Visual Composition in Cinema: From the Painting to the Cinematic Frame

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between cinema and the visual arts from a semantic and aesthetic perspective focusing on the image as a medium that carries meaning. Such an intersection contributes to reshaping the expressive boundaries of each medium within a shared interactive horizon. The study seeks to highlight the manifestations of visual composition within cinematic discourse, tracing the image's modes of operation and transformations, while examining how elements such as framing, color, and light are deployed within the filmic structure in relation to narrative and semantic dimensions. The core inquiry guiding this analysis focuses on elucidating the relationship between the cinematic image and the pictorial artwork in terms of shared mechanisms and symbolic significations, based on the assumption that cinema rearticulates visual composition within an open semantic framework. The study adopts a semiotic approach that considers the image as a network of signs, through an analysis of the film Loving Vincent, which constitutes a unique case where painting intersects with the cinematic frame to produce a complex visual construction. The findings reveal the presence of visual composition in cinematic discourse as an active structural element that contributes to meaning production and guides interpretation, as this discourse's components are transformed into signifying units within a dynamic visual medium. Furthermore, the interaction between the cinematic frame and pictorial references is shown to generate a dense network of meanings that endows the image with interpretive depth. This ultimately underscores cinema’s capacity to absorb and reconfigure visual art within a discourse where aesthetics and narrativity converge, opening new perspectives on the nature of the image and the boundaries of art.