A Semiotic approach to sculpture

Ill ABSTRACT Since past centuries arts have been investigated under the light of different methods of scientific research. One of these scientific research methods in our age is Semiotics. Until now analytical studies have been held using Semiotics in many disciplines of arts such as Architecture, Cinema, Painting, Photography, Theatre and Advertising. This thesis aimed to scrutinize Art of Sculpture -a discipline of art- by semiotics method and set Art of Sculpture as a medium of language. Following this purpose, in the first section; by giving a general desciption of semiotics, it was established that Art of Sculpture could be the object of this scientific method. In the second section; commenting on the Art of Sculpture under the light of fundamental concepts of semiotics, the relationship of the dimensions of sculpture demontrations in form (indicator) and content (indicated) was examined in detail. In the third section; initiating from the "Communication" concept with the help of sculpture how communication occurs between humanbeings and what kinds of functions occur as a result of this communication, were determined. Furthermore, dimensions of sculpture communication were investigated in detail according to syntactic, semantic and pragmatic - three basic aspects of every communication-. In the fourth section; under the concepts of "meaning" and "mention" how meaning creation is realized in Art of Sculpture, its characteristics and how it is conveyed were studied. Consequently, it is seen that Art of Sculpture like most of the art disciplines is a Semiotics System. By studying this system with a Semiotic method it is possible to establish a Sculpture Semiotics system. However, after creating such a methodology, our ideational power and perfection about sculpture can get deeper and the very essential core aspects of the expression of sculpture itself can be approached more closely.