Symbolism in Art

Abstract

AT the Friday evening discourse delivered at the Royal Institution on November 17, the audience had the unusual, but instructive, experience of hearing, in Sir Herbert Baker's account of “Symbolism in Art”, a distinguished practitioner of this form of expression in architecture on his principles, not from the æsthetic, but from the historico-scientific point of view. The discourse is now available in printed form. The interpretation of symbols, which is an element of no little importance in the study of art and the history of religions, suffers in a large number of instances from the drawback that it must be a matter of inference, and sometimes merely guesswork. Sir Herbert, in demonstrating to his audience the ideas which inspired, for example, the choice of motifs and subjects in the design of arms for the provinces of India used in the decoration of the new Delhi, showed the methods of the symbolising mind, first seeking the characteristic quality or incident pertinent to its subject, then giving it concrete form—thus, for example, selecting for the arms of the United Provinces the meeting of the sacred rivers at Allahabad, the bow of Rama, whose capital was at Oudh, and the fishes, the emblem of world power of the old Nawabs of Lucknow. Should events confirm Sir Herbert's diagnosis of the present trend of development in art towards symbolism, as the place of representational art is taken by mechanical means of reproduction, clearly the historical study of these principles and methods of symbolic art, of which he deplored the lack in the early part of his discourse, will demand increasing attention.