In the 1970s and 1980s, visual semiotics was studied mainly by Greimas and his pupils Floch and Fontanille. In 1988, scholars with an interest in images moved beyond the methodological framework of Barthes and Eco to hold a congress at Perpignan in an extension of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. In 1989, they established the International Association for Visual Semiotics, holding its inaugural congress in 1990 and establishing its name in 1992. The association is currently active and, despite limitations on the inclusion of the auditory, olfactory, and tactile senses, has established and institutionalized research in the formative arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, etc.), photography, design, film, video, advertising, and digital imagery. With its epistemologically multidisciplinary characteristics, it is developing into a cross-disciplinary field which encompasses the digital, the humanities, linguistics, phenomenology, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and so forth. Art requires the interpretation of meaning as a visual sign, and contemporary art requires the artist to give a statement about the process of art creation and the artist's intentions or ideas. Artists come to communicate with the world or audience by forming a discourse about their microcosm, the concepts and philosophies surrounding their microcosm in the production process, materials and familiar media, and tools. This requires a multidisciplinary approach. However, artists are limited in their ability to incorporate all disciplines. Here, visual semiotics can play a direct role in shaping the narrative of the creative process and provides an appropriate stimulus for the sequence of idea generation and statement in art creation.