This capacity of the viewer for essentially random symbolic reading is problematic, and the specific nature of intended systems of symbolism is also their greatest flaw. Allegory was deeply important for many years in Western art because of a shared language of religious iconography and symbolism, and because of the simple fact that the vast majority of the populace was illiterate. Outside of their cultural context, however, allegorical images become unstuck. Although the parole of all languages shifts constantly over time, abstract symbols, being almost completely unbounded by the essentially logical structure of grammar, can shift their meaning more suddenly and dramatically, and provide none of the contextual clues that, for example, allow a modern English reader to get to grips with the language of Chaucer. A dramatic example; in the early 20th century, it would not be uncommon to receive a greetings card decorated with the motif of a swastika, meaning ‘good luck’. After the Nazis chose the symbol as their banner the meaning changed absolutely and probably permanently, at least in the western world; for in many parts of Asia, the swastika is still a revered holy symbol. This reveals the deep flaw of the apparent universality of such a symbol; though employed in various forms by cultures all across the world, its very simplicity gives it a vast range of almost entirely disconnected meanings, each one dependent on the context in which it was created and the context in which it is perceived, requiring us to be in possession of a range of subordinate facts to have any sense of its meaning; it might be a paean to fascism if painted by a young man in the former East Germany, or it might be a meditation on the creation of the world if painted by a monk in Sri Lanka (It might also be the opposite way round, or neither ). Although in limited form these subordinate facts, or metatexts, are, as we shall later see, structurally vital components of all works of art, many artists (unless it is their conscious intention) desire to create work that at least partly transcends the facts of its creation, which are after all liable, especially after great amounts of time, to become divorced from the work itself, if only because the cultural context becomes so remote as to be essentially meaningless to the vast majority of people. Though timelessness and universality are far from being universal concerns in art, they unarguably form powerful psychic motivators for many artists. The very act of creating art arises from a desire to communicate something, to make the internal somehow external, to preserve something of a moment or a period, if only briefly.
