The standard approach to the problem of meaning in art is based on the supposedly unquestionable assumption that the art itself is a kind of lingua abscondita. Consequently the two main goals of the theories consist in unearthing the hidden linguistic dimensions of art, and construing an adequate semantic field for it. Theauthor proposes the reversal of this strategy. He argues that the realm of artworks could serve as the alternative semantic field for the ethnical languages.
In this article I describe experience which I call experience of the maternal-child body and which is primarily happy and problem-free. I then develop, in more detail, ideas which are born of this experience. Next I attempt to argue that the ideas in question offer a way of thinking the production of sense which eschews the metaphysics of presence, as well as the Lacanian-inspired idea of infinite movement in the order of the symbolic, and perhaps eventually eschews the post-structuralist thought of the infinite reference to significants without any kind of relation to a transcendent significant. I point to aspects that are in common between this description and the ideas of D. Winnicott, and I also put forward two moments in which this description clearly differs from Winnicott’s conception.
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