Paris Salon

Semiotics - Icons and Symbols

Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.  Early 1900's, Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).  American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced 'purse') (1839-1914).

Icon - A representation of the object itself, keeping its characteristics.  Resembles something.  Can be illustrative, diagrammatic, a photograph or the object/person itself.

People as icons - an image or name, an individual reduced to an idea.

Discuss - Celebrity is the state of being well known.  How does one obtain celebrity status?  In our culture?  Other cultures?  Past cultures?  Do celebrities fuel our/a culture?  How?  Why?

Link here for images and brief bio of Iconic People.

Symbols - No logical meaning for what it stands for. Have no resemblance to the real object, it’s a result of a convention (considered acceptable to most members of a society). A dove represents peace, but there’s no connection between the animal and peace, it’s just a convention. 

A symbol (an image or text) can only make meaning if the person already knows the convention - a matter of culture and previous knowledge.  For each culture the symbol makes meaning.

Color in cultures.  

Further Reading:
Signs and Language.  Link here.
The Age of the Female Icon by Holly Brubach, New York Times Magazine. Link here.
Perceptions of Female Beauty in the 20th Century by Louise Wood. Link here.

Terms and People for Test #1

Terms and People for Test #1. Test #1, Monday, Oct. 3. Final list of people and terms posted at 10:00 pm on Sunday, Oct. 2

Culture
Trompe L'oeil
Illusion
Platform
PT Barnum
Andy Warhol
Synthetic time
Real Time
Formal
Subjective
Objective
Content
Flaneur
Renaissance Painting
Crystal Palace
Arcade
Modern
French Revolution
Publicity
The Gaze
Icon
Symbol
Semiotics
Paris Salon
Eugen Sandow
Industrial Revolution

TED Talks

Alison Jackson looks at celebrity.
By making photographs that seem to show our favorite celebs (Diana, Elton John) doing what we really, secretly, want to see them doing, Alison Jackson explores our desire to get personal with celebs. Contains graphic images.

Chapter 13, To The Arcade: The World of The Shop and The Store

The new show windows

1900: Trimming the marvellous

In 1900 L. Frank Baum — the author of The Wizard of Oz (1900) — published the monumental and influential manual The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows (1900). Techniques of tableaux staging, mannikins and stage magic were combined to create the shop "illusion windows" (see: Colver 1988); eruptions of the marvellous and implicitly erotic into everyday life, overlaid with layers of mirrored reflections (analogous to photomontage) in the newly affordable plate glass. Baum was editor of the journal Show Windows from 1897-1902.
The surrealists were later fascinated by Atget's Paris show window photographs, although these do not convey the effect of being lit at night — in Berlin in the 1910s and 20s, the new show windows were lit up at night, and 'the uncanny mannikins' seen there, perhaps fed the early German cinema's fascination with 'living' automata and robots. Link here.

Paris, 1912, Eugene Atget

Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington D.C. 1982, black granite, each wall 246 feet long and 10.5 feet high. Link here for more on PBS ART21.

Penn Station, 1935, Berenice Abbott

Manhattan Newsstand, Berenice Abbott, 1935

Eugene Atget, b. 1857 - d. 1927, photo taken by Berenice Abbott in 1927

Berenice Abbott, b. 1898 - d. 1991, American Photographer

Great Crystal Palace, England, 1851

trompe l'oeil
Pronunciation: trump loy

The Oculus, 1473, Fresco, located in Northern Italy

Holy Trinity, 1425, Fresco, located in Florence, approx. 25 feet tall and 10 feet wide.
Art History Flashcards

Current day example of trompe l'oeil

Chapter 9, Gaze, Body and Sexuality: Modern Rituals of Looking and Being Looked At

King Louis XVI of France. Absolute Monarch. People opposed distributed pamphlets that criticized government.

Stereoscope. Reaches high fashion around 1860 in London. For a brief History, link here.

Stereoscope card.

Company of ladies watching stereoscopic photographs. 1850's - 1860's

Images of war sold for profit.

Spotted Bear, 1880

Gerard, Cupid and Psyche, oil on canvas, 73 x 52 inches, exhibited at the 1798 Salon. To learn more about this painting, link here to the Louvre museum collection.

An interesting blog link here.

Biard, Four O'Clock at the Salon, 1847.

Link here. Daumier, Free Day At The Salon, 1842.

Honore Daumier, artist and political cartoonist 19th century France. Pioneer of realism, painting ordinary or lower class people. His caricatures of French royalty and upper class got him sent to jail a couple of times.

Lithograph by Honore' Daumier (1808-1879).  Works by Daumier offer commentary on social and political life in France during the 19th century.

Honore Daumier

Jean Bernard Duseigneurs, Roland Furieux, shown at the Salon in 1831.

Eugene Delacroix, Massacre at Chios, shown at Salon 1824.

Carte de visite, Soujourner Truth, 1864, unknown photographer and publisher. Link here.

Two examples of carte de visite photographs taken during the American Civil War.

Eugen Sandow

Gustave Courbet, Wrestlers, 1853. Link here for a short video.

Jean Beraud, Morris Column, 1879-1880, painting.

"Please remember that when you get inside the gates you are part of the show" -From pamphlet, A Short Sermon to Sightseers.