ARTSENSE Acrylics Collection. n# 8. Concepts and signs.
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After meditation comes the sign. Having sensed reality we want to share our perception with the others around us. Generally words fail us and we recourse to signs, simple mental images conveying the sense of what we want to share.
In animist societies, shaman, men of knowledge were initiated by their benefactors to the art of seeing reality. With the help and under the influence of psychotrops, they learned to reach out to the ONE for gaining understanding of the working of the daily realities of their tribes. Their initiation was completed when they could enter into contact with the ONE at will at which time they used signs to share their worldview with the other tribe members. Carvings, paintings and decorations of those times integrate the signs of the worldview spread by those men of knowledge the shaman.
In the religious times of the gods, priests and monks were initiated to the creed that they would later preach to their brethren. The spreading of their worldview was realized through signs and words (manuscripts with illuminations), painted images, sculptures,...
In the early stage of capitalism, paintings are commissioned to represent the new notion of individual property. The new rich and entrepreneurial aristocracy want to adorn their walls with the local landscapes of their mansions and castles and also their portraits. Those paintings become the signs of their possessions, their property and individuality.
By the end of the 19th century, the signs start turning to the individuality of the creator himself and by mid twentieth century we all had lost the meaning, the sense of what signs are all about.
Here we are now, entangled into this perplexing and troublesome situation of total absence of meaning. But I think that we should rejoice at the knowledge of our conscience of this absence. This is indeed I believe the point where, or should I say when, we start to search for the sense to give to nowadays signs and meditation is a great way to find ourselves and to make sense out of our reality and thus discover the signs of our times.