Indexicality in esthetic signs and the art of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
pp. 249-261
in: John Deely, Margot D. Lenhart (eds), Semiotics 1981, Berlin, Springer, 1983Abstract
Recent discussions of portraiture have stressed the fact that the goal of a portrait is not so much iconicity or mimesis, for in that case a full-length mugshot would be superior, but rather in "rendering present" the subject for the viewer. Wendy Steiner, in her article on the semiotics of this genre, has suggested that this "rendering" is due to the indexicality, rather than the iconicity, of the sign.1
