THE TRAJECTORY OF THE IMAGE ...
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S E R I A L PAG E I D E N T I F I C AT I O N N o. :
is possible that the purpose of these paintings lay in the act of creating, the magic of making the representation. >>> A similar disregard for the permanence of the image may be seen in the sandpaintings of some southwestern tribes of Native Americans. Complex and elaborate designs, highly stylized, are created by pouring colored sand onto a smoothed dirt or sand surface or upon a skin lain upon the ground. In the Navajo rites, the image is destroyed both by interacting with it in the course of the rite, and ritualistically at the end of the rite. Preserving the image in any permanent form was largely prohibited, even by threat of death (Wyman 1983 [1952]: 9). While the Navajo were not, by and large, nomadic people and had the permanent settlements that would have permitted them to preserve representations had they so chosen, the creation of the image was, for them, not a thing to be saved. The image was not meant to preserve, but to bring an idea into being in a different form, to make visible in a representation aspects of the otherwise invisible relationships between the people and the universe. >>> The sandpaintings of the Navajo peoples of the American desert show a purpose for images and their creation that is alien to the mainstream of the Western aesthetic tradition. The sandpainting ∞ˇor ‘drypaintings’ (as other substances are used in their creation) are created by ‘singers’, men empowered to perform rites for the good of individuals or the tribe. Women are forbidden to perform these rites, or even to be present at some parts, P78