Meet Me At The Threshold – Symbolism in Contemporary Art

When Renaissance viewers encountered Botticelli’s “Primavera,” they immediately understood its symbolic vocabulary—Zephyr pursuing Chloris, the virtues of the Three Graces, Venus governing love, Mercury wielding reason. Shared symbolic literacy meant art’s visual vocabularies transcended individual artists and could be read like texts.

This universal symbolic system has fragmented into what might be called parallel systems. Diego Rivera’s visual vocabulary for revolutionary labor politics, Kara Walker’s symbols addressing race and American history, Picasso’s Blue Period language of human suffering—each represents a coherent symbolic system, but viewers literate in one may be completely unable to decode another.

In this illustrated talk, Carmel artist Mel Ahlborn argues that while we cannot—and perhaps should not—recreate universal symbolic systems, contemporary artists continue art’s threshold function: contemplative experiences exposing a richness that escapes casual attention. Ahlborn presents examples from Renaissance masters through contemporary practitioners, including her own work with Illumination Studio Carmel. Interactive exercises will encourage the audience to consider the expansion of their own visual vocabularies as a means of cultivating transformative attention.