A letter arrived just the other day – written in red, an addition to the alphabet, in this case an alternative for the letter ‘v’ (see the Letters in Red). Its intimate meaning exists no doubt only between its sender and receiver, but for the general reader there is a delicate lesson in, or revision of, the semiotics of shopping (though like the best kind of lesson it occurs by a creative accident).

What do we see? A stylish, though traditional basket by a window (of solid, old fashioned quality and in good decoration). The contents are of two red peppers, a bunch of tomatoes and appearing from under them, the latest addition of Vogue magazine (its lettering echoing in red, with the words ‘HERO PIECES’ and ‘The allure … soft’ just discernable). The vegetables, like the magazine, appear to have been collected ‘just now’ from the marketplace. They jostle freely in the basket. They conjure an image of freshness and cosmopolitan living. But there is also a certain patience or is it perhaps knowingness? These items, which speak of a readiness to be touched, are held within this high-sided basket and given an exact light for their picture. What could this mean?

The image is in many respects a worthy update on that well known advertisement for Panazni that Roland Barthes wrote about in the early 1970s, and which is still rolled out to this day when teaching aspects of semiotics. The ‘idea’ we have in this scene is, as Barthes writes, ‘a return from the market’ – just as I have suggested for the first picture. This is what Barthes further explains:

…the idea … we have in the scene represented is a return from the market. A signified which itself implies two euphoric values: that of the freshness of the products and that of the essentially domestic preparation for which they are destined. Its signifier is the half-open bag which lets the provisions spill out over the table, ‘unpacked’. To read this first sign requires only a knowledge which is in some sort implanted as part of the habits of a very widespread culture where ‘shopping around for oneself’ is opposed to the hasty stocking up (preserves, refrigerators) of a more ‘mechanical’ civilization.

However, if we take the ‘mechanical’ to also include Warhol’s images of consumer items, we can perhaps come back to the first image and begin to see the greater relevance of the copy of Vogue magazine (which I must stress was not purposely placed for this analytical reason, it was, I have on good authority, genuinely purchased – as a basic need – along with the vegetables). Today’s basket not only finds its way into marketing media (to become an advertised object of desire), but it also contains media forms and not just as a supplementary item, but as an equivalent to the basic food stuffs surrounding it. We don’t need the signifier of the half-open bag to alert us to euphoric values, nor are we necessarily unaware of the ideology of ‘shopping around for oneself’ – instead we are ourselves capable of constructing (and deconstructing) euphoric values; not just to shop for ourselves, but also to communicate, to share with others. As the systems theorist, Niklas Luhmann, suggests, society can be treated as ‘a social system that consists solely of communications and therefore as a system that can only reproduce communications by means of communications’. We deny a great deal if we attend only to the view that it is Mass Media which makes society meaningful. A monolithic view that is – if only in a humble fashion - dispelled by this simple example of a basket with vegetables and Vogue; a worthy, flirtatious addition to the those letters in red.