The search for meaning through art

Woman, I, Willem de Kooning, 1950-52.

All of humanity starts at the same place, as a helpless infant in an existence of sucking, touching, gurgling, wetting and excreting. The philosopher, Richard Wollheim maintains that these are exactly the experiences that the artist Willem de Kooning portrays in his work. A world we explore with our fingers and mouths, a reality primarily composed of our mother. Everything outside of her is threatening and frightful. In his book, What Art Is, Arthur C. Danto tells of a video in which a man holds an infant that had been born only ten minutes yet the baby imitated the man opening his mouth and sticking out his tongue. As if the child was born with some level of communication and recognition.

The Christian religion realized that art could translate stories and myths in fundamental terms that everyone could understand and used it to great effect. The primordial image of Western art is that of a mother and child. In Ulysses, James Joyce talks of "the word every man knows" while many think the word is "love," Danto believes it would have to be an almost universal word. He thinks the best candidate is "Mama" a word that causes the lips to make a sucking motion. Christian art represents humans in all their most vulnerable moments, birth, suffering, hunger, love, and death.

The Holy Family, Nicolas Poussin, 1641.

The Christian scene of the Nativity is familiar to all of us, the baby, mother, and, father with friends and family gathered to see the newborn, some bearing gifts. We identify with the scenario and feelings depicted. Nicolas Poussin's The Holy Family is a perfect example, the mother playing with her baby while a bowl of food waits nearby. The father leans on the window sill catching up on the sleep he lost due to the cries of the child. We all know what each of the characters is experiencing and can connect with it. The idea that the family might be holy is irrelevant.

A time traveler from another era would recognize what was going on just as we understand how the characters in The Illiad and The Odyssey act. Our visitor would even identify with the subjects of Picasso's Blue Period, the cubist work might give them pause but Picasso was still primarily painting women. While much has changed in advances in science and our understanding of the world, the appearance of that world remains much the same. This is how art provides meaning across the ages.