Mukaøovský’s Structuralism and Semiotics

Abstract

An introduction to an English translation of Jan Mukařovský’s lecture The Semiology of Art (1936-1937). In this lecture Mukařovský (1891−1975), a Czech aesthetician, literary historian, theorist, and leading proponent of Czech structuralism, develops his interpretation of the semiotics of art from a detailed explanation of the basic functions of the artistic sign. He emphasizes the role of the aesthetic function, which is dominant but latently and potentially contained in all the other functions of the linguistic and the artistic sign. He then defines the artistic sign as the dialectical negation of the communicative sign.