What we see is what we think we know. It is hard to separate the eyes from that faculty of the mind that says ‘that is a cup’ or ‘that is a foot’. This is the battle every artist must fight when drawing from life. Our preconceptions of an object blur the real image that we are seeing in front of us. Nietzsche says ‘An artist should see nothing as it is…’, and my point is an artist should see nothing as it supposedly is.
To illustrate this point, just try looking at your own hand. Now, try drawing it taking into consideration everything you know about hands. They have four fingers, and one thumb, connected to the palm, they have fingernails, they can bend and so on. The moment we start racking through our brains for this information is the moment we stop seeing what is really there in front of us, and so it becomes much more difficult as we start to rely on memory to substitute for our sight. Forget about all that information. Pretend you don’t even know what a hand is, and you start noticing the detail that makes this hand.
On the other hand, signs and symbols are images that use sight in conjunction with what we know, so we understand the meaning. For example, toilet signs. We know which image is indicating which gender because we know women wear skirts, and men don’t. The sight of these images relies on this knowledge or they become redundant.
Symbols meanings are decided by society and so can change through time. The Pentagram is a symbol which you might associate with Satanic cults, but it has only been the past century or so that it has been used in these cults and the pentagram must be inverted. The Pentagram has been associated with many different religions in the past, such as Paganism, Judaism and early Christianity. Even the cross, belonging to Christianity, is changing its meaning when put into different contexts (though Christianity has not been the only religion to use this symbol). Today, it seems to be creeping up everywhere in women’s clothes shops. The cross has been plastered everywhere on t-shirts, leggings and jewellery. Sometimes even inverted crosses and this links to Satanic cults again! And sometimes they decide to put both the cross and an inverted cross side by side on a t-shirt! Apparently, when symbols and fashion mix, they become meaningless. Typical.
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