The interplay of the material and the semantic within iconic experience

In the course of the last two decades, discourse on images has become animportant part of contemporary philosophical (and not only philosophical) investigations. Thistendency arises on the one hand from the imaginization of current social life and on the other handfrom the recognition of substantial role that images play in production and translation of knowledge.Frequently the emotional reaction to problematics of images indicates that the question of iconicmeaning is never exclusively of theoretical nature. Not least this circumstance explains why there arenowadays so much different understandings of images: from treatment of images in terms of symboltheory to theoretical positions approaching the images as agents of social action. In this article weconsider problematics of images/iconicity in perspective of meaning theory. The specificity of iconicmeanings consists in unavoidable tension between meaningful and material aspects of iconicexperience. This tension indicates an essential shift in the problematic of images: from verticaldimension of reference (relation between iconic representation and things/circumstances iconicallyrepresented) to horizontal dimension of iconic plane itself (relations between iconic elements). As themodel for our analysis of semantic specificity of iconic objects we take two-dimensional materialimages (paintings, photographs, pictures on screen). First of all this model has an advantage ofexternality. It blocks the subjectivist way of interpretation of images. What follows from it is that thequestion whether we have in current case to do with image or not can be answered only on the way ofstructural thinking. Neither topological considerations (mental sphere as specifically iconic reign) nornormative (whether an object can be classified as artwork or not) ones should come into question. Onlythe inner (i.e. structural) traits of an object should be counted by any endeavor to define it as the icon.Among inner traits of the icons we find such as iconical plane, which differs from what we callphysical surface. In distinction from physical surface iconical plane knows no external limits. In thisregard it is absolute. But its absoluteness is quite compatible with its phenomenality. Iconical planebecomes visible under condition of simultaneity. All iconic elements of an external image should beconceived simultaneous to become visible as iconical plane, i.e. as an image in the strict sense. In theresult physical (pre-semantic) materiality transforms into iconical (semantic) materiality, whichremaining phenomenal (visible) establishes new mode of spatial relationship (the metrical relationstransform into grammatical ones).

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