Stories Behind The Art

Five hundred generations ago the oldest representation of birds and parts of birds is a prehistoric bird headed man painted on one of the walls of the Lascaux Cave in France. (Paul R. Ehrlich, 1988, p. 47) By the estimate that a generation is roughly 30 years, the first paintings of birds appeared between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago.

At that time the population of the world was thought to be less than one million people. Perhaps the clear majority were living in small hunter/gatherer migratory groups and established communal farms. Almost certainly prehistoric people were in daily contact with birds. Some undoubtedly thought that birds watched over them. Angles have wings, do they not? Ancient Egyptians called birds “winged souls.” (Paul R. Ehrlich, 1988) They were used to symbolize particular gods. The Egyptian God Horus, the god of the sun, was the head or body of a falcon. (Paul R. Ehrlich, 1988)

Raptors subsequently have been used to represent national power. For example, the national symbol of the United States is the Bald Eagle. (Paul R. Ehrlich, 1988) The eagle symbolizes both victory and freedom.

Native Americans thought of birds as gods. The Raven played a central role in the religion of Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. They were revered for their intelligence. In addition to Native American beliefs, in Norse Mythology, two ravens sit on his (Odin’s) shoulders and whisper all the news which they see and hear into his ear; they are called Huginn and Muninn. He sends them out in the morning to fly around the whole world, and by breakfast they are back again. Thus, he finds out many new things and this is why he is called ‘raven-god.’ (Simek, 1993) In this way the ravens are associated with the gathering of knowledge and the power, through learning, of the Norse people.

In the beginning of our relationships with birds we admired and even dreamed of having their power, freedom, and intelligence. Through art we elevated the bird to god like status. We celebrate the bird in dance, music, sculpture and painting. In the 18^th Century James Audubon elevated illustrating bird biology to an art form. He is said to be the first to illustrate bird biology and consistently paint the natural history of the bird. (Paul R. Ehrlich, 1988, p. 49) Audubon’s illustrations have fetched top dollar at an auction in 1985 earning as much as $35,200 for a portrayal of seven long-gone Carolina Parakeets.   (Paul R. Ehrlich, 1988, p. 49)

Through the generations our relationship with birds has changed. Birding is a hobby second only to gardening in popularity. We still watch birds. But like the price of an Audubon print they have flown beyond our reach. As human population grows past 9 billion, bird populations are struggling to adapt to an urban environment. As we have learned to fuel our wings with aviation gas the biological beat of wings pounds a slow cadence in a hurry up world. We tweet on our iPhone without the music of feathered friends to keep us company.

I sit at the window that looks out on the bird feeders in the yard.  I joke that the deer are trying to grow wings. If you are what you eat, the bucks and does are well on their way to sprouting talons, beaks and wings.  We feed our lawn ornaments here. Wild birds too visit the feeders. Some flocks arrive in mass and politely take turns sharing a spot on the feeder. Others fight to establish their territorial imperative. And frequently there is cooperation between species as squirrels encourage the shaking of the feeders by the deer while groundlings sit open mouthed below the falling grain.

Perception, the ability to see is the gift of the artist. It is a life long learning process where detail and pattern play games with light and dark. It is here that the value of what is to be discovered is found. But what happens to the perception of the artist and all of those who see the artist’s work changes?

Realism concerned itself with how life was structured socially, economically, politically, and culturally. (http://www.theartstory.org/movement-realism.htm, 2018) "So, after the literary schools that wanted to give us a distorted, superhuman, poetic, touching, charming, or proud vision of life, the realist or naturalist school came, which sought to show us the truth, nothing but the truth and the whole truth." Guy de Maupassant. The choice of the realists to bring everyday life into their canvases was an early manifestation of the avant-garde desire to merge art and life. The ideal images drawn from mythology and taught in the art schools probably began around the early 1600’s. Realism as a movement emerged in France around 1840. Its influence is felt in every art movement since. (http://www.theartstory.org/movement-realism.htm, 2018)

The impressionist movement 1867-1886 shifted artist’s work away from rendering detail in favor of discovering the play of light on a subject. The natural history of the bird in nature became the impression of the bird on nature. According to (www.artmovements.co.uk, 2018) “…small touches of pure color rather than broader strokes, and painting out of doors to catch a particular fleeting impression of color and light. The result was to emphasize the artist’s perception of the subject matter as much as the subject itself.

Expressionism 1905-1925 pushed natural history even further away and emphasized the artist’s feelings at the sacrifice of the bird’s biology and environment. Expressionism is an artistic style in which the artist attempts to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in him. The bird’s natural world is subsumed in the boldness of the artist’s vision. Human emotion dominates form and function in bold color and brush strokes. (www.artmovements.co.uk, 2018)

Abstract art 1940-1960 moves the artist and the viewer of art away from recognizable representations of reality. (www.artmovements.co.uk, 2018) S.I. Hayakawa in his book, “Language in Thought and Action” demonstrates how we use language to move from tangible objects to symbolic representations of objects. This ability to abstract thought results in sharing meaning through language when we share the same meaning of the symbols. Art history demonstrates how the symbolic representation of our world transitions from realism to impressionism to expressionism and at the highest level of thinking to abstraction. Therefore, the written and spoken language of Hayakawa’s abstraction ladder find their parallel in art.

While we are sharing our interpretation our world through how we express our thoughts and feelings we are changing how we perceive our world. As we move from the farm to the city, from the forest to the concrete jungle, our perception changes. We no longer see the animal in its natural habitat. As we change our living space we change our culture. “The cultural accomplishment of the ages … come to us as free gifts from the dead. These gifts, which none of us has done anything to earn, offer us not only the opportunity for a richer life than our forebears enjoyed but also the opportunity to add to the sum total of human achievement by our own contributions.” S.I. Hayakawa

In this world where our personal expression of self leaves a record of how we think and feel about our world we are changing that world. As we work to improve our self-expression we are also changing ourselves. In this dynamic of change we must ask, “As our work adds to the sum total of human achievement, what is gained and what is lost?”