“Pictures, Symbols, and Signs,” by Rudolph Arnheim

Arnheim, Rudolph. “Pictures, Symbols, and Signs.”
Visual Rhetoric in a Visual World: A Critical Sourcebook.
Ed. Carolyn Handa. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. (    137-151)

This article, originally published in 1969,  offers theory for the rhetoric of the image. Arnheim explains the three functions of images. “Images can serve as pictures or as symbols; they can also be used as mere signs” (137). Images may serve more than one function at one time. An image is a sign when “it stands for a particular content without reflecting its characteristics visually” (138). The example given is the triangle on road signs that indicated danger. Images are pictures “to the extent to which they portray things located at a lower level of abstractness than they are themselves” (138). One example given of image as picture is a child’s stick drawing of a human. When an image acts as a symbol, “it portrays things which are at a higher level of abstractness than is the symbol itself” (139). The example given here is of a work of art that depicts a theme, or uses symbolic imagery to convey a message beyond just the scene represented.  The viewer and the context of the image determine the symbolic meaning of images. Arnheim states, “It is the context that will decide whether a cross is to be read as a religious or an arithmetical sign or symbol or whether no semantic function at all is intended, as in the crossbars of a window” (143).

Arnheim goes on to discuss the symbolic importance of corporate trademarks.  He writes, “Any design has dynamic qualities, which contribute to characterizing the object. . . . An emblem may be a perfectly acceptable analogue of the referent for which it stands, and yet it may not intend to evoke its dynamic impact or not succeed in doing it” (146).
In the section “Experience Interacting with Ideas,” Anheim explains how images often function simultaneously as pictures and symbols. He concludes with the “two scales of abstraction,” stating, “In a picture, the abstraction level of the image is higher than that of the experience it represents; in a symbol the opposite is the case.”  There is the Image Scale and the Experience Scale, both determining the function and value associated with images. In the end, images function as representations and abstractions, and symbols evoke “human reasoning,” whether they take the form of shape, picture or sign.