Symbolism has consequences: Peace, Harmony, and the Holy Ghost can't bring back the Passenger Pigeon

I really liked swans when I was five. They were so pretty and graceful. In the fairy tales that I read princesses rode on their backs through the night sky and swans floated decoratively in placid ponds in front of castles. Elegant human-swan hybrids leaped through my dreams after I saw Swan Lake.

One day, I went with my family to the Asheboro Zoo, where there was a pond with swans, which visitors were encouraged to feed. You can guess where I'm going with this. This video shows roughly what happened (minus the wedding dress).



The video is actually kind of interesting. The bride, dressed elegantly in white, has been prompted to feed the swan, her symbolic counterpart, probably for the benefit of a photographer. The swan, a symbol of purity, romance, and grace, seems in actuality to be anything but that. I learned a valuable lesson that day at the zoo. I learned that what's real and what's ideal are very different things. Angry, greedy swans are not pretty, graceful, or elegant; they are scary and painful. Symbolism has consequences.

Our reading this week, David Rubin's essay "A Bird Tapestry," written to accompany images in the catalogue for the 2004 exhibition Birdspace: A Post-Audubon Artists' Aviary, describes the work of 50 artists who use birds in their work. I think it's quite important to note that while the artists USE birds in their work, the pieces often aren't really about about birds. The birds depicted or referenced in these works are almost always used as symbols for human ideals, emotions, and ideologies.


Above is Michael Crespo's 2006 oil painting The Eye of a Dream. Although the artist was included in the aforementioned exhibition, the painting was completed later, though it serves to illustrate a sort of vague symbolism that seems to be prevalent throughout the selected work. The title of the piece is a dead giveaway. The heron and the flowers represent peace, serenity, grace, though the storm clouds brewing in the background suggest turmoil. I don't know what the bit of architecture in the back is supposed to be. Loosely exotic. Dreamlike, you might say. The painting uses the heron as a symbol. The heron-as-object/idea is more important than what a heron does, where it lives, what it eats.

Other artists referenced seem to use birds merely as an object. They don't really go so far as to even associate the animal with an idea. Rubin mentions Hunt Slonem, who is apparently a very successful artist, saying of his 2000 piece Toucans (below), "the birds reveal both human and divine attributes - they could be a chatty crowd or a choir of angels."


Seriously? Rubin so overestimates the depth of this piece that I don't even know what to say. It's cheesy abstraction, decoration, fluff. It doesn't tell me much of anything about toucans, humans, and certainly not the divine.

My biggest problem with Rubin's essay is that he doesn't address potential problems with these artists' use of birds as symbols and decoration. I'll admit, birds are pleasing to the eye and offer rich opportunities for metaphor (flight, nesting, eggs, etc.), but they are also creatures. Real live creatures. With real live creature problems, like the dumb brides who insist on getting too close.

I have no problem with symbolism; it's a great way to talk about abstract ideas. But I do have a problem with an exhibition catalogue that fails to note that its supposed subject is loosing the battle against human development. According to the Audobon society, 20 of the most common birds in America have lost more than half of their populations in the last 40 years. (More here.) The real consequence of art that idealizes birds and uses them as symbols is that it fails to talk about the real pressing issues. The art that Rubin describes and the way in which he discusses it are largely out of date, more suited to medieval religious imagery than contemporary work.

Paula McCartney places fake birds in trees and photographs them as if they are alive. On first glance, it seems as if the birds are real, although it quickly becomes apparent that they are fake because of the way in which they are photographed. It's clear that McCartney hasn't used a telephoto lens (space hasn't been condensed), and she is too close to the birds to have caught so many perched just so.

(above: Bird Watching, (Dark Eyed Junco), 2003)

By placing the fake birds, McCartney makes us aware of the absence of the real thing. Her pictures don't objectify and idealize the birds, as nature photography often does. Instead, they are presented matter-of-factly, in drab forests with drab skies. As they really are. (Or would be if she wasn't using fake birds.)

I started with a when-I-was-a-kid anecdote, so I'll end with one for good measure.

I grew up in the woods. Not a big forest, just can't-see-the-neighbors woods. On summer nights, usually just after I went to bed, we would often hear owls hooting - Barred, Barn, Screech, and occasionally a Great-Horned. My brother and I would get out of bed, and my parents would put the "North American Owl Vocalizations" record (no joke) on the turntable and crank up the volume. We would open up all the doors and windows, and go outside and listen as the record attracted the owls closer and closer to the house. We don't hear the owls anymore.