French Literature Reviews - 2026

The Sign and the Painting. Painting, Writing, Referent
Art and Visual Culture

Albert Lichten, Le signe et le tableau. Peinture, écriture, référent dans la pensée contemporaine de la peinture, Paris: Ed. Honoré Champion, January 2004, 292 p., 50 euros, ISBN: 2-7453-0977-3

Abstract
The era of painting with a representative mission seems to be over. Moreover, the death of painting has been predicted for decades. Contemporary visual artworks seek to establish their status by drawing on the semiological notion of the "message" and, ideally, by returning to the tradition of primal arts—that of the sign, whether figurative or not.

Biography
Albert Lichten, an aesthetician and philosopher, has pursued a dual career as a painter and an educator. His book will be of interest to anyone wishing to explore how artistic practice engages with contemporary conceptual frameworks in retrospect.

Table of Contents
- The Quarrel of the Image
- Referent and Content
- Metaphor and Temporality

The relationship between the visual image and the written sign has long been a central concern in aesthetics, particularly as modern art moved away from traditional mimesis. This inquiry touches upon the historical tension between the image as a representational tool and the sign as a fundamental unit of meaning, a dialogue that has defined much of the discourse surrounding the evolution of visual arts in the late twentieth century.

Le signe et le tableau examines how contemporary visual artworks seek to establish their status by drawing on the semiological notion of the message and returning to the tradition of primal arts. The work addresses the quarrel of the image, the referent, and the nature of metaphor and temporality. Readers interested in the intersection of philosophy and aesthetics may find this examination of artistic practice relevant.