ICAMS 2012 4 th International Conference on Advanced Materials and Systems ARTISTIC TECHNOLOGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURAL LEATHER PRODUCT MARLENA POP INCDTP - Division: Leather and Footwear Research Institute, 93 Ion Minulescu, Bucharest, Romania, email: pop_marlen@yahoo.ca The foray into structures of artistic image in environmental decorative arts aims, on the one hand, at the comparative analysis of artistic discourse in three different registers of expression: the decorative and the plastic register, and on the other hand, it aims to identify the icono-plastic sign as carrier of the archetypal message, in two distinctive types of logos: poetic and narrative. The third register of expression is the material one, defined by artistic technologies. Aesthetic interpretation stays in the area of deciphering the artistic message, mostly symbolic, while semiotic analysis aims to decipher the inner mechanisms of the image, and the artistic imagination, defining icono-plastic signs. Undertaking the materialization of the work, throughout the whole trajectory of achieving the decorative cultural product, is called artistic technology. It is a creative technology at the conceptual level, but framed within technical steps to achieving the environmental decorative product, which are very clearly defined as technological operations. Coming out of the major area of aesthetics and subjected to semiotic analysis, the artistic image transgresses, in theory, from a harmonic matrix of analysis, specific to aesthetics, into an expressive matrix, specific to discourse analysis, visual rhetoric. The whole approach, as well as the result of semiotic analysis of a decorative art project idea, will lead, step by step, to outlining an artistic technology, which becomes itself part of the cultural product symbolics, a technological style thus emerging. Artistic technology analyzed in terms of semiotics, which is the subject of the case study for the Red apple project is leather embroidery, industrially manufactured. The purpose of the whole scientific endeavor is to shape the guidelines of a framework artistic technology to further develop a number of artistic products with cultural identity, for modern domestic environmental spaces: private homes with determined environmental design or public spaces: institutions, libraries, airports etc. Keywords: artistic technology, cultural leather product, semiotic analysis, environmental design. INTRODUCTION Out of a relative aesthetic taxonomy, textile arts are by definition decorative arts, using a variety of artistic techniques and technologies. Artistic technology is that set of technical steps that lead to achieving a decorative environmental cultural product, made of various materials, specific to textile arts. By means of the case study presented in the paper, the project Red Apple is proposed as semiotic analysis of the plastic discourse which will lead to a new approach to artistic leather technologies. Traditional techniques of hand embroidery on leather, specific to fur craft, were adapted to mechanical sewing technologies that achieve many decorative or plastic effects on the compositional surface of an artistic material such as leather. Artistic technologies require integration of plastic materials, in this case leather, in the cultural concept of the decorative product, because the technology itself has plastic value in the compositional framework developed. Thus, the technical elements such as stitch type, its density, assembling components, substrate, framing, carry the semiotics of the same artistic concept, which transmits a single message. THEORETICAL-EXPLANATORY AND METHODOLOGICAL GUIDELINES A macrosemiotic analysis involves discovering the work through its specific analysis, offering the receiver the possibility to make his own interpretation, by means
Artistic Technologies for Development of Cultural Leather Product of three levels of understanding. These levels of understanding can be assimilated differently, depending on the repertoire of the receiver, but parameters required for an accurate and complete reception must already exist in the decorative work. 1. The pre-iconographic level of analysis refers to elements through which the public perceives the work at a first reading: classification of compositional objects, surface aspects of texture, shape and color, the relationship between the viewer and the work; 2. The iconographic level deals with understanding iconic signs and relationships between them, and therefore the message of the work, which is given by all the elements of the artistic language: texture, shape and color, which produce a direction of communication. Texture - Material (linen, cotton, silk, hemp, sisal, wool, microfiber, technical textiles, waste, etc.); - Dyes and pigments (classes of pigments: mineral, natural, organic, metallic); - Personal technique or artistic technology (manual techniques or industrial technologies for weaving, printing, embroidery, knitting, sewing etc.). Shape Expression of shape in textile arts is done both two-dimensionally and threedimensionally, using various techniques, ranging from haute-lisse to textile sculpture or installation or, on the contrary, textile miniature. The signifiers of shape are the same as for painting, sculpture or graphics. The position parameter is analyzed according to the background and the center of the compositional image, i.e. the center of interest, corresponding to the semantic axis. The size parameter is defined according to the scale of the viewer and the background size. At the one-dimensional level, the basic /large/-/small/ opposition becomes /long/-/short/ and at three-dimensional level, there is the /voluminous/-/nonvoluminous/ pair. Size is also based on perspective. The signified of size is called dominance. The orientation parameter is defined as a virtual movement in the background on a path whose model can be established. This movement can be /centripetal/ or /centrifugal/. But whether it is centripetal or centrifugal, it may seem to be oriented /vertically/ (i.e. /ascending/ or /descending/) or /horizontally/, /right/ or /left/. The signified of orientation is balance, which can be defined depending on two variables: potentiality of movement and stability. Colour At the level of expression, colour can be defined by three variables: the dominant color, brightness and saturation. Chromatics may acquire meaning also by reference to an iconic sign: thus, red can be interpreted by its similarity with blood, blue by its similarity with the sky etc., depending on the cultural symbolism the author and the viewer belong to. The plastic sign is a synthesis of all three forms of expression: texture, shape, colour, and its meaning, rather vague and imprecise, emerges only in context of the image; each element becomes significant depending on the one next to it and their
ICAMS 2012 4 th International Conference on Advanced Materials and Systems particular relationships lead to what is known, at value level, as originality, personal style, manner. 3. The iconological level - the viewer aesthetically recreates the artwork and restores the creative path, projecting onto the artwork the whole range of ideas that have supposedly led to its creation. The viewer has a great freedom in reading in the case of the plastic sign, but equally, also requires a plastic culture, i.e. a more elaborate repertoire for it. There is a hierarchy of reading systems that, far from being mutually exclusive, can be used together: the visual artwork can be read like a text, integrating it into a cultural architext, but it can also be read by knowing the specific code used in its making. Even if the iconological method looks especially towards the aesthetic value of artworks, while semiotics examines how visual language is signified, they are not mutually exclusive, but complementary. CASE STUDY, RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Artistic Technologies for Development of Cultural Leather Product The demonstrational case study, presented below, outlines the stages of a concept of decorative leather cultural product, for environmental space (Figure 1). Recent ethnographic research, also presented in Roman Ethnographic Atlas, coordinated by Ion Ghinoiu, impose the idea that the tree of life in Romanian ancestral culture is neither the fir tree, taken 200 years ago from German culture and used in various holiday rituals, nor the oak, present as a heraldic symbol in some medieval coats of arms, but the red apple tree. Not the royal yellow apple tree, neither the green apple, but the wild red apple present in Romanian culture for thousands of years. Its very millennial presence in this area before the invasions of Celts and Pelasgians, in whose cultures it represents Axis Mundi, translated in our language as the sky axle, as well as the symbolism developed on the iconic structure of Neolithic testimonies found in ceramics, in the Gumelnita culture, have led the authors of the Atlas to argue that the iconic sign of the tree of life is the red apple tree. This iconic sign appearing as tree of life in most Moldovan Orthodox frescoes and Oltenia rugs has a positive connotation of direction in life and not a negative one, as spread by Christianity. In the case study, regarding Red Apple Tree project development, archetypal symbol of the apple can be identified both as carrier of artwork message, of the artist's intentionality and by the very material structure and project technology. The structure of the Red Apple Tree project The artist's intentionality - transfer of a cultural message, regarding one of the Romanian archetypal symbols, the tree of life, defined by the "red apple tree" - is expressed by: Typology of the artwork: two-dimensional embroidery on leather, made with industrial equipment, although the technique specific to Romanian fur and leather crafts is manual; Texture: structures of various types of leathers in terms of animal origin, assortment, technological processing and colour finishing, on flax textile substrate and wooden support; Shape: relatively rectangular, of 120x105 cm, two-dimensional; Composition enclosed with decorative framing and a center of interest in the common perception of the viewer. The figurative archetypal symbol is included in this hub of dynamic axes of the composition as a figurative symbol - the red apple tree. The frame is divided into several descriptive registers that include icono-symbolic Romanian signs. Only in the horizontal register there is an archetypal symbol of time, the Greek infinite motif, today a motif of globalized culture. Th colour palette has earthy tones, with accents of red and blue. The central, dominant icono-symbolic sign of the red apple tree is shown decoratively; the whole work is easy to read, following the narrative path of the composition. It is surrounded by many archetypal icono-plastic signs for the Romanian culture: the snake, the cross, the spiral, the ladder, the egg, the zig-zag.
ICAMS 2012 4 th International Conference on Advanced Materials and Systems The semantic triad texture - shape - color communicates the circumscription of the artwork into a cultural identity only by means of the icono-symbolic signs expressed by motifs and by the narrative logos. This type of artwork requires a more specialized repertoire of the viewer. The semiotic hypothesis, which is confirmed through the case study, implies that the level of expression is not opposed to, but correlated with the content of the artistic image. Creating plastic meaning does not take place only between isolated elements, such as the iconic sign bearing a symbol and the plastic one which is an expression of the semiotic code, but also between two types of levels, compositional, spatial or temporal. The efficiency of similar effects derives from dimensional density or homogeneity of parts. This principle of reading an artistic work is a semi-symbolic one. The iconic sign is, by definition, a carrier of message of the artwork, and it is demonstrated that the archetypal symbol is embedded in it, transposed through the artistic technology used. CONCLUSIONS The semiotic analysis of the artistic project demonstrated that: - the visual language of an artistic work includes a cultural archetype in its semiotic structure, whether it is conveyed by the artist's intention of the plastic message; - plastic expression is not opposed to, but correlated with the content of the artistic image; - creating plastic meaning does not take place only between isolated, icono-plastic elements, but also between two types of levels, compositional, spatial or temporal; - the archetypal imagery of the artist is found in his work both through the topic, subject, message and through the rhetorical peculiarities of the plastic discourse; - the plastic rhetoric, as a decorative style used in artwork development, as a cultural product, is also transferred to the artistic technology used, in this case, industrial leather embroidery; - the artistic technology used in cultural product development is an intrinsic part of it, for which a technological style can be developed. REFERENCES Barthes, R. (1964), Rhetorique de l image, in Communications, n. 4. Boldureanu, I.I. (2006), Traditional Oral Culture: Themes, Concepts, Categories (in Romanian), Marineasa, Timişoara. Durand, G. (1977), Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary (in Romanian), Univers, Bucharest. Evseev, I. (1994), Dictionary of Cultural Symbols and Archetypes (in Romanian), Amarcord, Timisoara. Francastel, P. (1992), Figurative Reality (in Romanian), Meridiane, Bucharest. Ghinoiu, I. (2008), Romanian Pantheon (in Romanian), Romanian Academy Press, Bucharest. Gombrich, E.H. (1986), Art and Illusion (in Romanian), Meridiane, Bucharest. Pop, M. (2012), Cultural Archetypes and Patterns in Contemporary Romanian Textile Arts, in International Conference on Arts & Society, III, The International Journal of Arts Theory and History, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, Birmingham, UK. Vranceanu, A. (2002), Literary Models in Visual Narration (in Romanian), Cavaliotti, Bucharest.
Artistic Technologies for Development of Cultural Leather Product