What is meaning?

How do we decode the things we see? For one of my university essays, I have been reading up on Erwin Panofsky's theory of iconography, the semiotics of images, and how we decode the images we see almost instantaneously, without even thinking about what we are doing. 

In Panofsky's theory, he relates iconography to gesture, in particular the tip of a hat when walking past someone you know as a greeting. The person to whom the hat is tipped recognises this as a greeting, a polite gesture, and in order for them to understand the meaning they would've had to exist in the same cultural and social context. Yet we don't even think about how we interpret the things we see. Another example, as in the book 'Practices of Looking' by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, is road signs. If we think about road signs, we interpret them quickly and easily, and pretty fast we understand them and don't think twice when we see them. The same relates to images, for example, if I were to show you the image below, you would instantly connect that to the Olympics. Both the symbol of the rings and the word 'Olympics' represent the event, that's semiotics for you.

Although Panofsky's theory is meant for artworks from the Renaissance, lets interpret the Olympic rings using it. 

Breaking down interpretation or meaning:

1) Primary or Natural

- I recognise the shapes and colours

2) Secondary or Conventional

- I recognise the symbol as representation of the Olympics, I recognise the cultural context

- I recognise that the rings mean the 5 competitive continents and the colours (including white) represent the colours of the flags of all competing countries

3) Intrinsic meaning

- The symbol tells us the about the cultural context it was created in

- An age of sport and competition 

- The symbol was created only 100 years ago, so the symbol was created in a fairly contemporary age

Henry Moore's sheep sketches

Henry Moore is an artist best known for his bronze sculptures which are scattered in locations across the world, however, little people know that he was also a talented sketcher and it is his delicate sheep sketches I am going to concentrate on in particular.

Moore lived in Much Hadham, a small village in East Hertforshire, and worked in a small studio overlooking a sheep field. He spent much of his time studying the sheep in his sketchbook, the way they moved, behaved and the shape of their bodies. Moore managed to capture the sheep's faces in very intricate detail, his method was to make a small, sharp noise to grab the sheep's attention so that they would turn to look at the source of the noise for several seconds, with a long, blank stare on their faces.

Moore was fascinated with the mother-child bond of animals, larger forms protecting smaller ones, a theme which is noticeable topic of interest in much of his work. Many of his sheep sketches are of ewes protecting their lambs, one may say a large influence on his artwork. Lord Clark (Civilisation and Landscape into Art) comments that Moore expressed 'a real affection' for his sheep subjects.

Moore sculpture at Kew Gardens, notice the similarities?

His sheep sketches are very accurate and first look solid in form when standing from a distance, yet when you get closer to the imagery you start to notice his style. Zig-zags and rushed ball point pen lines dominate the drawings, thicker and more panicked scratches where there is less light and softer yet still sudden and vigorous on the brighter parts of the scene. Moore also rarely started his sketches by outlining his sheep, but started shading straight away, a risky strategy especially with the use of ball point pen but nonetheless effective.

Moore rarely outlined his sketches before shading

Buy Henry Moore's sheep sketchbook here