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Iconographic Art Form
Aboriginal art as an iconographic art form
The art the Aboriginals created is extremely complicated both in its visual aspect and in the vast symbolic language of icons it uses. Symbols are carriers of meaning, whether they are in written words or in icons. Each intrinsic artistic idiom contains an understandable lexicon of designs and contexts that can be used in a multitude of combinations, each with different meaning. The artist, by marking his surfaces with these symbols, transfers the meaning onto the surface and transforms a thing from its mundane state to its supernatural state. This was also a way of asserting authority, as the use of ancestrally inherited designs and icons reasserted their identity, their rights and responsibilities to the tribe.
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