Sürrealism ja semiootika
Semiotics and surrealism

Summary/Abstract: This article provides a review on existing works about relationships between semiotics and surrealism. It also points to some deep links between the two, bringing together incompatibility and contradiction as fundamental features of semiosis and as the focus of surrealist art. The principle of non-contradiction is the basic premise of the scientific description of reality. The creation of meaning, however, is born from a contradiction (something is a sign to the extent that it is not that something). Meaningful reality as an object of semiotics is in this sense a sur-reality. The art movement most devoted to the treatment of contradiction as such is Surrealism. Thus, surrealism and semiotics share a common centre of interest. It turns out that the surrealist René Magritte’s painting has become one of the emblems of semiotics. It is also worth paying attention to the closeness of surrealism to ecological movements.

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