May 26, 2005
Notes on
Immanuel Kant
Critique of Judgement
Well, this as many Kantian text proves to be very rich as well as very complex. According to Kant, there is no empirical basis of proof that could compel anyone to make some judgement of taste. A judgment of state is not the same as a judgment of reason. Judgements of taste are synthetic since they go beyond the concept of the object and even beyond the intuition of the object and add a predicate (pleasant feeling). How are synthetic judgments possible a priori? Mechanical art versus aesthetic art which arises feelings of pleasure/. Art canbe called fine art only if we are conscious that it is art while yet it looks to us like nature. Antimony concerning the principle of taste: Thesis: not based in concepts. Antithesis: based on concepts. An audience approaches a work disinterested, not meaning with no interest at all, but there is not a real rational engagement with the work to consider an aesthetic value.
* If art merely performs the acts that are required to make a possible object actual, adequately to our cognition of that object, then it is mechanical art: but if what it intends directly is [to arouse] the feeling of pleasure, then it is called aesthetic art. The latter is wither agreeable or fine art.
Nature, we say, is beautiful if it also looks like art: and art can be called fine art only if we are conscious that it is art while yet it looks to us like nature.
Notes on
RG Collingwood
The Principles of art
Collingwood presents a view of art and artistic expression. His view is based on expressionism. He emphasizes that art is arrived at by using ones emotions and becoming conscious of these emotions. For him the work of art is not the expression of the emotions but the effort taken in order to express that emotion which is being felt. Collingwood also explains how art is not only based on taste or aesthetics, but that is intimately connected with oneself in many aspects, such as the intellectual, social, imaginative and affective. The creation of a work is an act of imaginative creation and the appreciation of any work supposedly recreates those emotions and thoughts that were used in order to create it.
* What we get out of a work of art is always divisible in two parts. There is specialized sensous experieence, an experience of seeing or hearing as the case may be. There is also a non-specialized imaginative experience, involving not only elements homogeneous, after their imaginary fashion, but others heterogeneous with them.
Notes on
GWF Hegel
Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art
Emphasizes the spirit of a culture developed in their art. The spirit of art has first a universal sense. and afterwards acquires a partivular sense and the final part is when it acquires an individualization of artistic beauty. Three relations of the idea to its configuration. Symbolic art:a mere search for portrayal. Classical: affords the production and vision of the completed Ideal and presents it as actualized in fact. The third one is the romantic form. good conclusion: “Now, therefore, what the particular arts realize in individual works of art is, according to the Concept of art, only the universal forms of the self-unfolding Idea of Beauty. It is as the external actualization of this Idea that the wide Pantheon of art is rising. Its architect and builder is the self-comprehending spirit of beauty, but to complete it will need the history of the world in its development thorought thousands of years.
* Artistic configuration and its differences are on the one hand, as spiritual, of a more universal kind and not bound to one material, and sensous existence is itself differentiated in numerous ways, but since this existence, like spirit, has the Concept implicitly for its inner soul, a pecific sensous material does thereby, on the other hand, acquire a closer relation and a secret harmony with the spiritual differences and forms of artistic configuration.
three parts of this science universal-particular-final.
What the particular arts realize in individual works of art is, according to the concept of art, only the universal forms of the self-unfolding idea of beauty. It is as the external actualization of this Idea that the wide Pantheon of art is rising.
Notes on
Franz Boas
Primitive Art
He asserts that all human activities may assume forms that give them esthetic values. By appealing to the senses, activities may acquire esthetic values. This is very interesting for it is a broad explanation for acquiring esthetic appeal, and he will extend his thought into the realm of how broad art may be. Moreover, he says that art is a process or processes by which certain typical forms are produced (after having acquired a technical virtuosity). Thus, fixity of forms are closely connected to the idea of beauty, according to Boas; since this fixity is only acquired by having acquired a highly developed technique or virtuosity. This stability of forms would lead to style, otherwise non-existent. Furthermore, he separates ideas and objects. And when an idea is presented in an object, it adds meaning by acting as a symbol. He studies the Eskimo throwing sticks which have the same function but are designed differently in each tribe. Boas also shows the conservativism of forms both in industrialized societies as in pre-industrial groups. Also of interest is Boas’ consideration of the artisan. He tries to explain how in some tribes it is hard to extract any knowledge of the object produced from the maker (because of a lack of intimate knowledge both personal and cultural), whereas in others it is not so difficult to engage thru the maker into the overall meaning of the work. Artisans and artists are terms that we always keep trying to define with my friends beyond the usual criteria of repetition and social purposes of the objects made, so Boas discussion shed some light on that subject for me.
*The woven bags of the Ojibwa are gorgeous.
Another interesting aspect found in Boas’ essay was the similarity found between ‘western’ art as well as other people’s art, in the collaborations and influences that develop in art.
*The bulk of the makers of objects of everyday use are, therefore, imitators, not originators, and the mass of uniform material that is in use and constantly seen will restrict the free play of imagination of the original minds. There is probably not a single region in existence in which the style may be understood entirely as an inner growth and an expression of cultural life of a single tribe.
Notes on
Raymond Firth
Art and Anthropology
Firth raises interesting points on art. He shows how the Western view of art is not a completely correct definition in that it has to be extended for it to encompass ‘exotic’ art. He also gives a remarkable argument to break the differentiation between art and craft, given historical artistic expressions such as the Bauhaus utilitarian works. Also fascinating is the connection found in nature and its aesthetic appeal. Thus, artistic beauty is not only man-made, since natural beauty is not opposed to artificial beauty. Hehe, the acid test of aesthetic value-high auction prices (remember to quote often). A fascinating aspect of anthropology of art is the arduous search for the implicit and explicit meanings of art in that, as Firth explained, there may be meanings that cannot be put into words but are very important to the maintenance of their art. Firth also demonstrates how ‘exotic art’ continuously develops and is not stagnant or unalterable in style.
*Tension or ambiguity in a work of art, from our own or an alien culture, there probably must be. But it can be of a very diffuse kind, concerned with the effort to grasp novel patterns of colour, line, mass, or sound, and relate them to our existing experience.
The concept ‘art’ as such is alien to the practice and presumably the thought of many of the peoples studied by anthropologists, who try to present the people’s own iconic classification as a whole. Then, many simple iconic forms can bear a strong semantic charge, which puts them alongside more elaborate ritual forms to which the designation of art would be given-for example, the cross in much Christian sculpture.
Modern studies have revealed that the alleged ‘traditional’ has often been a product of an early contact with Western industrial influences, including steel tools.
Notes on
Clifford Geertz
Art as a Cultural System
Geertz correctly says that art is hard to talk about, and people may become very simplistic or give many different meanings to different works, which may be unnecessary.
*Understanding the song of a bird must be nice. Would birds appreciate it as much as we do (from a sound perspective)? How does this appreciation apply in humans and the artistic expressions in different cultures?
-Nice quote: “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”
Geertz also presents the view that social environments define much of a person’s perception of beauty. Which I believe is very true, sometimes it may be harmful when people are very close minded and are not able to appreciate other people’s aesthetic values. So, it becomes a system of cultural symbols. And these symbols are easily read by the people belonging to a certain culture but may also be learnt by a ‘foreign’ person into that culture. Many of those symbols may overlap in cultures. By analyzing XV century italian painting, he shows the symbols, meanings, and ideas applied to the works of the time. As well as by analyzing Morrocan poetry. He asserts that the most popular meaning of a work stays with it. Sometimes undermining that work or applying individual morale to indoctrinate it into others. Objectivity is also a cause of cultural indoctrination through art. He believes that what seems important is not the works per se but the factors that caused these statues, painting or poems.
*The capacity, variable among peoples as it is among individuals to perceive meaning in pictures (or poems, melodies, buildings, pots, dramas, statues) is, like all other fully human capacities, a product of collective experience which far transcends it, as is the far rarer capacity to put it there in the first place. It is out of participation in the general system of symbolic forms we call culture that participation in the particular we call art, which is in fact but a sector of it, is possible. A theory of art is thus at the same time a theory of culture, not an autonomous enterprise. And if it is a semiotic theory of art it must trace the life of signs in society, not in an invented world of dualities, transformations, parallels and equivalences.
Notes on
H. Morphy
From Dull to Brilliant: The Aesthetics of Spiritual Power Among the Yolngu
To study the aesthetic of Yolngu paintings, Morphy denies the relationist perspective of aesthetic value that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Since artists try to send certain signals but the audience’s response is unpredictable. So, works transcend the control of their creators. Morphy explains how Yolngu paintings are not made with the same purpose as in Western cultures. These painting tend to represent Ancesral beings through the use of Ancestral designs which may contain spiritual power and differ among clans. Interesting how paintings are not a contemplative experience for Yolngu. Due to the significance of what may be depicted on the painting. So Yolngu painters try to produce a correct design, to produce an Ancestrally powerful design, and to produce a painting which enhances or beautifies the object it is painted on. These painting are judged on 3 criteria: the correctness of the design, the brightness and the clarity of its cross-hatched lines (as we may recall, this perfection of technique theory can be applied from Boas’ essay). The importance of light for Yolngu can be seen in this quote: ‘the light that makes the heart go happy, makes it smile’ These paintings and the connection with the brightness are said to represent how powerful those Ancestral beings are represented. Thus, some paintings are destroyed before being displayed in public and why they avoid to look directly at these paintings. Morphy also arguments in resemblance to Radcliffe-Brown: the mental state of the [ritual Andamanese] dancers is closely related to the mental state that we call aesthetic enjoyment. But Morphy extends his argument to say that the Yolngu’s selection of ritual components for a ceremony is centrally concerned wit matters of content as well as form.
*Long, contemplative viewing is not the only way to appreciate a painting. The brief glimpse from the corner of the eye may indeed be an aesthetic experience in harmony with the way in which Yolngu art is intended to be experienced and understood.
Notes on
Jeremy Coote
Marvels of Everyday Vision
This is a most interesting essay that diverts from the concentration of studying art objects and focuses on the visual aesthetic that governs the cattle keeping Nilotes of the Southern Sudan. Thus, Coote is more comfortable when talking about art as the ‘aesthetic aspect of a society’s activities and products. For this group, cattle is a highly valued possession and plays an important tole in their life. From the physical characteristics of the cattle, the Nilotic cattle-keepers derive their visual aesthetics. E.g. shape of the horns, color configuration, fatness of the body, sheen of the hide.They apply metaphorically the terminology used for cattle characteristics to people’s characteristics. As in the case of the Dinkas, if their cattle-colour vocabulary were taken away, they would have scarcely any way of describing visual experience in terms of colour, light and darkness. They discuss about cattle in a highly developed manner based on the physical characteristics. For them ‘cattle are primarily a feast for the eyes and only secondarily a feaast for the stomach. Coote concludes that people act in the world to maximize their aesthetic satisfaction just as the Nilotes take pleasure in the lives they lead, as well as into some of the marvels of their everyday vision.
*The philosophy of art tends towards analyzing the relation between art and such matters as the True and the Good, matters which are beyond the formal qualities of works of art. It is perhaps worth emphasizing that practices similar to those of Western art criticism and philosophy are to be found in other cultures. These practices are worthy of study in their own right.
Notes on
Anthony Shelton
Predicates of Aesthetic Judgement
Shelton analyzes the ‘aesthetics’ of the Huichol and how it is different from the Western conception of aesthetic. He will use Wittgenstein’s analogy which says that the meaning of aesthetics can only be derived from an examination of the different language games in which it features. Also, decorated or ritual objects are not restricted to exchange relations between huuman and supernatural beings. They are also used in exchange of goods between wife-givers and wife-takers (marriage ceremonies). So objects are not only religious offerings but also social symbols. A worry for Shelton is that the more elaborate the crafts for external (commercial) use become, the more impoverished become the Huichol deities. Thus, the impoverishment of the gods means a decline in their power and influence over the Huichol world. Emphasis in the difference between craft production disintegrative since it is controoled by an external value system; while the production of ritual objects and offerings serves an integrative function within the society. Huichol aesthetics has no existence independent of the religious and ritual contexts. There is no discourse of aesthetics, but it is used as an ethical codification.
Notes on
Ross Bowden
Art, Architecture, and Collective Representations in a New Guinea Society
Bowden studies the Kwoma. of Papua New Guinea. Male virilitude represented on the decorations inside the house. These houses are ceremonial centers. They are said to represent men’s cultural ability to reproduce (create) and kill, giving them the distinction of being creators and the powers of also being able to end life. Interesting to see the sense of ownership of a certain totemic species by different clans. Sculptures are vivified by the spirits they depict. Sizes of the houses depend on the size of the clan. Bark paintings are incorporated in the ceilings of these ceremonial houses and contributions by other clans are welcome. Of course ‘renowned artists’ get a privilege position in the ceiling of the house. These houses are mainly at the center of the settlement and women are excluded from these houses. In these houses men also debate clan matters in a orderly way since, any act of violence may be punished by the spirits within the house. Kwoma houses are also an exceptional architetural construction. Themes: maculine creativity, homicidal aggression, and exchange.
Notes on
Susanne Küchler
Making Skins; Malangan and the Idiom of Kinship in Northern New Ireland
The essay discusses the art objects produced as gifts for final mortuary exchanges in the northern part of New Ireland (art from this region is named ‘malangan’). Kuchler argues that malanagan art is inseparable from the colonial situation in which relations of land, labour, and loyalty became institutionalized in the mortuary context. As funerary monuments, malangan sculptures evoke memories of the past, of the deceased one, and of events associated with their lives.So, the sculpture must enclose the ‘passage of time’.But these sculptures are confined to the few hours between public display and disposal in the forest.
*Beautiful expression of passing time, and a metaphor of life.
The malangan present a seemingly unlimited inventiveness in the different ways of composing motifs (about twenty seven) into new different combinations. Carving wooden malngan is referred to as (tetak) ‘the making of skin’. Malngan images come from dreaming, which are set in motion after having eaten a magical potion. Malangan carvers may usually be of an advanced age. But carving is not only done with the purpose of re-presenting a forgotten image so that it can become shaared memory. The image is the way to to represent the seat of thought and creativity during life, and that becomes raw energy after death----> ‘Vital substance’. So the images are to recapture this energy and present its infinite renewal, since death is not the collapse of this substance but its the start of a long process of renewal. Of course, social processes have interfered and consequently developed in various ways the malangan sculptures.
Notes on
Jarich Oosten
Representing the Spirits: The masks of the Alaskan Inuit
Masks represent an animal as prototype of its genus (with its ‘inua’ or human being and its appearance). For Inuit the unityof men and animals is emphasized in diachronic as well as in synchronic perspective.They believed that in the early days all animate beings had a dual existence, and they could become either animals or men. Probably, that is why animals and humans are merged in this masks but physically and thematically. It seems as a cycle of personifications and animal imitations. Inuit culture has an intricate theory of souls (soul dualism, essence of being, names connected namesakes as part of a soul development). Everyone could have encounters with spirits but shamans perceive the true nature of animate and inanimate beings. Masks were not instrumental in establishing relations with spirits, rather theyserve to represent meetings with spirits and expressed the human nature of animals and spirits (inua). Not a clear distinction between secular and religious masks. Early mask collectors did not acquire much information. Masks used in some feasts but not in others.
Notes on
Robert Layton
Traditional and Contemporary Art of Aboriginal Australia: Two Case Studies
Layton is concerned with Graburn’s assertion that communities of the “fourth world” rarely produce arts for their own consumption, but that they produce arts primarily for sale to another culture. Layton asks two questions: 1)why is it that art provides an appropriate vehicle for the participation of hunter-gatherer communities in the market economy of the dominant society within which they find themselves encapsulated? 2) How is is that such communities can preserve a viable culture out of which distinctive art-forms emerge? “By means of the cash income, artists and their communities secure a degree of independence from state aid and the limited opportunities for employment offered by the dominant society.” He will study two Australian groups: Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara. These communities are very similar to the Pintupi presented in Myers’ book. The style of the art in these communities is based on the representation of the marks left by people and animals as they move across the landscape. Multivalency/polysemy: meanings represented in a single motif. Ambiguity: meanings which potentially may be attributed to a single motif in different contexts. As in the Pintupi, each clan has rights over their designs and dreams. Colonialism bringscatastrophic change to hunter-gatherers communities. Become dependent on the government, foreign illnesses, massacres, marginal environments to live in...As in Myers, this essay questions the transition from aboriginal to fine art. How a work becomes fine art?
Notes on
Jeremy MacClancy
The Bilbao Guggenheim
This article was very interesting to me, for I am trying to learn about the Basque country artistic and economic development. MacClancy presents the many sides in the conflict of opening a Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. Since it will bring economical, artistic, social and even political consequences to the region. Arts and music had been flourishing in the Basque country recently. So the leaders of the project argued this would give a better place to showcase the work to many artists. Also, the economy is goind down in the area from its major production materials. Moreover, the government wanted to make of Bilbao a European centre for service industries, modem technologies, and upmarket tourism. Besides from these arguments, artists were separated also in those for and those against the proposal. For some the commodification of art goes against their ideals and their artistic vision, also the museum would bring the culture (artistic) of spectacle and entertainment, ‘the business of leisure’, Coca-colonization (very nice terminology). Others argued that just because an object is being treated as a commodity does not mean that it is only being treated as a commodity nor that it will, in consequence, be only ever treated as a commodity.
*…commodization is not a singular, irrevocable process, that objects may be said to have social lives, and that their being treated as commodities may only be stages within their social lives…just because an object is being treated as a commodity does not mean that it is only being treated as a commodity no that it will, in consequence, be only ever be treated as a commodity.
Immanuel Kant
Critique of Judgement
Well, this as many Kantian text proves to be very rich as well as very complex. According to Kant, there is no empirical basis of proof that could compel anyone to make some judgement of taste. A judgment of state is not the same as a judgment of reason. Judgements of taste are synthetic since they go beyond the concept of the object and even beyond the intuition of the object and add a predicate (pleasant feeling). How are synthetic judgments possible a priori? Mechanical art versus aesthetic art which arises feelings of pleasure/. Art canbe called fine art only if we are conscious that it is art while yet it looks to us like nature. Antimony concerning the principle of taste: Thesis: not based in concepts. Antithesis: based on concepts. An audience approaches a work disinterested, not meaning with no interest at all, but there is not a real rational engagement with the work to consider an aesthetic value.
* If art merely performs the acts that are required to make a possible object actual, adequately to our cognition of that object, then it is mechanical art: but if what it intends directly is [to arouse] the feeling of pleasure, then it is called aesthetic art. The latter is wither agreeable or fine art.
Nature, we say, is beautiful if it also looks like art: and art can be called fine art only if we are conscious that it is art while yet it looks to us like nature.
Notes on
RG Collingwood
The Principles of art
Collingwood presents a view of art and artistic expression. His view is based on expressionism. He emphasizes that art is arrived at by using ones emotions and becoming conscious of these emotions. For him the work of art is not the expression of the emotions but the effort taken in order to express that emotion which is being felt. Collingwood also explains how art is not only based on taste or aesthetics, but that is intimately connected with oneself in many aspects, such as the intellectual, social, imaginative and affective. The creation of a work is an act of imaginative creation and the appreciation of any work supposedly recreates those emotions and thoughts that were used in order to create it.
* What we get out of a work of art is always divisible in two parts. There is specialized sensous experieence, an experience of seeing or hearing as the case may be. There is also a non-specialized imaginative experience, involving not only elements homogeneous, after their imaginary fashion, but others heterogeneous with them.
Notes on
GWF Hegel
Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art
Emphasizes the spirit of a culture developed in their art. The spirit of art has first a universal sense. and afterwards acquires a partivular sense and the final part is when it acquires an individualization of artistic beauty. Three relations of the idea to its configuration. Symbolic art:a mere search for portrayal. Classical: affords the production and vision of the completed Ideal and presents it as actualized in fact. The third one is the romantic form. good conclusion: “Now, therefore, what the particular arts realize in individual works of art is, according to the Concept of art, only the universal forms of the self-unfolding Idea of Beauty. It is as the external actualization of this Idea that the wide Pantheon of art is rising. Its architect and builder is the self-comprehending spirit of beauty, but to complete it will need the history of the world in its development thorought thousands of years.
* Artistic configuration and its differences are on the one hand, as spiritual, of a more universal kind and not bound to one material, and sensous existence is itself differentiated in numerous ways, but since this existence, like spirit, has the Concept implicitly for its inner soul, a pecific sensous material does thereby, on the other hand, acquire a closer relation and a secret harmony with the spiritual differences and forms of artistic configuration.
three parts of this science universal-particular-final.
What the particular arts realize in individual works of art is, according to the concept of art, only the universal forms of the self-unfolding idea of beauty. It is as the external actualization of this Idea that the wide Pantheon of art is rising.
Notes on
Franz Boas
Primitive Art
He asserts that all human activities may assume forms that give them esthetic values. By appealing to the senses, activities may acquire esthetic values. This is very interesting for it is a broad explanation for acquiring esthetic appeal, and he will extend his thought into the realm of how broad art may be. Moreover, he says that art is a process or processes by which certain typical forms are produced (after having acquired a technical virtuosity). Thus, fixity of forms are closely connected to the idea of beauty, according to Boas; since this fixity is only acquired by having acquired a highly developed technique or virtuosity. This stability of forms would lead to style, otherwise non-existent. Furthermore, he separates ideas and objects. And when an idea is presented in an object, it adds meaning by acting as a symbol. He studies the Eskimo throwing sticks which have the same function but are designed differently in each tribe. Boas also shows the conservativism of forms both in industrialized societies as in pre-industrial groups. Also of interest is Boas’ consideration of the artisan. He tries to explain how in some tribes it is hard to extract any knowledge of the object produced from the maker (because of a lack of intimate knowledge both personal and cultural), whereas in others it is not so difficult to engage thru the maker into the overall meaning of the work. Artisans and artists are terms that we always keep trying to define with my friends beyond the usual criteria of repetition and social purposes of the objects made, so Boas discussion shed some light on that subject for me.
*The woven bags of the Ojibwa are gorgeous.
Another interesting aspect found in Boas’ essay was the similarity found between ‘western’ art as well as other people’s art, in the collaborations and influences that develop in art.
*The bulk of the makers of objects of everyday use are, therefore, imitators, not originators, and the mass of uniform material that is in use and constantly seen will restrict the free play of imagination of the original minds. There is probably not a single region in existence in which the style may be understood entirely as an inner growth and an expression of cultural life of a single tribe.
Notes on
Raymond Firth
Art and Anthropology
Firth raises interesting points on art. He shows how the Western view of art is not a completely correct definition in that it has to be extended for it to encompass ‘exotic’ art. He also gives a remarkable argument to break the differentiation between art and craft, given historical artistic expressions such as the Bauhaus utilitarian works. Also fascinating is the connection found in nature and its aesthetic appeal. Thus, artistic beauty is not only man-made, since natural beauty is not opposed to artificial beauty. Hehe, the acid test of aesthetic value-high auction prices (remember to quote often). A fascinating aspect of anthropology of art is the arduous search for the implicit and explicit meanings of art in that, as Firth explained, there may be meanings that cannot be put into words but are very important to the maintenance of their art. Firth also demonstrates how ‘exotic art’ continuously develops and is not stagnant or unalterable in style.
*Tension or ambiguity in a work of art, from our own or an alien culture, there probably must be. But it can be of a very diffuse kind, concerned with the effort to grasp novel patterns of colour, line, mass, or sound, and relate them to our existing experience.
The concept ‘art’ as such is alien to the practice and presumably the thought of many of the peoples studied by anthropologists, who try to present the people’s own iconic classification as a whole. Then, many simple iconic forms can bear a strong semantic charge, which puts them alongside more elaborate ritual forms to which the designation of art would be given-for example, the cross in much Christian sculpture.
Modern studies have revealed that the alleged ‘traditional’ has often been a product of an early contact with Western industrial influences, including steel tools.
Notes on
Clifford Geertz
Art as a Cultural System
Geertz correctly says that art is hard to talk about, and people may become very simplistic or give many different meanings to different works, which may be unnecessary.
*Understanding the song of a bird must be nice. Would birds appreciate it as much as we do (from a sound perspective)? How does this appreciation apply in humans and the artistic expressions in different cultures?
-Nice quote: “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”
Geertz also presents the view that social environments define much of a person’s perception of beauty. Which I believe is very true, sometimes it may be harmful when people are very close minded and are not able to appreciate other people’s aesthetic values. So, it becomes a system of cultural symbols. And these symbols are easily read by the people belonging to a certain culture but may also be learnt by a ‘foreign’ person into that culture. Many of those symbols may overlap in cultures. By analyzing XV century italian painting, he shows the symbols, meanings, and ideas applied to the works of the time. As well as by analyzing Morrocan poetry. He asserts that the most popular meaning of a work stays with it. Sometimes undermining that work or applying individual morale to indoctrinate it into others. Objectivity is also a cause of cultural indoctrination through art. He believes that what seems important is not the works per se but the factors that caused these statues, painting or poems.
*The capacity, variable among peoples as it is among individuals to perceive meaning in pictures (or poems, melodies, buildings, pots, dramas, statues) is, like all other fully human capacities, a product of collective experience which far transcends it, as is the far rarer capacity to put it there in the first place. It is out of participation in the general system of symbolic forms we call culture that participation in the particular we call art, which is in fact but a sector of it, is possible. A theory of art is thus at the same time a theory of culture, not an autonomous enterprise. And if it is a semiotic theory of art it must trace the life of signs in society, not in an invented world of dualities, transformations, parallels and equivalences.
Notes on
H. Morphy
From Dull to Brilliant: The Aesthetics of Spiritual Power Among the Yolngu
To study the aesthetic of Yolngu paintings, Morphy denies the relationist perspective of aesthetic value that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Since artists try to send certain signals but the audience’s response is unpredictable. So, works transcend the control of their creators. Morphy explains how Yolngu paintings are not made with the same purpose as in Western cultures. These painting tend to represent Ancesral beings through the use of Ancestral designs which may contain spiritual power and differ among clans. Interesting how paintings are not a contemplative experience for Yolngu. Due to the significance of what may be depicted on the painting. So Yolngu painters try to produce a correct design, to produce an Ancestrally powerful design, and to produce a painting which enhances or beautifies the object it is painted on. These painting are judged on 3 criteria: the correctness of the design, the brightness and the clarity of its cross-hatched lines (as we may recall, this perfection of technique theory can be applied from Boas’ essay). The importance of light for Yolngu can be seen in this quote: ‘the light that makes the heart go happy, makes it smile’ These paintings and the connection with the brightness are said to represent how powerful those Ancestral beings are represented. Thus, some paintings are destroyed before being displayed in public and why they avoid to look directly at these paintings. Morphy also arguments in resemblance to Radcliffe-Brown: the mental state of the [ritual Andamanese] dancers is closely related to the mental state that we call aesthetic enjoyment. But Morphy extends his argument to say that the Yolngu’s selection of ritual components for a ceremony is centrally concerned wit matters of content as well as form.
*Long, contemplative viewing is not the only way to appreciate a painting. The brief glimpse from the corner of the eye may indeed be an aesthetic experience in harmony with the way in which Yolngu art is intended to be experienced and understood.
Notes on
Jeremy Coote
Marvels of Everyday Vision
This is a most interesting essay that diverts from the concentration of studying art objects and focuses on the visual aesthetic that governs the cattle keeping Nilotes of the Southern Sudan. Thus, Coote is more comfortable when talking about art as the ‘aesthetic aspect of a society’s activities and products. For this group, cattle is a highly valued possession and plays an important tole in their life. From the physical characteristics of the cattle, the Nilotic cattle-keepers derive their visual aesthetics. E.g. shape of the horns, color configuration, fatness of the body, sheen of the hide.They apply metaphorically the terminology used for cattle characteristics to people’s characteristics. As in the case of the Dinkas, if their cattle-colour vocabulary were taken away, they would have scarcely any way of describing visual experience in terms of colour, light and darkness. They discuss about cattle in a highly developed manner based on the physical characteristics. For them ‘cattle are primarily a feast for the eyes and only secondarily a feaast for the stomach. Coote concludes that people act in the world to maximize their aesthetic satisfaction just as the Nilotes take pleasure in the lives they lead, as well as into some of the marvels of their everyday vision.
*The philosophy of art tends towards analyzing the relation between art and such matters as the True and the Good, matters which are beyond the formal qualities of works of art. It is perhaps worth emphasizing that practices similar to those of Western art criticism and philosophy are to be found in other cultures. These practices are worthy of study in their own right.
Notes on
Anthony Shelton
Predicates of Aesthetic Judgement
Shelton analyzes the ‘aesthetics’ of the Huichol and how it is different from the Western conception of aesthetic. He will use Wittgenstein’s analogy which says that the meaning of aesthetics can only be derived from an examination of the different language games in which it features. Also, decorated or ritual objects are not restricted to exchange relations between huuman and supernatural beings. They are also used in exchange of goods between wife-givers and wife-takers (marriage ceremonies). So objects are not only religious offerings but also social symbols. A worry for Shelton is that the more elaborate the crafts for external (commercial) use become, the more impoverished become the Huichol deities. Thus, the impoverishment of the gods means a decline in their power and influence over the Huichol world. Emphasis in the difference between craft production disintegrative since it is controoled by an external value system; while the production of ritual objects and offerings serves an integrative function within the society. Huichol aesthetics has no existence independent of the religious and ritual contexts. There is no discourse of aesthetics, but it is used as an ethical codification.
Notes on
Ross Bowden
Art, Architecture, and Collective Representations in a New Guinea Society
Bowden studies the Kwoma. of Papua New Guinea. Male virilitude represented on the decorations inside the house. These houses are ceremonial centers. They are said to represent men’s cultural ability to reproduce (create) and kill, giving them the distinction of being creators and the powers of also being able to end life. Interesting to see the sense of ownership of a certain totemic species by different clans. Sculptures are vivified by the spirits they depict. Sizes of the houses depend on the size of the clan. Bark paintings are incorporated in the ceilings of these ceremonial houses and contributions by other clans are welcome. Of course ‘renowned artists’ get a privilege position in the ceiling of the house. These houses are mainly at the center of the settlement and women are excluded from these houses. In these houses men also debate clan matters in a orderly way since, any act of violence may be punished by the spirits within the house. Kwoma houses are also an exceptional architetural construction. Themes: maculine creativity, homicidal aggression, and exchange.
Notes on
Susanne Küchler
Making Skins; Malangan and the Idiom of Kinship in Northern New Ireland
The essay discusses the art objects produced as gifts for final mortuary exchanges in the northern part of New Ireland (art from this region is named ‘malangan’). Kuchler argues that malanagan art is inseparable from the colonial situation in which relations of land, labour, and loyalty became institutionalized in the mortuary context. As funerary monuments, malangan sculptures evoke memories of the past, of the deceased one, and of events associated with their lives.So, the sculpture must enclose the ‘passage of time’.But these sculptures are confined to the few hours between public display and disposal in the forest.
*Beautiful expression of passing time, and a metaphor of life.
The malangan present a seemingly unlimited inventiveness in the different ways of composing motifs (about twenty seven) into new different combinations. Carving wooden malngan is referred to as (tetak) ‘the making of skin’. Malngan images come from dreaming, which are set in motion after having eaten a magical potion. Malangan carvers may usually be of an advanced age. But carving is not only done with the purpose of re-presenting a forgotten image so that it can become shaared memory. The image is the way to to represent the seat of thought and creativity during life, and that becomes raw energy after death----> ‘Vital substance’. So the images are to recapture this energy and present its infinite renewal, since death is not the collapse of this substance but its the start of a long process of renewal. Of course, social processes have interfered and consequently developed in various ways the malangan sculptures.
Notes on
Jarich Oosten
Representing the Spirits: The masks of the Alaskan Inuit
Masks represent an animal as prototype of its genus (with its ‘inua’ or human being and its appearance). For Inuit the unityof men and animals is emphasized in diachronic as well as in synchronic perspective.They believed that in the early days all animate beings had a dual existence, and they could become either animals or men. Probably, that is why animals and humans are merged in this masks but physically and thematically. It seems as a cycle of personifications and animal imitations. Inuit culture has an intricate theory of souls (soul dualism, essence of being, names connected namesakes as part of a soul development). Everyone could have encounters with spirits but shamans perceive the true nature of animate and inanimate beings. Masks were not instrumental in establishing relations with spirits, rather theyserve to represent meetings with spirits and expressed the human nature of animals and spirits (inua). Not a clear distinction between secular and religious masks. Early mask collectors did not acquire much information. Masks used in some feasts but not in others.
Notes on
Robert Layton
Traditional and Contemporary Art of Aboriginal Australia: Two Case Studies
Layton is concerned with Graburn’s assertion that communities of the “fourth world” rarely produce arts for their own consumption, but that they produce arts primarily for sale to another culture. Layton asks two questions: 1)why is it that art provides an appropriate vehicle for the participation of hunter-gatherer communities in the market economy of the dominant society within which they find themselves encapsulated? 2) How is is that such communities can preserve a viable culture out of which distinctive art-forms emerge? “By means of the cash income, artists and their communities secure a degree of independence from state aid and the limited opportunities for employment offered by the dominant society.” He will study two Australian groups: Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara. These communities are very similar to the Pintupi presented in Myers’ book. The style of the art in these communities is based on the representation of the marks left by people and animals as they move across the landscape. Multivalency/polysemy: meanings represented in a single motif. Ambiguity: meanings which potentially may be attributed to a single motif in different contexts. As in the Pintupi, each clan has rights over their designs and dreams. Colonialism bringscatastrophic change to hunter-gatherers communities. Become dependent on the government, foreign illnesses, massacres, marginal environments to live in...As in Myers, this essay questions the transition from aboriginal to fine art. How a work becomes fine art?
Notes on
Jeremy MacClancy
The Bilbao Guggenheim
This article was very interesting to me, for I am trying to learn about the Basque country artistic and economic development. MacClancy presents the many sides in the conflict of opening a Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. Since it will bring economical, artistic, social and even political consequences to the region. Arts and music had been flourishing in the Basque country recently. So the leaders of the project argued this would give a better place to showcase the work to many artists. Also, the economy is goind down in the area from its major production materials. Moreover, the government wanted to make of Bilbao a European centre for service industries, modem technologies, and upmarket tourism. Besides from these arguments, artists were separated also in those for and those against the proposal. For some the commodification of art goes against their ideals and their artistic vision, also the museum would bring the culture (artistic) of spectacle and entertainment, ‘the business of leisure’, Coca-colonization (very nice terminology). Others argued that just because an object is being treated as a commodity does not mean that it is only being treated as a commodity nor that it will, in consequence, be only ever treated as a commodity.
*…commodization is not a singular, irrevocable process, that objects may be said to have social lives, and that their being treated as commodities may only be stages within their social lives…just because an object is being treated as a commodity does not mean that it is only being treated as a commodity no that it will, in consequence, be only ever be treated as a commodity.
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