The Glass in Front of the Painting: Reflectivity in Francis Bacon’s Exhibitions from a Textual-Semiotic Perspective by Dimitrios Chatzicharalampous

The semiotic approach that is attempted in this paper concerns the phenomenon of reflectivity that is caused by the imposition of glass panes in front of the paintings of Francis Bacon (1909-1992) during their exhibition. First, I investigate the properties of glass that sustain a conceptualization of its functions within the space of an art exhibition, pointing out its character as a semiotic boundary. Then, I examine the implications of views of the glass panes as technical or artistic devices, moving forward to their inclusion into the researcher’s conception of the artistic text

Semiotic and Rhetorical Patterns in Dance and Gestural Languages by Nicoleta Popa Blanariu

The body is the crossroad of the biological and cultural (representational) experience of human being. It has a basic rhetoric potential, which is exploited, in various cultures, through both verbal and non-verbal communication. As a proof, Lakoff’s and Johnson’ s concept of “orientation metaphor”, able to transpose certain concepts into space, as well as Fontanier’s “metonymies of the physical”, or Greimas’ “metonymic actors” identified in the bodily segments and acting each “in the name of an actant” (Greimas). Therefore, the body is an “expressive space” (Merleau-Ponty), the symbolic value of its segments being deeply involved in choreographic significations.