Myths and Symbols ın Contemporary Art

The myths that depict how anything has come into existence and that always relate to creation tell us the origin of ‘things.’ Mythologies can be defined as the documents that hide the knowledge and ideas which were generated deep in history. Campbell suggests that mythological narrations have visible and invisible aspects and that it is necessary to reveal the invisible rather than the visible aspect. This finding is valid for symbols too. Symbols are the pictorial forms of mythologies and there are close ties between mythologies and symbols. The language and ‘persons’ of the unconscious are the symbols whereby our dreams contact us. Therefore, researching people and their symbols indeed means researching the mankind’s relation with his own unconscious. Symbol-based narration has been adopted from the past to present by many artists as it embodies a sort of knowledge with codes and selected as a method for the generation of artworks. The tales and myths, which are still subject to the artworks of today, have moved beyond the depiction of stories and “personalized” especially in recent years, and have been transformed through the generation of a new wave that is based on a special narration and expression whereby the artist creates his own myth and mythologizes his world.