The reflection of the rooster sign on plastic arts: A comparison with the Early Republic Period in Turkey, to the present contemporary Western art

It is known that in order to perceive and understand the environment full of unknowns, humankind first imagines the objects it senses from the moment it starts to see and then transforms these images into symbols. The first paintings that primitive people designed on cave walls were symbols of the rituals they developed for supernatural forces they took shelter against the beings they feared and the visual communication tools they used to explain them to other people. This formation, realized by humankind by symbolizing images, is acknowledged as an artistic activity that is part of a cultural process. Although this activity is a part of a ritual, the symbols used were important messages in line with the sociological-psychological-economic structure, history and beliefs of the society in which the artist lives. The "rooster," which is in the poultry family among animals, has become a virtual image in human production as a religious-magical, functional, or artistic expression tool with the symbolic meanings it has been attributed to since 2000 BC is thought the rooster to have been domesticated. According to the researches, the mystical aspect of the rooster that heralds the sunrise before it is used as a food, its courageous character that does not give up the fight, and its warlikeness have resulted in the rooster's symbolic responses that change according to cultures, geographies and beliefs. The rooster image, which is identified with mythological characters, religious figures and natural forces, has been used as an artistic expression element in wall paintings, religious depictions, weavings, ceramics, architecture, paintings and sculptures since the rock reliefs. In this study, in which the image of the rooster is compared to the plastic arts from the early Republican era in Turkey and concurrently in the West until today, data collection technique based on document analysis was used. With the extensive literature review, the symbolic counterparts of the image, which change, diversify or do not change but become universal in the context of historical, religious, ideological, cultural and geographical differences, were determined and the reflections of this cultural heritage on artistic interpretations in the following periods were examined. Thus, on the axis of the selected works, whether the symbol is used in a conceptual and/or plastic sense has been examined and interpreted in the context of cause-effect relationships. Keywords: Rooster image, Plastic arts, mystic, cultural memory