There is something curious about how a simple shape of a heart ♥ drawn onto a two dimensional piece of paper can evoke such associations of love, romance and passion, be it all in the name of St. Valentine’s Day. How many of us have made a doodle of this shape whilst thinking of a loved one? If we colour the shape red we are thinking of passion but what if it is blue? Cold hearted? Funny how this ♥ shape has us such has instinctive effect upon us! Now the commercial love fest of Valentine’s Day is behind us and the 160 million plus ♥ cards litter waste paper baskets, the question has to be asked as to why this iconic ♥ shape packs a punch.
You would no doubt agree that the heart shape does not have any resemblance to the real thing and what the traditional “heart shape” actually depicts is debated with supposition because nobody really sure of its origins, even its connection to St Valentine is mysterious. The ♥ shape has appeared to have represented a variety of things across different cultures over the centuries following various paths of ancient pagan festival, religious devotion or medieval poets simply eulogizing the excitement of their hearts when in love. So when did love become heart shaped?
Visually speaking its origins may lie in Ancient Greek pottery painting and with the depiction of ivy tendrils as shown in the image of a Maenad, a Dionysus maiden devotee rendered in 490-480BC.
[ source: Maenad @ wikipedia]
Ivy leaf was fabled to aid regeneration and had also the association of constancy such as faithfulness, affection and needless to say love.
As the heart was not fully understood biologically speaking till many centuries later, the blending of this enigmatic organ with sensations of love into a heart shape representation progresses confusing. Notions of carnal love weave in and out of fields of worship may it be spiritual piety, fertility ritual with particular associations with features of the female body or mythical herbal custom. The ♥ shape it would appear entangled itself with the association of strong emotion and over time it has filtered down to us in various guises through crafted images, so much that its stylized ‘cardioid’ shape has become deep seated our visual perception which grasps the associations of love instantaneously.
We accept without question a flat picture, even if only a doodle as our vision actively grasps at tiny bits of the shape and line pattern. Within milliseconds the brain makes sense of these marks and subject to our experiences and imagination, rings a bell of recognition. We mentally note what we are seeing as our brain has stored countless images, patterns and associations that we have encountered and hey presto a heart shape expresses love.
I remember the countless ♥ doodles I did over a teenage crush on the back of an exercise book, the boy is no more but the love of art began. Aimlessly scribbling away is the first art form we encounter and the trigger in learning to draw. It is a way to be creative without trying and by using simple shapes leads to the foundations of drawing and painting.. One of the most famous remarks made by an artist is that of the advice given to the young artist Emile Bernard by Paul Cezanne “Treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone”.
In essence Cezanne urged Bernard to look at shapes as building blocks for his art and when on to say “When one knows how to render these things in their form and their planes, one ought to know how to paint”.
Shapes ○ ð ◊ ▲ or simply a ♥ can be cast as absently minded design but essential to imaginative thinking of the artist. As an avid doodler I have provided myself with many creative ideas and there is one quote I love which evokes further doodling: “A line is a dot that went for a walk” from the artist Paul Klee.
Start a doodle today you never know where it might lead!
Look out for " National Doodle Day " Friday 2nd March 2012
Drawing a line through epilepsy......
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