HOW ARTISTS CAN USE SYMBOLS IN QUIET WAYS

"Her Room", is Wyeth's egg tempera of Mrs. Wyeth's room on the day of an eclipse of the sun. The stillness of the room was suddenly broken with a rush of air, as a squall roughened the waters and blew the curtains. He worried about his son, Nicholas, who was in a boat on the water beyond the window. Seeing the wooden chest on the floor, he thought of a coffin.

HOW WYETH USES THE SYMBOLS "SPIRAL" and "HEART":

From the eerie eclipse light and rough waters to the heart shaped keyhole, there are many symbols within this painting. These combine with Wyeth's commitment to capturing the essence of the moment and the qualities and character of the place and objects to make a complete world of significance within his painting. Although the symbols are not all obvious, they are all important in making the mood and meaning of the painting. Without noticing the symbolism directly, we can receive Wyeth's emotions about the time and place and call it "realism".

Many people, especially young people, answered the question "What object represents the spirit of community to you" by saying or drawing a heart. One person drew a spiral when thinking of the spirit of community of the Hartwick Wall. Above is an example of how a master artist has used those two symbols in an understated way, as part of a well developed translation of his own feelings.

Vital to the message is that, beyond simply drawing a heart and a spiral, Wyeth has connected us to elemental concepts of love and eternity with his artistic vision. Light falls on the shell and makes it shine from within. The shell's spiral architecture and connection to the sea, contributes to the feeling of a moment caught in time contrasted with timeless eternity.

In the Mural Project in downtown Oneonta, this type of understated symbolism will be the most common.

ARTISTS USING SYMBOLS TO TEACH

St. Augustine is portrayed here by Botticelli as an exemplar of divine learning. The clock shows that the hour is sunset, by prevailing Italian time, the exterior light can only come from a divine vision. From the pose of the saint's hand to the objects that surround him, symbols fill the fresco with meaning, telling a story of the character of St. Augustine.

In many murals, throughout the ages, symbols have been used as they are here, to illustrate concepts in a more obvious way. St. Augustine is a scholar and conversant with science, but values spiritual enlightenment over material enlightenment.

Rather than expressing this in quiet ways, Botticelli makes absolutely certain that you understand the concept by literally opening the book and letting you read the pages. The book displays Euclidean geometry and pokes fun at it, (in 15th century Italian, otherwise we would get the joke too), making concrete the idea of the church official's who commissioned the mural: that spiritual knowledge was superior to secular knowledge.

This is another way that symbolism will be used in the Mural Project. Our subject matter will be different however: the spirit of community.

To learn more about the fresco technique used by Botticelli, visit Murals In Time, within which is a pop up window that explains many kinds of painting techniques.

CONCEPTION AND RESEARCH BY JENNIE WILLIAMS. PAGE DESIGN BY JOHN AVERY AND JENNIE WILLIAMS