ABSTRACT
Newspaper photographs, pornography, television documentary, advertising and magazine layouts are all visual artefacts that are treated by visual culture but which offer little of interest to the student of aesthetics. In modernist and postmodernist orthodoxy much weight is put on the sign and signification in art. It is with signification that the orthodoxy claims to give an account of meaning for the arts. Saussure's definition of a sign, however, is vague in terms of its semantic import. This is because he is not concerned with particular usage of language but with its structure. A sign, according to him, comprises two parts: the signifier and the signified. Night Painting, as the title suggests, was painted at night. Its coloured surface is organized so as to bring about an experience of the model under artificial lighting: the harsh electric light reflecting off the surface of the reclining model.
