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On Metaphors by Jean Rivard  What if to make art is to make metaphors? What if, no matter the discipline, metaphor is the means by which we yoke intuition to thought, thought to emotion, and emotion to body? What if we think about metaphor broadly? What if we think of it as creative yoga for artists? If that were true, what would that mean for those artists who seek to reinvigorate or create new meaning? Metaphor, in the traditional, narrow sense, developed in language by using physical concepts — up/down, back/forward, in/out, hot/cold, and so on — as the way to grasp and convey abstract concepts that exist beyond the physical world. We say I "see" when we really mean we comprehend or understand an idea. The economy is "up." I'm feeling "low." Of course we do not literally "see" an idea, or feel "low." The economy is not literally "up." But those physical realities are the ground by which we relate and understand what is not physical. According to linguist Guy Deutscher, all languages utilize metaphor, because metaphor is an indispensable element in the thought process of every one of us. Consider, as an artist, that you have a stock of expressive means. Color, form, perspective, space, movement, word, figure, sound, silence, texture are all parts of a vocabulary you use to "carry" your intuitions, your thoughts, your ideas, and your feelings. That dynamic is literally metaphor in action, as the word "meta-phor", from the Greek, means to carry across. Metaphor can work tacitly in your artwork, not unlike the way language itself is built upon dead metaphors — metaphors that are so assimilated into the language that we take them for granted but use in every sentence we speak. Moody lighting in film noir, for example, is a tacit metaphor for a treacherous world full of shadows. The utilization of minor or major keys in music, or certain traditional dance movements, such as the fluttering of arms in the ballet Swan Lake, are all tacit metaphors understood by artists and viewers in the most basic language of those art forms. And within the visual arts, every representation of a "real" thing, such as a tree, is, in one sense, a metaphor, as a tree drawn is not in fact, the tree itself. It is a stand-in, a symbol, and therefore, a metaphor — something Magritte coyly pointed out by painting the words "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" or "this is not a pipe," next to his painting of a pipe. Want to read more? Subscribe to POLYSEMY. Click here to preview more articles. ©2006 POLYSEMY. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. |