p The semantic trend can as a whole be characterized not merely by its sign orientation, but its specifically semiotic position: the sign is viewed as a systemic object, as the element of a sign system. The semiotic approach was employed to a greater or lesser extent by Richards, Langer, Wittgenstein and Cassirer. However, the most marked theoretical expression of this approach is to be found in the work of the American philosophers Charles Peirce and Charles Morris. The philosophical thought of both authors was dominated by pragmatism with a behaviourist tendency, particularly marked in the case of Morris.

p The prominent American thinker, logician, mathematician, philosopher and natural scientist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is rightly considered the founder of a new science : semiotics. Peirce’s works contain no full, systematic description of semiotics (this was provided later by Morris), and his semiotics are not clearly delimited, sometimes becoming confused with logic, but he does formulate the principal notions of the science, defines its basic terms and elaborates a detailed classification of signs. “I am as far as I know,” wrote Peirce, “a pioneer... in the work of clearing and opening up what I call semiotic, that is, the doctrine of the essential nature and fundamental varieties of possible semiotics" (1, 5. 488).  [171•1  Peirce defines semiotics as the science of 172 sign processes, and he analyses in detail the functions of signs in the sphere of scientific cognition-in logic and mathematics.

p Peirce neither developed nor even posed the question of the application of semiotics to the analysis of the aesthetic sphere, and, in particular, to art. We will not find anywhere in his writings a developed semiotic theory of art. Such a theory can only be deduced on the basis of his theoretical views as a whole, and the statements about art which we find in his works and which must not be regarded merely as illustrations of various semiotic arguments. Peirce’s semiotic theory of art presupposes a particular philosophical interpretation of semiotics.  [172•1 

p This theory of art must also be viewed in the context of Peirce’s general aesthetic views. A number of difficulties arise in the elucidation of the latter. First, as James K. Feibleman has correctly remarked, aesthetics is the weakest of all the sections of his philosophy. Secondly, Peirce felt himself least competent in this field, and his views consequently undergo constant fluctuation. Thirdly, this is the least studied aspect of Peirce’s philosophy.

The order and character of the description which follows is determined by certain principal premises of Peirce’s semiotics, and in particular by his definition of the sign: “A sign is something, A, which denotes some fact or object, B, to some interpretant thought, C" (1, 1. 346). Thus, any sign situation has a “triadic”nature, including sign, object and interpretant. We shall also examine the relation of signs in art as seen by Peirce in accordance with this triadic interpretation: the character of the signs themselves in art, the nature of the objects and phenomena which they designate, and the special features of the interpretant in art (16).