Week 8 CIM417 open work.

Open Work  “The Fool”

“The Fool” invites the viewer to approach and ponder from various perspectives. In the introduction to Umberto Eco’s The Open Work (Eco, 1989), David Robey asserts that Eco uses the term ambiguity to represent the effect of formal innovation in art. I propose that "The Fool" is an example of an “open work” that has had incarnations of meaning from the literal, univocal, logical, and ambiguous.  All have extended the invitation to engage “the Addressee” for over 500 years and my recreation also celebrates this tradition. 

As the artist author, my representation is a digital piece depicting a weathered and worn-looking playing card. A printed appearance with a hint of paper stock has been applied in the image's construction. I have also used a restrained palette to signify weathering or to imply time and entropy’s effect on the card's condition. These subtle combinations of simulacra are used to build a strong signifier to the addressee. This is a design choice. The intent here is clear - a tangible, worn, and used physical card. This is a communicative discourse, an aesthetic choice that relies on the cultural background of the addressee. The line work is simplistic and bold and crude; contrast is used to drive the primary “read order” in the composition. This primary encoding sees the character, dog, and then the environment identified. The composition is faithful to the Rider-Waite Tarot card, with the primary character being a young gender-neutral person walking in nature with a carefree, stepping pose holding a white flower, and sporting a tunic with a floral design. The implications around who this person is and what their motivations are, are open to the addressee’s interpretation. Slung over the character's shoulder is a bindle, or a knapsack, which implies provisions, lunch perhaps? Meanwhile, the little white dog jumping at the fool's heels could be interpreted as either a loyal friend along for a walk or jumping up to get the character's attention. Is the dog trying to warn the fool of potential danger or is it a feral beast, intent on attacking?

Subtle semiotic symbols include that of a skull cast into the relief of the shadows underneath the young person. These symbols directly signify danger, death, mortality, or impending doom. Rocks falling and crumbling from the bottom of a ledge suggest that the path is unsafe. Meanwhile, the radiant sun paints a symbolic display of the perfect day, with picturesque mountain ranges framing the distance. Yet, those mountains appear to cut a diagonal 45 degree angle from on high, down to a lower vantage that extends out of frame. This could signify that the direction in which the character is walking is heading away from the sun and down. Both signifiers have connotations of potential negativity, as heading away from the sun implies darkness, a place where people cannot see and are blind. While down or south are terms that culturally relate to negative outcomes and emotions. A border surrounds the composition, and at the bottom of the card, a worn banner with the title for the card is presented: “The Fool.” The term makes a statement about the scene and subject. The overall image contains contradictions of symbological meaning and outright implications of threat. All of this sits upon another contradiction in the relation to cards being associated with games and play. An “open work” is certainly on display.

Cartomancy - Divination - Semiotics of Tarot.

Inna Semetsky promotes that semiosis is an action of signs from a three-fold perspective of semiotics. Semetsky describes how the divination aspect of reading is based not only on the symbolic meanings of the card but also on how it is interpreted according to the subject, purpose, or intention of the reading (e.g., asking a question, wanting an answer), as well as the spread, position, or direction of the cards in relation to each other in a formal layout. Without the “interpreter” or “diviner” interpreting the meaning at the time of the reading alongside other cards, the meaning of the symbols can change entirely (Semetsky, 2013). I would also add that the diviner, also an addressee, relies on their own personal habitus to transmit information to the protagonist addressee. Considering the cultural scenario of both parties in the reading, plus the addressee’s habitus forming interpretive opinions, we have a semiosis taking place that is communicative, interactive, relational, and interpretive.

Inna Semetsky also describes layers of semiotic meaning for "The Fool" in *The Edusemiotics of Images: Essays on the Art-Science of Tarot (Semetsky, 2013), articulating the importance of the experiential existence of “The Fool.” Semetsky portrays them as containing a vital germ of intellectual curiosity. The doom and abyss that lie ahead of the fool could potentially be overcome by the learning that the journey provides through the lived experience that the fool will undertake. The individuation of the fool and the making of decisions will also see the fool become something else; the fool is embarking and won’t always be a fool. The card represents participation in life. (Semetsky, 2013).

More on “The Fool”

The epistemological paper trail sees “The Fool” initially as one card from a deck of 78 cards used primarily for games of entertainment. The representations on all the tarot cards relate to culturally agreed social conventions. The tarot, or Tarocchi or Tarocco Piemontese, originated in mid-15th century northern Italy, spreading in popularity throughout Europe (Dummett, 2007). The interpretations of all the tarot card imagery have undergone many iterations over time to maintain the currency of the images and efforts made to keep symbols culturally appreciated by a variety of addressees, updating the visual signifiers that allow interpretation by the various cultural strata over time with relation to the game and the various cards' agency within these games. There is historical evidence of “well-to-do” aristocratic types, such as viscounts, commissioning variations of the tarocchi deck with art, symbolism, and meaning relevant to the tastes and cultural scenario at play (Dummett, 2007). Jane Stokes asserts that this type of evidence is appropriate for analysing cultural content through the “four types of knowing,” finding the key markers of cultural engagement at play. These types include elements such as oral traditions, written historical texts, or discourse analysis, which the presence of the card and the game variations' existence could be seen as evidence of. We must then enter into discussions about the specific semiotic analysis and rhetoric that is held within (Stokes, 2013).

The semiotics of “The Fool” within a game of Tarocchi: “The Fool” was also known as “Le Mat,” which can be interpreted as “The Mad Man,” “The Beggar,” or “The Excuse.” The card has some variation in the depictions of “The Fool,” including beggars with dishevelled clothes and crowns of feathers, court jesters in costume adorned with bells and floppy hats with stupefied grins adorning their faces, and naive, fresh-faced young people walking on precarious mountain tops. The card is said to play in a similar fashion to a wildcard. The cultural connotation of “The Fool” is one who is able to cross societal norms and break free of the responsibilities that society might assign to an average person, allowing them to transmute or contravene the game's rules. This could be through ignorance or buffoonery, through deformity and allowances made for the disabled or mentally handicapped (Dummett & McLeod, 2009), or via the court jester, a professional role that, as a device of the court, was able to say and do things that would contravene the standards and obligations of a courtier (Al-Azraki & Khamees, n.d.).

References

Al-Azraki, T., & Khamees, T. (n.d.). The Representation of the Fool in the Elizabethan Age and Its Significance Today. https://www.uniselinus.education/sites/default/files/2021-06/Tesi%20Thair%20Abdul%20Al-Azraki.pdf. a paper on the representation and meaning of the fool from a variety of cultural perspectives.

Bembo, B. (1460). The Fool (tarot card), in Visconti Sforza tarot deck. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bembo-Visconti-tarot-arcanum-fool.jpg. The Fool (tarot card), in Visconti Sforza tarot deck, beautifully drawn in the mid XVth century by Italian artist Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti and Sforza dukes of Milan. Four cards (out of seventy-eight) are lost from the deck (the fifteenth and sixteenth major arcana—respectively the Devil and the Tower—, the Knight of Coins, and the Three of Swords), thus seventy-four cards remain.

Deck; Le tarot dit de Charles VI . (1450). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fool_(tarot_card)#/media/File:Fool_tarot_charles6.jpg. Charles VI (or Gringonneur) (15th century) depiction of the fool.

Decker, R., & Dummett, M. (2013). The History of the Occult Tarot. Prelude Books.

Di Bondone, G. (1306). Giotto-_The_Seven_Vices_-_Foolishness.JPG [Chapel Painting]. https://www.wga.hu/index1.html. Giotto: The Seven Vices GIOTTO di Bondone No. 53 The Seven Vices: Foolishness 1306 Fresco, 120 x 55 cm Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua.

Dummett, M. (2007). Six XV-Century Tarot Cards: Who Painted Them? Artibus et Historiae, 28(56), 15–26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20067158

Dummett, M. A. E., & Mcleod, J. (2009). A history of games played with the Tarot pack. Supplement. Mellen Press.

Eco, U. (1989). The Open Work. Harvard University Press. Umberto Eco. the open work. - Semiotics and .

Inna Semetsky. (2013). The Edusemiotics of Images Essays on the Art - Science of Tarot. Rotterdam Sensepublishers. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sae/reader.action?docID=3034859&ppg=47

Mato (0) card from the Sola Busca tarot deck, created in Italy during the late 15th century. (1491). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sola_Busca_tarot_card_00.jpg. Mato (0) card from the Sola Busca tarot deck, created in Italy during the late 15th century.

Rider - Waite. (n.d.). The Fool from the Rider - Waite Tarot Deck. Retrieved July 20, 2024, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fool_(tarot_card)#/media/File:RWS_Tarot_00_Fool.jpg. image of the famous Rider - Waite Tarot Card “The Fool.”

Stokes, J. (2013). How To Do Media And Cultural Studies. SAGE. a book on the process of approaching media studies and cultural studies .