Graphic as a cultural Artifact. A semiotic approach to social poster in Chile

Abstract

This article presents a critical review of the contribution of semiotics to the study of image, with the aim of formulating a proposal of analysis applied to poster in Chile. It seeks to contribute to the study of image, incorporating new approaches to complement the classical perspectives of analysis. The method used keeps using semiotics categories and includes the contexts of production and decoding of messages, when analyzing them as part of a bigger symbolic context. The sample analyzed was composed of posters that addressed social issues developed between 1970 and 1973, for the government of Salvador Allende,that had a huge impact in the local public space. The results of the analysis shows an aesthetic and communicational proposal that expressed the desire to build a new kind of society and its way of being represented through functional stakeholders to the political and social project at the time and incorporating visual references from the popular world and the mass culture. This visual synthesis, gave to the Chilean poster a great communicative potential able to tune with the changing demands of a wide audience, and also to validate its own narrative as part of narrative from a larger ideological framework.