Textual patterns and iconicity in nonrepresentational modern paintings

Grammatical Iconicity in modern paintings, we have come up with the following finding: The previous semiotic textuality predictions do not fully describe the textual patterns of nonrepresentational modern paintings in general. For the most part, only the compositional principle of Saliency stands as an applicable principle affecting the reading paths of paintings. That is to say, the directionality principle of modern paintings is greatly involved with perceptual transitions. In this respect, modern paintings rely on similar resources of content-progressing to music pieces (cf. Donald 2006): The body of art is greatly shaped by the cumulating and transitions of perceptual cues, alternative to the dominance of Information value, as in the case of most linguistic grammar (Halliday 1990; 1994a) and commercial visual layouts (Kress and van

Leeuwen, 1996). It is thus not the case that all visual genres progress directionally exactly like verbal texts or highly commercial multimodal texts, in which Information value functions as a promising textual flow determent factor.

To better illustrate the inapplicability of Information value in our data, a visualization of the recorded instances of New information zones among all 90 paintings is shown in Figure 6.2 to 6.4:

Figure 6.2 Patterns of New Information zones in the figurative group

Figure 6.3 Patterns of New Information zones in the semi-figurative group

Figure 6.4 Patterns of New Information zones in the abstract group

It is obvious that in the figurative group (Figure 6.2), the circled instances of New remain bountiful. In the semi-figurative case (Figure 6.3), the applicability of Information value drops. Finally, in the abstract group (Figure 6.4), no sign of Information value could be found. Therefore, the commonality of Information value does not suit the visual genre like ours. There must be an alternative principle governing the compositional flow of paintings.

Let us return to the research questions of this study. It is clear that after our examination, a textual reality dictated by iconicity is indeed validated in the case of nonrepresentational modern Western paintings, from the figurative to the abstract. These paintings:

1) Stably involve the interplay of various kinds of iconic grammatical metaphors, fulfilling the criterion of “iconic semiotic entity” in Halliday (1990);

2) Vaguely display a textual flow, in which:

(1) In figurative cases, the compositional principles of Information value, Saliency, and Framing (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996), are all actively applied;

(2) In semi-figurative cases, the applicability of Information value and Framing starts to sharply decline in determining the textual flows of the paintings;

(3) In abstract cases, both Information value and Framing could not be applied.

The remaining clues for textual flow lie in the titles, and the Saliency zones involved.

As shown in (1) to (3) above, Information structure ceases to function as the dominating principle of Modern painting textuality. The most promising principle appears to be Saliency, as it is the only factor applied in all three styles of painting groups in our corpus. Nevertheless, we propose here that Saliency (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996) serves as the basis for the structural grammar of paintings, rather than serving as the grammar itself, since it does not provide further clue in determining textual

directionality, as illustrated in Chapter 5.

Given 1), it is clear that paintings are doubtlessly validated in the aspect of iconic GM. The aspect of the criteria for an iconic textual flow in 2), however, requires a re-interpretation from the previously commented.

The following figures displays our manually analyzed process, or records, of Examination 1, the investigation on the textual reality of Grammatical Iconicity (GI).

Each circle represents an instance of analysis, fitting in the approximate location a GM is found in its painting-plate, which is represented by a square (following Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996). There are a total of 30 circles in each of the three squares standing for the figurative to the abstract grouping:

Figure 6.5 Patterns of GI in the figurative group

Figure 6.6 Patterns of GI in the semi-figurative group

Figure 6.7 Patterns of GI in the abstract group

Specifically, in Figure 6.5 to 6.7, the red circles stand for the recorded GI of SALIENCY. The blue circles, on the other hand, are the cases for the GI of

MARKEDNESS. According to this visualization of analysis, we have found that the GI zones of SALIENCY almost always fall at the left of the paintings in all styles. In addition, the GI zones of MARKEDNESS almost always fall at the right of the paintings.

If we consider the psychological impact of Saliency, which is already hinted in Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), it is exactly what attracts human vision easily. It is thus reasonable that the GI zones of SALIENCY serves as the starting points, or textual on-sets, in nonrepresentational modern paintings. Meanwhile, we have found a lack of SIZE Grammatical Iconicity application in the MARKED zones. However, they almost always possess a unique textual status, and regularly arranged at the right.

The observation based on our sampling further imply a holistic pattern of

nonrepresentational modern painting textuality: The SALIENCY zones often serve as a start of a painting-text, and the MARKED zones mark, or help direct viewer attention, to the finale of a painting, ending the general flow of the text.

The textual reality of the currently discussed paintings, therefore, not only contains the regularity of GI, but is in fact structurally directed by these form-meaning

alignments. As illustrated, the structurally-arranged GI principles, instead of a mainly semantic-based Information value or a purely perceptual-based visual Saliency (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996), functions as the determining textual principle of the current visual corpus. The GI patterns outshine the principle of Information value, and direct the textual flow of the paintings from the left (SALIENT ZONES) to the right

(MARKED ZONES), forming a generally left-to-right directionality (Fig. 6.8 to 6.10):

Figure 6.8 Textual flow formed by GI patterns in the figurative group

Figure 6.9 Textual flow formed by GI patterns in the semi-figurative group

Figure 6.10 Textual flow formed by GI patterns in the abstract group

In the model of Grammatical Iconicity, Hiraga (2005:44-45) has put it:

“The relationship of form and meaning in grammatical metaphorical mapping is diagrammatical, because what is preserved is an analogical relationship mediated indirectly by grammatical metaphors. This contrasts with a direct attributive connection such as pure imagic iconicity between the linguistic form and meaning, e.g. a case of onomatopoeia and visual language such as logographs.”

The structural iconicity in Hiraga’s (2005) model is categorized as Diagrammatic

Iconicity in Nanny and Fischer’s Taxonomy of Iconicity (1999), which is dictated by the law of analogy. It is diagrammatic in nature, as it captures structural mappings between poetic textual features and poetic aesthetics. Diagrammatic Iconicity contrasts Imagistic Iconicity, which merely follows the “firstness” (Pierce 1995, see Chapter 2) principle

based on principles of mimicry. Freeman (2009:172-173) once comments that diagram is ‘the abstraction of the structure of image, serving to symbolize the mental processes of creating concepts in the mind’, and also: “When diagram takes on the characteristics

of image, then iconicity at the more abstract level happens”. Through our examination, we have highlighted the existence of Diagrammatic Iconicity, aside from the reported Imagistic Iconicity, in the textuality, or textual “grammar” found in 90

nonrepresentational modern Western paintings.

Figure 6.11 Taxonomy of Iconicity in Nanny and Fischer (1999)

We believe that our finding, while in alignment with the Saliency principle reported in Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) belonging to an imagistic iconicity, further unveils a more abstracted and systematic level of Diagrammatic iconicity, which is textually grammatical in nature. Based on our methodology, Modern paintings could be viewed as a visual genre strongly in favor of structural iconicity instantiated by the interplay of form and meaning in a global and multimodal fashion.

Therefore, Modern paintings are not only “standing as” a form of firstness, Imagistic Iconicity, but also “structured by” mechanisms of Diagrammatic Iconicity at a grammatical level, just like the case of linguistic texts.

In 1977, Van Dijk suggested that the macro-level rules of texts are often not required to be openly expressed in the text, but are often “inferred by the

micro-structure of the discourse, and that they “take place in the course of reading the

text, not a posteriori,” hence only appear prominent when the readers of the texts are trying to summarize what they have read. We believe that this concept could be well adopted in the case of modern western paintings: Diagrammatic Iconicity, rather than Information values, guides the global textual flow of Modern paintings like an

inevitable gravity, shaping the macro-level progression structure of the texts. However, this macro-flow never harms the miniature depictive details or semantics of in-painting GMs functioning as ‘iconic semiotic entities’ (Halliday, 1990). This again accords with the general definition of van Dijk (1977).