VAIZDO NARATYVUMAS.

The article explores the problem of visual narrativity, asking what concept of narrativity could be efficiently employed to analyze works of art, thus enriching our comprehension of visual texts. Of course, narrativity may be quite easily revealed in images that consist of several distinct scenes, depicting a sequence of events perceived as a story; especially so when the story represented has a known verbal prototype. However, methodological problems concerning visual narrativity arise when trying to interpret images that depict just a single moment of time and are not based on any pre-existing story that could serve as a reliable source for interpretation. Aiming to avoid interpreter's misconceptions and searching for narrative signs in the structure of the visual text itself, the article takes the semiotic theory of narrativity as a starting point. The functioning of the narrative grammar in static visual texts (the ones without time sequences or state transformations) is discussed and exemplified examining the paintings of šarūnas Sauka. Three properties allowing for narrative reading of a static visual text are highlighted. First, it is revealed that the semiotic theory of narrativity is relevant when analysing visual texts that imply transformation, movement, a stage preceding or ensuing the depicted scene. Second, it is demonstrated that narrative structure is also observable in the visual texts that imply a possibility of transformation, in cases when the figures of the text are related among themselves by an active and intentional look or gesture, presupposing their actantial roles. Finally, it is suggested that an additional narrative dimension can be revealed in images that involve the viewer into a certain "game". Narrative grammar serves as an organizing principle of the communication between the viewer and the figures of the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]