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| The example from Paris Match that is used by Barthes to explain the concept of 'Myth'. |
The required reading for this project was Roland Barthes’s ‘Myth Today’.
Barthes, especially in Mythologies, applies the methods of analysis once used by structuralists on the production of meaning in language to the study of ‘Myth’. This done through the examination of contemporary cultural practices thus allowing items, or images, to be contextualised within a wider structure of beliefs, values and symbols. The study of ‘Myth’. This results in layers of signification that are central to our understanding of a single object. This can be seen in ‘Project 12: The rhetoric of the image’.
What is different from Project 12 is that in ‘Myth Today’ Barthes expands upon the concepts of denotation and conception. If ideology is a set of values of beliefs of a given society then Myth allows it to underlie fixed societal structures i.e. language. The Ideological meaning, expressed through hidden conventions, of a sign that is expressed through connotation is in reality specific to a group is rendered universal for that given society. Myth thus allows the connotative meaning of an object denotative (i.e. ‘natural’) thus it is conductive to the dominant ideology.
Myth is a principle of secondary signification and while being both historically and culturally dependent it is the underlying societal meaning encoded into artefacts, practices and images. Myth, either primitive or sophisticated, allows a culture to explain, think and understand some aspect of reality through conceptualisation. Myth, as a form of communication within a culture, thus exists before the image is constructed and is constituted by a chain of related concepts which is activated via analysis. The Paradigmatic selection within an image metonymically is the extension of something else. Through language, or in our case the image, Myth is able to transform reality into an ideological statement. Ultimately, Barthes wanted to investigate how ideology actually works than rather just reducing culture to the status of reflecting a particular society.
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I further considered and kept in mind these questions while researching both Barthes and appropriate images:
- If, as it is argued, that the underlying structure is not immutable, what if or when the structure changes?
- Does meaning cause language (visual as well as literal), as structuralism seems to imply, or is meaning the result of language?
- Is language a means of conveying the underlying and the overarching truth, or do we understand it to be truth that which language tells us is true?
Obviously what differs from Project 12 and now from this point within the course, which are reflected in the above questions, is that we are now considering the critical movement of Post-structuralism. Post-structuralism argues that structuralism tends to create sameness. Despite Saussure’s insistence on difference being the origin of words, Structural analysis tends to create a metanarrative that reduces everything into a simple structure.
Supplementary Task
- Barthes’s cites Minou Drouet – her expression of ‘tree’ would add to the pure matter a type of social usage – was a controversial, in regards to authorship, French poet. I believe Barthes cites her because of the style of her written expression, especially in the poem ‘Tree that I love’. Barthes further examines Drouet in ‘Literature According to Minou Drouet’ in The Eiffel Tower and other Mythologies (1979).
Primary Task
- Think carefully about the passage on meaning and form: “The meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning”. Annotate an artwork to illustrate your thoughts on this passage.
To expand on the last project (‘Mini-project on structuralist analysis’) I have again chosen the propaganda poster ‘Lenin Lived, Lenin Lives, Lenin Will Live Forever!’ (1967) by Ivanov, Victor Semenovich.
I came to the conclusion to reanalyse this image because Leonid Kotilarov’s ‘Portrait of Stakanhov’ (1938) was used as an example of how Myth works. Through Socialist Realism, the reality represented by image of the miner becomes an ideological statement; the freedom and heroism of the worker in the Soviet Union.
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| Portrait of Stakanhov, 1938; Leonid Kotilarov. |
“The meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning”
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| "Lenin Lived, Lenin Lives, Lenin Will Live Forever!" [text by Mayakovsky], 1967 (Poster); V.S. Ivanov (1909-1968). |
Here the image of Lenin represents the ideology of the Soviet Union itself. For example, if you then look at the form of the poster, the red of flag merges with red highlighting on the opposite side of the figure. The colour not only signifies the national colour but, especially with the figure bathed in glow of the red light, the passion behind the ideology is extolled. His stance is solid, defiant in what he represents. This spirit of the revolution is clearly reinforced by the inclusion of the date ‘1917’.
Anchorage becomes relay through the Mayakovsky quotation “Lenin Lived, Lenin Lives, Lenin Will Live Forever!” is anchorage. This is not just an image of Lenin or the visual embodiment of Marxist-Leninist ideology. The presence of Lenin represents the spirit of the Soviet Union. The appropriation of Lenin’s image is intertextual.
Sadly, as piece of propaganda the form of this artwork fails to outdistance the meaning. The stylised form, which in itself is not re-presentation of reality, reinforces the ideological meaning behind the image; this is not an example of Socialist Realism.
The image of Lenin is not photographic; it is part image constructed by an artist. It is easier for artist is able to manipulate the image of Lenin to express a certain ideological statement. The reality of Lenin, the anti-physis, is not only shaped by but becomes to represent an ideology, the pseudo-physis.
Bibliography
Barry, Peter. (2009) Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Barthes, Roland. 1972. Mythologies. 1972. London: Jonathan Cape.
Cartwright, Lisa., Sturken, Marita. 2001. Practices of Looking: an introduction to visual culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Evans, J. and Hall, S. ed. 1999 Visual culture: a reader. London: Sage Publications.
Gleb Prokhorov, ed.: Art Under Socialist Realism: Soviet Painting 1930-1950. Roseville East, Australia: Craftsman House. 1995.
Harrison, C & Wood P. (eds) Art in Theory, 1900-2000: an anthology of changing ideas. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Semenovich, I.V. (1967). "Lenin Lived, Lenin Lives, Lenin Will Live Forever!" [Poster]. Private Collection.
