Visual syntax in the iconography of Saint Nicholas
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Małgorzata Haładewicz-Grzelak
Abstract
This article analyzes the iconography of Saint Nicholas from the retrospective angle of the interrelation of constituent meanings. I propose that the persona of Saint Nicholas is a “complex symbol” consisting of a number of simple symbols (e.g., the crosier and miter in Western Christianity representations, the blessing in Orthodox icons, the bag in secular and hyper-secular renditions, etc.). These simple symbols entail implicational structuring, which might be called the visual syntax of Saint Nicholas. My visual qualitative model based on constructivist relational philosophy (e.g., Bateson, Mind and nature: A necessary unity, Bantam, 1979; Lenk, Filozofia praktycznego interpretacjionalizmu, Oficyna Naukowa, 1995, Lenk, Das Denken und sein Gehalt, Oldenbourg, 2001) serves to interpret the signification changes in terms of the spreading and delinking of the correlations.
© 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
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Articles in the same Issue
- Semiosis, mythic algebra, and the laws of association
- Peter Pan's shadow and the relational matrix of the “I”
- An “iconological turn” in literary and cultural studies and the reconstruction of visual culture
- Reading signs: Semiotics and depth psychology
- The images of film and the categories of signs: Peirce and Deleuze on media
- The sign universe, Summum Bonum, self-control, and the normative sciences in a Peircean perspective or man ought to contribute to the growth in the concrete reasonableness
- Into the realm of zeroness: Peirce's categories and Vipassana meditation
- Fuzzy meanings: Exploring meta-theories of communication in advertising research
- Visual syntax in the iconography of Saint Nicholas
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