I find chapter 2 of Look Again! especially important in understanding how to read art and what constitutes as art. The analysis of form, symbol, and sign greatly influence the interpretation of any piece of art as well as define pieces that may not typically be considered art. The idea of reading art comes from semiotic theory. Semiotics is the theory of signs. Signs can take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures, objects, and even ideas. The theory says that these signs can only function if they are interpreted and recognized. Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure has a two-part theory of the composition of signs. Saussure believes that there is a signifier and a signified. The signifier is the form that the sign takes and the signified is the concept it represents.
“In semiotics, a text is an assemblage of signs constructed (and interpreted) according to the rules or conventions of a particular medium or form of communication” (D’Alleva 39). By this definition, novels, poems, and symbols in graffiti can all be categorized as texts. The process of interpreting these texts through the system of rules is called reading. Art historians: Mieke Bal, Louis Marin, and Norman Bryson have developed the “idea of reading as a very specific semiotic methodology for interpreting visual images” (D’Alleva 39). The English word “tree” is a signifier for a signified living tree that you see when you look out your window. American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce has said, “a sign…is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign”(D’Alleva 33).
This idea of semiotics applies to graffiti when we consider gang graffiti. Just as when people see a tree, they often think of the word tree in their head, when members of a gang see a piece of graffiti with a gang’s mark/symbol, they too think of the signified because that is the meaning that it has in their mind. This idea could also be applied when looking at signature handwritings and styles of graffiti that are specific to a signified person or group.