Sans Fig Leaf
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"What's it mean?"
24 January, 2008
About eleven and a half
miles outside of the small town in which I was born stands a large rock
overhang on which appear both petroglyphs and pictographs. Such
pictures can be found in many locations throughout the region. They're
believed to have been put there by the Fremont tribe, which either died
out or were absorbed by other tribes about 1200 years ago.
I don't remember the first time I saw them, because I was a toddler.
Some relatives were visiting from out of state, and my Grandparents
decided the petroglyphs were one of the sites they should see. The
figures are the crude forms often called "carrot man art" because they
look like carrots, each with an oval head sticking out the top.
This particular "picture" consisted of seven or eight of these carrot
men. One is much shorter than all the others. Two of the tall ones have
spikes sticking out of the heads.
As a kid, I assumed the
spikes represented feathered headdresses, so those two were obviously
the chiefs. I took the shorter person to be a child. So I thought it
depicted some kind of ritual. A coming-of-age thing, perhaps.
My mom once said she
assumed the two with the figures with spikes were supposed to be men,
and interpreted it as some sort of family portrait. The child flanked
on either side by his parents, who are in turn flanked by a pair of
grandparents, while the other, fainter, figures represented the whole
tribe looking on.
I have no idea what the figures were originally meant to convey. What
little I know of the Fremont culture is contained in a single sentence
above. So the scene they conjured for me, with eagle-feather
head-dresses and so forth, are almost certainly wildly inaccurate. Just
as my mom's notion of a specific family portrait is probably wrong, as
well. The symbols could be nothing more than the Fremont equivalent of
a road sign: "Village ahead!" or "River crossing."
I got thinking about those glyphs recently when I got into a discussion about writing: who defines what the story means? I've always contended that the creation of any art is a two-way proposition. The artist is trying to evoke something with the art. It isn't art until an audience reacts to it.
But then we have things
like these pictographs, or stone age cave paintings. Is it still art if
the entire culture of the original audience is so long gone that no one
knows what the pictures are supposed to be?
I think so.
The figures still evoke
something. Everyone I ever went to see them with came away with some
notion of what they meant. The notions were seldom the same, but all of
us felt something. We all recognized the "carrots with ovals on top" as
human figures. We all felt certain that they were put there for a
reason.
The very best art doesn't
just evoke a specific image or idea--it also leaves us pondering long
after the initial viewing or reading. Something lingers, and we turn it
over in our heads. Or we repeat part of it to a friend. Or we wonder
what happened next. We get into arguments with our friends about what
it meant, or which part was best or worst.
It could be argued that
the pictographs have some of that effect precisely because we don't
know much about the culture they came from and have no idea who made
them or what they meant. The fact that it's out of context lends it an
"unfair" mystique. It's a valid point.
On the other hand,
something more recent, where we do know who made it and so forth, has
the advantage of being able to allude to cultural references we know.
The fact that it is not out
of context lends it an equally "unfair" authenticity.
No one ever really knows
what a particular creation means, not even the author or artist. We may
know what we meant consciously when we made it, but not what was going
on in our subconscious. Why did I pick that detail, or omit this other
thing? Why do you use that shade of blue and not that one?
If the audience is moved;
if they argue and debate and discuss, their interpretations are
arguably more important than the artist's. A machine can push things so that
they always go to the same place. Artwork isn't supposed to be like
clockwork. It's supposed to push each person's heart, but not all to
the same place. Just because
the consequences are unintended, that doesn't mean that they are wrong.
People are always asking me what my lyrics mean. Well I say what any decent poet would say if you dared ask him to analyse his work: if you see it, darling, then it's there.
-- Freddie Mercury
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