Art, Design & Psychology – Romantic and Structural Models
Humanist Model   Structuralist Model
That there is a real world out there that we can understand with our rational minds   

That the structure of language itself produces “reality” – that we can think only through language, and therefore our perceptions of reality are all framed by and determined by the structure of language.
That language is capable (more or less) of accurately depicting the real world.  

That language speaks us; that the source of meaning is not an individual experience or being, but the sets of oppositions and operations, the signs and grammars that govern language. 

That language is a product of the individual writer’s mind or free will, meaning that we determine what we say, and what we mean when we say it; that language expresses the essence of our individual being; that there is such a thing as an essential unique individual self

 

  

Meaning doesn’t come from the individual, but from the system that governs what any individual can do within it. Determinism
[Think of the different ways of writing about a job; meaning comes from the mode of writing about it, not from the individual writer]

The SELF [also known as ‘the subject’] is represented by saying “I” e.g. I want an ice cream.  I am 21.  I am pretty.  The self is the subject of the sentence and the centre of all meaning and truth.  Words mean what I say they mean, and truth is what I perceive as truth.  I create my own sentences out of my own individual experiences and a need for individual expression.

 

  

Rather than seeing the individual as the center of meaning, structuralism places THE STRUCTURE at the centre, it is the structure that generates the meaning, not the individual.  Language itself is the centre of meaning.  I can only say “I” because I inhabit a system of language in which the position of subject is marked by the first person pronoun, hence my identity is the product of the linguistic system I occupy

 
[This also applies to the idea of the artist as the romantic, isolated, creative person who represents the world “as I see it”, is the creator, author, maker who has a free will, a freedom to make the world in their own image.]   [The artist is a part of a complex system of structures. The individual reflects the system and is not the creator of it.]

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