METAPHOR AS A SEMIOTIC KEY IN VISUAL POETICS
Keywords:
metaphor, message, semiotic key, meaning, visual artAbstract
By analyzing the contexts of metaphor's application in the fine and visual arts, this paper explores its essential properties through the applicability of linguistic and art theories. Drawing upon some of the most significant hypotheses addressing this concept, the study advances the hypothesis that metaphor serves as a semiotic key to constructing meaning within the visual arts. Methodologically, the paper analyzes the aspects of the framing and poetic function of metaphor, alongside procedures such as appropriation, intertext, recontextualization, and intermedia. The analyses are conducted transdisciplinarily, at the intersection of philosophical, linguistic, and art theories. The research focuses on the hermeneutic approach to metaphor as a trope of similarity and a trope of deviation (Ricoeur; Henle), as a foreign body, and as an analogy (Aristotle; Ricoeur). Viewed through these insights and within the context of movement and transposition with generic potential (Lawlor; Ricoeur), the process of metaphorization is identified across a multitude of examples from fine art: Matsys, Rembrandt, Dürer, Bruegel, Caravaggio, Goya, Homer, Duchamp, Picabia, Höch, Hausmann, and others.
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