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Marcel Duchamp (R Mutt) "Fountain" 1917

SIGN and SYMBOL

"Beneath apparent reality another reality lies concealed "  Nietzsche

"The best book is a collaboration between author and reader."   Barbara Tuchman

 Our world is mediated to us through the employment of symbols.  If we are on the same symbol system, words, spoken and written are ways we understand our reality and the reality of others.  If the symbol system is changed and we are not privy to the codes and practices of that symbol system, then we lose comprehension.  Symbols are surrogates for bits of reality and in the visual arts there are ways to invent visual symbols that approximate realities both in the internal subjective subconscious fantasia and the external concrete world.  Analogy, metaphor, allegory, and parable involve creating symbol systems.  Likewise everything in the concrete world is a symbol or has the potential to be a symbol.  I heard someone say that "art is all about making choices;" material and media are central to decision making, as well as the process of working toward completion.

Material
Material and media add to the content of the work.  Consider the material in relation to the idea For example,   one of the first things, that art educators do on the first day of class is hand out paper.  Paper is a material that is made essentially from trees. (see process)  The paper also contains dimensions 81/2  X 11, and usually is white or some color.  The paper has some weight to it.  If a student is considering rendering an idea which has to do with the fragility of life then cardboard, or bristol board as a  symbolic material  seems incongruous.  Rice paper on the other hand (made from rice -which nourishes)  is thin and transparent and the choice of it would add another level of meaning to the work. "Life is as fragile as this thin transparent piece of rice paper."  The dimensions of the work can also be made to fit the idea, one can marry an even dimension with an even dimension in a rectangular format or pit the even against the odd or forget the rectangular format altogether.  Found objects are rich fodder for speaking in symbols.  A critical crossroad was established in the art world when Marcel Duchamp took a urinal, attached the signature "R Mutt," titled it Fountain  and placed it in an art gallery.  At this point the gallery space becomes paired with the meaning of art.  From then on virtually any object put into a gallery took on the aura of art.  (see enviroment)  Everyday objects can now be art in themselves but they also are charged with symbolic power.  Joseph Cornell placed a variety of found objects in constructed boxes to  symbolize journeys he never took and to describe cosmologies not yet discovered. Jasper Johns experimented with stripping objects of their power by applying layer upon layer of wax encaustic over loaded images like American flags and gun targets. Andy Warhol and Robert  Rauschenberg have taught us this (along with Duchamp) that everyday objects are ever bit as interesting as any art displayed on a wall.  Consider in relation the words of novelist Italo Calvino in the book Six Memos for The Next Millennium,

"I would say that the moment that an object appears in a narrative, it is charged with a special force and becomes like the pole of  a magnetic field, a knot  in the net of  invisible relationships.  The symbolism of an object may be more or less explicit, but it is always there.  We might say that in a narrative any object is  always magic."

The Art Making Process as Meaning in Itself

Materials are manufactured through a process of routine transformation.  Paper is made from wood pulp which suggests a birth of one substance out of the death of another.  Artists prioritize and edit through an idiosyncratic  process.  Can the process of working, the choice of material, the sequence of unfolding events be another symbolic attribute added to the idea being investigated?   A process of working can be symbolic in itself.  The medieval process of alchemy pervades the fields of literature, science, the arts and history because the process  conjures up rich symbolic associations: turning metal into gold and the union of fire and water becomes a philosophy of opposites to be reconciled. In studio practice the use of a favorite brush, or the time of the day or the music being listened to becomes part of the process and therefore part of the symbology.