And each provides the bonding experiences and subjective alliances of culture. Aesthetic bearing is the validating experience of active mythology. Aesthetic bearing plays an initiating yet subjugated role in the development of personality. The participant actualizes his own personality and is integrated into society through empathetic identification with the signifiers of culture. Through aesthetic bearing the individual experiences aspects of culture as his own and through these experiences is incorporated into the social setting.
Culture implies a tillage of the soul as well as the intellect.
It is a cultivation that imparts the ideals and values of society. Paradoxically, the autonomous self is dependent on immersion into the rituals and sign systems of culture. Self-image is learned in a process that develops throughout our lives. Whether the epic poem of the ancient Greeks or the paintings of the Modernist, art is a symbol of the self in transition. The artist searches for the hypothetical image that best fits the needs of individuation.