The circular semiotics of the creative process: semiosis and translation through Emma Kunz’s New Method of Drawing

This chapter reflects on the act of creating pictorial artworks, and the multiple translations between substances—thought and idea, verbal, iconic, plastic. Each step is connected to different semiotic operations and, thus, invites postulates from various semiotic theories in its analysis and as tools enabling those steps to unfold. The theoretical reflection starts with an overview of the syncretic works of Roland Barthes, Wassily Kandinsky and Emma Kunz, whose practices merged theory, research, and artistic creation. In these cases, the operations are interlocked and the act of creation appears as a circular semiotic process in which the artist reflects on the meaning of form, colour and composition—the expected application of semiotics—but also intentionally uses semiotic processes as tools for creation—thus reversing the theory’s direction as a “generative” tool. The author’s own interdisciplinary process in the drawing series Creation, inspired by Kunz’s new method of drawing, serves as a case study for creative processes in which the lines between representation and manifestation are blurred, enabling a discussion of dimensionality in creative and communicative processes. The chapter draws from the works of Algirdas-Julien Greimas, Jean-Marie Floch on figurative and visual semiotics, Juri Lotman’s cultural semiotics, and biosemiotic concepts from Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas A. Sebeok.

This chapter reflects on the act of creating pictorial artworks, and the multiple translations between substances—thought and idea, verbal, iconic, plastic. Each step is connected to different semiotic operations and, thus, invites postulates from various semiotic theories in its analysis and as tools enabling those steps to unfold. The theoretical reflection starts with an overview of the syncretic works of Roland Barthes, Wassily Kandinsky and Emma Kunz, whose practices merged theory, research, and artistic creation. In these cases, the operations are interlocked and the act of creation appears as a circular semiotic process in which the artist reflects on the meaning of form, colour and composition—the expected application of semiotics—but also intentionally uses semiotic processes as tools for creation—thus reversing the theory’s direction as a “generative” tool. The author’s own interdisciplinary process in the drawing series Creation, inspired by Kunz’s new method of drawing, serves as a case study for creative processes in which the lines between representation and manifestation are blurred, enabling a discussion of dimensionality in creative and communicative processes. The chapter draws from the works of Algirdas-Julien Greimas, Jean-Marie Floch on figurative and visual semiotics, Juri Lotman’s cultural semiotics, and biosemiotic concepts from Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas A. Sebeok.