It is easy to minimize the importance of symbols in culture. Art tends to focus on existential symbolism, leap-frogging over the ways in which we interpret symbols constantly, in the form of letters, ...

Art theorist, intellectual historian, and cultural scientist Aby M. Warburg mused: Was bedeutet es, sich im raum zu orientieren?, a physical and spiritual mouthful which roughly translates as, “What ...

A small boat with a broken mast bobs about on stormy waters, at the mercy of the waves. Clinging to the deck is a lone sailor, a black man desperately scanning the horizon for help. He needs it; the ...