Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production

Maruska Svasek

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781783714759
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides an introduction to anthropological perspectives on art. Svasek defines art as a social process. We study not only the artefacts themselves and the values attributed to them, but also the process of production and its wider context. Providing a critical overview of various anthropological theories of art, Svasek offers a new perspective which centres on the analysis of commoditisation, aestheticisation and object agency. She explores the process of collecting and exhibiting art works and how this relates to art's production, distribution and consumption in an increasingly global market. The book outlines the significance of art and aesthetics in everyday life, and examines the shifting boundaries between art and other categories such as kitsch, souvenirs, propaganda and pornography. Finally, Svasek argues for an anthropological perspective that links the production and consumption of artefacts to political, religious and other cultural processes. Ideal as a teaching text, this book gives a detailed overview of themes that are central to the fields of art history, art sociology and cultural studies.

Part 1

Theorising Art

1	INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS ART?

When considering the different ways anthropologists might help to explain what many of us regard as artistic behaviour, we would very likely ask them the question: what is art? The question can be interpreted in two distinct ways. On the one hand, it demands to know the criteria by which objects that are often seemingly incomparable, such as Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, Damien Hirst’s dissected cow in formaldehyde and Australian Aboriginal Dream Paintings can be similarly classified as ‘works of art’. The pursuit of common qualities that can bridge the divide between such distinctly different objects is sometimes referred to as a generalising system. Adopted by many anthropologists in the past, this approach claimed that all societies produce artefacts that are considered valuable, and that, while the objects themselves might differ wildly, the common motivation to create such objects is derived from distinct human behaviour that exists in all societies. By analysing art in its correct cultural and social context, supporters of this approach argued that art can be compared across different societies, civilisations and nations, in a similar way to politics or religion. Melville Herskovits, for example, suggests that ‘[i]n the widest sense … art is to be thought of as any embellishment of ordinary living that is achieved with competence and has describable form’ (1948: 380).

Broad definitions such as this argue that, because art exists in all societies, it constitutes a universal category that can be used not only to explain what art is, but can also be used as an analytical tool to explore similar types of behaviour involved in the production, use, and consumption of objects and artefacts in different parts of the world. As Chapters 2 and 3 demonstrate, this perspective is problematic because it disregards the fact that art is itself a ‘set of historically specific ideas and practices that have shifted meanings across the course of the centuries’ (Errington 1998: 103).¹ In other words, taking art out of its social and historical setting to analyse and explain other social or cultural habits presupposes that definitions of art are somehow timeless and free from preconceived ideas, which clearly is not the case.

In their pursuit of a broad definition that would allow them to identify and compare different artefacts in different cultures and societies, supporters of the generalising approach found that the broader their definitions, the more meaningless they became. The anthropologist Roy Sieber (1973b: 431), for example, proposed a definition of art that distinguished eight principal qualities, namely that art is man-made, exhibits skill, exhibits order, conveys meaning, is the product of conscious intent, is effective, conveys a sense of unity and wholeness, and evokes a response that is immediate. He believed that, if used sensibly, this list could be used to identify art in different cultural settings, but he was quickly forced to acknowledge that the list was inadequate and needed constant revision and adaptation.

More recently, Richard Anderson (2000) proposed a theoretical definition of art that outlined certain combinations of highly probable artistic features.² In the hope of avoiding the ethnocentric projection of one society’s ideas of what constitutes art upon another, and aiming to challenge what he considered an artificial separation of high-brow and popular art, he argued that ‘[l]ike a chameleon, the word “art” takes on different colors, depending on the verbal foliage in which it is found’ (2000: 5). He distinguished a number of what he defined as objective qualities in order to help scholars establish whether a particular artefact could be considered art or not.³ Again, however, using a list of artistic qualities to determine what was or was not art soon proved highly unreliable. Anderson’s own study of art in America revealed that, while his approach did indeed erase the divisions between high and low art forms, it failed to differentiate between art and a range of other activities that could not reasonably be considered to have any claim to be art at all. His attempts to evaluate art by appraising the artist’s commitment to his medium for instance, forced him to concede that, on those criteria even a committed comic-book reader could be considered a great artist (2000: 107). By overextending his classifications, his category of ‘art’ became meaningless.

In contrast to this generalising approach, this book offers an alternative answer to the question ‘What is art?’ Instead of considering art as a universal category, it instead stresses the processual nature of art production, and identifies the many different factors that influence the ways in which people experience and understand it. Instead of generalising definitions of art that often prove deceptive simplifications, which hide or distort complex historical processes, the book aims to analyse the conflicting definitions of art and aesthetics in specific socio-historical contexts.

OBJECT TRANSIT AND TRANSITION

When exploring why objects are considered art in a particular period and in a particular social setting, it is crucial to analyse two processes referred to in this book as transit and transition. Transit records the location or movement of objects over time and across social or geographic boundaries, while transition analyses how the meaning, value and status of those objects, as well as how people experience them, is changed by that process. The works of Vincent van Gogh provide a good example of precisely that type of change. During the artist’s lifetime, his paintings were only appreciated by a small number of people and were not the highly valuable artworks they are today. Even though Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s older brother, managed to sell some of the works through a gallery in The Hague, the paintings were not in high demand and therefore did not pass extensively through the hands of dealers in networks that invariably stretched across Europe and North America. Most art lovers were not enchanted by the paintings, and there was no shortage of art experts ready to dismiss the artist’s technique as falling far short of the high standard required of ‘fine art’. Yet, over time, as artistic fashions changed, the paintings gained in status and financial value, and were marketed and sold as leading examples of avant-garde painting. Eventually, they were sought out by influential collectors and prestigious museums in different parts of the world, and presented as aesthetically powerful masterpieces. In terms of the process of transit, from the moment van Gogh finished painting his canvasses, they were over time transported over ever greater distances to private collections and public galleries where, as part of the process of transition, their status and meaning shifted from relatively worthless objects attracting few collectors and viewers to priceless artworks recognised internationally as ranking among the most sought-after ever created.

The processes of transit and transition are always shaped by the different relations between institutions or individuals who produce, consume, give, take, buy, sell, use, or display artefacts (Marcus and Myers 1995; Price 1989; Steiner 1994). These relations might sometimes be of a purely business character, between art dealers for example, or characterised by dependency in the case of an artist and his dealer who sells his paintings or a private collector who supports him financially as a form of patronage. In the case of van Gogh’s works, in terms of how they are bought and sold today, only a small circle of the super-rich or well-funded galleries can afford to purchase them, which, in terms of transit, determines the type of locations where they can be found. That limitation adds to their value by making them an important symbol of economic power and prestige that increases the owner’s social status. This same mechanism of supply, demand and prestige attached to particular objects not only functions within art markets, but also in other markets with collectable items that can range from stamps, autographs and baseball cards, to almost anything that is available in limited numbers and deemed of value by the group of people who seek to own it.

POLITICAL DIMENSIONS AND OTHER CONTEXTUAL DYNAMICS

When artefacts are shifted from one location to another as part of the process of transit, or when the values of the society where they are located undergo transition, they can become entangled with national and international political or religious issues. Governments of countries that were once the colonies of former imperial powers such as Britain, continue to demand the return of artefacts considered of national importance. The Elgin Marbles, for instance, sculptures that once adorned the Athens Parthenon, were taken to Britain by Lord Elgin in the nineteenth century, and continue to be a source of contention between Greece and the United Kingdom. Similarly, one of Ethiopia’s most sacred monuments, the Axum obelisk, which was taken to Rome by Italian soldiers in the 1930s, has recently been returned, ending decades of dispute. Why some of these objects are given back while others remain in the hands of their present owners, and to what extent these artefacts are symbols of domination or resistance are issues addressed in depth in Chapter 6.

As an example of how, by transition, the status of an immobile object can change due to a shift in the values of the society where it is located, one only has to consider the recent destruction of the giant Bamiyan statues of Buddha in Afghanistan. Located on territory controlled by the Taliban regime, which enforced a fundamentalist doctrine of Islam, giant statues carved out of mountainsides some 1,500 years ago when the local society was largely Buddhist, were destroyed on the grounds that they were now unacceptable to Islamic teaching. In contrast to the attitude of Western governments and the governments of Buddhist nations, which argued that the statues should be preserved as one of the artistic wonders of the world, their destruction was celebrated by Taliban supporters. The different ways in which artefacts can simultaneously be valued in religious, political, artistic, cultural and financial terms are addressed throughout the book, and highlight the importance of contextualising our understanding of artefacts.

In terms of identifying the location or milieu of an object, this book adopts a multi-layered, processual concept of what constitutes a context. Context should not be thought of as a static, secure box in which supposedly unproblematic categories of art are kept, but as a setting that is liable to change and that requires extensive social and historical knowledge to provide more complete theories about the interaction between artistic and non-artistic processes. Rather than the metaphor of a box, context might better be thought of as a river, which has the power to divert its own course or erode its banks and reshape the landscape.⁴ Discourses about art, as well as the different ways it is practised and experienced, both influence and are influenced by wider societal processes. A more fluid perspective of contextual dynamics can provide insights into the production of art and its aesthetic values. The hierarchical observance of one aesthetic principle of art over another can also be used to promote values or justify conditions that are enforced elsewhere in society. As discussed later in the book, such examples can arise in many different forms, in particular where they are used to reflect unequal power structures as was often the case in former colonies where foreign governments sought to justify their rule over indigenous populations.

To illustrate the point, when Amon Kotei, an aspiring young artist studying at Achimota Art College in the British Gold Coast in the 1930s, sculpted a realistic and technically skilled bust of an African head, his angry British teacher dismissed his efforts with the remark: ‘This is European art!’ (Svašek 1997c). The colonial staff insisted that African students refrain from imitating ‘superior’ Western art forms, and remain true to their own ‘less sophisticated’ tradition. Instead of indulging in realism, they were instructed to make traditional artefacts such as fertility statues and wooden stools, which, according to the colonial teachers, reflected norms and values that were timeless, unchanging and specific to Africa. In this particular case, Western artistic and cultural superiority was promoted by colonial art teachers through their promotion of certain aesthetic values and was part of a wider political discourse that sought to justify the British presence in what is now Ghana. Art education was just one of the many areas of social life on which the colonial power similarly sought to stamp its authority. At the same time, however, the decision by some students to oppose their teachers’ instructions by continuing to produce ‘European’ art turned their work into an act of resistance indicative of wider political discontent with British rule. The pressure put on artists to remain true to their supposedly unchanging forms of traditional African art, and their resistance to these aesthetic norms, must be analysed against the context of political domination and resistance that characterised the period and society (Svašek 1997c).

The process by which art is conceptualised in a particular socio-historical setting, and how that conceptualisation relates to other activities and processes in a society, is another issue central to this book. The clash between African students and colonial teachers in the former British Gold Coast demonstrates how the concept of ‘art’ is often contested in thought as well as action. The two groups used the English term ‘art’ to refer to the same process of creating artefacts, but both had very different interpretations of the aesthetic definition of the word. Understanding the social setting of conflicts that might be predominantly intellectual highlights why context is vital to understanding how and why struggles over definitions of art come about. In other words, in seeking answers to the question ‘What is art?’ we need to examine the ways in which particular artistic discourses are shaped by political, economic, social and cultural factors that are historically specific.

It is not just in relations between different societies and cultures that we find conflicting ideas about what constitutes art. Definitions of ‘art’ are often just as fiercely contested by different groups within the same society, and often highlight the different forms of interrelation between art production, professionalisation and social distinction. Consider, for example, the case of Wim Delvoye, a Belgian artist who exhibited his controversial artwork entitled Cloaca in Antwerp’s Mukha Museum in October 2000.

The exhibit was a costly working reproduction of the human digestive tract, complete with mouth, stomach, bowels, human enzymes, bacteria and a glass anus, which became popularly known as the ‘shit machine’. Constructed at a cost of well over a £100,000, with the help of biologists, Delvoye’s artwork was fed three times a day by a local gourmet restaurant on luxury foods that included champagne and oysters. At the end of each day, the glass anus ejected excrement that was then sealed in Perspex jars and sold to eager collectors at a price that quickly spiralled above £1,000. Not surprisingly, the artwork evoked a wide range of reactions among art critics and the public alike.

Some members of the public lavished praise on the work, while those hostile to the idea that excrement could be considered a valuable artwork suggested it was further proof of the debauched mindset of contemporary artists, who, lacking genuine skill to produce artworks worthy of past masters, had resorted to trading in toilet jokes. Critics opposed to the work claimed that the artist was engaging in an exclusive artistic discourse unintelligible to the non-cognoscenti. People who rejected the work did so for the most part because the artwork did not fit with their own aesthetic preferences and expectations about what constituted art. The amount of money spent on building it and the gourmet catering bills also caused many to draw comparison between the decadent waste of food and the plight of people starving in the Third World. The idea of waste, according to the artist, was central to the artwork: ‘I wanted to emphasise that art in itself is a decadent business because no artwork has ever done anything to improve the world.’⁵

For some modern art supporters up to date with twentieth-century art, however, the work was considered more a cliché than shocking. The conceptual artist, in their view, was simply incorporating elements of early twentieth-century modernist movements, such as Dada and Surrealism. From an historical perspective, Cloaca was relatively conventional in its aim of shocking audiences by displaying a form of human excretion. Over 70 years before, the French artist Marcel Duchamp claimed he had transformed a urinal into art by exhibiting it in a gallery and, in the 1960s, the Italian artist Piero Manzoni had sold his own excrement as artwork in tins labelled ‘Merde d’Artista’. For this reason, some artists and critics dismissed the work as too conventional. Despite vociferous public hostility, however, Cloaca attracted a record number of visitors to the museum and, even though many did not attach any aesthetic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Part 1: Theorising Art
• Part 2: Objects, Transit and Transition
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index