Model and icon
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Wendy Steiner
Abstract
Models and modeling function as themes or representational subjects in a striking number of recent literary, pictorial, and filmic works. This sudden currency is explained here through indexical and iconic characteristics of models. Since they are historical entities, works about models indicate art’s relation to extra-artistic reality, often gesturing as well to the reality of the artist, audience, and ‘contact’. The model’s likeness to its image opens a potential for reversibility between them, which artists can use in exploring hierarchy. By anchoring art in reality and signifying reciprocity and equality, model-themed art blurs the line between ethics and aesthetics. Thus, in contemporary culture the aesthetic function would no longer be Roman Jakobson’s formalist “set toward the message”, but instead a set toward the interaction.
Abstract
Models and modeling function as themes or representational subjects in a striking number of recent literary, pictorial, and filmic works. This sudden currency is explained here through indexical and iconic characteristics of models. Since they are historical entities, works about models indicate art’s relation to extra-artistic reality, often gesturing as well to the reality of the artist, audience, and ‘contact’. The model’s likeness to its image opens a potential for reversibility between them, which artists can use in exploring hierarchy. By anchoring art in reality and signifying reciprocity and equality, model-themed art blurs the line between ethics and aesthetics. Thus, in contemporary culture the aesthetic function would no longer be Roman Jakobson’s formalist “set toward the message”, but instead a set toward the interaction.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction 1
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Part I. Iconicity and conceptualization
- Iconicity by blending 13
- The Bashō code 25
- Iconicity in gotoochi-kitii ‘localized Hello Kitty’ 43
- Grammar-internal mimicking and analogy 63
- To draw a bow 引 83
- Spatiotemporal aspects of iconicity 95
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Part II. Visual iconicity
- From diagrams to poetry 121
- The iconized letter 141
- The semantics of structure 159
- Visual iconicity in Latin poetry 173
- Shared and direct experiential iconicity in digital reading games 191
- Iconicity, intermediality, and interpersonal meanings in a Social Semiotic Space 211
- Model and icon 233
- Degrees of indetermination in intersemiotic translation 247
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Part III. Auditory iconicity
- Sound, image and fake realism 263
- Opera, oratorio, and iconic strategies 275
- On some iconic strategies in concept albums within the Italian singer-songwriter tradition 295
- Iconically expressible meanings in Proto-Indo-European roots and their reflexes in daughter branches 311
- The lexical iconicity hierarchy and its grammatical correlates 331
- Author index 351
- Subject index 355
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. Iconicity and conceptualization
- Iconicity by blending 13
- The Bashō code 25
- Iconicity in gotoochi-kitii ‘localized Hello Kitty’ 43
- Grammar-internal mimicking and analogy 63
- To draw a bow 引 83
- Spatiotemporal aspects of iconicity 95
-
Part II. Visual iconicity
- From diagrams to poetry 121
- The iconized letter 141
- The semantics of structure 159
- Visual iconicity in Latin poetry 173
- Shared and direct experiential iconicity in digital reading games 191
- Iconicity, intermediality, and interpersonal meanings in a Social Semiotic Space 211
- Model and icon 233
- Degrees of indetermination in intersemiotic translation 247
-
Part III. Auditory iconicity
- Sound, image and fake realism 263
- Opera, oratorio, and iconic strategies 275
- On some iconic strategies in concept albums within the Italian singer-songwriter tradition 295
- Iconically expressible meanings in Proto-Indo-European roots and their reflexes in daughter branches 311
- The lexical iconicity hierarchy and its grammatical correlates 331
- Author index 351
- Subject index 355
