The Indescribable Nature of Symbols

Analysis of art through the ideas of Robert Unger

Art is not sociology. The subjectivity of the viewer’s analysis does not make for good solid data from which to build. If you try to use art as sociology, you will be forced to reduce the results so far down in order to arrive at something concrete, that it strips the experience of all its context transcending power. In order to arrive at concreteness, you first must kill the thing itself, cut it into pieces, clean it and present it, naked and dead. Art as sociology is presenting us with the dead remains of the actual experience, and in this presentation, it seeks to tell us something true.

Art as art, presents us with symbols, that fail to fully describe our experience and simultaneously, as symbols, defies our ability to capture their meaning. In this way, art is life, as we are also at a loss to comprehend the meaning of what is happening right now. There is no amount of words or symbols that can express what is going on right now. Any attempt to explain, is immediately making the experience itself more complex, and simultaneously failing to do it justice.

Our symbols fail us, or rather, we perceive something greater than what can be described with the words, images and sounds we have at our disposal. The insatiable reaching for description, followed by the disappointment at not being able to capture the thing itself, is the main driver for the life of the mind and for art. We are dissatisfied with the things we make, because, like ourselves, they will never be able to fully describe, and will never be fully understood. However, these weaknesses of explanation should not make us feel as if we are failures. It should not send us scurrying off to find something “concretely useful”. It is one of our greatest gifts.

We are context transcending beings. Like our symbols we cannot be contained by any context that we create for ourselves. We try to understand our inner lives, our most intimate realities, but eventually find our explanations reductionary, partial and unfulfilling. It is the same for the social roles we are assigned by our culture, roles such as mother, businessman, female, adolescent, etc. It is the same with the things we create. They are always squeezing us too tightly, slipping away from us, frustrating our ability to be fully described, leaving us feeling as if there is something more than what there is.

To deny this experience by reducing it to concrete utility is to deny art its descriptive power of pointing us in the direction of what is actually going on, which is, in the symbolic world of the mind that we’ve created, (first) our experience of striving to describe, (second) our frustration at failing, and (third), our joy and wonder at not being able to fully contain anything. Art as sociology denies this inherent utility, by offering up for itself a “purpose” a call to action, which is nothing but a redundancy. The call to action is already there. It is to recognize and come to terms with the nature of the symbolic reality that we’ve created.

There is always more in the thing itself, then can be expressed in the corresponding symbol, and likewise, there is always more in the symbol then can ever be fully described by us. This reality is only weakness, when you look at it through the lens of wanting to find solid ground. Its usefulness seems suspect only when you look at it through the lens of needing it to do something concrete. It’s purpose, only insufficient if you seek ultimate meaning. What is more useful, then for art to show us the indescribableness of our situation, but then rather then feeling defeated at the enormous scope of our task, to give us the strength to go on?