
properties, recurring in different fashions in the picture and in the world. Similar
conceptions are present in the work of other psychologists, such as Kennedy and Hochberg
(cf. Sonesson 1989a,III.3.2.). Such a conception must suppose our perceptual systems to be
capable of picking up isolated features of the environment (not necessarily identical to
linguistic features; cf. Sonesson 1989a,III.4.1.). Contrary to Eco’s contention, therefore, the
38
pictorial sign (as well as the real-world scene) must be, not conventional and unanalyzable into
features, but essentially feature-based and motivated.
Iconicity and the ecology of semiosis
The impression of similarity found in pictures is not in doubt, as long as we do no choose to
scrutinize the details. Similarity appears to be, not the motivation for the sign relation, but a
result of it, or perhaps rather of some other property equally preceding the sign-relation. We
have therefore yet to discover a property which is common to all pictures, and which
characterizes no other objects. For not only is there a coherent Lifeworld notion of pictures,
but there is no other way of explaining that pictures have meaning. Goodman’s and
Greenlee’s contention that the referent of each picture is appointed individually (if that is
indeed what they want to suggest), and Eco’s proposal that the relations of the picture are
so correlated with those of the referent, are utterly unconvincing, and besides, incompatible
with what psychology tells us about the child’s capacity for interpreting pictures when first
confronted with them at 19 months of age (as demonstrated in a famous experiment by
Hochberg). But it does not follow that this common property must be similarity.
Goodman may be taken to suggest that this property is ’analogy’ or perhaps ’syntactic
and semantic density’. Density here means roughly that, no matter how close a division we
have made of a picture into units, it is always possible to proceed, introducing a third unit
between each of the earlier pairs, and so on indefinitely. Unfortunately, there are many
problems with this proposal. To begin with, it is strange that the difference between verbal
language and pictures is supposed to reside in the ways in which types relate to tokens, and
not in the relations between expression, content, and referent. Another problem is that
’analogy’, in the common and required sense, does not seem to follow from double density,
as Goodman supposes. In any case, there are reasons to doubt that pictures are dense, in the
strict sense, for while Goodman’s definition excludes pictograms, any partition of actual
pictures and pictograms is bound to be arbitrary. On the other hand, the definition includes,
among the objects which it qualifies as pictures, diagrams and thermometers, and no doubt
many other signs which are not ordinary thought to be such. Repleteness, which is
Goodman’s term for density resulting from divisions made from many different points of
view, cannot, contrary to Goodman’s opinion, make the difference between pictures and
diagrams, for it can actually be shown to exist in some instances of the latter (for details, see
Sonesson 1989a,III.2.3-5.).
Goodman is right in claiming that the sign function and similarity are not jointly
sufficient to define the pictorial sign; but substituting analogy for similarity, or adding them
together is not enough either. However, we can make sense of Goodman’s counter-example
if we require similarity, or the impression of similarity, to be at least a partial reason for the
sign function. This requires there to be a kind of taken-for-granted hierarchy of prominence
between the things in the Lifeworld. Some ’things’ are more apt to serve as expressions of a
sign relation than others, in fact, those which are relatively less prominent. Interestingly, the
39
only verified case in which a so-called primitive tribe failed to recognize pictures as such,
concerned a group which had never seen paper, and was therefore led to emphasize the
material per se. When pictures where instead printed on cloth, they immediately recognized
their function (se Sonesson 1989a,III.3.1.).
In the case of a droodle, similarity is only discovered once we have been informed
about the precise sign function, or when we have guessed at it; but in an ordinary picture the
impression of similarity precedes the sign function. On the other hand, the probability of
there being a sign function, would seem to be a prerequisite for our hitting upon the
similarity. For something to be a sign of something else, it must, as we just observed, be
relatively low-ranked on the scale of prototypicality applying to the ’things’ of the
Lifeworld. No doubt signs can also be made out of high-ranked Lifeworld ’things’, but then
the sign function must be introduced explicitly as a convention or be expected in the
situation. In fact, the painting at the art exhibition, the tin can in the shop window, and the
objects exposed in the museum are all signs of themselves, some of their properties, or the
class of which they are members; but the sign function only emerges in given situations.
In a recent collection of essays, Neisser (1987) considerably broadens the notion of
ecological psychology, incorporating Rosch's theory of prototypicality, as well as Gibson's
work on perception, in order to account for the conceptual negotiations going on in the
everyday environment. In his contribution to Neisser's anthology, George Lakoff (1987)
argues for the reconstruction of Roschian prototypicality using different kinds of cognitive
models. Elsewhere, in their study of the basic metaphors which underlie both poetry and
ordinary language, Lakoff & Turner (1989:160ff) describe a ’cultural model’ which they call
’The great chain of being’. This model, which ’places beings and their properties on a vertical
scale with 'higher' beings and properties above 'lower' beings and properties’ (p.167), has
been studied by historians of ideas since the time of Lovejoy, but Lakoff & Turner shows it
to be still current and active in a lot of everyday thinking, as for instance in ordinary adages.
This ’commonplace theory about the nature of things’ (p.170) would only stand in need of
being slightly amended to also account for the naturalness with which surfaces stand for
scenes, rather than the reverse.
Such regularities of the Lifeworld, together with the laws of environmental physics,
and other commonplace theories of the world, stand at the origin of an even broader domain
of study, which we could call the ecology of semiosis. This discipline should, among other
things, lay the groundwork for all future conceptions of cultural semiotics. But it will also be
needed to explain the varieties of iconicity. It will begin by teaching us that some meanings
are deeper than signs.
The semiotic function according to Piaget
Two facets should be distinguished, according to Saint-Martin (1985:6ff; 1990:9ff), within
the perceptual act: the objective aspect, linked to external stimulation, and the subjective
aspect, which derives from the perceptual instrumentation of man, that is, the psychological
40
and psychological structures at work in perception. In Saint-Martin's opinion, this is what

Saussure was thinking of when he compared the signifier and the signified of the linguistic
sign to the two faces of a piece of paper. Just as the linguistic sign has its sensorial signifier
and its conceptual signified, the ordinary percept, Saint-Martin claims, possesses its dual
face.
No doubt this is a serious misrepresentation of Saussure's intention: for he never tires
of repeating that both the signifier and the signified are mental entities, and thus pertain to
the conceptual, not the external, aspect, in Saint-Martin's sense. If he had been interested in
making a distinction of the kind which Saint-Martin suggests here, he could perhaps have
made it in terms of ’form’ and ’substance’ — which really amounts to saying that he would
have put Saint-Martin's external stimulation in his version of the pragmatic waste-basket, la
parole. More importantly, however, Saussure certainly conceives of the sign function as being
something very different from the act of perception, although it may stand in need of a
perceptual act to become manifest. It might be argued, of course, following Saint-Martin
(1990:10), that the signified must be inferred from the signifier, just as the object must be
discovered in the percept: but if the signified is hidden behind the signifier, the signifier is in
itself an object hidden behind its appearances.
In discussing the perceptual act, Saint-Martin (1988; 1990:9ff) relies abundantly on
the work of Piaget. Yet, curiously, she ignores Piaget's important attempt to define the
semiotic function (which, in the early writings, was less adequately termed the symbolic
function). In his model of the sign, Saussure made a set of important conceptual distinctions
(which we have discussed elsewhere), yet he supposed us (and himself) to understand the
basic meaning of such terms as ’signifier’ and ’signified’. The discussion of Piaget's semiotic
function will help us to discover that which is taken for granted in this model.
The semiotic function is a capacity acquired by the child at around 18 to 24 months of
age, which enables him to imitate something outside the direct presence of the model, to use
language, make drawings, play ’symbolically’, and have access to mental imagery and
memory..The common factor underlying all these phenomena, according to Piaget, is the
ability to represent reality by means of a signifier which is distinct from the signified. Indeed,
Piaget argues that the child’s experience of meaning antedates the semiotic function, but
that is does not then suppose a differentiation of signifier and signified in the sign (see Piaget
1945; 1967; 1970. Also cf. Bentele 1984. and Sonesson 1990f).
In the numerous passages in which he introduces this notion of semiotic function,
Piaget goes on to point out that ’indices’ and ’signals’ obviously are possible long before the
age of 18 months, but then they do not really suppose any differentiation between
expression and content. The signifier of the index is, Piaget says, ’an objective aspect of the
signified’; thus, for instance, the visible butt of an almost entirely hidden object is the
signifier of the object for the baby; and the tracks in the snow stand for the prey to the
hunter, just as any effect stands for its cause. But when the child uses a pebble to signify
41
candy, he is well aware of the difference between them, which implies, as Piaget tells us, ’a
differentiation, from the subject’s own point of view, between the signifier and the
signified’.
Piaget is, I believe, quite right in distinguishing the manifestation of the semiotic
function from other ways of ’connecting significations’, to employ his own terms.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that while the signifier of the index is said to be an
objective aspect of the signifier, we are told that in the sign and the symbol (i.e. in Piaget’s
terminology, the conventional and the motivated variant of the semiotic function,
respectively) expression and content are differentiated form the point of view of the subject. We
could actually imagine this same child that in Piaget’s example uses a pebble to stand for a
piece of candy have recourse instead to a feather in order to represent a bird, without
therefore confusing the feather and the bird: then the child would be using the feature,
which is objectively a part of the bird, while differentiating the former form the latter from his
point of view. Only then would he be using an index, in the sense in which this term is
employed (our should be employed) in semiotics (that is, in Peirce's sense). And obviously
the hunter, who has recourse to the tracks to identify the animal, and to find out which
direction is has followed, and who does this in order to catch the animal, does not, in his
construal of the sign, confuse the tracks with the animal itself, in which case he would be
satisfied with the former.
Both the child in our example and the hunter are using indices, or indexical signs. On
the other hand, the child and the adult will fail to differentiate the perceptual adumbration in
which he has access to the object from the object itself; indeed, they will identify them, as
least until they decide to change their perspective and approach the object from another
vantage point. And at least the adult will consider a branch jutting out behind a wall as
something which is non-differentiated from the tree, to use Piaget’s example, in the rather
different sense of being a proper part of it.9 In the Peircean sense an index is a sign, the
relata of which are connected, independently of the sign function, by contiguity or by that
kind of relation which obtains between a part and the whole (henceforth termed
factorality). But of course contiguity and factorality are present everywhere in the perceptual
world without as yet forming signs: we will say, in that case, that they are mere indexicalities.
Perception is profused with indexicality.
The concept of appresentation in phenomenology
Each time we perceive two objects together in space, there is contiguity; and each time
something is seen to be a part of something else, or to be a whole made up of many parts,
there is factorality. Not all instances of these are signs, however. In the case of an actual
perceptual context, two items must be present together in consciousness, whereas in a sign,
one item is actually present while the other only appears indirectly through the first. Yet the
latter is also true of what may have termed an abductive context, which is the way in which
the side of the dice at which we are not looking at this moment is present to consciousness,
42
and the way into which we retain the preceding moment in time, or anticipate the one to
follow (retention, protention).10
The phenomenological tradition stemming form Edmund Husserl and later amply
developed by Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckman has contributed some useful distinctions
here. According to these thinkers, two or more items may enter into different kinds of
’pairings’, from the ’paired association’ of two co-present items, over the ’appresentative
pairing’ with one item present and the other indirectly given through the first, to the real
sign relation, where again one item is directly present and the other only indirectly so, but
where the indirectly presented member of the pair is the theme, i.e. the centre of attention
for consciousness. This will be enough to distinguish the abductive context from the sign, if
we suppose the former to always carry the theme in the directly presented part or to have it
span the whole context. But this is by no means certain, and there seems to be many
intermediate cases between a perfect sign and an abductive context (the poetic function,
ostensive definitions, proto-indices, etc.; cf. Fig. 2.).
This is where Piaget’s idea of the semiotic function supposing a differentiation turns
out to be useful. Whereas the items forming the sign are conceived to be clearly
differentiated entities and indeed as pertaining to different ’realms’ of reality, the ’mental’
and the ’physical’ in terms of naive consciousness, the items of the context continuously
flow into each other, and are not felt to be different in nature. Before we go on to illustrate
this, two things should be noted: First, both content and expression of the sign are actually
’mental’ or, perhaps better, ’intersubjective’, as most linguists would insist; but we are
interested in the respect in which the sign user conceive them to be different. In the second
place, Piaget’s notion of differentiation is vague, and in fact multiply ambiguous, but, on the
basis of his examples, I have introduced two interpretations for it: first, the sign user's idea
of the items pertaining to different basic categories of the common sense Lifeworld; and, in
the second place, the impossibility of one of them going over into the other, following the
flow of time or an extension in space.
Suppose that, turning around a corner of the forest path, we suddenly catch a glimpse
of the wood-cutter lifting his axe other his shoulder and head. This experience perfectly
illustrates the flow of indexicalities which do not stop to become signs: it is sufficient to
observe the wood-cutter in one phase of his action to know what has gone before and what
is to come: that he has just raised his tool from some base level, and that at the next
moment, he is going to hit the trunk of the tree. If we take a snap-shot of one of the phases
of the wood-cutter's work, we could use it, like the well-known traffic sign meaning
’roadworks ahead’, as a part for the whole or, more oddly perhaps, as a phase signifying
contiguous phases. There has been a radical change from the flow of indexicalities occurring
in reality, for not only is there now a separation of expression and content ’from the point of
view of the subject’, but this separation has been objectified in the picture. Not even a series
of pictures will reconstitute the perceptual continuum, but a film may of course do so.
43
However, when we ask the wood-cutter to stand still for a moment (like in a ’tableau
vivant’), his position as such, before it is transformed into the motive of a picture, is already
a sign for the whole of the action, although the directly presented position does not seem to
be non-thematized, continuity is only provisionally interrupted, and expression and content
are felt to be of the same nature. We are somewhere in between the abductive context and
the sign: this may be termed a proto-index.
The picture is undoubtedly a sign, in the sense of it having a signifier which is doubly
differentiated from its signified, and which is non-thematic and directly given, while the signified is
thematic and only indirectly present. Yet none of these properties applies as unequivocally to
the picture as to, for instance, the verbal sign. As noted by philosophers from Husserl to
Wittgenstein and Wollheim, we seem to ’see’ the content of the pictorial sign directly ’into’
its expression. This is true is a quite concrete sense. For instance, although no real faces are
quadrangular, we have no trouble identifying figure 3 as a face; and, more to the point, we
can even indicate the precise place of the expression plane where the ears are lacking. This
certainly has something to do with that peculiar property of iconic signs, observed by Peirce,
and called exhibitive import by Greenlee, which makes it possible for icons to convey more
information than goes into their construction (cf. Sonesson 1989a,III.3.6. and III.5.1.)
In spite of his intention to distinguish signs from other ways of connecting meanings,
Piaget in fact confounds meanings of very different kinds, and is therefore unable to
discover the stages which have to be reached in order to attain the semiotic function. Yet it
is precisely because we have taken the Piagetian notion of semiotic function seriously that
we have been able to isolate the sign as a peculiar brand of meaning. And this will permit us
to evaluate the unique contribution to the study of meaning made by Gestalt psychology.
The varieties of pictorial meaning — Configurations and other holistic

properties
Developing some ideas of Piaget's and Husserl's, we have imposed a set of constraints on
meanings which are signs. We have thus also rejected the parallel between the strata of the
sign, expression and content, and the perceptual act, suggested by Saint-Martin. In the
following, we will offer some general remarks on meanings which are not signs. In the
process, we will discover, with Saint-Martin and Gestalt psychology, that all perception is
imbued with meaning. Yet is remain for us to investigate what kind of meaning this is, if it
does not answer to the requirements imposed on the semiotic function. Perhaps perceptual
meanings, which are not signs, but appear in pictures, can be constrained in some other way,
permitting us to characterize, if not all kinds of meaning manifested in pictures, then at least
those types which tend to loom large on the pictorial surface. It is conceivable, for instance,
that topological and/or Gestalt relations may dominate pictorial meaning in this way.
Indeed, Saint-Martin could perhaps by taken to make precisely this claim.
44
Signs among other meanings

Some employments of the term ’sign’ and similar expressions are not congruent with the
semiotic function, but may yet correspond to some kind of meaning. In cognitive science,
terms like ’sign’, ’symbol’, and ’representation’ are used in a vastly more comprehensive sense
than the one favoured here. The contents of consciousness are said to be ’symbols’, and so
on, of things in the ’real’ world (see Johnson-Laird 1988). Interestingly, that is an
employment of the term found also in John Locke, one of the first explicit semioticians, at
the beginning of the 18th century. Even before that, however, Pedro Fonseca, in his treatise
on signs from 1564, distinguished two types of signs: formal signs, by means of which we
know the outside world, and instrumental signs, which lead to the cognition of something
else, like the track of an animal, smoke, a statue, and the like (cf. Deely 1982). However, as
recognized in philosophical phenomenology, and more recently in the ecological psychology
of James Gibson, we do not ordinarily perceive signs of the world, but the world itself; and
thus, if indeed meaning is involved, its relata cannot be differentiated, and there can be no
semiotic function.
Not all of Piaget's examples of the semiotic function may really be of that kind, even
applying his own criteria. Günter Bentele (1984), who quotes Piaget's definition according
to which the content of the sign must be differentiated from its expression, rightly observes
that imitation does not manifest the semiotic function in this sense, but is a prerequisite for
it: indeed, it will function as a sign only on rare occasions when the act of imitation is taken
to refer back to the imitated act, instead of just being another instance of the same kind
(Moreover, Trevarthen & Logotheti 1989 shows the child's ability to imitate something
outside the presence of the corresponding model to antedate the acquisition of the semiotic
function). The same remark should apply to ’symbolic’ play, and is in fact made by Bentele in
another context: the toy is a sign, only to the extent that the child takes it to represent the
real thing, which cannot be true, for instance, in the case of a toy lion if the child has no
experience of the real animal11 . Nor is is clear that imagery and memory (not discussed by
Bentele) requires any real differentiation of expression and content (see Sonesson 1990f and
1989a,III.3.5-6.). On the other hand, the semiotic function is not only embodied in verbal
language and drawing ability, together with some instances of play and imitation, but also
appears, for instance, in gesture, music, etc.
Trevarthen’s critique is in fact more general. He argues that the child is attuned to
meaning from the first, that is, not only from birth, but in fact already at the end of the fetal
stage: co-operation, and the capacity to pick-up other people's meanings, is somehow built
into the organism from the start. Yet, as far as I have been able to determine, the term
’meaning’ is here employed in a more general sense than the one characteristic of the
semiotic function, as we have tried to develop this notion taking our hints from Piaget and
Husserl: it includes perception, particularly of an interpersonal kind.12
45
Ever since the time of Gestalt psychology, there has been another meaning of meaning
around, quite distinct from the sign: the whole which is perceived to be something more
than the elements out of which it is observed to be constituted. Although no psychologist
would nowadays accept the Gestalt psychological explanation for the emergence of the
whole, the phenomena are still there to be accounted for, and are described in contemporary
cognitive psychology as being some kind of perceptual prototypes. Meaning according to
Gestalt psychology amounts to something being more than its parts; but the sign, according
to Roman Jakobson’s formula, which we tried to explicate earlier, supposes there to be
something standing for something quite distinct from itself.
There is certainly a wider sense of meaning, which may be related, as Lévi-Strauss once
put it, to order, that is, organization, relatedness, indexicality. What is important here is the
connecting of things together, and the selection of elements to connect from a wider field of
possibilities. It is interesting to observe that it is not the sign function but the paradigm, the
feature, and the phoneme, as metaphors for selection, and the syntagm and the index, as
metaphors for connection, which have had an important role to play in the adoption of the
linguistic model in semiotics, notably in the work of Barthes, Greimas, Lévi-Strauss, and the
Peirceans. When Lévi-Strauss presents the myth as a sign function, this interpretation is
contradicted by his own detailed description, which really manifests a second-order texture.
And when Greimas claims that even the phoneme carries meaning, this can only be
understood in the sense of its forming a whole, a category having its own limits.13
As we have already observed, the picture is certainly a sign, in the sense of it having a
signifier which is doubly differentiated from its signified, and which is non-thematic and
directly given, while the signified is thematic and only indirectly present. On the other hand,
the picture is made up of, and presupposes, a number of meanings which are more
elementary than signs. We shall see the importance of this observation later. For the time
being, let us simply note that these meanings are of two kinds, those which, in Piagetian
terms, pertains to operativity (logic, classification, etc.), and those which have to do with
figurativity (which, in Piaget, is a residue concept). According to serious brain research
(which should not be confused with the dubious lore pertaining to brain hemispheres
nowadays found in the weeklies), operativity and figurativity may be very roughly distributed
into the left and the right half, respectively, of the brain. Adding together the information
contained in the writings of Gardner (1977; 1982; 1984) and Coffman (1980), we can
construct a table in which the importance of both operativity and figurativity to drawing
ability is made clear (Fig. 4): contours and global properties are on the side of figurativity,
while details, inner elements, and richness of details are on the side of operativity. Put more
generally, operativity seems to account for structure, in which the whole works on the parts
to make them stand out more prominently, whereas figurativity explains the configuration, in
which many elements are fused into a new whole (cf. Sonesson 1989a,I.3.4. and I.4.3.).
All wholes are imbued with meaning. But not all meanings are wholes, nor are all
46
wholes configurations. These are some insights stemming from the holistic psychologies
being active in Germany during the first half of this century, but not perpetuated by that
most famous of its branches, Gestalt psychology, and therefore lost for Saint-Martin.
Gestalt theory and the other holistic psychologies
At least three different versions of holistic psychology developed in the German speaking
world around the turn of the century: the Graz school, the Berlin school, and the Leipizig
school. Christian von Ehrenfels is reputed to have been the first to discuss, in his 1890
article (reprinted in Weinhandl 1960:11ff), the nature of ’Gestaltqualitäten’, in particular as
manifested in music. A melody may by transposed, he observes, without any of its elements
remaining constant. To von Ehrenfels and his immediate followers in the Graz school, such
as Meinong, Bernussi, and Witasek, these configurational qualities are supposed to be added
to elementary sensations, which serve as their foundation (see Weinhandl 1960; Gurwitsch
1957:54ff). Husserl's discussion of ’figural moments’ (treated by Saint-Martin 1990:21ff)
would also seem to tend to this conclusion. About a century earlier, however, some of the
ideologues, close precursors of semiotics, observed that there was one kind of whole which
must be apprehended prior to the perception of its parts (cf. Sonesson 1989a,I.3.4.).
Moreover, on a closer reading, von Ehrenfels actually seems to maintain that there are two
kinds of wholes, those, like the melody and the square, which are directly perceived, and
those which depend on our initiative for their existence, as the similarities which might be
discovered between two notes.
According to Koffka, Köhler, Wertheimer, and other members of the Berlin school,
and later to Arnheim, Gurwitsch, and Merleau-Ponty, the configuration is immediately
given, whereas the putative elementary sensations must be abstracted out of the whole. The
criteria by which a phenomena is recognized as being a configuration are, according to
Köhler, demarcation, closure, and over-summativity (cf. Weinhandl 1960:334ff, 384ff). A
whole is said to be a sum if, when one part is detached from the whole, no modification
occurs in the part, nor in the remaining whole; otherwise, it is over-summative, that is, a
Gestalt. Writing in 1947, Mukar&ovsky! (1974:7ff, 20ff) protested that all wholes were not
like this: while structural wholes result from the mutual relations between its components,
including negative ones, a holistic whole, that is, the Gestalt, is primarily a demarcation
made in the field, from which an inner differentiation may later ensue. Piaget (1972a: 137f;
1972b:47) distinguishes two kinds of wholes, schemes and Gestalts, along similar lines.
As early as 1906, Krueger (quoted in Weinhandl 1960:385) criticizes the all too
general use of the term ’Gestalt’ to designate all kinds of wholes, proposing a distinction
between wholes distinctly moulded to a particular shape, and wholes in a more general
sense. According to Krueger, emotions and the experience of small children generally are
non-configurational wholes. Such properties, he maintains, cannot be transposed, unlike von
Ehrenfels' melodies. Other criteria are proposed by Volkelt (in Sander & Volkelt 1962.43ff,
passim), another member of the Leipzig school, according to whom a typical configuration
47
stands out from a background and is internally articulated, whereas other holistic properties may
be externally and internally diffuse. In his studies of children's drawings, Volkelt encountered
holistic properties, such as the closure and angularity of the cube, transposed, though
undoubtedly modified, from the child's perception (see the cube drawing in the left column
of Fig.4.). Volkelt and Sander later recognized many degrees of demarcation and articulation
of wholes, bridging the distance between the typical configuration and the merely holistic
properties (see further discussion in Sonesson 1989a, I.3.4.).
Saint-Martin's (1990) book is exclusively concerned with the Berlin school, more
commonly known as Gestalt psychology, no doubt because, in comparison to the other
schools, it showed a greater predilection for the Gestalts. Refuting popular belief, Saint-
Martin (1990:65ff) sets out to demonstrate that the opposition between figure and ground
was less central to the Berlin school than is usually claimed, and was understood in a much
more dynamical way. In a similar vein, she argues that Gestalt psychology did not reduce all
phenomena to simple configurations, as the circle and the square, but diagnoses a tendency
in perception to make any shape as similar as possible to a regular Gestalt, or at least to
conceive it as a deformation of such a configuration (p.,8, p.17, p.73ff, p.78). As against a
common misunderstanding, she insists that Gestalt theory, instead of assimilating all
perception to a small set of static shapes, looked upon it as a dynamic process in which
contrary forces could, in some cases, give rise to perfect configurations (p.40ff, p.71). In this
view, perception is a field of tensions, of forces and counter-forces, striving to establish an
equilibrium of forms, imposing the configurational properties on comparatively ’bad’ forms,
and accepting, in the last analysis, the ’badness’ of certain shapes. Although a picture
containing no trace of configurations rapidly appears uninteresting, this is also true of a
composition made up a completely regular Gestalts (p.107). Some amount of ’badness’ is
needed in order to retain our interest in the picture, requiring ever greater deformations, as
we grow accustomed to the extravagances perpetuated by the different waves of
modernism.
Some of the other affirmations which Saint-Martin makes in defense of Gestalt
psychology are more surprising. For instance, she believes it is still possible to entertain the
theory according to which there is an isomorphism between the tensions intrinsic to the
perceptual field and some kind of electromagnetic field in the brain (p.34ff). This
conception may not have been refuted; indeed it may not be susceptible of being refuted; it
simply is not the kind of theory any psychologist would take seriously today. This is not to
deny that something very similar to a interplay of tensions takes place in perception, only
that it will translate directly into magnetic brain fields (some of those effects could even be
reinterpreted in terms of Gibsonian ’affordances’). As far is I understand, Saint-Martin also
wants to claim (p.86) that the Gestalt theorists did not necessarily believe the Gestalts, or
the forces responsible for their emergence, to be innate. Such a controversial claim, to say
the least, stands in need of a proof which is never produced.
48
Instead, Saint-Martin (p.85) quotes Chomsky as defending such an innateness

hypothesis. She seems much more favourable, however, to Ehrensweig's idea, according to
which ’good forms’ should result from some kind of censure accomplished by forces
emerging from the unconscious. Whatever its source, it might be argued, however, that there
is a general tendency to organize different shapes, as well as other phenomena, around a
central case which is the best realization of the category (cf. Rosch 1973). Such a tendency
to prototypicality could be innate, or may result from some very early experience in the
common human Lifeworld. The particular ’good forms’ would then be superficial
phenomena derived from this general tendency. Indeed, prototypicality itself could be a
relatively superficial effect, which is based on different kinds of modelling (cf. Lakoff 1987;
Rosch 1987).
Saint-Martin clearly considers iconicity to be an phenomenon which is comparable, in
this respect, to that of the good form (p.83ff,107f). Like Eco and many other semioticians,
she takes iconicity to imply the recognizability of real-world objects on the pictorial surface
(which is a much to limited meaning, as we have seen). Curiously, this is quite the opposite
of Gibson's and Kennedy's conception, according to which Gestalt effects simply result from
the recognition of real-world objects on the pictorial surface (cf. Gibson 1982: 57f; and
Sonesson 1989a,III3.). Yet, Saint-Martin (p.83ff) may possibly furnish refutations of both
hypotheses, as she quotes the observations of Boas and Leroi-Gourhan, to the effect that
there is an opposition between real-world objects, and the simple, regular, symmetric and
rhythmically repeated, shapes appearing in the pictures created by ’primitive’ tribes. Even if
Gestalt effects exclusively turn up on the pictorial surface, and even if they are derivative
effects of pictorial representation, as Gibson claims, a prototypicality principle is needed in
order to explain this tendency to discover ’good forms’.
Interestingly, Saint-Martin considers ’good forms’ to be a comparatively late
development in perception, being preceded by aggregates organized according to simple
topological relations, which may be observed in children's drawings (p.89). Had she been
aware of the non-configurational, holistic, properties discovered by the Leipizig school, it
seems to us that she could have gone much further.
The features of perception and language
When pictorial semiotics was first initiated, some kind of minimal unit of pictorial meaning
was commonly believed to exist, for instance by Eco, Koch, Floch, Gauthier, Thürlemann,
Lindekens, Groupe µ, Gubern, Tardy, Vilchez, Paromio, etc., though most of these authors
only assumed the existence of such features only on the pictorial level. According to Eco,
conic codes (which should really be called pictorial codes) possess their figurae, signs, and
statements, just like verbal language. Although Eco was later to reject, ever more
emphatically, the existence of pictorial features, he retains, at least as late as in 1976, his idea
to the effect that films are organized into three articulations, which supposes the double
articulation model for pictures, according to which pictures are built up of distinctive traits
49
having no independent meaning and forming together autonomous signs (see critique in
Sonesson 1989a,III.4.2. and 1989c).
Eco’s contention that the cinema possesses three articulations, which is based on the
double articulation of static pictures, clearly derives from an at least threefold confusion
about the import of the notion of articulation in linguistics. Most importantly, Eco con-
founds levels of configuration, where a whole contains meaning going beyond that of its parts,
and levels of appresentation, where there is a passage to a quite different realm of reality (that
is, there is more than one layer of sign functions).. In fact, although linguistics have never
offered us any clear definition of articulation, it is apparent from linguistic practice that it is
supposed to involve a concurrent shift in the levels of appresentation and configuration.
Thus, there cannot be any triple articulation in the cinema (cf. Sonesson 1989a,III.4.2. and
1989c).
Nor can Eco’s three stratum model of pictorial meaning be sustained, for, as soon as
we attend to the definitions given, the figurae level merges with the sign level, and the sign
level with the semata level. Although pictorial features really lack meaning in isolation, each
one of them acquires a specific signification as a part of a signifying configuration, and thus
there is nothing comparable to the second linguistic articulation. If there is something like
the first linguistic articulation in pictures, then it appears on different configurational and
extensional levels of the picture, in different kinds of picture. A nose is a nose is a nose —
but it may appear as a feature or a sign, depending on the pictorial style selected (cf.
Sonesson 1989a,III.4.3.).
In spite of the arguments of Barthes, Metz, and the second Eco, there is every reason
to accept, along with such psychologists of perception as Gibson, Kennedy, and Hochberg,
the existence of pictorial features. But these features differ in important respects from those
of linguistics. Like all features that pertain to signs, pictorial features must be allo-functionally
defined, that is, they derive their identity from the relation which they contract with the
other plane of the sign; and although there is probably not just a small number of them, they
could scarcely be infinite. On the other hand, pictorial features are not deprived of meaning,
at least not in the way phonemes are. Indeed, according to Gibson and Kennedy, they are
not simple, physiological correlates of vision, but ’higher-order properties’. These may, or
may not, be identical to what we above, following the Leipzig school, termed holistic, non-
configurational properties. In fact, both terms really stand in needing of being better defined.
While pictorial features do seem to be categorical in themselves, their relation to the
other plane of the sign is merely probabilistic. Indeed, the pictorial sign contains many
redundant expressions for one content, but also a cumulation of contents conveyed by a single
expression. In this way, they are similar to the features present in the perceptual Lifeworld,
but, for the same reason, they allow for rhetorical modifications of our Lifeworld experience
(cf. Sonesson 1989a,III,4.1.).
Just like the later Eco, Goodman believes pictures to be similar to verbal language in
50
being conventional, while differing from it in allowing for no division into units. His idea of
inanalyzability, or ’density’, supposes, as we noted above, that no matter how close a
division has been made of a picture, it always remains possible to continue the division,
introducing a third unit between each of the earlier pairs, and so on indefinitely. This theory
is untenable, at least in the case of pictorial (Goodman's referential) meaning, for it is unable
to account for the fact that real-world objects can be recognized in pictures. If the referents
of pictures were simply appointed in each particular case, as Goodman suggests, the theory
might possibly be right, but we have seen, when discussing iconicity, that such as conception
is entirely unfeasible (cf. Sonesson 1989a,III.2.4-5. and III.6.1.).
According to Saint-Martin (1987a), the students of visual language have failed to
discover so far an elementary unit equivalent to the phoneme, because they have expected to
find too great a similarity between the units of the diverging systems. In the case of visual
language, this unit is the ’coloreme’, which may perhaps roughly be described as a minimally
perceptible surface point, or as that amount of information which is picked up by the viewer
in one glance as it is organized around a single point of fixation. Having introduced this
intriguing notion, our author proceeds to explore the nature of six visual variables, which
turn out to be dimensions on each one of which every surface point must evince a value:
these are termed colour/tonality, texture, dimension/quantity, implantation into the plane,
orientation/vectorality, and frontiers/contours generating shapes. Clearly, to the extent that
the coloreme is made up of visual variables, it will encounter at least some of the same
problems facing earlier feature analysis. Besides, according to its definition, the coloreme is a
segment, not of the object perceived, but of the very process of perception, and this, as we
shall see below, in not quite the same thing.
Perceptual features, as recognized by psychologists of perception, are in no sense
meaningless, contrary to the linguistic ones. For instance, Kennedy would show, using a
familiar landscape scene, that certain constellations of lines meeting at particular angles,
stand for bounds, edges, surfaces, corners and cracks of the three-dimensional perceptual
world. Although it is the constellation which triggers the meaning, its parts are then
distributed onto the constituent parts of the constellation. Features like those discussed by
Kennedy have been implemented in computer programs, and works out quite nicely.
It does not follow, however, that this is really the essence of human perception.
Gregory, who emphasizes the constructive character of perception, points out that the
presence of a simple tangent line may transform what looks like a tree into the semblance of
a woman’s head profile having a cigarette in her mouth. And Hochberg observes that there
are, in addition to the spatial layout features, so-called canonical features, which account for
the minimal opposition between Hitler and Chaplin in some caricatures. I would suggest,
however, that canonical features are much less marginal than Kennedy and Hochberg imply.
Indeed, even in Kennedy’s favourite landscape picture, the sea and the clouds are not seen
because of any layout features, but are clearly conveyed simply by means of prototypical
51
forms. In fact, even the drawing of the house, with the same spatial configuration, could
represent any number of other cubic objects, if it were not for its prototypical house
features.
It may be suggested, then, that canonical features are really pervasive in pictorial
perception. Just as the meaning of a sentence may be grasped directly, independently of the
details of syntax, there may be a direct perception of gist in the picture, in some cases
eventually supplemented by the registration of spatial layout. Actually, there is (in spite of
Hochberg’s attempt) no way of accounting for the phenomenon of impossible pictures, like
the devil’s turning fork, or many of Escher’s and Reutersvärd’s compositions, without
recognizing an opposition between what may, rather metaphorically, be termed the ’syntax’
and the ’semantics’ of pictures (see Sonesson 1989a,III.3.4.).
In spite of the existence of pictorial features, Goodman’s observations on density are
not entirely off the mark. Indeed, once we have decided between the category of a tree or a
woman’s profile, the drawing will tell us a lot about the particular conformation of the
crown, or the nose, the hair-cut, and so on. But not indefinitely: only up to a point set by
the principle of pertinence embodied in the pictorial medium.
Thus far, our discussion has been mainly concerned with pictorial features (the ’iconic’
features of most semioticians). The problem posed by plastic features, which are what
interests Saint-Martin, could well turn out to be quite different. Before inquiring further
into this issue, however, it will be necessary to scrutinize the notion of the coloreme.
The coloreme as sensation and noema
The coloreme is characterized by Saint-Martin (1987a, 1988) as an aggregate of visual
variables perceived in the visual world owing to a centration or fixation of the eye, which
gives rise to a macular, and then a peripheral, field surrounding the foveal area of clear
perception. In its primary sense, the coloreme is thus a segment, not of the object perceived,
but of the very process of perception, and in that respect, as well as in its being structured as
an array of adumbrational variants organized around a thematic centre, it is clearly
comparable to what is known in Husserlean phenomenology as the perceptual noema, and to
what the psychologist of perception Julian Hochberg terms, more colloquially, a ’glance’.
There can be no one-to-one mapping of the units of the perceptual process onto the
units of the object, however. Joining together the kindred traditions of Gestalt psychology
and phenomenology, Aron Gurwitsch (1957), in a classical work (quoted in other contexts
by Saint-Martin 1990) made a particularly thorough analysis of perception showing that the
object is entirely contained, differently adumbrated, in each one of the corresponding
noemata; his result still seems compatible with what we know from perceptual psychology,
in particular, as we noted above, with the ecological conception of Gibson and his
followers. Indeed, that Saint-Martin should ignore this fundamental distinction between the
object and the different adumbrations in which it appears to us is less surprising after reading
her Gestalt theory book, in which she explicitly rejects the parallel distinction made by
52
Gibson, and considers ’metaphysical’ the idea that the object is present through its
appearances.
There is nothing ’metaphysical’ about such a description. What it amounts to is,
primarily, that we have the impression of seeing the whole object in each one of its
appearances. This conception is not incompatible with Gurwitsch analysis according to
which the object is nothing but an ’internoematic system’, but such a system must be made
up of an infinite number of different adumbrations, which overlap one another more or less,
permitting the constitution of Gestalt-coherence (on which Saint-Martin insists in her
polemics with Hochberg referred to above). Any selection of elements from the
internoematic system, corresponding to the coloremes of Saint-Martin, must therefore be
arbitrary, and is thus unfit to serve as the basis for an analysis of the object, that is, in this
case, the picture.
In the case of picture perception, however, investigations, ever since the time of
Boswell, have tended to demonstrate the existence, if not of a order of reading, then at least
of certain points of fixation where the glances tend to cluster. In this sense, the noemata
would seem to offer a kind of indirect access to the thematic centres of the picture, to the
extent that those points attracting recurrent glances could be taken to define a small set of
privileged noemata extracted from the internoematic system. But since noemata have no
clear limits, but tend to shade into each other, and encompass one another, they could not,
even in this case, delimit the real building blocks of the picture. Furthermore, the
topological relations of the noemata are not at all those of the parts of the object contained
in them. In any case, Saint-Martin denies every relevance to these results, without even
attending to the difference between the hierarchies defined by the order of glances, and by
their recurrence.
Actually, the coloreme, on closer inspection, appears to be a much less sophisticated
notion than the noema. Its division into the foveal, macular, and peripheral, areas already
suggests that it is to be interpreted as a portion of the retinal image. Like all contemporary
psychologists, indeed, like Descartes, Saint-Martin observes that the retinal image is actually
never seen as such, but like Descartes, and like most present-day psychologists, she keeps
forgetting all the time the irrelevance of the static retinal pattern, clearly recognized by
Gibson (cf. Lombardo 1987). Indeed, at least in the Gestalt theory book, the coloreme
appears to be simply a sensation, in the sense of classical psychology.
Moreover, in Saint-Martin’s (1987a) earlier book, the coloreme also figures in the guise
of a unit defined ad hoc by the analytical scheme resulting from her analytical model. In
order to analyze a picture, an arbitrarily divided grid is imposed on it. Such a grid, according
to Saint-Martin, may well possess 15, 20, 25, or any other number of squares, although she
arbitrarily decides to employ the latter number, resulting from five horizontal, and five
vertical, divisions. Moreover, each square, designated by a letter of the alphabet, may be
further divided by the numbers 1-5, corresponding to each of the sides of the square, in
53
addition to its central point. And here comes the surprise: these 125 points are identical to
the coloremes! Thus, the points of fixation defining the coloremes are simply imposed ad hoc
by the model!
Curiously, Saint-Martin then proceeds to suggest that each of the squares are
comparable to the basic plane as a whole, in containing a differential distribution of energies
corresponding to the cruciform structure. But this is an absurd suggestion, if we remember
that the number of squares of the grid, and thus the localization of the limits between the
squares, was arbitrarily determined. Saint-Martin herself here seems to forget the
conventional character of the framework imposed by her model.
One cannot but feel sympathetic to Saint-Martin's suggestion (largely derived from
Piaget, cf. 1988; 1990:14ff) that perception is an activity, and that the pictorial work of art,
in order to be adequately perceived, requires a long series of perceptual acts. It is a pity,
however, that she should identify these acts with retinal fixations, for the latter are modified
all the time, and never become conscious as such (cf. Gibson 1982:96, 180ff). Is is also
curious that she should oppose her own view of perception as an active search to the static
character of phenomenology, when Husserl actually insisted on the explorative nature of
perception ("Ich kann immer weiter"), and that she should associate this conception with
Gestalt psychology, when it is much better represented by Gibson's ecological psychology
("the permanent possibilities of perception"). Indeed, according to the common bias of
constructivism and Gestalt theory, reality is not there for us to see, no matter how much we
try, which means that no series of perceptual acts, however extensive, will ever be able to
grasp the object itself. Only if we admit that there are ways of having access to reality, is it
possible to claim that we can close in on it, while also allowing for the fact that no actual
search is fully adequate, because it will never exhaust its object. Yet, all perceptual acts
contribute, as much as possible, to the construction of the picture as an object, to the
picture thing, which is given in its entirety, but incompletely known, in each one of its
adumbrations.
Plastic language reconstructed from the feature hierarchy
In our further discussion of pictorial perception, it will be possible to dispense with the
notion of coloreme, shown to be contradictory and confused, and thus to concentrate on the
visual variables, or features, of which it is made up. In the following, we will focus on the
features of the plastic level, that is, those properties really possessed by the picture
considered as a thing in itself, made up of mere twodimensional shapes on a surface (see
Groupe µ 1978; 1979; 1985; Floch 1985: 15; 1986a, passim; 1986b: 126ff, and passim; and
critique in Sonesson 1991b). In Gibson's terms, then, we will not consider the objects
referred to by the markings on the surface taken to be a picture, but those meanings which
are, in some other, further to be elucidated way, conveyed by the markings considered in
themselves.
It is not easy to see how we are to determine the plastic meanings of a picture.
54
Twodimensional shapes on a surface simply are too ambiguous in themselves. Groupe µ so

far has proposed nothing to answer this query; Jean-Marie Floch, however, even tries to
discover the meaning of ’abstract art’, that is, pictures having only plastic language. In order
to make such pictures accessible to semiotic analysis, Floch attempted the interpretation of
one of Kandinsky’s non-figurative paintings, ’Composition IV’, by means of a comparison
with other, more nearly figurative works by the same painter. In spite of Floch’s
perspicacity, this procedure is unsatisfactory, because it is only possible if we assume there to
be a redundance of plastic language in relation to the plastic one (Floch's ’iconic’ language):
that is to say, if it is always true that plastic language only repeats (though perhaps on a more
abstract, and thus partial, level) that which is already contained in pictorial language. But
this is certainly not a presupposition that can be made a priori (cf. Sonesson 1987;
1989a,II.3.2.). Apart from rendering the distinction between the two layers trivial, this
assumption is nowhere justified.
If, instead, we suppose there to be an autonomous plastic language, then we are con-
fronted with two problems. First, we need to discover what kinds of meanings could be
contained in the configurations, shapes and colours themselves. But in the second place,
since any visual configuration has a potentially infinite number of properties, we need to
know which of these properties are most likely to be relevant to our experience. Sonesson
(1989a,I.4.3-7. and II.3.6.; 1990g, 1991a) speculates on the possibility of there being a small
number of topological, bodily anchored properties, which predominates in such plastic
interpretations. Saint-Martin (1980; 1987a) broaches the problem of topology in a more
comprehensive fashion. Relying on Piaget's studies of children's drawings, she lists such
topological properties as proximity, separation, inclusion or interiority/exteriority (that is,
encasing and envelopment), succession, and continuity. In fact, different variants of
inclusion also intervene, without any reference to topology, in numerous text analyses by
Floch (cf. Sonesson 1992a). But there is nothing to justify the particular choice of properties
in these works either.
One way of approaching the intrinsic meanings of visual elements could be to establish
a feature hierarchy, similar to the one found by Jakobson (1942), according to which there is
a parallelism between the stages of phonetic development in child language, the stages of
phonetic reduction in the aphasic, and the relative complexity of the world’s languages, as
far as the phoneme repertory is concerned. Indeed, one exponent of the Leipzig school,
Lotte Hoffmann (1943) asked children between 2,2 and 9,7 years of age to imitate a set of
simple geometrical configurations using ready-made material, like sticks, plates, and rings. All
the configurations lacked all directly iconic content. By combining the ready-made
implements, it was possible to reproduce all the geometrical configurations faithfully.
Instead, however, children between 3-4 years would use any object whatsoever to stand for
all of the different configurations; but more often than not, a perfectly round, compact
object would be preferred. Older children would pick up only one, global, property present
55
in the configuration and imitate it with a single implement, for instance, such properties as
being closed, angular, pointed, having holes, and so on. Later several pieces would be used,
corresponding more often to the number of parts of the imitated object than its shape (more
details in Sonesson 1989a,II.3.6.).
It becomes clear from these example that a prototypical shape is used by the child to
represent a whole class of geometrical configurations. A round, compact object seems to
function like a prototype, a ’best form’, to which more deviant cases are assimilated. This is
seen most clearly is cases in which different children impose differently placed limits
between the classes subsumed by the prototypes (cf. Fig. 5.). Given these facts, we are able
to set up the rudiments of a tentative hierarchy: it will start out from the circle, the only
shape the centre and periphery of which are perceptually salient; and it will continue with an
elementary division into circles and straight lines, the latter being the first element in which
extension becomes salient (see Fig.6.).
The properties common to the child's drawing and the object imitated, in these
examples, are often non-configurational holistic properties; often enough, these properties
are represented in the drawing by the corresponding perfect configurations or "good forms".
Many of the properties transposed from the object to the drawing are clearly topological.
The task set before the child is admittedly to produce as close a resemblance as possible of
the object. Yet, some other instance is clearly looms large in the child's mind making him
predominantly pick up, among all the numerous properties of the object, those which are
holistic and/or topological in character. There is thus a second principle of pertinence
holding sway, and commanding that of pictorial representation. Topological and holistic
properties may indeed be basic meanings of plastic language.
The logic of qualities and the bodily modes
Comparing the two ’great structuralists’ Piaget and Lévi-Strauss, the cognitive psychologist
Howard Gardner (1973) argues that, whereas the first is a pure formalist, the second is really
more concerned with the peculiar qualities connected by the relations. In the conception of
Lévi-Strauss, it is as important that the mind tends to focus on specific qualities such as the
raw and the cooked as it is that it will conceive of them in binary opposition to each other.
The negation as such is not important, but what is negating what. Piaget, on the other hand,
merely reduces all reasonings of his experimental subjects to a group of four operations and
16 binary propositions or some approximation to these, and it is therefore of no avail to
know whether this mathematical form was manifested in a particular case as a reasoning
about chemical substances, billiard.balls, or a pendulum.
This interpretation does not seem to be entirely justified. In fact, according to Lévi-
Strauss’ own interpretation of his ’logic of qualities’, it is not the qualities, but the logic
which matters. Although there is a small set of qualities which tend to occur over and over
again in his analyses, Lévi-Strauss is most explicit about their arbitrary nature. Like the
phonemes, they have only positional or differential value, he claims. Just as the phonemes in
56
the word ’sun’ are meaningless separately and may be used in other words with quite
different meanings, so, according to Lévi-Strauss, the content ’sun’ in its turn is meaningless
relative to mythology, outside a particular ’mytheme’. It would be easy to adduce numerous
instance in which Lévi-Strauss rejects the idea of qualities having a meaning of their own
(see examples and discussion in Sonesson 1989a,I.4.); he even censors Jung and Levy-Bruhl
for embracing that idea.
Yet Gardner’s interpretation of Lévi-Strauss' work is not without all foundation.
There are passages which go in Gardner’s sense. But, more to the point, Lévi-Strauss' own
analyses certainly suppose that qualities have meaning, even if the myths then determine
these meanings in peculiar ways. Lévi-Strauss (1983) tells us that things as different as the
sheep’s horn, the eagle’s claw, and certain parts of different kinds of mollusc, may occupy
the same place in a myth, because they have in common the property of being ’des organes
qu’on retranche de l’animal avant de le comsommer, ou dont on retranche une partie avant
de les consommer’ (p.185). There is separation, not just of a part from a whole, but of a part
which is in some sense supplementary to the core, an appendage, a protuberant part. What
the myth treats as being the same is either the (edible) core separated from the (inedible)
appendage, or the (edible) appendage cut lose from the (inedible) core. It least in this case,
Lévi-Strauss has discovered a common denominator which can only be justified as a holistic,
non-configurational properties, and which appears to have some topological facets,
pertaining to inclusion, as well as mere proximity and separation.
Although there are certain recurring terms in Lévi-Strauss' work, he does not propose
any list of fundamental qualities, nor does he try to show why certain qualities should be
more important than others. In an experimental study, however, Gardner (1970) found that
children were particularly sensitive to what he calls modal/vectorial qualities, such as the
opening or closing of the hand or mouth, direction, balance, rhythm., penetration, and so on.
These properties may manifest themselves in different sensory modalities, and even in the
motoric realm. There are reasons to suppose that they continue to be registered by the adult,
and that he attends to them, in particular, when experiencing works of art. These
modal/vectorial properties, Gardner suggests, elaborating on an idea of Erik Eriksson,
receive their particular import from first being experienced in the relationship between one’s
own body and the field of objects outside the body, sometimes in relation to the keeping of
portions of the environment inside the body, and sometimes in relation to the release of
what was once part of the body.
Eriksson and Gradner refer these properties to different erotic zones, in the wide
Freudian sense of the term (As far as I understand, also Saint-Martin is pondering some
Freudian interpretation of pictorial meaning, which she will however present to us in some
forthcoming book). This is, to my mind, the problematical aspect of the scheme. It certainly
seems probable that the little girl will learn inception from enclosing a cherry in her hand,
and that the little boy will stick his hand into a hole in the tree, well before any of them get
57
the opportunity of having sexual intercourse. Should they have to await the sexual
experience, the boy would only acquire the notion of intrusion, and the girl could only know
of inception. However, a more general interpretation seems possible.
According to Piaget, schemes of thinking are abstracted from actions through the
several stages of intellectual development. What is, from the beginning, taking place as an
exchange between one’s own body and the objects outside, is projected onto the object pole,
and transformed into an object in its own right. In a parallel, but inverse fashion, modal
properties seem to evolve from the body’s confrontation with the world, but to be projected
back to the subject pole. Thus, they are experienced as bodily, and perhaps more generally,
spatial, relations. Indeed, in a study of the bodily continuum underlying gestures,we
discovered long ago, and quite independently of Gardner’s scheme, that gestural meaning is
largely a question of creating and dissolving bodily spaces, and of entering into and deserting
bodily constructed enclosures. (Cf. Sonesson 1981a,b,c; 1990g; 1991a).14
The dynamics of topology and semiotic integration
These modal properties are readily reduced into a set of notions taken over from
mathematical topology (Cf. fig. 7. Two more properties, which may be similarly reduced,
were added in Sonesson 1989a,I.4.3-5.: the refusal to let something else in, and the
resistance to be enveloped). This reduction should be interesting for a number of reasons.
Piaget and his collaborators have demonstrated that the geometry of the child’s first
experiential space is topological, i.e. it contains the kind of relations that would be preserved
in a figure drawn on a piece of rubber when the rubber is distended or compressed.
Topology has also been invoked numerous times in semiotics: in the morphology of René
Thom, in Pierre Boudon’s semiotics of architecture, and, of course, in Fernande Saint-
Martin’s visual semiotics. But beyond the fact that topological space, according to Piaget, is
the first space of child experience, the importance of topology has never been justified, nor
its categories clearly determined.
Strictly speaking, this analysis introduces two elements which are not found in
topology, in the mathematical sense: movement, that is, dynamics; and emphasis, that is, the
locus of the ego. But we know from other of Piaget’s investigations that primordial space is
heavily egocentric, also in the literal sense; and actions are at the origin of all structures.
Thus, also when considering plastic features, we are forced to return to the world taken for
granted, this time on the side of the subjective pole.
The reduction scheme merely involves a single species of topological qualities,
inclusion. Since there are a few other notions in topology, and since the body partakes of
other elementary spatial relationships, we should expect there to be other modal properties.
If movement is taken away , most of the relations would reduce to contiguity and
factorality, which are basic to indexicality. Thus, there is not only a need to extend the
reduction scheme, but pursue the reduction further, in order to discover such properties as
relate topology, indexicality, Gestalt relations, and so on. These observations should bring us
58
to observe another shortcoming of Saint-Martin's approach: her neglect to clarify the

relationship between the topological notions and the Gestaltian ones, which constitute her
second class of syntactical relations. Some of these notions are clearly related, as is the case
of proximity and contiguity. Furthermore, it would be important to elucidate the
relationship of these latter notions to indexicality and to the syntagmatic axis, both of which
involve contiguity. Conceivably, we may be able to derive all the basic notions of visual
semiosis, starting out from the elementary idea of indexicality, which (as we hinted above) is
the basic meaning relation in perception.
Perhaps we could take the elementary notion, in this context, to be the topological
relation of proximity. Two units in proximity which remain separate already constitute an
indexicality; in terms of Husserlean phenomenology, they form a pairing; in Gestalt
psychology, the same phenomena give rise to a contiguity; in the rhetorics of Groupe µ, they
could, under certain circumstances, appear as a disjoint figure in praesentia, and in ordinary
rhetorics as a metonymy. If the two units are visibly different in some relevant respect, they
are said, in structural linguistics, to form a contrast. If, however, one of the separate units is
not present in perception, but only in the mind of the perceiver, the units together create an
opposition, more exactly, a binary opposition, in terms of structural linguistics. Many
oppositions together will form a paradigm and, eventually, a structure. In the rhetorics of
Groupe µ, the relation is one of disjunction in absentia. Depending on the temporal
modification of the absent member, the pair will constitute a retention or a protention, from
the point of view of phenomenology. Under certain circumstances, the member which is
directly given to perception becomes the expression, and the absent member the content, of
an appresentation, semiotic function, or sign. If the constituents of such a sign relation
remain in contiguity, or if the are retained or protained as entering such a relation, they
form, more in particular, an indexical sign, or index.
Gestalts, or perfect configurations, repose on some kind of inclusion. They are thus
related to the semiotic concept of factorality, the classical rhetoric notion of synecdoche,
and the the Groupe µ notion of conjunction in praesentia. Inclusion is also involved in
figure/ground, centre/periphery, body/appendages, and similar phenomena. Adding
movement, all the modal/vectorial properties may equally be derived. In a similar way, we
can derive syntagms and syntax from the topological property of order, the notion of
isotopy, as well as Goodman's density, from the notion of continuity, and the corresponding
notion of allotopy from discontinuity. And many other parallels remain to spelled out.
It would be wrong to think of such a series of parallels as a reduction without residue.
There is no point in merely identifying, for instance, as Jakobson did, metaphor and
paradigm, as well as metonymy and syntagm. Instead, one of these terms should be
reconstructed on the basis of the other (if possible). Although structural linguistics,
Husserlean phenomenology, Piagetian topology, Peircean semiotics, Groupe µ rhetorics, and
the psychology of perception all start out, for example, from a kind of two term relation,
59
they use it to establish different constructs, phenomenology adding time modification and
degree of emphasis, linguistics introducing the idea of distinctness, and so on. Nor is is
certain that all these concepts really merit a place in an integrated framework of perceptual
semiotics.
As always, however, when we conceive of something in terms of reduction, the
ultimate terms must be based on something which is itself more firmly established. And that
is where we are brought back again to the ecology of semiosis.
Conclusion: Towards a semiotic ecology

Saint-Martin's Gestalt theory book must be seen as part of a project, including a number of
earlier and forthcoming books, which are intended to lay a firm, perceptual basis for
pictorial semiotics. Like Saint-Martin's earlier book (and no doubt her forthcoming ones), it
makes for illuminating and, in particular, stimulating, reading. Two points, forcefully made
by Saint-Martin in this book, as well as in other contexts, have been retained here: the idea
that pictorial semiotics (and visual semiotics generally) must be based on the fact that the
pictorial sign, before being anything else, is an object of visual perception; and the
requirement, following upon that observation, that pictorial semiotics should assimilate the
knowledge on perception assembled by Gestalt psychology and other approaches to visual
perception, thereby abandoning the autonomy postulate so characteristic of many schools of
present-day semiotics.
We have tried to adduce further reasons for giving up the autonomy postulate, but, at
the same time, we have pointed to the weak position of mere passivity and receptivity in
which Saint-Martin's proposal seems to leave semiotics. As against this conception of
semiotics as a mere ancillary, or second hand, science, we have argued for the necessity of
going beyond mere interdisciplinarity, as well as total autonomy, of giving semiotics access to
its proper procedures of verification, including the setting up of properly semiotic
experiments. Indeed, we have suggested that semiotics (in due time) should have something
of its own to offer to the other sciences, not merely take over the knowledge base
contributed by other approaches. Moreover, in order to steer free of interdisciplinary
triviality, we must insert this knowledge base into the problem space developed within
semiotics, as a consequence of the continuing concerns of own research tradition.
While admitting that the picture sign is, first and foremost, an object present in visual
perception, and therefore is dependant on the organization of the visual world, we have
pointed out the difficulty of choosing one among the several extant perceptual psychologies
as a basis for semiotic research, and we have emphasized the importance of making this
selection using criteria intrinsic to the semiotic domain, as well as such which can be derived
from the discussions of the warring factions of psychology. If, however, semiotics, as we
have suggested, is concerned to account for the implicit knowledge underlying the
performance of the users of different signification systems, Gibsonian ecological psychology
60
stands a much better chance than Gestalt theory of offering an adequate ground for a theory
of pictorial meaning. Inside the domain of perceptual psychology, moreover, direct
registration theory clearly holds the domineering position.
In order to serve the goals of pictorial semiotics, Gibsonian ecology probably needs to
be amended, notably to take account of cultural objects. Psychologists like Neisser, Rosch,
and Costall, and linguistics like Lakoff, have already begun working on this task. But
semioticians can also make a contribution. We will need a semiotic ecology, serving as
intermediary between perceptual psychology and pictorial semiotics. Furthermore, there is
really no reason to let pictorial semiotics be dissolved into the psychology of picture
perception. Just like there is a science of linguistics, which is not identical to
psycholinguistics, we will need a science of pictorial meanings, different from perceptual
psychology. Indeed, there is work to do. We have hinted at some of the great issues here: the
difference between signs and other (perceptual) meanings, pictorality as a sub-category of
iconicity, the nature of plastic meanings. The knowledge base of perceptual psychology
simply serves to bring these questions into view. It is the task of semiotics to resolve them.
Semiotic ecology could no doubt have a much broader use than the one required in
pictorial semiotics. It would certainly be basic to the study of sculpture, architecture, and
many other domains not included by Saint-Martin in her visual semiotics. But over and
beyond that, it would lay the foundations of cultural semiotics.
Notes
*
Review of Saint-Martin, Fernande, La théorie de la Gestalt et l'art visual. Québec: Presse de
l'Université du Québec 1990.
1
This it not far from Gibson's (for instance 1982:67) denial of the ecological relevance of
such measures as wavelength, intensity, and purity of wavelength, supposedly corresponding
to hue, brightness, and saturation.
2
In its weak sense, system analysis is of course always involved in the other two.
3
These terms are taken over from Hjelmslev, though “graduality” has been substituted for
“form” in order to insist on the less systematic character. of the organization For a full
critique of this model, including some doubts on the Hjelmslevean orthodoxy, cf. Sonesson
1988.
4
It is difficult to explain these notions without entering very complex discussions, or
recurring to elaborate pictorial examples. One may wonder if this cross-classification of
rhetorical devices into those the elements of which are present or absent, as well as disjoint
or conjoint, is really adequate, for only the four resulting categories really seems intelligible.
Actually, Groupe µ here touches questions which we have treated under the general heading
of indexicality, in Sonesson 1989a,I.2.5., which is not to say that our analysis is preferable,
and it would in any case have to be integrated with wider rhetorical issues.
61
5
We must dispense here with Peirce’s idiosyncratic terminology. For reasons explained in
Sonesson 1989a,III.1., we will take “representamen” to be roughly equivalent to
“expression”, whereas “object” corresponds to both “content” and “referent”. The Peircean
“interpretant”, on the other hand, appears to be a determination of the relation between the
former two.
6
Saint-Martin (1990:60ff) criticizes an earlier variant of this distinction, in terms of "the
visual world" and "the visual field", because it seems to suppose that "sensations" persist to
no purpose whatsoever in the human organism, but she fails to note that Gibson himself
rejected the distinction in this form in his later work.
7
For a discussion of another problematical facet, connected with the use of the
Hjelmslevean term “matter”, cf. Sonesson 1988,1.3.7.
8
In fact, Saint-Martin has written an article in the title of which she declares her intention
of formulating Eco's model anew, but I have unfortunately been unable to see it.
9
About proper parts, perceptual perspectives, and attributes as different ways of dividing an
object and thus different indexicalities, cf. Sonesson 1989a,I.2.
10
For a more thorough analysis, concerned with the problems addressed in this and the
following paragraphs, cf., in particular, Sonesson 1989a,I.2.5., I.4.2, and 1990b.
11
Cf. the discussion of the asymmetric nature of similarity, relying on experimental evidence
from cognitive psychology, conducted in Sonesson 1989a,III.6.2.
12
Gardner & Wolf (1984) also criticise the Piagetian semiotic function, yet their criticism
does not seem to attain the features which interest us here, for there seems to be no
contradiction between the existence an unitary semiotic function, in the sense of
differentiation between expression and content, and the existence of unequal rates of
development within different semiotic domains. For a complete discussion, see Sonesson
1991d. Also cf. Tamm 1990.
13
For another interesting argument concerned with the difference between direct perception
of the world, and the indirect apprehension typical of pictures and other signs, see Pérez
Carreño 1988:63ff.
14
This analysis, which involved the analysis of a number of documentary films produced by
French television, was accomplished by a working group under the direction of the present
author, and was realized in collaboration between the Groupe de recherches sémio-linguistiques,
and the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, in Paris, from 1979 to 1981.
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68
Göran Sonesson obtained his doctoral degree in linguistics from Lund University, Sweden,
in 1978, and was awarded in the same year an equivalent degree in semiotics by the Ecoles
des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. From 1974 to 1981, he conducted research
in general semiotics and the semiotics of gesture in Paris, and was later involved with general
and Mayan linguistics in Mexico. Since 1983, he has been in charge of the Semiotics Project
at Lund University, some results of which have been published in his book Pictorial
concepts (1989). President of the Swedish Association for Semiotic Studies, and a Swedish
representative in the executive commission of the IASS, as well as in the Nordic Association
for Semiotic Studies, he is also one of the founding-members, and vice-president, of the
International Association for Visual Semiotics, created at Tours in 1989.
Fig.1. Semiotic methods and their application to pictorial semiotics
Fig.2. The prototypical sign and other meanings
Fig. 3. Quadrangular face
Fig.4. Figurativty and operativity (in Piaget's sense) and the brain hemispheres (from Sonesson 1989a)
Fig.5. Different limts between prototype categories in children's drawings (adapted from Hoffmann's text
in Sonesson 1989a)
Fig.6. A hierarchy of shapes, derived from children's drawings (adapted from Hoffmann's text in
Sonesson 1989a)
Fig.7. Topological-dynamic interpretation of Gardner's modal-vectorial properties (from Sonesson 1989a)
69
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Pictorial semiotics, Gestalt theory, and the ecology of perception

Article · January 1994

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Pictorial semiotics, Gestalt

Elements of a history of pictorial semiotics

The relation of pictorial semiotics to other semiotic and non-semiotic

cognitive psychology (’protocol analysis’). Structuralism, in the primary, linguistic sense,

text analyses on the final pages of Saint-Martin's Gestalt theory book.

From psychologies of perception to theories of signs and iconicity

affirming that reality is fundamentally ambiguous, and so must be supplemented by the

rare occurrence in any scientific community, is not so easily refuted as Saint-Martin

and psychological structures at work in perception. In Saint-Martin's opinion, this is what

The varieties of pictorial meaning — Configurations and other holistic

Signs among other meanings

Instead, Saint-Martin (p.85) quotes Chomsky as defending such an innateness

Twodimensional shapes on a surface simply are too ambiguous in themselves. Groupe µ so

to observe another shortcoming of Saint-Martin's approach: her neglect to clarify the

Conclusion: Towards a semiotic ecology

– (1987). From direct perception to conceptual structure. In Concepts and conceptual

– (1990e). Iconicité de l’image — Imaginaire de l’iconicité. De la ressemblance à la

Fig.1. Semiotic methods and their application to pictorial semiotics

Fig.2. The prototypical sign and other meanings

Fig. 3. Quadrangular face

Fig.7. Topological-dynamic interpretation of Gardner's modal-vectorial properties (from Sonesson 1989a)

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