Anthropology Of Art Research Articles

Notes on the ‘ethnographic turn’ of the European avant-garde: Reading Carl Einstein’s <i>Negerplastik</i> (1915) and Vladimir Markov’s <i>Iskusstvo Negrov</i> (1919)

Abstract In the accounts of early twentieth-century modernism the ethnographic object and its ‘discovery’ by avant-garde artists has come to occupy a central role. But the African studies by the German author and critic Carl Einstein (1885–1940) and the Latvian artist Vladimir Markov (1877–1914) have regularly been demoted to the footnotes of primitivist appropriations. In the histories of non-Western cultures and the anthropology of art both have endured a place in obscurity. Described as ‘the first and most influential’ of the ‘champions of primitive art’, Einstein's Negerplastik has regained some recognition, whereas Markov's Iskusstvo Negrov remains the lesser known of the two books. Emerging at the same historical juncture both authors postulated the limits of Western artistic traditions by advocating the aesthetic autonomy of non-Western sculpture. By introducing a comparative reading, this paper argues that the image/text strategies of both studies orchestrated a poetics of alterity that was centra...

Aesthetics Versus Knowledge: An Ambiguous Mixture of Genres in Visual Anthropology

Visual anthropology is both a descriptive and an aesthetic endeavor. Filmed ethnography, for example, is a powerful scientific tool for documenting reality, but it is also often used to express anthropologist-filmmakers' personal artistic visions. This mixture of science and aesthetics has indirectly but deeply influenced anthropological theory, and has also contributed to visual anthropology's unclear definition in academia since it constitutes a terra nullius between science and art. This mixture of aesthetics and knowledge has practical consequences in the anthropology of art.

A agência de Gell na antropologia da arte

Ao delinear os parâmetros para uma antropologia da arte, o famigerado livro de Alfred Gell, Art and Agency, deixou de lado boa parte da antropologia, o que coloca algumas questões tão embaraçosas quanto pouco tratadas: pode-se fazer boa teoria sem contar com o acúmulo de conhecimento nessa área? Ou os temas recebem tratamento tão díspar que realmente não faz sentido falar mais em princípios teóricos comuns que podem e devem ser aplicados a qualquer objeto? O que perdemos com uma narrativa tão autocentrada? Partindo do pressuposto de que não é possível tratar teoria enquanto um conjunto de máximas que se somam ou se substituem, ou como um tabuleiro de peças que se acomodam umas às outras segundo sua validade isolada, este artigo procede a um exame da narrativa contida no livro de Gell, das articulações que realiza entre suas proposições. Examinarei, sobretudo, a leitura que faz dos autores que cita, como Peirce, Sally Price, e outros, e como os encaixa na sua argumentação. O objetivo desse exercício é evidenciar, para além de suas próprias definições, certas concepções sobre arte contidas na abordagem que Gell sugere e ampliar as referências para uma antropologia da arte.

The anthropology of art: a reader ? Edited by Howard Morphy & Morgan Perkins

The anthropology of art: a reader ? Edited by Howard Morphy & Morgan Perkins

Enrolling genetic technology in regulation

This article addresses the need to overcome theoretical weaknesses of both technologically and socially deterministic accounts of technological development. Technology does not simply 'impact' on local contexts, but nor does it act as a tabula rasa, subject to the free attribution of meaning by local social actors. Expanding on theoretical developments in the anthropology of art (Gell 1998) and gender and technology (Strathern 1988, 1999, 2001), the essay seeks to explore genetic technology as a social agent and as a technological 'index'. Examining a case of genetic technology regulation and innovation in Norway, the article argues that technology is best understood as an agent that is engaged with on an affective basis by those who interact with it.

Antropologia visual, práticas antigas e novas perspectivas de investigação

A antropologia visual nasceu em meados do século XIX com a "era da reprodutibilidade técnica" e da expansão industrial. Como se reformula hoje, na era da globalização e da transformação digital, essa disciplina ou convergência disciplinar? Voltada inicialmente para a documentação e preservação de práticas culturais ameaçadas, a antropologia de urgência, como se transformou ao longo do tempo em formas narrativas visuais, sonoras, audiovisuais e, mais recentemente, digitais? Orientada em primeiros passos para alimentar e enriquecer as coleções dos museus, como passa hoje por meio de múltiplas formas e suportes para o espaço público à procura de novos espectadores/atores (ou públicos)? Inicialmente instrumentação que pareceria garantir a objetividade, atribuindo-se-lhe o estatuto de tecnologia de pesquisa ou mesmo de auxiliar de pesquisa, como se confrontou com novos paradigmas epistemológicos ou se antecipou a eles? Voltada sobretudo para o registo das técnicas materiais e rituais e depois para as palavras e as sonoridades, como se orienta hoje no âmbito de novos objetos de estudo como a antropologia da arte, a antropologia do design, a cultura visual em contextos de processos acelerados de transformação social e cultural? Acrescentamos ainda mais duas perguntas às inquietações que nos fazem refletir sobre essa temática: como se repensa atualmente a antropologia visual no âmbito da antropologia? O que fazer com a antropologia visual hoje? Procuraremos traçar algumas formas de práticas antigas que adquirem nova e maior pertinência na era atual (trabalho com os arquivos, a memória, a relação entre o passado e o projeto, os objetos, a cultura material) e perspectivar novas oportunidades, novas práticas, novos objetos de estudo.

On Musical Mediation: Ontology, Technology and Creativity

This article develops a theoretical analysis of music and mediation, building on the work of Theodor Adorno, Tia DeNora and Antoine Hennion. It begins by suggesting that Lydia Goehr’s account of the work concept requires such a perspective. Drawing on Alfred Gell’s anthropology of art, the article outlines an approach to mediation that incorporates understandings of music’s social, technological and temporal dimensions. It suggests that music’s mediations have taken a number of historical forms, which cohere into assemblages, and that we should be alert to shifts in the dominant forms of musical assemblage. In the latter part of the article, these tools are used to conceptualize changing forms of musical creativity that emerged over the twentieth century. A comparison is made between the work concept and jazz and improvised electronic musics. Three contemporary digital music experiments are discussed in detail, demonstrating the concepts of the provisional work and of social, distributed and relayed creativity. Throughout, key motifs are mediation, creativity, and the negotiation of difference.

Dead Canoes: The Fate of Agency in Twentieth-Century Murik Art

<section class="abstract"> In Art and Agency, Alfred Gell seeks to reclaim the anthropology of art for the Durkheimian social. However, in the course of arguing that objects should be viewed as the "outcome, and/or the instrument, of ... agency" (Gell 1998: 15), he takes an essentialized view of the relationship of personhood to embodiment that, on the one hand, preconceives this relationship as consubstantial and, on the other, as static. Nevertheless, viewing art in Gell's way mimics itself; it offers agency, a powerful exegetical methodology for the study of art. In this article, I apply and refine Gell's thesis by means of a historical explication of the theme of agency in the art of the Murik Lakes people, a group of Sepik River fisher folk and traders. More broadly, I argue that Gell's analytical framework in Art and Agency needs to admit that the relationship of art to personhood and modernity is cultural, discursive, and unfinalized, as well as instrumental. </section>

Making Art in the Japanese Way: Nihonga as a Process and Symbolic Action

The aim of the present paper is to show how the school of nihonga is produced institutionally by superimposing features of the traditional paradigm of art-making onto a modern art form in order to “naturalise” it in the Japanese context. It is based on the personal experience of the author as a researcher at the nihonga department of the Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku (National University of Arts and Music) in 7995-97 and has in part been motivated by the conviction that it is far too early to proclaim the problem of “the distinctive” feel “of Japanese culture” a false problem, that the search for national identity in painting and analyzing “the incompatibility of imported styles and domestic sensibility” is still a point at stake among the Japanese artists and art-critics. This conviction is rather vividly supported by public statements of practicing artists on what the Japanese-style painting is, by the exhibitions focusing on the indigenous elements in Japanese art and by the many hours of communication with nihonga artists and students, especially with the well-known Japanese-style painter Okamura Keizaburo whose creative work is a good testimony to the meaningfulness of the problem raised. As the position of the author of this article was swinging from the critical stare of the outside observer to the empathic participation of nearly an insider; this experience will be treated as a sort of a field-work, though the author was not conscious of his activity as of a kind of “anthropology of art” back then.

Edmund Leach: An Anthropological Life

1. Edmund Leach (1910-1989): Achievements 2. Childhood and youth 3. Apprenticeship and the Second World War 4. The anthropologist at work: teacher and theorist 5. The Political Systems of Highland Burma 6. The Frontiers of Burma 7. Pul Eliya: the challenge to the descent group theory 8. Hydraulic Society in Ceylon: contesting Wittfogel's thesis and Sri Lankan mytho-history 9. The engagement with structuralism 10. The comparativist stance: us and them 11. The Structural Analysis of Biblical Narratives (with illustrations) 12. Anthropology of art and architecture (with illustrations) 13. Individuals, social persons and masquerade 14. Leach and Levi Strauss: similarities and differences 15. A Runaway World? 16. British anthropology and colonialism: challenge and response 17. Retrospective assessment and rethinking anthropology 18. The work of sustaining institutions 19. Retirement, retrospection and final illness Bibliography.

Anthropologies of art

This paper discusses how different conceptions of the idea of ‘anthropology’ entail different views of the ‘anthropology of art’. The prevailing notion of anthropology as the Western study of small-scale non-Western societies leads to a conception of the anthropology of art as dealing with the visual arts of these societies or cultures. Anthropology is sometimes also interpreted as referring to a particular approach that is applicable in examining sociocultural phenomena in whatever culture, including its art forms. Both conceptions of anthropology may be considered subsidiary to a more encompassing view of anthropology as the multidisciplinary study of humankind. Following this view, the anthropology of art becomes the comprehensive examination of art in human existence. As such it would coincide with World Art Studies, conceived as the global and multidisciplinary study of the visual arts.

Thinking about artworlds in a global flow: Some major disparities in dealing with visual culture

This article will argue that the differences between art history and the anthropology of art not just due to discipline-driven methodologies, though these are certainly a factor, but also occur because art historians and anthropologists are usually asking rather different questions, and finding the answers in quite different places within the culture. As a starting point I will demonstrate these differences of both approach and result, using two acclaimed studies by anthropologists of African expressive culture, one from the Congo (Zaire), the other from Sierra Leone. Although very different from each other, both downplay the importance of affect, and both assume aesthetic practice is transparent, i.e. that it directly reflects the meaning of life or human behavior. No art historian would make such a confident assumption.

Art in global context: An evolutionary/functionalist perspective for the 21st century

Regarding the arts as something peopledo — as behaviors, rather than the residue or artifacts of behavior — makes possible a theoretical grounding about their nature and importance, an endeavor that current anthropology of art has largely abandoned. A reconsideration of the suspect and largely discarded terms “functionalism” and “evolutionism” is presented in light of current evolutionary thinking. It is suggested that a contemporary reformulation of these concepts, illustrated by the author's Darwinian or “adaptationist” perspective on art, supports aims and claims of current anthropology of art, and contributes new focus and direction to its endeavors.

A natural anthropology of art

This article discusses the relevance of recent developments in neurobiology for the study of art worldwide. It is argued that both anthropologists and art historians can gain a better understanding of species-specific art and art practices over time and space by broadening their vision and approaches, building on the fundamental and exciting findings concerning art in neurobiology.

History of Art and Anthropology of Art

In April 2000, the French president opened a permanent exhibition of primitive art in the Mus?e du Louvre in Paris. Jacques Chirac directly sponsored this exhibition, entrusting a collector and dealer (who was neither an art historian nor an anthropologist) with the task of organizing the entire show. Out of the 150 sculptures from Africa, Oceania, Asia, and the Americas, many were coming from the Mus?e de l'Homme and the Mus?e des Arts Africains et Oc?aniens, others were bought on purpose, and a few more lent by their country of origin. Most of the objects can be labeled as tribal art with the exception of a few archaeological pieces from Africa (If, Nook) and a much larger representation of pre-Columbian, mostly Mesoamerican, art. The media and the public were very pleased with the presentation; the vast rooms had been entirely remodeled including the ceiling and windows; every sculpture but the smallest had its own showcase, accentuating the impression of its uniqueness and absence of context; much space was allowed so viewers could freely turn around in order to have the best look at the objects. Critics and visitors were above all delighted at the thought that primitive art, for a long time neglected if not despised, had received the supreme recognition and consecration by being welcomed under the same roof as Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. A few discordant voices were heard, however, in the French anthropological community, which claimed that this politically correct discourse could not hide the ethnocentrism prevalent in this operation; to anthropologists, the exhibition appeared as a spectacular illustration of the appropriation of non-Western art by Westerners because the objects displayed were only those that Westerners had accepted as belonging to their category art.1 The interest in Primitive art demonstrated by the artistic European avant-garde in the first decades of the twentieth century was presented as a guarantee for this operation, and illustrated in the exhibition by objects that had belonged to prestigious artists such as Max Ernst or Andr? Breton. From the perspective of the producing cultures, the display of objects so diverse in origin could only appear as arbitrary and lacking in coherence. Under the label Sculptures (thus was the title of the catalogue) were presented, among other things, a sapi transverse horn, a baule mice cage for divination, a zulu spoon, a magic stone for obtaining castrated pigs from Vanuatu, a ta?no ceremonial ax, a stool from the same culture, a Teotihuacan mask, and so on. The objects had been selected on the basis of their aesthetic appeal to the Western eye and their authentic?that is, untainted by Western intervention?character. In spite of the information dispensed in the catalogue and accompanying CD-ROM, the visitor left the exhibition without any knowledge of the makers and users of these objects. Thus to many anthropologists, who formerly did not seem to be concerned by these problems, the triumphant entry of primitive art to the Louvre was an opportunity to question the concepts of masterpiece and authenticity in non-Western art, to wonder about the virtues and the sins of collecting and displaying primitive art, and to address the ethical question of acquiring and presenting possible stolen or looted objects. I think that very few scholars specializing in pre Columbian art would follow the collectors' and dealers' ethnocentric trail. The aim of both art historians and

Japanese postage stamps as social agents: some anthropological perspectives

By relating the stamp issues made during the period 1937-89 to the changing Japanese political environment, this paper identifies themes in their designs which involve attempts by government to redefine Japanese national identity and Japan's desired role in the world. The paper suggests why certain other themes, which might have been expected to be prominent, were virtually missing from these stamp issues. The roles of politicians, civil servants and artists/designers in the creation of designs are described. The problems of analysing images on stamps for their social significance, involving theories of symbolism and semiotics aswell as of the anthropology of art, are briefly explored and the choices made for this analysis of their apparent themes are explained. Before the extent and nature of their social agency can be properly assessed, this research needs to be extended to include assessments of how the users of these postage stamps, both in Japan and abroad, interpret and act on their designs. It is also noted that, as a result of stamps becoming a part of material culture, there is a different social agency in their collection which further research may show results in new forms of social bonding.

Nature, culture and the body in classical Greek religious art

This paper explores the relationship between nature, culture and social action in cult statues in archaic and classical Greece. Following the model of recent work in the sociology and anthropology of art, it shifts the focus from decoding the meanings of images, to understanding how artistic languages work to create expressive effects in particular institutional settings. Classical 'naturalism' is characterized as an artistic language with a heightened capacity for the appropriation of natural bodily responses—partly given in universal processes of maturation, partly socially specific to the codification of such maturational processes according to the role system of ancient Greek society—in the construction of affective commitment to social roles defined and validated within Greek myth and religious culture.

A pragmatic impulse in the anthropology of art ? Gell and semiotics

A pragmatic impulse in the anthropology of art ? Gell and semiotics

Nature, culture and the body in classical Greek religious art

This paper explores the relationship between nature, culture and social action in cult statues in archaic and classical Greece. Following the model of recent work in the sociology and anthropology of art, it shifts the focus from decoding the meanings of images, to understanding how artistic languages work to create expressive effects in particular institutional settings. Classical 'naturalism' is characterized as an artistic language with a heightened capacity for the appropriation of natural bodily responses—partly given in universal processes of maturation, partly socially specific to the codification of such maturational processes according to the role system of ancient Greek society—in the construction of affective commitment to social roles defined and validated within Greek myth and religious culture.

The use of photographs in mourning and bereavement and the anthropology of art

This reviews the use of photographs of dead significant others in mourning and bereavement in contemporary Western societies. It compares this to the employment of memorial effigies in non‐Western societies or artefacts associated with the dead person. It describes the way in which selected photographs serve to represent the deceased as a means of externalising emotions in periods of mourning and bereavement. This type of relationship, in which a photograph is used as an instrument to represent the attachment to the deceased subject, has important implications for the anthropological study of artefacts.