International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts
Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle
The theatre poster
A semiotic approach
Théâtre vivant et documentation
Acts of the XIth International Congress of the Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts
Actes du XIe Congrès international des bibliothèques-musées des arts du spectacle.
Copenhagen 8-14 september 1974. (Editors: Per Pio & Ev Steinaa.)
Copenhagen 1976, pp. 28-33
One of
the most cherished and indeed most valuable premisses of French
structuralism
proclaims that it is possible and meaningful to interpret a work of art
as
"discourse" (or "text"), that is, as 'parole' in the
Saussurian sense, and yet to describe it with the method that in
linguistics
has been developed for the analysis of 'langue', the language system.
Consequently, the description starts usually with determing the
smallest
possible relevant elements or units and continues with constructing the
higher
structures as relations between these units. The somewhat risky gain of
this
method consists of the important fact that the various functional
levels can be
made obvious. Such a procedure, however, of necessity leads from the
elementary
units to the hierarchically more vital ones and therefore structuralism
is
hardly able to describe the integrating conditions and circumstances an
the
different levels. That means that this method concerns only one of the
multiple
manifestations of a work of art.
The
objective of my paper is not an abrupt and therefore unjust dismission
of
structuralism as a tool for theatre poster analysis. It is rather my
thesis
that a structural model cannot be described but as a semiotic model
that
reflects the communicative structure of a work of art. It is to be
characterized as "communicated communication" in which the
communication consists of a message that coproduces its own
communicative
situation. This communication process is to be subdivided in four
levels:
- the
level of the visualising code,
- the level of text existence,
- the level of text
reception, and finally
- the level of interpretation.
This
approach does not to try to be prescriptive, is not concerned with
teaching or
demonstrating how best to do things. It attempts to be descriptive as
to the
levels of analysis, that is, to propose a methodical way for
determining the
structure of any poster whatsoever, whether correctly or badly composed
(which,
of course, is different from the distinction between well- and
ill-formed, in
the logical sense).
It is
possible to describe a theatre poster as a piece of paper heavily
printed,
bearing images and characters or other sign elements accompanied by a
lingual
text and destined to be hung against a wall. As a tool for
communication
analysis, such a definition is neglectably useful. We.should instead
concentrate an the message contained: denotative message which can be
objectivated and translated towards a viewer by means of knowledgeable
signs,
and a connotative message, subjective and personal but shared by a
number of
individuals. The denotative message is explicit, to be translated
completely
without any loss of meaning into whatsoever other lingual system than
the used
one; it is based an a sign repertory, the elements of which are
producible by
the adresser and the adressees and are known before the communication
act. The
connotative message, however, is based an a series of perceptory
elements to be
deciphered by the analist but to the viewer unconscious, subconscious
or implicit;
they constitute the communication system. Some fundamental factors such
as
movement, costume, time, environment are tied together so that some
differences
and similitudes between the theatre and the graphic expression become
evident.
For.instance,
the time factor. A poster very often comprises a series of images and
naturally
the viewer needs a succession of time moments to perceive the totality
of these
segments and the total configuration as well. We perceive the images
consecutively, even if the time between each phase is very small. The
eye has
the capacity of absorbing in one form or Gestalt a medium amount of 4
or 5
separate images (or image parts), depending from the differences or
similarities between the images and from their position in the poster
space. If
the perceptory points in a poster reach 10, 20 or more, it becomes
necessary to
organize these perception points in a rhytmical succession in order to
perceive
them in a greater and at the same time simpler relation. The rhythms
and
motifs, constituted by numerous different elements, enter into the
poster space
and leave it to exist autonomously; the result is that the viewer in
the act of
perceiving lives an experience of movement and time. The poster keeps
working
in an the viewer. Where for instance a picture receives its own life
from the viewer's
immersion in the picture's organized space, the poster imposes its own
message on the viewer. The poster exists in its own rhythm, in its own
conditions, and
the viewer is receiving the message more than imposing his own
deciphering
intention.
At the
level of the visualising code we must distinguish between the
typographical
signs (themselves usually networks of relations), repesentographical
signs and
a (at least one) supersign, a supraposition of both kinds of signs into
a
pictorial image sign or object. These three kinds of signs I put
together into
two: conventionalized signs and projected signs. Conventionalized signs
constitute identificational units, elements of a sign system known to
the
viewer or to be considered as information values (for
instance, vignettes); projected
signs are elements of the particular sign system (either of this one
poster or
from the handwriting of the poster designer) and constitute
expectational
(somewhat irreverently, salivating) units. Both kinds of signs make use
of
focalisation as perception principle.
Conventionalized
or not, these signs can be specific, or vaque, or
ambiguous. The relation between their nature as a sign vehicle and
their
specificity of intended meaning (their suggestibility) leads to a
greater or
smaller fidelity or recognizability. The conventionalized signs are
perceived
in an association process. The not conventionalized signs function as
explicit,
unique signs, not to be associated but understood, i.e. the structured
combination of typographically organized characters and
conventionalized image
signs provides a faster approach by the viewer, a more direct
perception than
the structured combination of typographically organized language
(isolated
words, full sentences) and projected icons and/or symbols.
Consequently, the
attention captivating process must proceed not by stressing the
perceptibility
of conventionalized signs but the interaction of projected signs, only
slightly
at the start of the perceiving process to be helped by an accomodation
segment
of conventionalized signs.
Posters
make a large use of several typographic artifices to connote something
more
than its simple verbal or pictorial messages. The word may move or
assume
features that before were characteristic of iconographic conventions,
giving so
place to several kinds of visual-verbal messages, for
instance, the geometrisation of
syntax, the size and the type of the characters, word figures, the
destruction
of the linearity principle of language in order to produce visual
meaning
effects. The end of the research is to classify the different stages of
this
logo-iconic communication. It is neither the isolated word or lingual
text (as
a typographical sign) nor the image but a system of messages which
makes
variously and dialectically both registers interact; it is always an
attempt of
creating a particular kind of expression based an the interaction of
word and
image. The poster's codes consist indeed of an heterogeneous
"corpus"; semiotics, for its very nature, is the only discipline (or
method) which may carry out an analysis of these facts. It will have
therefore
to consider the definition of the structural autonomy, the concept of
the
analogon or homologon, the various procedures of connotation, the
criteria of
transformation, the processes of signification by iconicity and so on.
The
figuralisation of meaning as an aspect of visual rhetorics must accord
particular attention to the structuration of the message, that is,
repetition,
visual exaggeration, visual fusion (assembling of two signs), visual
metaphor,
associatory mediation, antinomy procedures, substitution and
constrasting. At
this level the rhetorical principle (G. Bonsiepe) is of particular
relevance:
the relation of symbolic aspects and semantic and pragmatic aspects;
the total
intermixture of these procedures forms the semiotic foundation of the
poster
code.
(If,
without demonstration, some conclusion may be presented, I take it that
iconicity is an extremely relative term. The graphic message is a
phenomenon of
an often rich and embarrassing complexity, as well by luxury as by
simplicity.
The richness makes it impossible to comprehend the poster as a sign
process if
one predefines it in terms of an assumed basic denotation of objects by
a
mechanical arrangement of coloured areas upon a twodimensional surface,
i.e. in
terms of a basic iconic or analogical representation.)
At the
level or text existence, the logo-representographic object as a
semiotic object
is considered to be referring to a systematisation process. This
systematisation may be held responsible for the structural element that
governs
the production of the graphic object. Recognized the superposed
processes of
codification that underlie the apparently total motivation of the
image, the
problem of complementarity must be solved. Continuity, similarity,
arbitrariness (or their opposites) and the operations of substitution
and
combination apparently are constitutive rules.
In the
sign other rules and codes accumulate, interrelated at different levels
of
abstraction or invention. The visual comes into play with the
linguistic and
the logic, the "purity" of the image is discarded. The code's network
requires an order of assembling, generative and creative, at the
deepest level.
Here the difficult issue of the specificity of the sign is decided.
Governed by
an abstract scheme which combines technical and mental motivities, in a
substance (specified by configurative operations) which introduces
colours,
forms, textures, etc., the graphic practice offers, basically,
a model of organization of logo- and represento-visual sensations. This
specificity is referable to functioning rules historically in force. Of
course,
other principles of synthesis may prevail as the contemporary pictorial
arts
procedures prove.
The
plurality of the signifying systems must be postulated. Graphic design
has its
own competence, without preformed structures nor mainly syntactic ones.
The
consideration of the circumstances of the graphic discourse (to explain
its
concrete plurifunctionality and the totality of the sense) breaks down
the
autonomy of the semiotic field. A "negotiated" graphic structure is
possible if the artistic performance modifies its competence, and the
limits
between semantics and pragmatics get blurred. This proposal which
departs from
the theories that give primacy to the significant, conceives the
graphical
practice in relation to its function, its use, its sense. It is at this
moment
that the orientation to the theatre must become obvious.
So the
poster is a pluralistic object. According to A. Molès (1972,
Théorie des
objects), the object is a mediator between man and his situation,
between man
and society. That means that the object has become communication.
However, it
is not by itself a message, but messages are associated to it. For
Molès,
function is the meaning ('le
sens') of the object. By the distance of their functional meanings
among each
other, objects may be mapped into a semantic space. Like a language,
however,
objects possess their internal syntax - the syntax according to which
its functions
and its parts are assembled. By means of pertinent oppositions (not
unlike
those of a commutation test) different object styles may be
differentiated
objectively. Not distinguishing at this moment between the
informational and
the suasory aspects of this poster function, I take it that
considerable
attention must be accorded to, for instance, the poster's size (not the size in square
feet or inches, but the visibility pattern it occupies under normal
visibility
conditions), the captivating (or glueing) effect of colour complexity
or
interplay, the iconicity degree, the abstraction degree, the complexity
degree
of text and image, the metaphorical quality, the pregnancy degree, the
connotative quality. Not every one of these qualitative aspects should
be
present at the same moment, but this is not to be excluded.
At the
level of text reception, semiotics as the study of patterns of
interpretative
behaviour deals with processes of inference (hence behaviour) and not
with
'things' (for instance,
isolated signs). It deals with perceptual interpretation at the
base, and, resting on this base, with the dichotomous processes of
interpretation of symptoms (as "natural" signs) and message (as
"artificial" signs).
At this
point, one could embark on a more ample discourse regarding
theatrographic
phenomenology. Each of us could draw on a more or less extensive
repertory of
motifs, images and themes. What is important is to see to what extent
such
elements can be identified as a particular sign concept. Only after a
verification of this kind will it be possible to proceed to a more
general
theory of theatrographic signs, and, consequently, to a description of
the
individual theatre poster codes, in short, to a typology of the theatre
poster
as a cultural phenomenon.
I take
it that to persuade still means 'to get someone to do something',
where 'something' means an action beyond that of merely looking at the
poster.
It is important to note that the composition of a poster is not
equivalent to
the act of persuading someone; that is merely its goal. For us it must
be the
art of finding all the available means for helping persuasion come
about. So
the underlying working method of a theatre poster is, in a rhetorical
way, the
art of suasion, that is, urging something to or upon people in order to
make
them become an audience. It is an art of speach act, an art of
illocution as
John Searle would put it, not an act of achievement, that is, an art of
perlocution.
Unlike
the poetics of the theatre poster which could concern itself with
elements of
internal narrative structure, the semiotics of the theatre poster could
exist
as a study of the triadic relationship between the implied author
(i.e., the
optional agent, the theatre company acting through its poster
designer), the
poster as an object, and the audience as the implied receiver. Are
these three
terms enough to establish it as an autonomous method, since the theatre
poster
does not consist as any act of communication but as one involving
suasion based
not an narrative or aesthetical structures but an perceptual-logical
ones?
I do
think it possible to study theatre posters semiotically insofar as they
are
considered to be texts aimed at specific effects an viewers. They
present a
gesture, a plea to accept, an imposition by one way or another. But how
could
one offer this a legitimate approach to an in many cases obvious art
form, as
opposed to comparatively identical obviously suasory messages, may
advertising,
propaganda and the like? I think the answer might be simple: what the
poster
designer urges upon us is not a particular theme or thesis partipris
within
the grapho-representational text, but rather the text itself, the
integrity, its
reason of existence. The poster's suasion is directed inward, a support
for the
design of the world of the work, not outward, toward the real world of
practical action. A poster must be recognized as having two semiotical
levels,
the inward, verisimilitudinous one, and the outwardly directed one, the
argument about the theatrical activity that the company elects to urge
upon its
audience. The poster is a semiotical text in which the object is to get
the
viewer to take overt action and not merely to respond aesthetically.
I do
not want to leave this level of text reception without swiftly
referring to the
aesthetic side of the theatre poster. What was called until a few years
ago
aesthetic has dissolved in a number of specific sciences all concerned
with
the visual experience: iconology, history of symbolism, of pictorial
and/or
graphic technigues, of perspective, of colours, of taste, of criticism.
Their
results are partial but enlightening. The viewpoints from which to
consider
artifact are, however, not limitless and with a careful grouping method
the
coordination of all these ways and methods seeins possible. Each step
could
constitute a different group of problems resolved, or proposed, both by
the
designer and by the viewer. If such a grouping proves itself to be
possible,
and if the connection between the various categories (giving an idea of
possible approaches, without that all the possible approaches should
actually
be used to explain a poster) could be logically suggested, than we are
confronted with a really interpretative system. Its character is
basically new
because it is based an ways the poster as a work of art could
communicate with
the viewer, and this
could modify the message of the work itself. It is possible, for this
reason,
that semiotics is, today, in a position to suggest a common frame for
apparently contrasting and scattered experiences
Concluding
with the level of interpretation which has already been tackled in the
preceding suggestions, the goal of the viewer may be described as a
complete
semantic interpretation. As a condition for this interpretation, the
viewer
(-a-nalist) tries to recover an analysable contextual totality,
comprehensive
of the specific practice of a designer and a message, implying
intersubjective
relation ships in precise historical circumstance.
Summing
up I want to stress the four elements in the semiotic analysis which I
consider
of essential importance:
- the poster as a graphic process, i.e. a multilinear message which several codes interact in the same moment
- the individuation of the various levels of poster as a graphic process in communication in the poster as a graphic process
- the analysis of the various attempts to elaborate the minimal unity of theatre orientated messages (isolated sign, global sign)
- a
proposal towards a typology of theatre poster signs possibly based an
(or
starting from) the three Peircan categories (index, icon, symbol)
Finally,
poster semiotics (as any other semiotics) is not that kind of
relatively
autonomous study. I presume that there are hardly any semiotic
universals, that
we are confronted instead with some motley array of phenomena. It
serves no
useful purpose to speculate in advance about whether semiotics should
be
regarded, from a methodological point of view, as having mainly its own
explanatory laws, or as being mainly parasitic an the explanations
provided by
other sciences. The answer to this question will emerge only when a
vast amount
of further spadework has been done. To further such work has been, I
take it,
the prime objective of my intervention.
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