Arts as a symbolic form of culture.

Art seems to be an omnipresent phenomenon, particularly art for sale: wherever and whenever man lives, there and then you will find art. With the development of “human spirit”, all changes that take place in culture are reflected in images and symbols of art, abstract or modern. However, art is not only a mere reflexion of changes in culture but part and parcel of culture.

Cassirer studies functions of a language, myth and religion, art and history as ‘symbolic forms’, all of which are aspects of human ability to form a meaningful world through symbols in abstract art. Hence, it follows that different ways of thinking and of cultural environments have a common ground in symbolic formation, which characterizes human beings as animal symbolicon.

A sign, symbol or symbolic form emerges as a method, which engenders mental and/or spiritual outward manifestations. The essence of consciousness, Cassirer insists, reveals itself in ‘a symbolic function’ and realizes itself through the unity of a thesis and an antithesis. The division into thesis and antithesis is natural for the intellect, whereas the synthesis of the opposites is an intrinsic feature of a cognitive process, as also called a ‘symbolic function’.

Primitive landscape or watercolor art comprises some elements of analysis and synthesis, its images serving the foundation for further development of a written language. Art in a primitive society was of paramount importance in translating abstract images, which, apparently, were exploited in ancient religious cults and developed into some theoretical notions. In all probability, early examples of primitive art reflected ancient notions of the build up of the Universe.

The latter presented the prototype for the development of the notion of the beautiful and of a perfect shape.