Getting Fra Angelico’s splotch out: rehabilitating visual cognitive semiotics

Abstract

Abstract Most contemporary approaches to meaning presume the limitation of semiotics (Didi-Huberman, Gumbrecht, Belting). The question of what kind of “semiotics” is required has not been asked. However, without some general science of meaning it is impossible to reform theory without committing past errors or ignoring progress. In the interest of reconnecting contemporary interests in “presence” to long-evolving needs, I review the ossification and decline of one theory of semiotics that serves as the tacit model rejected today. I return to problems of the nature of the sign – whether it is “digital” or “analog” and conceived as “communication” or merely “meaning.” I then reconstitute a workable visual cognitive semiotics based on phenomenological premises.