Symbols and Representation
In
a book on symbolism the author uses a very broad definition of symbol claiming that any
depiction of objects in a painting stands for something outside of the work of art and
therefore they all are symbols. Thus a guitar in a painting "symbolizes" a
guitar, hand is a "symbol" of a human hand. This is wrong: he confuses
"illusion" with "symbols". An object portrayed in a painting is an
illusion of an object that exists outside of a painting but once it is successfully
painted it has gained its sovereignty. Now it becomes a positive, complete being on its
own : an image that in many important ways differs from its origins in the outside world.
There is an ontological difference between a painted guitar and a guitar: one is an
apparition, an image made of light, while the other is a material being. Symbols exist
differently: they are members of the minds library of symbolic meanings.
A
scull symbolizes death but the depiction of the scull shows us an illusion of a scull, not
a symbol of it. One is visual the other is rational: Imago and Logos. Images are viewed
while symbols are read. To apprehend the scull as a symbol of death one has to stop
contemplating it as an image and engage in reading the logos of the scull, as a category
of thought, not an image anymore.
The
image requires of the viewer only a cursory acquaintance with the visible world to come
into being. One does not have to know what a guitar looks like to recognize it in a
painting as some string instrument and allow the arrangement of paints to become an image
of a guitar. For the symbol to come into existence a pictogram of an object has to occur
and be recognized by the viewers library of symbolic meanings. So, the crossbones
and scull do not have to be depicted with any attempt at accuracy to serve as a pictogram
indicating a symbol of death. Indeed the individuating elements of the image are impeding
and have to be overlooked, peeled away to show more succinctly the "noun" to be
read and compared with the mind's library of symbols. Vertical bar in a child's depiction
of a face is a pictogram of a nose and is "read" as a symbol of the noun
"nose". At that point the child is no longer a painter, but a writer,
hieroglyphic writer.
Kandinsky,
Miro and at times Klee were writers of new kind of pictograms; playful pictograms without
clues, fake cryptograms where wish to communicate has been replaced by an illusory
meaningfulness.
Symbolic
language enjoys considerable popularity among art critics who love to discover symbols
everywhere. That means more than reading the handful of symbols placed by the artists but
going on their own Symbol Safari and discovering new ones, placed in artworks by the
"subconsciousness". Yet language of symbols is not a rich, dynamic, expressive,
mentally rewarding form of communication. It is static, stale, reminiscent of what first
attempts at any language could have been. The message in most cases is like a few one-word
placards propped against each other. Not a very good tool for conveying anything of
complexity, subtlety or uniqness. Yet, symbolic interpretations of art-works are
generating longest texts full of exaggerated constructs and conjurers tricks of
ideological fancy wholly unwarranted by the simple image that served as a bottom stool for
the ridiculous overreaching into the stratosphere of cheap ideas. Since the art critics
and art historians naturally tend toward the world of ideas rather than close
contemplation they look with impatient distraction at the language of representation and
dismiss it as narrowly literal. Oh, Rembrandt -shame on you for painting all those
self-portraits without a nail to hang a symbol on!
In
contrast language of representation with its directness, immediacy and irreducible
complexity feeds and rewards the viewer in a way that can never be fully exhausted, cannot
be dipped-out to its bottom. Yet, because images exist on the outside of discrete
language, they dont generate much text under the fingers of art commentators. What
is so importantly, manifestly there remains uncanny, in plain view but appealing to
viewers intimate acquaintance with directly experienced reality rather than covering
the resplendent nakedness of images with rancid rags of ideas.
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