Art presupposes meaning.
In this article, I'll elaborate on what is often called rhetoric in a work of art.
Take for example Michelangelo's David.
So often the artwork speaks in a hidden language.
This sculpture embodies deeper meanings:
The Setting
The sculpture was meant to be placed at the Cathedral of Florence, but later it was moved to the square Palazzo Della Signoria, as a symbol of florentine supremacy, for at the time there was a dispute between different rulers of the city1.
But it goes beyond.
This is the flourishing of humanism, Italian renaissance at its best.
The artists noticed the changing landscape of values around them, inevitably expressing those through their work.
The Métier
Michaelangelo was 26 years old when he completed this sculpture.
The body is in contrapposto, which is very hard to portray, for it is unequal in length, and much harder to sculpt.
The knowledge of the human body is explicit as well in the details of the muscles, the bone structure under the skin.
The Story
David is a character from the Bible, the future king David.
In the story David faces the Philistine giant2 Goliath and defeats him by throwing a sling, throwing a stone in the center of his forehead.
Goliath falls on his face to the ground, and David cuts off his head.
The Discourse
So finally, when one gathers all this information together, there is a final point to be made by the work, a conversion of meaning.
In this specific case, this work points to something like "the supremacy of the intellect over strength".
If you look at David's body, his posture is relaxed, he is confident, he knows that he will win by his astuteness.
The body is totally relaxed. He is not even wearing his armor.
But the eyes are attentive, and the body is nevertheless full of potential for action.
Finally, this is the representation of the Humanistic mentality at its core. Up until then, humanity often saw strength as a superior virtue:
The strong beat the weak.
And here we have this young man, confident of his ability (similar to its maker), with fire in his eyes, but conscious of the absolute control he exerts over his enemy.
This is the discourse of the work.
The fundamental symbolic truth the work points to.
And it does so through the métier of the maker.
In other words, through craft.
The domination of technique from the sculptor is waht made it possible to translate that higher principle into reality, to really embody the truth in the stone.
This is rhetoric.
The important thing to understand is that rhetoric always transcends its setting:
The work expresses a truth that is high above, that is not dated, political, local or individual.
On the contrary, it transcends its own time, location, period and points to universal patterns, metaphisical truths.
Check out smarthistory for more info:
On the symbolism of giants :