Jurij Lotman's Semiotics of Culture: A Centenary Collection

On February 28, 2022, the centenary of Jurij Lotman's birth was marked. Lotman, a Russian literary historian and semiotician who died in 1993, founded the Tartu School in 1964 and coined the term 'semiosphere' in 1985. His interdisciplinary approach to culture as a system of sign systems has influenced 20th-century humanities. Silvia Burini, director of the CSAR Center for Russian Arts Studies in Venice and professor of Russian art history at Ca' Foscari, curated the essay collection 'Il girotondo delle muse' (Bompiani, 2022) for the centenary. The book gathers Lotman's writings on the semiotics of the arts, some previously untranslated into Italian and one unpublished. In an interview, Burini discusses Lotman's relevance: his theories provide adaptable tools for analyzing visual arts, anticipating later theories. Lotman's concept of 'byt' (everyday life) is central to his semiotic method, linking theory and daily reality. He viewed culture as a text, with art as a language that communicates through signs. His ideas on cultural memory and the social value of art remain underexplored in art history, despite early translations in Europe. The collection aims to fill this gap, offering a 'grammar of perception' for contemporary art studies.