As an artist myself, with interest in physical depictions, and how the process of what is seen becomes represented as painted wall art, or carved petroglyph lines, or three-dimensional sculpture, it is interesting to me to find physical objects becoming represented as symbols, and these symbols finding correspondence in different cultures. Ancient codexes or comic books, painted with burnt sticks of carbon or Apple iPads, art doesn’t lie! People may not like it, but artists only paint what they see. Cultures may transmute and codify art into symbols, and the idea of beauty may change through the ages, and thus a heavy-set, big-breasted and bumpy model of a primitive Venus, becomes an anorexic photoshopped version of a Cosmopolitan woman in the 20th century. And while the Greeks glorified female beauty and put woman up on a pedestal, Picasso brought her back to a primitive and jagged Mademoiselle d’Avignon.
Still, birds are birds, be they herons, ducks, Phoenixs, or feathered Quetlcoatls. And wings are wings, although sometimes it is hard to determine whether they are attached to angels, aliens, bees, or flying machines. Snakes are snakes, until they seem to become dragons or dinosaurs or staircases on zigurats, jagged bolts of lightning, or wavy rivers. Fish are just fish, and look like sturgeons, dolphin, or salmon, unless they are scaled, skinned, and worn by mermen… Palms are palms, until they become multi-branched deciduous-looking “Yggdrasil” or the Tree of Life of the Kaballah; and flowers are just flowers, until they take on the significance of the three-petaled iris or Fleur-de-lis, the five-petaled rose or cinquefoil, or the multi-petaled lotus… Lions, tigers, and boars, oh my…
This series of over eight films, is best viewed with a skeptical, but open mind — if not a sense of humor. And yet there is wonder and awe, at the mystery of it all, and appreciation that so much is still unknown to us.
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