Tourism Art and Souvenirs

The Material Culture of Tourism

David Hume

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415839440
• eBook ISBN: 9781135038229
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

This book examines the relationship between art and tourism through the study of the material culture of tourism: tourist art and souvenirs. It thoroughly examines how to categorise the material culture of tourism within the discourses of contemporary art and cultural anthropology, and demonstrates that tourist art is a unique expression of place and genuine artistic style. The first investigation to consider the activity of souvenirs from both indigenous and settler tourist sites, it brings a unique addition to the existing, dated, research in the area.Working initially from Graburn's definition of tourist art, as the art of one culture made specifically for the consumption of another, Tourism Art and Souvenirs sheds light on important aspects of the souvenir that have not been widely discussed. The most recent research is used to consider how the souvenir is designed and consumed, consumer expectations and influence on the character of the souvenir, how the souvenir maker is consumed by the tradition of heritage and how products become successful as souvenirs. The title also investigates the language involved in the representation of place and the recording of experience through the souvenir, developing a method that expresses the descriptive data of individual souvenir artefacts graphically so the patterns of language may be analysed.Enhancing the understanding of material culture in tourism and therefore adding to future tourism development this volume will be of interest to upper level students, researchers and academics in tourism, culture, heritage and sustainability.

1 Introduction

While tourism looked squarely in the eye is less attractive, almost shameful, to the principled and actively curious, we are all addicted to it. The compulsion to travel – to look, to perceive, to absorb and perhaps even understand something that will alter one’s preconceptions – is deeply ingrained in Western culture.

(Lippard 1999b: 87)

Today these sentiments resound in almost every corner of the globe. Tourist towns, from the southern-most tip of Australia to the far northern outposts of the North American continent, harbour a relationship with their seasonal visitors that is shaded with, largely unspoken, resentment, shame, or, at least, ambivalence. It is resentment not so much for the tourists themselves, but for the reliance upon tourism that has replaced a former mode of existence. A way of life that once offered what is, romantically, perceived as a better way. These idylls are the grist of tourist brochures and other promotional forms. They are represented through carefully selected images of pristine and picturesque vistas that allude to a way of life that may now only be sampled in short blocks of time, in controlled and often artificial environments. Such images situate the potential tourist in a time warp, in which he or she can experience pleasures and satisfactions, promoted in such images that are now rare, unknown and even forbidden, in the tourist’s daily environment. Many such idylls now survive only in the representation of heritage, large and small, and are contrived for the benefit of the tourist in formalised theme parks, eco attractions, spectacles and souvenirs.

If the images presented in glossy tourist brochures, with their idyllic view through the window, function as the opening bracket that marks off a period of unsustainable hedonism, in the form of the annual holiday, then the souvenir operates as the closing bracket that, like the holiday snap, sustains the experience and marks the end of the holiday mode. For, as an aide-memoire, the souvenir’s power rests in its ability to drag the experience of the destination into the tourist’s ordinary life and that activity is, moreover, the subject of this project.

Tourism is a highly organised and sophisticated activity, formed of large ephemeral social groups that come together for a fortnight or so in an unfamiliar environment. Like other social groups, tourists develop characteristics that help bind them together. This solidarity occurs through many behavioural patterns that have, at their core, the penchant for excess. While the tourist is on holiday, he or she is liberated from the daily routine of work, rest, and play. For the short period of the holiday, he or she does not have to think about where the next meal is coming from, or getting to work on time – play, in the form of leisure, is in the ascendant. As a result, tourists will spend more money in a fortnight than they would normally spend in a month at home.¹ Such is the nature of excess among a tourist society, that it constitutes the main ingredient of the glue that binds the ephemeral community together. It is the single most identifiable characteristic of tourist culture and, sometimes, not without a painful effect on the host culture.

There are many examples of destinations spoiled by their popularity, while some are indeed characterised as much by the continued presence of tourists as by their own unique features.² For the most part the attractions endure through careful management, while it is the attendant host society that, in some way, produced the destination that undergoes the most significant change. These alterations may be summarised as ‘social and economic’ (Smith, V. 1977: 4–5).³ At worst tourism results in the ‘disruption of the local economic system’ (ibid.).⁴ Even if less evident, however, tourism’s effects on the social structure of the host community are just as far-reaching. Smith suggests that ‘the effects of tourism upon the lives and worldview of an indigenous population are subtle, and usually only recognised by the people themselves and the anthropologist who was there before and after tourism’ (ibid.: 7). It is these structural alterations to the host culture that most affect the art and craft of that community. For many social theorists and anthropologists, culture is the glue of social cohesion and, according to Greenwood (1977), this glue comes unstuck under the pressure of tourism.⁵

This is a rather pessimistic view of tourism, and one I intend to counter through the course of this project. It is my contention that if the intention of, say, the ritual dance or artefact is communication and social cohesion, and it has endured many generations without drastic change to its meaning and purpose, then it is likely to be robust enough to communicate between different cultures. Rather than being destroyed, as Greenwood would have it, the aim of the souvenir artefact is altered and it now communicates to and coheres the ephemeral community of tourists, and provides a path of integration between guest and guest, host and host, guest and host, or tourist and destination.⁶ Indeed, as MacCannell (1976: 53), among others points out, ‘In some areas, local handicrafts would have passed into extinction except for the intervention of mass tourism and the souvenir market.’

The most enduring evidence of the tourist’s consumption is to be found in the art and craft directed to this ephemeral society, for like all societies, or communal groups, tourism produces a particular style of art in the form of the souvenir. As an artefact of tourism, the humble souvenir serves many purposes. From the perspective of the producer, the souvenir needs to represent the culture and heritage of the tourist destination, that is, his or her home or part thereof: the more nodes of heritage that can be tastefully invested in the souvenir by the maker, and recognised by the consumer, the better. An object made from a material indigenous to the tourist destination is a good start. If the object represents some aspect of the destination’s heritage, then all the better, and, if it carries with it the mark of the maker, who happens to be a local craftsperson, then better still. In this transition, formerly utilitarian artefacts are altered through artistic imagination and may be bracketed somewhere between art work and anthropological artefact, as I will demonstrate.

For fine art objects and anthropological artefacts, some authentication is required, such as title, maker, date and medium. For the souvenir, however, authentication is differently described. The date of production is relatively unimportant, as the date of collection takes precedence. This date is locked in through the memory of the collector, and the collector’s experience of the site, and the souvenir will assist in the recollection of the experience. In this respect the souvenir is a geographic artefact, rather than a historical object, in that it privileges place before time. The name of the producer is also frequently subsumed by that of the collector and, as I will show later, the object often becomes known as part of an esteemed collection that refers to the travel experiences of the collector. The individual title of the souvenir is also of minimal importance and defers in preference to a generic description that refers to the place of collection and/or culture of production. In many cases, as will become apparent, the medium of the souvenir assumes priority, especially when it is unique to the destination.

The difficulty with souvenirs rests in their selection, relying on a sort of commercial foraging activity. Unlike a conventional object of fine art, presented in a gallery, against an austere neutral background, the souvenir appears with a jumble of other such goods, vying for attention. In a gallery or museum the collector understands that the object is a work of art and that it is good, or at least accorded some value and status of aesthetic worth. The same may be said of the anthropological artefact in that the museum lends status and authenticity to the object, if not to its aesthetic quality. In this respect, the presence of the souvenir in a museum works against the museum’s scholarly authentication of the anthropological artefact, but that is a complex area that I will elaborate on, and clarify, at a later stage.

In the case of the work of art, the value of the object is implied by the setting, but for the souvenir, which I might add will be shown to be at times also a work of art, the place of collection is paramount.⁷ That is, while the work of art must be of value in itself, the souvenir’s key value is in its ability to mark the collector’s experience of the site, and that is a very different aesthetic judgement.⁸

The souvenir collector must engage in a value judgement based on his or her own knowledge and understanding of the site: what materials are endemic to the site and what skills, crafts and aesthetic values are bound historically within the culture. Then, above all, the tourist must trust his or her own aesthetic judgement and always be on guard against fraudulent imitations, such as coffee mugs emblazoned with Australian flags and emblems that are made in China, or plywood boomerangs. If art is a matter of aesthetics, then aesthetic judgement would seem to receive greater independent exercise in the markets, tourist precincts, roadside stalls and souvenir shops than in art galleries and museums, where aesthetics and taste are institutionally defined and served up to the viewer on a neutral tone plinth. In the souvenir shop, the only guide to taste is in the labels attached to the artefact, perhaps some advice from the proprietor and, most importantly, the buying habits of other tourists.

The tourist must measure the quality of the work against the souvenir’s ability to record the touristic experience. In so doing, the tourist, as collector, will tend to discount the artistic merit of the object in favour of the object’s ability to sustain the experience. In this, the collector is prepared to accede to the surplus value of the object, a value that is not inherent in the material or labour involved in the object’s production or in artistic merit.⁹ For the souvenir collector, the primary value is initially invested by the maker and enhanced by the collector’s perceived value of the object as a marker of place and experience. This capacity – to mark and sustain the tourist’s experience – adds significant value to the artefact, a value that has more to do with the tourist’s overwhelming need to lock the experience onto a material anchor than the worth of the artefact, which can obscure aesthetic shortcomings in the souvenir artefact. But, like all art, it is the principle of exchange, the exchange of experience and information and emotional response, that is at the core of the souvenir’s function.

In their selection of souvenirs, tourists tend to act as a cohesive group and seek not only an object that will serve as a mnemonic device to recall the experience, but one that also demonstrates that experience to others of the group and previous groups. In this way, the cohesiveness of tourism extends historically. The collection of similar souvenirs, travel art and the material culture of other societies by early travellers and explorers provides a starting point from which it is possible to detect the development and transition of many objects, from functional artefact within the culture of origin, to souvenirs with a more expanded language. To explore this further, it is necessary to backtrack through the long, formative history of contemporary tourism and the collection of material goods from ‘Other’ cultures. In glancing backwards, I will demonstrate the historical precedence of the claims I have made here with regard to touristic behaviour and souvenir collection.

Method of assessment

The aim of this book is to investigate how one might categorise the material culture of tourism within the discourses of contemporary art and cultural anthropology and, in part, to demonstrate that tourist art is a unique expression of place and genuine artistic style. Although a number of researchers have considered the objects of tourism and their place within the history of material culture, this is the first investigation to consider the activity of souvenirs from both indigenous and settler tourist sites. This book investigates the common expression and language involved in the representation of place and the recording of experience through the souvenir.

Through the course of this project I have come to recognise five key components in the language of souvenirs. I have then been able to develop a method that expresses the descriptive data of individual souvenir artefacts graphically, so that the patterns of the language may be analysed in accordance with the principles of Structural Anthropology.¹⁰

Until now, souvenirs have been divided into two groups: the ‘Sampled’ and the ‘Representative’ (Stewart 1984). This binary division of souvenirs was established on the grounds that Sampled souvenirs are souvenirs of individual experience that are not available as general consumer goods (ibid.: 138). These objects are collected directly by the tourist, with no intervention or mediation by the host culture. They often take the shape of sea shells or pebbles washed smooth by the tide, wild flowers, dried and pressed, or animal remains.

This type of souvenir collecting finds its history in those collections of ‘Naturalia’ (Pearce 1995: 32) gathered by the scientific company of early explorers and conforms to what Pearce (ibid.) calls a ‘systematic mode of collection’, in that the imperative was to relate the exotic samples to a known botanical system.

Stewart’s (1984: 138) Representative category includes ‘souvenirs of exterior sights … which most often are representations and are purchasable’. Here Stewart places all other souvenirs. They are objects that may properly be called artefacts in that they are produced from human mediation and interpretation. This category embraces, on the one hand, postcards, wilderness posters and calendars and, on the other, crafted objects, such as Stewart’s own example of a miniature basket (ibid.) and other crafted souvenirs like clay pots, didgeridoos, boomerangs, lathe-turned timber trinkets, models and postcards. In short, Stewart’s Representative category includes souvenirs made from both endemic and generic materials. It is clear, from this range of souvenir artefacts, that there is the need to subdivide this category.

As a result, I have established a new ‘Crafted’ category of souvenirs that distinguishes between those artefacts crafted from endemic materials and those produced from generic media. This is achieved by recognising the deficiencies in Stewart’s division of souvenirs into two categories: the Sampled and the Representative. First, it fails to recognise the relationship, based on media, that exists between artefacts contained in the two categories and, second, it does not address the difference between a souvenir crafted from an endemic material and a souvenir produced from generic media. The new Crafted category is epitomised by artefacts that function as Sampled souvenirs, through their endemic medium yet, at the same time, operate as Representative souvenirs because the endemic medium is modified through craft, often to represent the heritage of the visited site, and presented as a purchasable commodity. The Crafted category is established on the basis that the production of this type of souvenir is developed from the traditional use of endemic materials. As a result, the revised Representative category now accounts for souvenirs made from a generic medium, such as postcards.

However, the selection of raw materials, design and manufacture of souvenir artefacts accounts for only one part of the process by which certain artefacts are framed as souvenirs. It is only when the artefact is consumed by the tourist that it functions as a souvenir. In order to fully establish the new Crafted category I examine how souvenirs from this group function differently to those from the other categories.

This is achieved by analysing the visual language of souvenirs, as artefacts of cross-cultural exchange. The visual codes of these artefacts contain information about the site and/or culture they depict. The destination is consumed by the tourist who, in turn, invests the artefact with his or her narrative for the purpose of recording the experience of that site and/or culture. Depending on the type of souvenir, the subsequent narrative is shown to develop in different ways, resulting in different patterns of expression from the three distinct groups of souvenir.

For this to happen, the artefact in question must first attract the eye of the tourist and ultimately act as a material anchor for the reiteration of the tourist’s experience. The souvenir must make the tourist’s holiday tales believable or, at least, enhance and sustain the experience once the holiday has finished. This is the prime responsibility of souvenirs that, in the Crafted and Representative categories, occurs through the exchange of narrative between cultures. This narrative is initiated by the maker and advanced by the collector.

In Chapter 2, I examine the cross-cultural exchange of information from a historical perspective. I show how the fascination with the artefacts of exotic cultures dates back, at least, to the Roman Empire. Then how the souveniring impulse begins to emerge with the early modern collection of the artefacts of other cultures (by colonial explorers, missionaries and early anthropologists, as the agents of colonial contact) and then was fully developed during the Romantic period through the agency of the Grand Tourist.

This latter period saw the display of exotic artefacts in Wunderkammer collections, which enabled the collector to demonstrate the exotic places and cultures that ‘he’ had experienced. From this I recognise a similar pattern of display to that of the contemporary souvenir, and I show how both collections operate to enhance what Phillips and Steiner (1999: 3) term the ‘knowledge, power and wealth’ of the collector. In turn, both the Wunderkammer and souvenir collections are shown to operate as material anchors for the collector’s stories about exotic people and places, or holiday anecdotes.

My next move is to scrutinise the collecting motive of the anthropologist as the proto-tourist. Here I show that the anthropolo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The European collection of ‘Other’ cultures: a historical structure from which to assess tourist art and souvenirs
• 3 Souvenirs and the anthropological gaze: the study and reception of souvenirs over the last half century
• 4 The souvenir and the fetish
• 5 Contexts of display: tourist art in recent museogallery exhibitions
• 6 The language of souvenirs: three discrete groups – the Sampled, Crafted and Representative
• 7 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index