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By CHARLES PARTINGTON
Rappahannock News Contributing Writer
Symbols and ritual are the themes of the show by local artists now on display at the Middle St. Gallery in Washington. Most of the pieces, which range from oils and watercolors to metal sculptures, are centered, in one way or another, around symbols rather than ritual so I will limit this review to them.
What is a symbol? And what accounts for its power?
Anything can serve as a symbol. The comedian and activist Dick Gregory once remarked that if Jesus Christ had been born in the twentieth century then future Christians would be wearing little electricchairs around their necks. In and of itself the object serving as a symbol is powerless. An object becomes a symbol when it comes to represent a reality. Symbols are reminders of realities not present. The cross reminds the Christian of the “spiritual” reality which may very well be forgotten while he is occupied in the business of everyday life.
The power of a symbol, whether it’s a Christian cross, a police officer’s badge, an academic title, the family photos on the businessman’s desk, or the mirror in an Islamic wedding ceremony, derives from the reality it represents and is meant to recall. A symbol, then, can be seen as one reality poking into another, and symbols tend to occur wherever two or more realities intersect.
It is commonly remarked that the use and manipulation of symbols is what most clearly distinguishes the human from the other varieties of animal. If this is true it’s because human experience comes in an expandable number of frames of ideas, emotions and forms of action I am calling realities and symbols are an expression of one reality coming to terms with another. Symbols are reminders: they can tap you on the shoulder or they can catapult you into another world or perception, but above all they reflect the divisions of human experience.
The symbols in the Middle St. Gallery show fall roughly into four categories: abstract symbols, borrowed symbols, personal symbols and social symbols.
An abstraction can serve as a symbol only if the reality it rep
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