The Anthropology of Art: A Reader (Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology) [1 ed.] 1405105615, 9781405105613, 9781405155328

The Anthropology of Art

Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology Series Editor: Parker Shipton, Boston University

Series Advisory Editorial Board: Fredrik Barth, University of Oslo and Boston University Stephen Gudeman, University of Minnesota Jane Guyer, Northwestern University Caroline Humphrey, University of Cambridge Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen Emily Martin, Princeton University John Middleton, Yale Emeritus Sally Falk Moore, Harvard Emerita Marshall Sahlins, University of Chicago Emeritus Joan Vincent, Columbia University and Barnard College Emerita Drawing from some of the most significant scholarly work of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology series offers a comprehensive and unique perspective on the ever-changing field of anthropology. It represents both a collection of classic readers and an exciting challenge to the norms that have shaped this discipline over the past century. Each edited volume is devoted to a traditional subdiscipline of the field such as the anthropology of religion, linguistic anthropology, or medical anthropology; and provides a foundation in the canonical readings of the selected area. Aware that such subdisciplinary definitions are still widely recognized and useful – but increasingly problematic – these volumes are crafted to include a rare and invaluable perspective on social and cultural anthropology at the onset of the twenty-first century. Each text provides a selection of classic readings together with contemporary works that underscore the artificiality of subdisciplinary definitions and point students, researchers, and general readers in the new directions in which anthropology is moving. 1

Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader Edited by Alessandro Duranti

A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion Edited by Michael Lambek

The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique Edited by Joan Vincent

Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader Edited by Robert Parkin and Linda Stone

Law and Anthropology: A Reader Edited by Sally Falk Moore

The Anthropology of Development and Globalization: From Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism Edited by Marc Edelman and Angelique Haugerud

The Anthropology of Art A Reader

Edited by Howard Morphy and Morgan Perkins

ß 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Howard Morphy and Morgan Perkins to be identified as the Authors of the Editorial Material in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1 2006 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The anthropology of art: a reader/edited by Howard Morphy and Morgan Perkins. p.cm.—(Blackwell anthologies in social and cultural anthropology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-0561-3 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4051-0561-5 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-0562-0 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4051-0562-3 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Art and anthropology. 2. Art and society. I. Perkins, Morgan. II. Morphy, Howard. III. Series. N72.A56A67 2005 —dc22 2005013067 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 9/11pt Sabon by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com

Contents

Acknowledgments About the Authors The Anthropology of Art: A Reflection on its History and Contemporary Practice Howard Morphy and Morgan Perkins

viii x

Part I Foundations and Framing the Discipline

Primitive Art Franz Boas

Split Representation in the Art of Asia and America Claude Le´vi-Strauss

Introduction to Tribes and Forms in African Art William Fagg

Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art Gregory Bateson

Tikopia Art and Society Raymond Firth

The Abelam Artist Anthony Forge

109

Part II Primitivism, Art, and Artifacts

123

Modernist Primitivism: An Introduction William Rubin

129

Defective Affinities: ‘‘Primitivism’’ in 20th Century Art Arthur C. Danto

147

CONTENTS

Histories of the Tribal and the Modern James Clifford

150

A Case in Point and Afterwords to Primitive Art in Civilized Places Sally Price

167

Oriental Antiquities/Far Eastern Art Craig Clunas

186

Introduction to Art/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections Susan Vogel

209

Vogel’s Net: Traps as Artworks and Artworks as Traps Alfred Gell

219

Part III Aesthetics across Cultures

237

Yoruba Artistic Criticism Robert Farris Thompson

242

Style in Technology: Some Early Thoughts Heather Lechtman

270

‘‘Marvels of Everyday Vision’’: The Anthropology of Aesthetics and the Cattle-keeping Nilotes Jeremy Coote

281

From Dull to Brilliant: The Aesthetics of Spiritual Power Among the Yolngu Howard Morphy

302

Part IV Form, Style, and Meaning 18

Visual Categories: An Approach to the Study of Representational Systems Nancy D. Munn

321

326

Structural Patterning in Kwakiutl Art and Ritual Abraham Rosman and Paula G. Rubel

339

Sacred Art and Spiritual Power: An Analysis of Tlingit Shamans’ Masks Aldona Jonaitis

358

All Things Made David M. Guss

374

Modernity and the ‘‘Graphicalization’’ of Meaning: New Guinea Highland Shield Design in Historical Perspective Michael O’Hanlon

387

CONTENTS

vii

Part V Marketing Culture

407

Arts of the Fourth World Nelson H. H. Graburn

412

The Collecting and Display of Souvenir Arts: Authenticity and the ‘‘Strictly Commercial’’ Ruth B. Phillips

431

The Art of the Trade: On the Creation of Value and Authenticity in the African Art Market Christopher B. Steiner

454

Part VI Contemporary Artists 26

467

A Second Reflection: Presence and Opposition in Contemporary Maori Art Nicholas Thomas

472

Representing Culture: The Production of Discourse(s) for Aboriginal Acrylic Paintings Fred Myers

495

Aesthetics and Iconography: An Artist’s Approach Gordon Bennett

513

Kinds of Knowing Charlotte Townsend-Gault

520

Cew Ete Haw I Tih: The Bird That Carries Language Back to Another Jolene Rickard

544

Index

549

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, much gratitude must go to our editor Jane Huber for her always affable and patient enthusiasm from the very beginning when the project was just a gleam in several pairs of eyes. The series editor Parker Shipton has provided much encouragement and commentary along the way. Emily Martin, Angela Cohen, Graeme Leonard, Lisa Eaton, and many Blackwell staff members have helped to guide the manuscript through its various stages and lent advice when most needed. Thanks to Loreen Murphy and Robert Nicholl for their help in negotiating the labyrinth of permission acquisition, and Elizabeth Wood-Ellem for producing the index at short notice. Karen Westmacott has made an invaluable contribution in facilitating communication, editorial assistance, and employing her eye for detail. Frances’ Morphy’s critical reading of drafts of the introduction is greatly appreciated. Special thanks to all the authors of the articles who have been able to lend assistance with the often surprisingly complex details of republishing their work. The editors and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book: 1 2 3 4

6 7

Franz Boas, pp. 183–188, 218–219, 222–230, 239–240, 251–255, 279–281 from Primitive Art. New York: Dover, 1955. Claude Le´vi-Strauss, ‘‘Split Representation in the Art of Asia and America,’’ pp. 245–268, 385–398 from Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1963. William Fagg, pp. 11–18 from Tribes and Forms in African Art. New York: Tudor, 1965. Gregory Bateson, ‘‘Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art,’’ pp. 235–255 from Anthony Forge (ed.), Primitive Art and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. Reprinted by permission of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc., New York. Raymond Firth, ‘‘Tikopia Art and Society,’’ pp. 25–48 from Anthony Forge (ed.), Primitive Art and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. Reprinted by permission of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc., New York. Anthony Forge, ‘‘The Abelam Artist,’’ pp. 65–84, 291–294 from Maurice Freedman (ed.), Social Organisation: Essays Presented to Raymond Firth. London: Cass, 1967. William Rubin, ‘‘Introduction,’’ pp. 1–79 from ‘‘Primitivism’’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. New York: Museum of Modern Art, [1985] 1999. Reprinted by permission of the Museum of Modern Art, New York Arthur Danto, ‘‘Defective Affinities,’’ from The Nation 37226. New York, 1984. Reprinted by permission of The Nation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

9 James Clifford, ‘‘Histories of the Tribal and the Modern,’’ pp. 189–214, 349–369 from The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Originally published in Art in America, Brant Publications Inc., April 1985. 10 Sally Price, ‘‘A Case in Point, Afterword, Afterword to the Second Edition,’’ pp. 108–136 (1st edition), 134–145 (2nd edition) from Primitive Art in Civilized Places, 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1989] 2001. Reprinted by permission of Chicago University Press. 11 Craig Clunas, ‘‘Oriental Antiquities/Far Eastern Art,’’ pp. 413–446 from Tani Barlow (ed.), Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997. ß 1997 Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the publisher. 12 Susan Vogel, ‘‘Introduction,’’ pp. 11–17 from Susan Vogel, ART/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections. New York: Museum for African Art, 1988. Reprinted by permission of the Museum for African Art. 13 Alfred Gell, ‘‘Vogel’s Net: Traps as Artworks and Artworks as Traps,’’ pp. 15–38 from Journal of Material Culture 1 (1). Sage Publications, 1996. ß Sage Publications 1996. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd. 14 Robert Farris Thompson, ‘‘Yoruba Artistic Criticism,’’ pp. 19–61, 435–454 from Warren D’Azevedo (ed.), The Traditional Artist in African Societies, 2. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973. Reprinted by permission of Indiana University Press Ltd. 15 Heather Lechtman, ‘‘Style in Technology: Some Early Thoughts,’’ pp. 3–20 from Heather Lechtman and Robert S. Merrill (eds.), Material Culture: Styles, Organization and Dynamics of Technology. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society for 1975. St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1975. 16 Jeremy Coote, ‘‘Marvels of Everyday Vision: The Anthropology of Aesthetics and the CattleKeeping Nilotes,’’ pp. 245–273 from Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton (eds.), Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, [1992] 1995. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. 17 Howard Morphy, ‘‘From Dull to Brilliant: The Aesthetics of Spiritual Power Among the Yolngu,’’ pp. 181–208 from Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton (eds.), Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press. 18 Nancy Munn, ‘‘Visual Categories: An Approach to the Study of Representational Systems,’’ pp. 936–950 from American Anthropologist 68. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Reprinted by permission from the American Anthropological Association. 19 Abraham Rosman and Paula Rubel, ‘‘Structural Patterning in Kwakiutl Art and Ritual,’’ pp. 620–639 from Man 25 (4), 1990. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishing. 20 Aldona Jonaitis, ‘‘Sacred Art and Spiritual Power: An Analysis of Tlingit Shamans’ Masks,’’ pp. 119–136 from Zena Mathews and Aldona Jonaitis (eds.), Native North American Art History: Selected Readings. Palo Alto, CA: Peek Publications, 1982. 21 David Guss, ‘‘All Things Made,’’ pp. 69–85, 90–91, 231–232, 247–262 from To Weave and to Sing: Art, Symbol and Narrative in the South American Rain Forest. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press. 22 Michael O’Hanlon, ‘‘Modernity and the ‘Graphicalization’ of Meaning: New Guinea Highland Shield Design in Historical Perspective,’’ pp. 469–492 from Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1, 1995. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishing. 23 Nelson H. H. Graburn, ‘‘Introduction: Arts of the Fourth World,’’ pp. 1–30, 372–393 from Ethnic and Tourist Arts: Cultural Expressions from the Fourth World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press. 24 Ruth Phillips, ‘‘The Collecting and Display of Souvenir Arts: Authenticity and the Strictly Commercial,’’ pp. 49–71, 287–289, 311–325 from Trading Identities: The Souvenir in

28 29

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700–1900. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998. Reprinted by permission of the University of Washington Press. Christopher B. Steiner, ‘‘The Art of the Trade: On the Creation of Value and Authenticity in the African Art Market,’’ pp. 151–165 from George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers (eds.), The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press. Nicholas Thomas, ‘‘A Second Reflection: Presence and Opposition in Contemporary Maori Art,’’ pp. 23–46 from Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1, 1995. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishing. Fred Myers, ‘‘Representing Culture: The Production of Discourse(s) for Aboriginal Acrylic Paintings,’’ pp. 26–62 from Cultural Anthropology 6 (1), 1991. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Reprinted by the permission of the American Anthropological Association and the author. Gordon Bennett, ‘‘Aesthetics and Iconography: An Artist’s Approach,’’ pp. 85–91 from Aratjara, Art of the First Australians. Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1993. Charlotte Townsend-Gault, ‘‘Kinds of Knowing,’’ pp. 76–101 from Diana Nemiroff, Robert Houle, and Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1992. Reprinted by permission of the National Gallery of Canada. Jolene Rickard, ‘‘CEW ETE HAW I TIH: The Bird That Carries Language Back to Another,’’ pp. 105–111 from Lucy Lippard (ed.), Partial Recall. New York: New Press, 1992. Reprinted by permission of the New Press.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

About the Authors Howard Morphy is Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University and Honorary Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. He has written and edited a number of books on the anthropology of art and Aboriginal Australian art, including Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge (1991) and Aboriginal Art (1998). He has curated many exhibitions including (with Pip Deveson) Yingapungapu for the opening of the National Museum of Australia in 2001, and has collaborated for many years with Ian Dunlop of Film Australia on the Yirrkala Film Project. Morgan Perkins is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and of Art, Director of the Weaver Museum of Anthropology, and of the Museum Studies Program, at SUNY, Potsdam. He has written on contemporary Native American and Chinese art and curated a number of exhibitions, including What Are We Leaving for the Seventh Generation? Seven Haudenosaunee Voices (2002), and Icons and Innovations: The Cross-Cultural Art of Zhang Hongtu (2003), both at the Roland Gibson Art Gallery, SUNY, Potsdam.

The Anthropology of Art: A Reflection on its History and Contemporary Practice Howard Morphy and Morgan Perkins

The anthropology of art has entered an exciting stage in its history. It is in the process of moving from its place as a minority interest that most anthropologists could neglect towards a more central role in the discipline. In the past, disengagement from art as a subject of study reflected attitudes of anthropologists to material culture in general. It also sprang from a particular, overly narrow, Euro-American conception of art that made it, for some anthropologists, an uncomfortable field of study. The reasons why the narrowness of this definition inhibited anthropological analysis are both interesting and problematic, since historically anthropologists have adopted a critical stance to the presuppositions of their own cultures. For over a century, they have been at the forefront of debates over the definitions of religion, magic, kinship, gender, law and the economy, but art has, until recently, remained outside these definitional debates in anthropology at least. Yet in the context of Euro-American art practice the definition of art has been every bit as much contested as these other definitions, and indeed anthropological ways of thinking have often been influential in the debate about art while practitioners of anthropology have remained largely disengaged. The discomfort that anthropologists have displayed over the inclusion of art among their data is shared with related disciplines such as archaeology, in which rock art remained for long divorced from other data, relegated to the concerns of a subdiscipline of committed, passionate and sometimes obsessive believers. Indeed it is only recently that it has begun to be accepted as a normal part of the archaeological record.1 Being located on the margins has positive aspects. Studies of art have been interdisciplinary in their nature, engaging with ideas that come from outside the narrow confines of the core discipline, and often from outside the academy. Art is associated almost equally with the two senses of the word ‘‘culture’’ – culture as a way of life or body of ideas and knowledge, and culture as the metaphysical essence of society, incorporating standards by which the finest products of society are judged. This may have been a factor in the discomfort that some

HOWARD MORPHY AND MORGAN PERKINS

anthropologists felt about the term. Art in the first sense is associated with bodies of knowledge, technologies, and representational practices that provide insights into the whole lifeworld of a society. Art in the second sense has been seen as the product of a particular stage of Euro-American history. In this sense, art is seen as disconnected from society as a whole and overdetermined by its role in the class structure of Western capitalist society (e.g. Bourdieu 1984).2 In this view art objects have become tokens or repositories of symbolic capital in which the ruling class invests its money to create value, and by which it reinforces its elite status; it is an interesting topic in the study of class based Western societies, but not necessarily as relevant in the rest of the world. It is fundamentally important to separate out this aspect of art from more general features that make it a relevant category for cross-cultural analysis – including analysis of the phenomenon in its Western context. Its entanglement with recent European history and its articulation with Western value creation processes is an important dimension of art in the Euro-American social context, and worth investigating in its own right. Moreover, the role of art in contemporary Western society has an effect on global processes and so is a factor in cross-cultural investigations (see Myers 2002). Art as a category in Western society is more contested than is allowed for by the view that sees it simply as a commodity or an object of aesthetic contemplation. As Marcus and Myers write: By virtue of cross-cultural training and experience, most anthropologists encounter the category of ‘‘art’’ internal to our own culture, with suspicion and a sense of strangeness. Yet in this suspicion, anthropologists have also tried to reify the category and to simplify the complex internal dynamics of conflict within art worlds over issues of autonomy. Thus anthropologists’ critical sensibilities of relativism, have largely failed to recognize modern art’s own internal assault on ‘‘tradition’’ and challenge to boundaries. (Marcus and Myers 1995:6)

The synoptic view that emphasizes the unique characteristics of the Western category of art, with its Eurocentric biases, is thus itself often both a simplification and something of a stereotype, even though it is possible to find plenty of evidence for this view from art world discourse. This idea of art is really the conjunction of a number of themes: an emphasis on the autonomy of the aesthetic experience, where art consists of a set of objects set aside for aesthetic contemplation, with no other overt purpose; the development of a progressive evolutionary view of Western art history associated with an established canon that stretches forward from classical Greece to the present by way of the Renaissance; and the placing of an emphasis on individual creativity – if not genius – and a premium on innovation.3 These achieve their most extreme and condensed form in the connoisseurship of the elite and the rhetoric of the auction market with its emphasis on uniqueness. The emphasis on individual creativity and the premium placed on originality – ‘‘the shock of the new’’ – resulted in the ascendancy of the avant-garde. Many of these themes are shared by other systems. However, the Western themes co-exist in a particular way that has come to dominate the international art world. Contemporary artists from a wide range of cultural backgrounds have increased their engagement with the international art world and developed their own forms of avant-garde art. These may coincide with the historical Western concept, yet may also derive from indigenous concepts of innovation and rebellion. In its reaction against the Maost conception of politically controlled art (Mao 1967), the Chinese avant-garde art movement, for example, has engaged with contemporary Western

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forms and concepts while also drawing upon the tradition of some literati painters who were noted for their rejection of prescribed styles and practices (Perkins 2001).4 To create a more holistic view of cross-cultural art practices it has become important for the anthropology of art to move beyond its predominant focus on small-scale societies and address practices in art systems where there has been a long tradition of art historical practice and a culturally specific recognition of certain materials as art objects and certain individuals as artists.5 While certain characteristics of the contemporary Western art object provide a basis for differentiating contemporary Western art practice from that of many other societies, they must not be allowed to define the general category ‘‘art object.’’ Nor need they do so: in themselves they connect with important general themes in anthropology which can provide cross-cultural insights and comparisons that overturn the essentialized uniqueness of the Western category. The making of collections, the accumulation of display goods, the integration of aesthetics within value creation processes, the articulation of cultural performance with political process and many other anthropological themes provide a basis for making comparisons between the ‘‘exotic’’ of the contemporary Euro-American art world and the art of other places and times.6 However distancing some anthropologists find the contemporary Euro-American concept of art or the art world(s) associated with it, that sense of distance cannot be the only explanation for the neglect of art by anthropologists for much of the recent history of the discipline. Some other reasons are discussed below. From Inclusion to Exclusion: Anthropology and Art in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries The idea of art in European culture has itself been subject to a continuous process of change. The conception of art in the mid-nineteenth century was very different to what it subsequently became under the influence of modernism. Art and material culture were an integral part of nineteenth-century anthropology. As a discipline, anthropology developed hand in hand with the cabinets of curiosity, with antiquarianism, and with the widening of European horizons following the Enlightenment. It was caught up with a more general interest in the exoticism of Otherness, and found itself in a constant state of tension between a comparative perspective that acknowledged a common humanity in all places and times and a teleological evolutionary tendency that saw European civilization as developing out of a progressive transformation of earlier societies. The classificatory projects of institutions like the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford captured this tension – recognizing common categories while ordering things and societies in evolutionary sequences. The typological method in British anthropology involved the identification of traits associated with particular cultures and levels of civilization, and artifacts and customary practices were equally components of those typological sets.7 Art was included with other material culture objects in the evolutionary schema developed by anthropologists such as Pitt Rivers (1906), Tylor (1871, 1878),8 and Frazer (1925). The most perfect simplification of this argument is Pitt Rivers’s diagrammatic representation of the origin of artifacts of different types from the form of a simple stick (figure I.1).9 He represents artifacts almost as if they reproduced biologically, with successions of minor mutations eventually resulting in differentiation and the production of more complex objects. It is significant that he chose Australian Aboriginal artifacts as the

HOWARD MORPHY AND MORGAN PERKINS

Figure I. 1 This diagram by General Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers 1875, was first produced as plate iii in his article ‘‘On the Evolution of culture,’’ Proceedings of the Royal Institute of Great Britain VII:20–44. The figure was titled ‘‘Clubs, boomerangs, shields and lances’’ and illustrates the evolution of weapons of these types from a simple throwing stick shown in the center of the diagram. The diagram captures the essence of Pitt Rivers’s theory of the development of material culture objects from the simple to the complex as the result of a cumulative process – analogous to Darwinian evolution

basis for his model since Aborigines for long remained the exemplar of ‘‘primitive’’ societies – those that could be taken to represent earlier stages of human cultural evolution. While today Pitt Rivers’ model appears simplistic in the extreme, the questions posed by observable patterns in the data remain interesting. To understand the problematic that drove evolutionary writers on art it is necessary to enter a mind set in which innovation is seen to be a rare component of human cultures, in which most motifs and styles of art are regarded as typically of long duration, in which copying was seen as integral to art practice, in which there were thought to be objective criteria for assessing representations either as decorative forms or as realistic representations of a world out there. The problems that needed to be tackled were: where did the idea or form of particular designs come from, and, on the other hand, how did techniques of realistic representation evolve? Interestingly, the premises underlying those questions were challenged by modernism, which in turn gained much of its energy from reflecting on the very same set of artifacts that the anthropologists were analyzing. Ironically, modernism saw the diversity of cultural forms as a license for innovation. This was often associated with a rhetoric of ‘‘freeing’’ the artists from the constraints of tradition. Modernism

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viewed the inspirational works of ‘‘primitive art’’ as exemplars of a universal aesthetic yet simultaneously built in its own assumptions to explain the liberating nature of their forms: primitive art expressed the fundamental, primeval psychic energy of man, unconstrained by the academic tradition – it could be connected to the art of children and the insane. This tension between the modernist avant-garde approach to the arts of other cultures and the anthropological approach remains a continuing theme of debates over the interpretation and exhibition of art. While the emphasis of anthropology has long moved away from evolutionism, the tension remains between the avant-garde view that art speaks for itself and is open to universalistic interpretation, and an anthropological perspective, which requires an indigenous interpretative context. The formal analyses of British anthropologists such as Haddon (1894; Haddon and Start 1936) and Balfour (1888, 1893a) articulated with the concerns of evolutionary theorists, but it could be argued that their method of analyzing sequences over time was relatively independent of the evolutionary hypotheses that the sequences were sometimes used to support. Their concern to trace the development of decorative motifs over time was connected to the general problematics of art history and antiquarian archaeology. In the archaeological record, motifs were seen to succeed each other over time and to have spread across boundaries, reflecting the relationships between groups.10 The problem with the method was that the sequences themselves became proof of the evolutionary theory that lay behind them, giving temporal direction to the sequences, from simple to complex, or from figurative to abstract.11 In the USA, the pioneering anthropologist of art Franz Boas was equally interested in problems of form in his analyses of non-European art. He certainly saw studies of form in art as having the potential to reveal historical patterns and relationships between groups, but was fundamentally opposed to simple evolutionary theories. He begins his book on Primitive Art (1927) by noting that ‘‘the treatment given to the subject is based on two principles that, I believe, should guide all investigations of life among primitive people: one the fundamental sameness of mental processes in all races and in all cultural forms of the present day; the other the consideration of every cultural phenomenon as the result of historical happenings’’ (Boas 1927:1). There was a close association between anthropology and museums in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and many anthropologists were also among the builders of the great ethnographic collections of institutions such as the Smithsonian, the Peabody, the British Museum, the Pitt Rivers Museum, and the Berlin Museum.12 Anthropologists working under the auspices of the American Bureau of Ethnology and the parallel Boasian tradition made documented collections that have subsequently become a major resource in the anthropology of art, and produce rich ethnographies of art. The Australian ethnographies of Spencer and Gillen (1904, 1927) were rich in their coverage of the material culture and ceremonial performance of Australian Aboriginal societies. Spencer who, under the influence of Frazer, could never allow himself to refer to Aboriginal religion, nevertheless wrote in very positive terms about their ‘‘art.’’13 Detailed accounts and recordings of art and material culture were also made by European anthropologists such as Nordenskio¨ld (1973 [1893], 1930), von den Steinen (1969 [1925]), and others. However, as anthropology moved into the twentieth century a breach began to develop between academic anthropology and museum anthropology in both Britain

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and the USA. In Britain, evolutionary theory began to come in for strong criticism. The characterization of societies in terms of traits, and their ranking according to typologies based on the movement from simple to complex forms were seen as an impoverished theory based on inadequate method. Evolutionary theory, it was argued, failed to place cultural traits in the context of societies taken as a whole. It failed to show the interrelationship between components in the present, and failed to demonstrate the truth of its hypotheses on the basis of the data available. There was simultaneously a methodological shift away from museum based studies and inventories of customs produced by missionaries, traders and government officials, towards studies based on long-term field research. Longer-term fieldwork revealed the relationship between different elements of a society as it was at a particular point in time and opened richer veins of sociological data. There was no reason, a priori, why the study of art and material culture could not benefit from fieldwork based studies. However, in Britain the fieldwork ‘‘revolution’’ became associated with a particular theoretical shift in anthropology towards the structural functionalism of Radcliffe-Brown (1952, 1977) and Malinowski (1922, 1979). Radcliffe-Brown’s ‘‘comparative science of society’’14 had a profound effect on developments in British social anthropology. In his concern to create a space for anthropology that differentiated it from surrounding disciplines he created an anthropology that centered on synchronic studies of social organization and the comparative study of social structures. He distanced anthropology from history, from psychology, and, in part as a reaction to developing trends in American anthropology, from culture. In emphasizing a synchronic study of human society he effectively buried the data of the evolutionists and their problematic. The opposition to psychology reinforced the social over the individual and behavior over emotions, excluding areas where the study of art has the potential to make a major contribution. In the minds of the new theorists the study of material culture was too closely associated with the more simplistic aspects of evolutionary theory and not central to the shifting concerns of the discipline.15 Thus material culture – and art – became separated from the mainstream of British social anthropology. Objects were confined in the museum basements and little studied. This situation remained true of British anthropology until the 1960s – indeed the neglect of art and material culture was at its most profound just before the tables turned and art again became an important subject of anthropological writing. In Europe anthropology underwent a similar process of separation from the museum in those countries, such as Holland and France, that developed parallel fieldwork traditions. In American anthropology the history has been a little different, though characterized by similar periods of neglect. Long-term fieldwork was associated with the development of the Bureau of American Ethnology and Boasian anthropology, which though it included a critique of evolutionism was certainly not a precursor to functionalism. Anthropology developed a little more holistically in the USA than in Britain. The four-field approach to anthropology (socio-cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics) allowed material culture studies to continue as a subject wedged between archaeology and socio-cultural anthropology. It is even possible to see in American anthropology a long-term influence from culture historical approaches to art. Marcus and Myers argue for recognition of the long-term impact of those approaches on American anthropology. For example, they note the influence of European art theories on the anthropology of

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Boas and his students Kroeber, Sapir, and Benedict, in particular through the concepts of pattern and style in culture (Marcus and Myers 1995:11 ff.).16 Nonetheless, relatively few studies of art were produced by American anthropologists in the first half of the twentieth century. And archaeology, concerned with its own disciplinary independence, tended to distance itself from the museum based study of material culture objects and the analysis of artifacts in living societies. The distancing of material culture studies and art from the mainstream of anthropology created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Social anthropologists failed to take advantage of a major potential source of data, and museum anthropologists failed to connect the objects in their collections with the societies that produced them. Museum anthropology became disconnected from the main concerns of the discipline and no longer made a significant contribution to contemporary debates. Museum collections continued to be built through short-term field expeditions or through connections with government officials and missionaries. Ironically, museum anthropologists were at least as suspicious of the term ‘‘art’’ as were social anthropologists. Museum anthropology, quite correctly, was concerned to develop classifications of material culture that were as culturally neutral as possible. The typological classifications of the Pitt Rivers Museum, for example, further developed by Henry Balfour (1893b, 1904), Penniman (1953, 1965: 153 ff.), and Beatrice Blackwood (1970), had no place for art. Art was de-emphasized in museum exhibitions in favor of more general exhibitions of material culture and dioramas of daily life. Many museum anthropologists viewed the category of art with as much suspicion as did other anthropologists. The reasons are complex, and they have not been fully researched. Factors include internal relations within museums, anthropological assumptions and the entanglement of indigenous art with the art market. In the museum world the term ‘‘art’’ tended to be associated with the more highly valued collections from classical civilizations whose objects were part of European heritage. The arts of classical civilizations were positioned in a trajectory that led to European fine art and were associated with the connoisseurship and value creation processes of the art market. The emphasis on the dating, appreciating, appraising and authenticating of classical antiquities created a category of objects removed from the primary concerns of ethnographic collections, whose curators emphasized more the cultural significance of objects. While many individual researchers transcended this divide, the opposition between art and ethnography and its entanglement with the categorization of collections as markers of civilization had a major impact on museum anthropology. Those objects designated as ‘‘art’’ were often distanced from their cultural context and evaluated according to Western criteria and in relation to Western categories. Ethnographic objects were considered prior, in an evolutionary sense, to the great ‘‘art’’ traditions of Western civilization. If they were art, they were ‘‘primitive art.’’ As material culture objects they were viewed as having functional roles in their producing societies that had nothing to do with the categories established by Western art history. Thus art came to be viewed as a Western category with no equivalence in most societies. Where it encompassed the works of other cultures it appropriated them and subordinated them to the history of Euro-American art. The art market appeared to be a party to the presuppositions of Western art history, categorizing certain objects as primitive art. Yet it was also engaged in a value creation process that shifted some objects from the artifact to art category (these issues are well covered by Price 2001 and Errington 1998).

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Some ethnographic museum curators were offended by the activities of the art market. In their view it ripped objects out of their indigenous category as types of functioning artifact and placed them on the pedestal of art. They found themselves in competition with private collectors through the auction houses. Art moved objects beyond the acquisition budgets of the ethnographic museums and placed them in the hands of private collectors, or edged them towards the galleries of the art museums, who in turn viewed them in an ambivalent light. In this period, which lasted until the 1960s, anthropologists in general saw art as an artificial category. It took the objects they studied as ritual objects, functional artifacts, prestige items or markers of status and placed them on a pedestal for aesthetic contemplation. The art dimension of the object seemed to be epiphenomenal – at worst the projection of European aesthetic values onto objects produced in quite different contexts for quite different purposes. This view became deeply embedded in the discipline. For example, it may in part explain the influence of Bourdieu’s approach to art which does not require detailed attention to artistic process, form or creativity.17 One might argue that a professional philistinism, a lack of belief in art as an area of significant human activity influenced anthropologists to neglect it. The ideology of ‘‘art for art’s sake’’ that so restricted interpretations of Paleolithic art may well have reflected the general opinions of a particular class in Western society to which most anthropologists belonged. The concept of high art was so internalized by anthropologists, as part of their own cultural experience, that they could not adopt a more culturally neutral way of viewing it. On the one hand, they were socialized into the same aesthetic discourse as other members of their professional class while, on the other hand, they were sceptical about the applicability of the concept of art crossculturally. It is ironic that Radcliffe-Brown’s (1927) only essay on art concerned the art of the Australian modernist Margaret Preston, who used Indigenous Australian motifs in her paintings and was inspired by Aboriginal aesthetics – a topic that Radcliffe-Brown the anthropologist wrote nothing about! The Exceptions While the neglect of art was general among anthropologists there were a number of exceptional studies. Some social anthropologists such as Raymond Firth (1979) Melville Herskovits (1934, 1938, 1959 and 1966) and Robert Redfield (1959) maintained a holistic vision of anthropology in which art was an integral component. Firth characteristically managed to appreciate the liberating force of modernism in Western art while drawing lessons from modernism for the analysis of nonEuropean art, without forgoing his anthropological relativism. It is always difficult to enter particular historical moments – especially moments of significant change – and capture the way in which the world appeared to people living through those times. The impact of modernism and the challenge of primitive art are almost unrecoverable experiences. Firth provides a glimpse of the excitement, of exposure to exotic forms when he writes: ‘‘the admission into the graphic and plastic arts of distortion, of change of form from the proportions given by ordinary vision, came as a liberating influence.’’ And then the anthropologist takes over as he continues: It was significant not only for an appreciation of the contemporary Western art, but also for a clearer understanding of much medieval and exotic art. Like Romanesque painting and sculpture which have long captured my interest, the painting and sculpture which anthropologists encountered in exotic societies could be regarded, not as a product of imperfect vision, technical crudity,

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or blind adherence to tradition, but as works of art in their own right, to be judged as expressions of artists’ original conceptions in the light of their cultural endowment. (Firth 1992:19)

In the USA, Melville Herskovits, a student of Boas, led the study of African and African American art. In Britain colonial anthropologists such as Mills (1926, 1937) and Rattray (1954) produced important regional ethnographies of art. The school of French anthropologists who emerged around Marcel Griaule and later Germaine Dieterlen made a major contribution to the study of African art and were pioneers of visual anthropology.18 In Belgium there were Luc de Heusch (1958, 1972, 1982) and Daniel Biebuyck (1969, 1973). In Australia Ronald Berndt was a passionate advocate for an anthropology of art, and the amateur anthropologist Charles Mountford made important documented collections.19 And some museum based anthropologists such a William Fagg (1968, 1970, 1981, 1982) of the British Museum were unafraid to make art the central theme of their research. However, more often than not, studies of art were absent where they might have been expected. Malinowski’s (1922) study of the Kula played down the richness of the performances and the pageantry of the voyages and the exchanges that surrounded them, produced limited insights into the abundant art of the Kula voyages and overlooked the spectacle of the women’s skirts.20 Ironically it was the material dimension of the Kula that stimulated theoretical discourse from the beginning, in Mauss’s (1950) analysis of the gift and the subsequent discourse in anthropology over exchange. But it was not until the late 1960s, beginning with Weiner’s (1977) studies in the Massim that aesthetics, performance and material culture became integral to the research process and a broader understanding of the role of material culture in the processes of exchange and value creation began to emerge.21 And it was not until the latter part of the twentieth century that the first major studies of Trobriand Island art were undertaken (Scoditti 1990; Campbell 2002). A Revival of Interest The 1960s saw a strong renewal of interest in art among anthropologists. It sprang from two sources – from changes in the research agenda of anthropology and from the fact that the current of Western art and art theory began to flow more in the direction of anthropological thinking. In neither case were these movements general but they helped to create an environment in which the anthropology of art could begin to grow and find new niches, both within the discipline itself and in the wider art world. Anthropology as a discipline grew rapidly after World War II and this allowed or even encouraged new specializations. In Britain there was a move away from the focus on social relations and the analysis of social structure to an increased concern with myth, religion, and ritual. The anthropology of art received support from the renewed interest in symbolism, which in turn articulated with structuralist, semiotic and linguistic approaches to culture viewed as a system of meaning. Similar changes occurred in American anthropology, which already had an advantage in its diversity and the number of its practitioners. The 1960s also saw the growth of interest in visual anthropology, a renewed interest in material culture and the development of an anthropological archaeology. These were synergistic with developments in the anthropology of art if relatively independent of it. Often there were crossovers in theory and method in these disciplines which were concerned with the cultural dimensions of things (Kubler 1962, 1979).

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The anthropology of art benefited particularly from the development of theoretical interest in two areas – symbolism and exchange. Symbolic anthropology was concerned equally with the semantic aspects of symbolism and with the effectiveness of those symbols in ritual contexts – with linking the intentional aspects of ritual with the performative. Since ‘‘art’’ objects – body paintings, sacred objects, masks – were often integral to ritual performances they entered into the study of ritual and symbolism (see e.g. Forge 1973, 1979; Fernandez 1982, 1986; Turner 1973, 1986; Witherspoon 1977; and Munn 1973, 1986). Exchange theory was closely connected to studies of symbolism. Exchange is one of the ways in which value is created, and material objects are both expressions of value and objects which in themselves gain in value through processes of exchange. Objects such as Kula valuables are integral to exchange systems and in many societies sacred objects, body paintings and designs add to the prestige and power of the groups or individuals controlling them. The role that objects played in these processes became a topic of increasing interest (see e.g. Gregory 1982; Munn 1986). Exchange theory and symbolic anthropology influenced the discourse over the nature of persons and things, in the context of their interrelationships. This became a central theme of anthropology in the 1980s and 1990s. From the 1970s on there was also an increasing emphasis on topics such as the emotions, gender, the body, space and time. Art, broadly defined, often provided a major source of information. Sculptures and paintings offer insights into systems of representation (Morphy 1991; Taylor 1996), the aesthetics of the body (Boone 1986), value creating processes (Munn 1986; Gell 1992), social memory (Ku¨chler 2002), the demarcation of space (Blier 1987) and so on. Song and drama provide rich sources of information on the poetics of culture (Feld 1982), the world of feeling, and reflective and introspective dimensions of culture as well as exemplifying performativity (Kratz 1994).22 Material culture objects were no longer regarded as passive; they began to be seen as integral to the processes of reproducing social relations and of developing affective relations with the world – ‘‘art as a way of doing, a way of behaving as a member of society, having as its primary goal the creation of a product or effect of a particular kind’’ (D’Azevedo 1973:7). Through their material possessions people produce an image of themselves in the world, and these material possessions also operate to create the stage on which people lead their daily lives – they are markers of status, gender relations and so on. We would argue that many studies of the era concerned failed to explore sufficiently the material dimensions of objects and missed the opportunity to use them as a truly independent source of data. Nevertheless, they created an environment in which the anthropology of art could develop. Modernism and the Anthropology of Art Changes in the Western art world also resulted in a more serious engagement with anthropology. The concept of art that developed at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries centered on the aestheticized object separated from the rest of life. As far as anthropology was concerned, this was an alien view. However, modernism also created the groundwork for a more positive and dynamic relationship between anthropology and art.

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The rise of anthropology and the development of modernism in art were related, even though anthropologists neglected to study art either in their own society or in the non-European societies that were the primary focus of their research. For the practitioners of modern art in the early years of the twentieth century, the encounter with the arts of Africa and Oceania was a liberating experience. Although the critique of primitivism has rightly emphasized the appropriative nature of this aspect of modernism, the aesthetic shifts associated with the widening of the European tradition played an important role in awakening an appreciation of non-European art and in creating spaces for its exhibition. As Firth’s statement (above) suggests, the advent of modernism had the potential to disturb the anthropologists’ preconceptions about what art was, so that they could begin to see the analytic potential of the art of the societies they studied. Anthropology’s articulation with modernism has been long-term, and it is only recently that anthropologists have become fully aware of the complexities of that relationship. The challenge of anthropology to the contemporary Euro-American art world, only now being explicitly articulated, is twofold: it gives agency to the artist and asserts that cultural context plays an important part in the appreciation of art. Thus it problematizes the universalistic assumption behind the modernist enterprise. In turn the challenge for anthropology has been to open up its own interpretative practice to the aesthetic and affective dimension of objects. Marcus and Myers (1995) draw attention to the fact both contemporary art and anthropology have ‘‘culture as [their] object.’’ This is an interesting idea. Certainly one of the main trends in late twentieth-century modernism has been the emphasis on different forms of conceptual art in which the idea is the object. Art has increasingly become part of cultural commentary and of political discourse, involving a reflexive critique of the artist’s own society. This synergy with anthropology’s reflexive aspect and its focus on culture may be the reason why anthropology and ethnography have recently begun to figure in Euro-American art discourse and practice;23 museums and their ethnographic collections have become installation sites and a springboard for cross-cultural dialogue among artists. The present conversation between art and anthropology24 reveals the dynamic, changing and complex nature of the Western art category as well as saying something about the increasing engagement of anthropology in popular discourse, and cautions against long-term generalizations about the relationship between the two. An Anthropological Definition of Art So far, we have skirted around two issues that are central to an anthropology of art – the definition of art and what characterizes an anthropological approach to art. The two are related – an anthropological definition of art is going to be influenced by the nature of anthropology itself. As a cross-cultural discipline, its definition of categories is affected by the desire to reduce cultural bias; the objective is to make categories as broadly applicable as possible without becoming meaningless. Those categories form part of an evolving and often implicit disciplinary metalanguage. Yet we would also argue that the definition of an artwork cannot come solely from within the discipline. Anthropology is the study of human societies and hence anthropological categories must be based in the real worlds in which people – including anthropologists – exist. Historically, anthropology’s metalanguage has always been biased by

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its Western origins and our definition of art is no exception. That bias needs to be acknowledged and taken into account in the construction of the definition. In turn this process of revision may challenge and influence the categorical definitions of the anthropologists’ own societies. In this regard we take a very different approach from Gell who eschews a definition of art.25 We will use a working definition of art that one of us developed previously: ‘‘art objects are ones with aesthetic and/or semantic attributes (but in most cases both), that are used for representational or presentational purposes’’ (Morphy 1994:655). The definition is not intended to be exclusive; rather, it indicates the kind of objects that anthropologists are usually referring to when they focus on ‘‘art objects.’’ Components of the definition are likely to be found in most anthropologists’ writing about art. To Boas ‘‘the very existence of song, dance, painting and sculpture among all the tribes known to us is proof of the craving to produce things that are felt as satisfying through their form, and [of the] capability of man to enjoy them’’ (1927:9). Boas also connected the form of art to meaning and saw the interaction between the two as contributing to the aesthetic effect: The emotions may not be stimulated by the form alone but by the close associations that exist between form and ideas held by the people. When forms convey meaning, because they recall past experiences or because they act as symbols, a new element is added to enjoyment. The form and its meaning combine to elevate the mind above the indifferent emotional state of everyday life. (Boas 1927:12)

Our position is that the anthropology of art is not simply the study of those objects that have been classified as art objects by Western art history or by the international art market. Nor is art an arbitrary category of objects defined by a particular anthropological theory; rather, art making is a particular kind of human activity that involves both the creativity of the producer and the capacity of others to respond to and use art objects, or to use objects as art.26 We acknowledge that there are good arguments for deconstructing the art category and replacing it with more specific concepts such as depiction, representation, aesthetics, and so on, all of which are relevant to some or all of the objects we include under the rubric of art. We also acknowledge that the study of art can be nested within an anthropology of material culture (see Miller 2005 for a recent approach to materiality) and that the dividing lines between art and non-art within that category are often fine and not always relevant. Our response is to recognize that the category of art is fuzzy, involving a series of overlapping polythetic sets, which contain objects that differ widely in their form and effects. However, the narrower terms that are used to replace art as a general concept are often complementary to one another and they all seem to be drawn together in discourse that surrounds the objects that are usually designated art objects. And clearly we think that the more general concept of art is relevant to understanding the role of such objects in human social life. Otherwise we would not produce a reader on the anthropology of art! It could be argued that we have narrowed the topic down too much by focusing on material objects, and that our separation of the visual arts from dance and music follows a categorization from Western art history that is inappropriate for cross-cultural analysis. But we suggest that our definition of art applies with little modification across different media of communication. Indeed we would argue that art making as a concept can be applied across media and that this strengthens our argument for its existence as a particular kind of human action. The justification for

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focusing primarily on the visual arts in this collection is that visual arts have properties of affect and performance that distinguish them from song, music, dance and other modes of performance and that require different skills and techniques and involve different senses.27 But visual art is often produced as part of a performance that equally involves other media, or if it occurs separately it crossrefers to artistic practice in other media. Anthropological analysis must involve an understanding of how the parts contribute to the whole, and what makes an object an art object may only be determined by analysis across media and across contexts. Anthropology must also be open to classifications of the phenomenal world that do not correspond to Western categories. The sets of objects that fall within the category of art object have to be determined in each particular case in the context of the society concerned. While there may be an overlap in the classifications employed by different cultures, it cannot be presumed. The anthropological category is an analytic one and will not necessarily conform to any category explicitly recognized by a particular society.28 The point so often raised, that there is ‘‘no word for art’’ in the society concerned, is not an argument against an analytic category of art (see, for example, Perkins 2005).29 It is, however, relevant to ask what sets of terms are applied within the society to the sets of objects that might be encompassed within the category art. The analysis of the vocabulary employed may be relevant to determining whether the label art can be appropriately applied. If these objects are thought of first in their functional sense (such as fish hooks used in physical or magical ways), it does not follow that they lack qualities that overlap with and are considerably relevant to the category ‘‘art,’’ anthropologically defined. The lack of a specific word is often an indication of the production and reception of imagery, performances, and so on, as integrally connected to other aspects of life (e.g. catching fish). The rationale for continuing to pursue the anthropology of ‘‘art’’ is threefold. First, art is a term that, for better or worse, has been either adopted or recognized on a nearly global scale. Second, art describes a range of thoughts and practices that employ creativity in the production of expressive culture, regardless of whether that production adheres to prescribed forms or embodies individual innovation. Third, the anthropology of art encompasses the history of this concept in cross-cultural encounters and the contemporary conditions that are the inheritance of this history. The application of expressive, aesthetic, evaluative terms to the objects concerned would on a priori grounds be good evidence that they fit into the cross-cultural category as we have defined it. However, the use of aesthetic criteria is not a necessary and sufficient condition. The classification of works as art by the Western art world is not a relevant criterion for defining the category of non-Western arts, even if there is an overlap in the works that might be included. The criteria used to include works from nonWestern societies under the European rubric of art are of more relevance to the history of Western art than they are to understanding the significance of those objects in their own cultural contexts. The Western category of art has been expanding, selectively swallowing up the arts of other cultures. For much of the twentieth century the categorization of non-European art as ‘‘primitive art’’ predominated. The recognition of the qualitative aspects of African and Oceanic objects reflected in part the engagement of European artists with these objects at the end of the nineteenth and turn of the twentieth centuries.

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The dominant paradigm for exhibiting primitive art, until recently, subordinated it to the influence of the works on Euro-American artists and viewed the works as objects of aesthetic contemplation independent of their cultural context. In the 1935 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, African Negro Art, the curator James Johnson Sweeney ‘‘felt that if African art was displayed in the same manner as European and American sculpture, viewers would evaluate it using the same aesthetic criteria’’ (cited in Webb 1995:32–3). First Nations art in Canada had received similar treatment in a 1927 exhibition at the National Gallery. As with a later exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York – the subject of many of the articles in the Primitivism section of this volume – this exhibition presented West Coast Native works primarily as objects that had inspired non-Native Canadian artists. The purpose of this exhibition was, according to then Director, Eric Brown, ‘‘to mingle for the first time the art works of the Canadian West Coast tribes with that of our more sophisticated artists in an endeavour to analyse their relationships to one another, if such exist, and particularly to enable this primitive and interesting art to take a definite place as one of the most valuable of Canada’s artistic productions.’’30 The European art world selected out objects that fitted within its own broad categories of sculpture and painting. These were portable and transportable works that could be exhibited in similar ways to their European equivalents. The set of objects relevant for analyzing art in Africa, Native America, or Aboriginal Australia is unlikely to be the same as the set selected out for inclusion in the Western category of art. It must be borne in mind, however, that if the objective of anthropology is partly to alter Western ways of thinking about different cultures, an anthropologically informed Western category of Aboriginal or African art (Yoruba art, San art and so on) is potentially realizable. We agree with Gell (1992) that a degree of aesthetic agnosticism is required when analyzing aesthetics cross-culturally; however we do not go as far as he does in ruling aesthetics to be outside the province of an anthropology of art. It is vital not to presume how a particular object is interpreted on the basis of our own aesthetic judgements. An aesthetic response involves a physical, emotional and/or cognitive response to qualitative attributes of the form of an object. We would argue that there is a cross-cultural dimension to aesthetics and that some perceptions and even interpretations may be shared widely, but that this is a matter to be demonstrated in the particular case on the basis of relevant ethnography. In a sense there is a double problem of interpretation. We have to establish the quality of the aesthetic effect and then place it within an interpretative context to determine its meaning – how it is felt – in the context of the producing society. None of these qualifications suggests that we cannot explore the aesthetic dimension of these objects, and indeed in many parts of his analysis Gell does precisely this. He tends to equate the aesthetic with beauty and pleasure. Both of these are important components of aesthetic discourse, but the aesthetic dimension must also encompass their opposites – feelings of discomfort, the idea of ugliness and the potential for pain. Works of art must first be defined in relation to particular traditions and in their social and cultural context. It may be that the concept of art is not useful in the analysis of the objects of some societies. It is certainly the case that an anthropological study of a particular topic, for example ritual, is likely to include objects that are non-art objects as well as those that can be usefully defined as art. Indeed there is no reason why the category art should be used at all in analyzing ritual objects, so long

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as the aesthetic attributes of the objects are considered when relevant, that is, when their aesthetic effect is part of the reason why the event in which they partake is thought to be ritually powerful. One might conclude from this, indeed, that rather than developing an anthropology of art anthropologists should simply be aware of the semantic and aesthetic dimensions of objects. We are partly in agreement with this notion. There is no doubt that, as anthropologists from Boas to Coote (1992) have noted, the aesthetic dimension applies to the natural world as well as to cultural products.31 One might argue that the concept of art is useful simply as a flag to remind anthropologists not to neglect this dimension of an object in their analysis. However art does not inhere simply in the aesthetic dimension of objects. It categorizes certain kinds of object and a certain way of acting in the world that shows common elements cross-culturally. The category differentiates art objects from other objects, even if the boundaries of the category are fuzzy around the edges. Anthropological Approaches to Art or Anthropological Theories of Art What is distinctive about an anthropological approach or rather anthropological approaches to art, apart from the cross-cultural definition of art itself? The easy answer is that the anthropological approach to art is as diverse as the discipline itself. There is no anthropological theory of art that is not also part of more general theory (see Layton 1991 for one approach to the discipline and Van Damme for a survey of ‘‘anthropologies’’ of art). However it is possible to make certain generalizations about an anthropological approach that most anthropologists would find uncontroversial. An anthropological approach to art is one that places it in the context of its producing society. The art of a particular society has to be understood initially in relation its place in the society where it was produced, rather than in relation to how members of another society might understand it. Subsequently it might be interpreted further in relation to some general propositions about the human condition or according to a comparative model of human societies. But initially it needs to be placed in its ethnographic context. Once it is placed in its context we have to discover what kind of thing art is before we can begin to analyze it and see how it in turn contributes to the context in which it occurs. Anthropology is a dialogic discipline precisely because of its holistic approach. Analyzing what kind of object a work of art is may be a prerequisite to understanding its role or effect in a ritual performance. It is possible that its semantic density may be an important factor, or its aesthetic effect, or its historic significance to participants; there may be any number of factors acting separately or in conjunction. Analysis of the object contributes to an understanding and definition of context, and this in turn provides relevant information about the object itself. For these reasons we do not think that there is any single anthropological theory of art. Since art is an encompassing category, it includes objects of very many different types that are incorporated in contexts in different ways. In some cases the semantic aspects of the object may be of central relevance to the way it functions. In other cases its expressive or aesthetic properties may be central. While some art systems encode meanings in almost language-like ways, in other cases meaning operates at a more general level. In most cases the same artworks in context can be approached from a variety of different perspectives, all of which are relevant to understanding

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some aspect of their form or significance. As O’Hanlon (1995:832) points out it is important ‘‘to recognise the multidimensionality of art’’ where the semantic, aesthetic, affective and purposive dimensions all apply to the same object or event. Throughout its history anthropology has returned to the debate about whether the central focus of the subject is social relations or culture. This debate or chasm has affected the anthropology of art at various times and, as we suggested in the first section of this introduction, discomfort with a particular conception of culture may have contributed to the neglect of art by structural functionalists. Our simple – perhaps even simplistic – counter to this divide is to argue that it is equally important to study the social and the cultural aspects of art. Art is often integral to social relationships as Gell (1998) emphasizes, and no anthropological study of art would be complete if its social, political, and economic dimensions were neglected. However art is also closely associated with the ideational aspects of society and with the bodies of knowledge associated with those ideas. Here it enters the realm of culture. Its study requires attention to formal aspects of the art in order to answer certain questions: how does art convey meaning, how does it affect its audience, how does it represent subject matter, is it viewed as a manifestation of a God or spirit or as the genius of a creative individual? These questions link form to content. Too often, purely sociological theories of art neglect details of the form of objects. They consider them to be irrelevant or epiphenomenal to the way art works – to its place in the market or its value as a symbol of power. These can be termed ‘‘black box’’ theories of art in which every object – in formal terms – may as well consist of an empty and featureless black box. While the neglect of form may be adequate for certain analyses, it is likely to provide only a partial understanding of the role of art objects in social life. The study of art encourages anthropologists to deal with the temporality of cultural processes, to connect the experiential dimension of culture, the immediacy of performance with longer-term and more general processes. Works of art have different durations. Some, such as a spectacular revelatory event in a performance, may be over in a matter of seconds, even if the impact on participants endures for a lifetime. Others – a mask or a body painting for example – may be present for a few hours until they are removed or wear away. Others may be part of a permanent structure – such as a temple icon, added to or modified, at times dressed, but ever present in place. Consider, for example, the case of the Zuni Ahayu:da (War God) that must be allowed to decay in order to release its dangerous power back into the environment. This stands in direct opposition to museums’ efforts at preservation and has thus been used as a central argument in repatriation claims (Clifford ch. 9; Tedlock 1995). The different durations of presence will affect how such works are seen, how people relate to them over time, how they can be used in knowledge transmission, how they can be learned, and so on. The analysis of their form must take these factors into account – the work of art is not simply the object itself but the whole context in which it is produced, seen and used. There is an added complication. The experience of an artwork is not necessarily confined to a single event or context. Different dimensions of the work may come into play over time as a result of multiple exposure or evocations of the memory of form. Yolngu paintings, for example, are inscribed on the bodies of initiates prior to their circumcision; they seldom last unmodified for more than a day after they are finished, and the boys receive little instruction as to the meaning of the designs. The immediate

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impact of the painting is intense; its painting on the body is part of a life changing experience. A boy lies still for hours while the fine cross-hatched lines are painted across his chest with a brush of human hair, and he will remember the event for the rest of his life. For his adult relatives the fine painting marks his change of status from boy to man; it is a symbol of pride and a sign of his connection to the ancestral world. Paintings are experienced as spiritually powerful objects, and the shimmering brilliance of the design as it appears on the boy’s chest as he is carried on the shoulders of his mother’s brothers to the place of circumcision is a sign of this ancestral presence. The paintings are semantically dense objects which refer to the actions of the ancestral beings in creating the land. They are also maps of the created land and they encode the structure of Yolngu clan organization. Each painting could be the subject of a book but it is only glimpsed at a distance by most participants in the ceremony and is not present to be examined in detail. Its semantic and cognitive significance is not located in the moment or instance of its physical expression, but in its existence within a mental archive of possible images, connected through the Yolngu system of knowledge to other instances of ancestral power in the form of songs, landscape, designs belonging to different places and associated with different ancestral beings. To attempt to understand its significance without reference to this wider context is as meaningful as trying to learn the meaning of a word from its occurrence in a single sentence (for a detailed analysis of Yolngu art see Morphy 1991). In China by comparison, paintings in the literati tradition that have been produced by an individual artist at a specific moment in time may be altered by the addition of seals or later inscriptions made by the artist or subsequent collectors. The evolution of the painting itself, reactions of viewers, and the painting’s provenance thus become marked on the object itself. A single painting can also become part of an ongoing system of inspiration and commentary involving calligraphy, poetry and subsequent paintings produced by the original artist or another. Artists use these multiple art forms to complement and comment upon one another’s work over time (see Sullivan 1974 and Vinograd 1991). Even direct copies of a painting produced by another artist are often held in very high regard and this practice continues to be central to the current system of education. This practice is sometimes viewed as a form of competition with the master painters of the past that allows the tradition to evolve and remain vital (Fu 1991). We have used specific examples, but we are making a general point that must be a central proposition of the anthropology of art: understanding the significance of the work requires placing it in the widest possible context. It is not sufficient – or perhaps possible – to understand its immediate effect or significance without first understanding the historical, social, and cultural backgrounds to its production. One of the advantages of studying art works is that they provide a means to access the processual dimension of culture. They connect events with processes and they connect experiences separated in time. The Anthropology of Art and Interdisciplinary Discourse Ironically the future anthropology of art must re-engage with those methods and problems that led a different generation of anthropologists to reject the study of art in the first place. It must engage with the study of form at the micro level, seeing in the production of art objects a form of agency that arises from bodies of knowledge.

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At the macro level it must engage in the study of form for the purpose of comparative and historical analysis. Attention to form and the relative autonomy of form forces attention away from any single interpretative framework and encourages the researcher to look for the widest possible range of explanations for the existence of objects themselves and the contribution they make to an event. Different objects contribute in different ways. The study of form opens up a full range of avenues to explore the psychological impact of objects, their cognitive significance, the creative processes that underlie them and their contribution to systems of knowledge and meaning. A revitalized study of form can also help reforge the links between the research of anthropologists and of scholars working in related disciplines such as social history, art history, and archaeology. Analyses of form can be central to the analysis of historical process and the dynamics of relationships between groups over time. Studies of dress, for example, can provide information about changes in the expression of religious ideology, in concepts of gender and in gender relations (e.g. Hendrickson 1995; Banerjee and Miller 2003). While not every anthropologist will be interested in historical processes, it is important to create a dialogue across disciplines that involves shared methodologies and problematics. The input of anthropology into archaeology has often been in the form of lessons in social theory, but in the absence of methodologies that enable those theories to be applied in concrete archaeological situations. The analysis of the distribution of art styles can provide relevant data for social and historical studies aimed at establishing the nature, permeability and fluidity of social and cultural boundaries. The use of art in cultural mapping has a long history in studies of African art (see Fagg 1964 and Kasfir’s, 1984, critique). While simple correlations between artistic styles and other components of culture – such as linguistic boundaries or kinship systems – are seldom going to be found, style in art nonetheless provides a relevant source of data for interrogating boundaries and the nature of movements across them in the context of long-term social and cultural processes (see Dietler and Herbich 1998 for a relevant discussion). Attempts to establish relationships between art styles and cognitive structures (Fisher 1961) or social systems (Berndt 1971) have been controversial, but may none the less provide interesting directions for research if the complexity of the relationships is sufficiently taken into account. The anthropological study of art has recently had an important impact on anthropological studies of social change and processes of globalization. The impact has been in two main areas: in the study of processes of trade and exchange, and in the discourse on the process of globalization, including the conceptualization of cultural boundaries. The two issues are closely related since the ‘‘traffic in culture’’ has always been an area that problematizes an over-rigid and prescriptive model of cultures as bounded entities. The sale of art objects and craft has been one of the main entry points for small-scale societies into the global economy; it is also one of the main ways in which the image of such societies is created in the imagination of outsiders. While ethnographic museums were an integral component of the global trade in indigenous craft from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, anthropologists in general neglected to study – or perhaps even see – the trade, for a number of reasons. In part, anthropologists were interested in small-scale societies as they were before European colonization, and trade with Europeans shattered the illusion of the

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‘‘uncontaminated savage.’’ The primary aim of anthropology, for a long time, was to reconstruct societies as they were before colonization. Hence the influence of outsiders was something to be factored out or overlooked. For a long time anthropologists, on the whole, neglected social change. They saw it as something exogenous to the societies that they studied, rather than as a process in which such societies were fully engaged – albeit often from a position of disadvantage. In recent years understanding of these issues has been transformed. The pioneering work of Nelson Graburn (ch. 23) and his co-authors established that trade in art and artifacts was very much a component of contemporary relations between indigenous and nonindigenous societies. Nicholas Thomas’s (1991, 1999) later work showed that the exchange of goods and mutual influence was integral to the colonial process from the very beginning. The writings of Appadurai (1986), Kopytoff (1986) and Steiner (ch. 25) explored the journeys of objects across boundaries and the implications of these journeys for our conceptions of the producing and consuming cultures.32 It is now understood that the value creation processes in which objects partake are not restricted to the place and time of their production, but inhere in all of the interactions in which they are involved. The nature of the value creation processes will depend on the role that art has in the producing society, and in particular historical circumstances. Trade in art objects that have a central role in a society’s religious or ritual system can be a sign of the loss of value of those works in their indigenous context; a marker of religious transformation or the effect of missionary zeal. On the other hand, trade in highly valued religious art can be quite compatible with the role that the object has in its original context (as has been suggested for New Ireland Malangans (Gell 1998: 224–225)) and may contribute to increasing understanding in the consuming society of the religion and the values that underpin it (as is the case with much contemporary Australian Aboriginal art). Art can be one of the means by which the image of a culture is conveyed across time and space. But the images that are created in this way often involve cultural stereotypes that belong to the consuming culture rather than to the producing culture. The processes of selection and interpretation can create a simplified, essentialized, atemporal image of a particular society which bears little relation to its recent history or contemporary existence. These processes have been well explored in the writings of Price (ch.10), Errington (1998) and Karp et al. (1991, 1992). However the critique of the appropriation of art to create representations of ‘‘other’’ cultures must not in itself be essentialized to cover all places and times. It has been recognized recently that such essentialization denies the agency of indigenous peoples in both the past and the present. Indigenous people have often used art as a means to economic survival, as a demonstration of skills and cultural values, and as a means to assert cultural identity in a changing world (Dussart 1997). Art production has also been integral to dynamic processes in the producing societies: changes in the relations between men and women, in religious ideology, in employment and occupation. Art is nearly always produced in contested environments and the study of art in colonial and post-colonial contexts provides a means to access those dynamic processes. The denial of agency to indigenous artists takes us back to the very beginnings of this introduction; to the modernist myth that saw the Western artist as the person who recognized the value in the work of primitive art or folk music. However it is often the case that indigenous artists and craftspeople have been active in the process

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of manufacturing and marketing their art for new audiences, and creating new musical forms. We may now label such things as ‘‘world music’’ or ‘‘world art,’’ which again tends to deny agency to the indigenous peoples. It is appropriation in modern dress. In cultural studies and some areas of anthropology a judgmental element has come into the analysis – this mixing of cultures has been celebrated as the production of a hybrid post-colonial world, in opposition to previous models that focussed on difference. The agency of individuals who contribute to local trajectories and identity formation processes as well as being participants in more global processes, is de-emphasized. The problem of scale is important here. We prefer instead to see people acting in several frames, which do not in any simple sense include each other. The local is not nested in the global (or displaced by it), but rather articulates with it. We would expect a future anthropology of art to contribute to a more subtle and nuanced understanding of the relationship between the local and the global, and to situate the social and cultural production of art in space and time in a way that reveals the reasons for its irrepressible diversity and inventiveness. This requires a sophisticated understanding of local contexts of production – not frozen in some precolonial time/space, but dynamic and productive. Exhibiting Art Today Changing anthropological ideas have had an impact on the role of museums and art galleries as repositories of cultural artifacts. Two almost unrelated processes have made museums exciting places again. First, they have been properly recognized as valued repositories of cultural and historical archives providing a resource that allows for the reanalysis of contact history, colonial processes, changes in material culture and so on. Second, indigenous peoples have rediscovered their pasts in the collections. They are using museums as means to come to terms with loss. In some cases they see the preservation of past histories as a source of strength, giving them unique identities within the nation states that have incorporated them. Museums and art galleries have become spaces for contesting the stereotyped images of the past and challenging the assumptions of the present. Indeed in some settler colonial societies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand a more anthropologically informed understanding of history has led to the rise of a competing indigenous identity which is replacing some of the myths of nationhood associated with the colonial process. In a contemporary context the notion of the museum has, like art, been exported and differentially adopted or rejected, based upon its relevance to a particular nation or range of cultures. Collection, preservation, and display are now no longer the province of museums as Western institutions. They have entered a cross-cultural space where their value is reappraised. The potlatch, for example, was and continues to be a forum for the collection and display of material objects in a social and cultural context that has been represented in museums in both local and urban settings. The repatriation of a potlatch collection to Cape Mudge and Alert Bay, British Columbia (Clifford 1991) highlights the way that Western standards of museum practice have, in some cases, been imposed (the criteria for this return stipulated that the objects must be housed in a museum) even as local communities alter those practices to become locally relevant. The current policy of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian – where Native and non-

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Native staff consult the relevant tribal communities on most aspects of the storage and display of cultural objects – is only the largest and most recent example of the adaptation of museum practice to indigenous systems of knowledge that has been occurring in countless tribal museums throughout North America. In the USA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) has forced museums to adapt to the concerns of Native Americans over the handling of objects and human remains. Whether forced or voluntary, international debates over repatriation and the general control of material cultural property (and intangible cultural property according to a new UNESCO convention) have created a dialogue that both enhances the cross-cultural understanding of art and allows for increasing collaboration. Significant yet invigorating challenges to art institutions are presented by the participation of artists with different cultural backgrounds – in contrast to the long history of including objects without the participation of their producers. Contemporary artists producing work in styles that range from historical to experimental have increasingly engaged with art institutions and, in so doing, presented alternative conceptions of art as cultural knowledge. The analysis of systems of art education is a useful method for understanding the role of art in different cultures. The pedagogical process sets the foundations for knowledge and determines how individuals learn – and sometimes learn to critique – the conventions of the different art worlds in which they may circulate.33 Related cross-cultural studies of children’s art also offer a particularly rich avenue for anthropological analysis in this respect. Artistic skills and accompanying cultural knowledge may be acquired through a range of methods that include independent study, family and community gatherings, apprenticeships, and training in art schools. Whether individual or institutional, a Western influence on art education has often impacted the evolution of contemporary art forms and practices in different cultures. The many pedagogical examples found throughout the world include the Western influence on Inuit (Houston 1952), Native American (Gritton and Cajete 2000), and Aboriginal Australian art (Bardon 1979), as well as art in Ghana (Svasˇek 1997) and China (Perkins 2001).34 Although the centripetal forces of international art institutions draw artists from every culture into their sphere, these individuals may choose not to participate or, if they do, they may challenge the rules of those institutions. Since many contemporary artists now have training in a number of settings they can draw upon different cultural forms to address themes that are both cultural and personal to question the definitions of ‘‘indigenous,’’ ‘‘traditional’’ and ‘‘modern’’ (see, for example, the contributions by Bennett and Rickard in this volume). Conclusion In this survey of the history of the anthropology of art we have been equally concerned with two questions: what anthropology can contribute to the study of art and what the study of art can contribute to anthropology. The first is easy to answer, in particular in relation to the recent European tradition of art history. An anthropological approach places art in its social context. The relativism of anthropological theory broadens the definition and conception of art by elucidating its contexts – whether they be local or global. This relativism is in harmony with trends in contemporary Western art practice that have seen a challenge to the presuppositions that

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underpin the definition of the Western canon. Anthropology has a role in this Western art world discourse, but it is also concerned with developing an ethnography of Western art practice and of the complex, multi-sited art world itself, through research into the passage of works from artist’s studio, to commercial gallery, to art museum or private collection and into the lives of those involved in that world and the journey. An anthropological approach to art is not opposed to exhibiting works of art in art galleries. While the way objects are presented reflects and influences the way they are viewed by members of a particular society, it should not limit they way they are analyzed. An anthropological perspective may problematize the exclusivity of the art gallery as a venue but does not prescribe a particular way of viewing objects (see Morphy 2001). As Vogel (1991) demonstrated, there are many ways of exhibiting the same object, each of which may contribute in different ways to understanding and appreciation. Finally, what can the study of art contribute to anthropology? It is our view that art is an integral part of most, if not all, human societies and that by failing to study it anthropologists deny themselves access to a significant body of information. An anthropology of art opens the way to understanding the processes of creativity and creative action. It can provide insights into human cognitive systems – how people conceptualize components of their everyday life and how they construct representations of their world. Art is often, indeed, employed in the creation of context – of the frame within which ritual action occurs, or of the stage and the accompanying regalia for political performance. The neglect of art, and of the aesthetic dimension of human action in general has resulted in a failure of anthropology to understand or convincingly demonstrate the effect of participation in certain events on members of a society. The analysis of art or of the substance of ritual performance – the paintings, sculptures, songs and sequences of action – has often been the missing ingredient in the anthropological study of ritual, which has centered instead on debates between structural and symbolic analyses of the content of ritual action. It has focussed on performitivity in an Austinean35 sense of what ritual does, and has neglected to study how ritual achieves its effects. The analysis of ritual forms opens avenues to understanding the effect of ritual action on the minds and bodies of the participants. More generally, the failure to acknowledge and investigate the place of the aesthetic in human life has resulted in the neglect of data that can enrich studies of embodiment, of dispositions, of ‘‘habitus’’ – of factors that are now acknowledged to play a crucial role in socio-cultural process and identity formation. One of the most unfortunate consequences of the acceptance of an essentialized definition of art was that it removed art from everyday life, making it epiphenomenal, a mere decorative or aesthetic veneer that social scientists did not have to take seriously into account. Yet for most of human history art has been an essential component of human action. Even in the West, art carried on as a normal part of life in its multiple interventions – as style, as design, as craft, as architecture, as decor, as dress, as bodily adornment, as advertisement and so on. These areas have also tended to be neglected until recently by social scientists perhaps as a consequence of their family resemblance to art, partly because they were simply taken for granted. Now that the significance of this dimension of human action has been realized, an immensely rich field of research has been opened up. Anthropologists are only now beginning to learn how to deal with it analytically. The study of art is essentially an

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interdisciplinary field that brings together anthropologists, artists, art historians, and social historians in an exciting venture.

NOTES 1 For example, see the essays in Heyd and Clegg (2005) or Morphy 1989 and the number of recent books on Australian Aboriginal rock art (e.g. Layton 1992, and Morwood 2002). 2 We are using ‘‘Western’’ here in a loose sense to refer to Euro-American class based capitalist societies while acknowledging that there is a danger both in essentializing the category of the West and creating an artificially bounded entity in the context of increasing globalization of economies. 3 Marcus and Myers’ definition of the modern art world fits our purpose well: ‘‘a very specific historically situated art world: namely the contemporary, Western-centered tradition of fine arts that began with the birth of modernism and a transformed art market out of the previously dominant Academy system in nineteenth-century France. This is a world still defined, even with its post-modern attempts at transformation, by the creation of aesthetic experience through the disinterested contemplation of objects as art objects removed from their instrumental associations’’ (1995:3). This system of education has been exported widely, in Africa and Asia, for example, where contemporary artists are trained and often inherit the values of this system. 4 Literati painting refers to both the style and social system in which Chinese ink painting has been produced for more than a thousand years. Central to this system is a distinction between the perceived superiority in technique and intellectual sophistication of paintings done by scholarly amateurs (the literati) as opposed to the paintings produced by professionals for sale (see Cahill 1994 for a nuanced analysis of this system). While the changes in Chinese society during the 20th century have fundamentally altered the social system that produced literati painting, the style is still practiced extensively and has evolved over time. Some contemporary artists and intellectuals, however, have strongly rejected the efforts of those who continue in this style because they consider it to be hopelessly stagnant and irrelevant to contemporary China (see Andrews and Gao 1995). 5 Among the many relevant areas for study are practices in Japan (Moeran 1997), China (Yen 2005), India (Bundgaard 2005; Hart 1995; Pinney 2004), and in Islamic art (George 1998, 1999), as well as anthropological analysis of different Western systems (Marcus 1995, Herzfeld 1990). 6 It is not only in the West that objects are exhibited. This is well illustrated by Daniel Biebuyck in his analysis of Lega sculpture when he writes: ‘‘The final initiation takes place when a man is older, wiser, and familiar with all of Bwami visual culture. Therefore, the object combinations hold fewer surprises. The final performance strips away all metaphorical layers. The teacher escorts the initiate into an area where initiation objects are carefully laid out. No explanations are given: the initiate is left to understand the meaning through contemplation of the exhibition’’ (Biebuyck 1994:42). 7 The scrutiny of indigenous peoples has challenged many museum practices including systems of classification. In the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution, for example, consultation with the affiliated tribes has resulted in indigenous categories of classification being implemented in the storage and display of objects. 8 For Tylor the development of the arts, whether weapons, pottery, textiles, or architecture, could be ‘‘traced along lines of gradual improvement,’’ as in the development of stone age implements: ‘‘Beginning with the natural sharp stone, the transition to the rudest artificially shaped stone implement is imperceptibly gradual; and onward from this crude stage . . . till the manufacture at last arrives at admirable artistic perfection’’ (1929

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[1871]:66–68). The movement from old to new materials and techniques is also anevolutionary process: ‘‘The keeping up in stone architecture of designs belonging to wooden buildings, furnishes conclusive proofs of growth, in several countries, of the art of building in stone from the art of building in wood’’ (1964 [1878]:141–142). Pitt Rivers, 1906: plate III, between pages 44–45; accompanying discussion pp. 37–39. Haddon and Start compare the occurrence of particular motifs in Iban textiles with other textile traditions (e.g. Malay), concluding that the distinctiveness of the Iban designs suggests indigenous development ‘‘since the Iban became separated from other peoples’’ (1982 [1936]:137–141). For example, Balfour’s analysis of face designs on South American pottery offers a developmental sequence moving from realism to increased decorative effect (1893a: 36–39). See, for example, O’Hanlon and Welsch (2000) on the process and impact of ethnographic collection in Melanesia during this time. Spencer’s and Gillen’s studies of the Arunta and other Aboriginal groups of central and northern Australia included chapters dedicated to ‘‘decorative art’’ and gave attention to designs across forms – on implements and weapons, rock drawings, decoration of ceremonial objects, and ground drawings (Spencer and Gillen, 1904:696–743; 1927:551– 578). Other forms of art, such as body decoration, were covered within the analysis of ceremony (e.g. Spencer and Gillen, 1904:177–225). See Radcliffe-Brown, 1968, ch. 10, and 1977, ch. 6. As d’Azevedo puts it ‘‘The study of art and other aspects of culture that did not readily fit into the rigors of scientific method were swept out of favor along with Social Darwinism. The reaction against the excesses of nineteenth-century evolutionism, along with the rapid accumulation of new data from comparative ethnology, engendered a legitimate distrust of generalizations derived from anticipations of our own culture’’ (d’Azevedo 1973:2). See Kroeber (1948, ch. 8, 1968 [1952] ch. 36, and 1957); see also Benedict (1934) and Sapir (1951). Rather than focus on the artistic process, Bourdieu saw both the artist and the socially knowledgeable appreciator of art as more or less passive products of ‘‘the social norms which combine to define the always uncertain and historically changing frontier between simple technical objects and objets d’art’’ (1984:29). Including Roger Caillois, Michel Leiris, and the filmmaker Jean Rouch. Marcel Griaule founded the collective French research project on the Dogon people of Mali, Germaine Dieterlen was his main collaborator; see Griaule (1938, 1947, 1970 [1948]); Griaule and Dieterlen (1951); Dieterlen (1941); also Leiris and Delange (1968); Caillois (1962, 1970). See Berndt (1964, 1981; Berndt and Stanton 1980). Mountford collected widely in Australia from the 1930s to the 1950s, including during the 1948 American/Australian scientific expedition to Arnhem Land, see Mountford (1956–64, 1958, 1961). As Michael Young (2004:398) writes of Malinowski: ‘‘His interest in arts and crafts (‘primitive technology’) was principally in their economic and social aspects, and he railed against the ‘museum moles’ who studied disembodied objects torn from the cultural contexts that gave them life and meaning. Such views were integral to Malinowski’s temperament. and they are reflected in his earliest thinking about the kind of anthropology that most interested him: ‘primitive sociology’ rather than ‘ethnology’ ’’. e.g. Munn 1986 [1976]; Weiner 1977; Leach and Leach 1982; see also Newton 1975; Norick 1976; Shack 1985; and Macintyre’s (1983) bibliography on the Kula. In this book we have largely restricted ourselves to the visual arts both because we argue that they have their own distinctive sets of properties but also because the scope of the book would otherwise be too large. In doing so we hope to have left the space for another set of readings that centers on the musical and performative arts. In leaving this space we

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24 25

26 27

acknowledge that it is one that needs to crossed, redefined and even transgressed, according the categories of particular cultures and the nature of particular genres and media. As exemplified in recent conferences and publications, art historians and artists have been especially active in their efforts to draw upon anthropological knowledge and methodologies (see Perkins 2004 and Westermann 2005). This conversation is exemplified by the range of articles produced by those working across disciplines as featured in journals such as Res and African Arts. Gell proposes that ‘‘the anthropological theory of art does not need to provide a criterion for art object status which is independent of the theory itself. The anthropologist is not obliged to define the art object, in advance, in a way satisfactory to aestheticians, or philosophers, or art historians . . . the theory is premised on the idea that the nature of the art object is a function of the social-relational matrix in which it is embedded. It has no ‘intrinsic’ nature, independent of the relational context’’ (Gell 1998: 7). A good discussion of these definitional issues in sympathy with our own approach is provided by d’Azevedo (1973). See Goodman (1969) for an important philosophical approach to the distinctions and relationships between different art forms. In its various forms, an anthropology of the senses (Howes 2003; Taussig 1993) also addresses the relationships between the visual arts and other forms of expressive culture. As d’Azevedo rightly points out ‘‘A normative, non-analytic concept of art or the artist, derived from a particular tradition of our own culture, cannot be expected to comprehend either the manifold expressions of artistry in our society or in others any more than the formal tenets and social structure of Protestantism would comprehend the varieties of religious expressions among human groups’’ (d’Azevedo 1973:9). In Mohawk, for example, there is still no indigenous word for art although the English term is used both for convenience and, to be gracious, as a courtesy to non-Mohawk speakers. There are, however, many terms describing both objects and the processes for making them such as basketry, beadwork and painting. In contrast, there are many words for art in Chinese reflecting the long and nuanced history of indigenous practice in which paintings and other objects, although embedded within complex social systems, have come to be regarded as distinct art objects. The National Gallery has recently unveiled a new approach to Aboriginal art that consists of the entire reconfiguration of the permanent Canadian art galleries to integrate Aboriginal works under the exhibition title, ‘‘Art of this Land.’’ For the 1927 exhibition see the catalogue (National Gallery of Canada 1927). For comparative purposes on the reception of Chinese art in Great Britain, see Clunas (ch. 11). Boas (1955[1927]:349) writes: Artistic enjoyment . . . is based essentially on the reaction of our minds to form. The same kind of enjoyment may be released by impressions received from forms that are not the handiwork of man, but they may not be considered art, although the esthetic reaction is not different from the one we receive from the contemplation or the hearing of a work of art. When speaking of artistic production they must be excluded. When considering only esthetic reactions they must be included. See also Coote (ch. 16, this volume); Firth 1992:17–18 and Maquet 1986. Appadurai suggests that, as a category of the intercultural flow of commodities, ‘‘ethnic and tourist arts’’ provide the best example of ‘‘the diversities in taste, understanding, and use between producers and consumers . . . tourist art constitutes a special commodity traffic, in which the group identities of producers are tokens for the status politics of consumers’’ (1986:47). The psychologist Howard Gardner (1988, 1990) has explored the role of art education and the art of children at length. See Becker (1994) and Cahan and Kucor (1996) for inquiries into the relationship between contemporary art and art education. See Herzfeld (2004) for a relevant anthropological analysis of the pedagogical process among artisans and their apprentices in Crete.

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34 The role of training is often central to the process of becoming acknowledged as an ‘‘artist’’ in various cultural contexts. Distinctions between skill and training are also related to debates over the term ‘‘primitive’’ and the perceived divisions between fine art and popular forms such as graffiti (see Jarman 1996 for a study that touches on mural art). ‘‘Outsider art’’ has been a term used to describe both the art of the untrained and art produced by the mentally ill (the latter usage being related though distinct from the wellestablished field of art therapy). 35 The philosopher of language John Austin moved away from an analytical emphasis on meaning in language toward a focus on the performative nature of certain utterances; see Austin 1962.

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Leach, E. R and J. W. Leach, eds. 1982 The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leiris, Michel and J. Delange, 1968, African Art. M. Ross, trans. London: Thames and Hudson. Macintyre, Martha, 1983 The Kula: A Bibliography. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Malinowski, Bronislaw, 1972[1922] Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, with a preface by James G. Frazer. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Malinowski, Bronislaw, 1979 The Ethnography of Malinowski: The Trobriand Islands 1915– 18. Michael W. Young, ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mao Tse-tung, 1967 Mao Tse-tung on Literature and Art. Peking: Foreign Language Press. Maquet, Jacques, 1986 The Aesthetic Experience: An Anthropologist Looks at the Visual Arts. New Haven: Yale University Press. Marcus, George, 1995, The Power of Contemporary Work in an American Art Tradition to Illuminate its Own Power Relations. In The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology. George Marcus and Fred Myers, eds. Pp. 201–223. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marcus, George and Fred Myers, eds. 1995 The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mauss, Marcel, 1970[1950] The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Ian Cunnison, trans. London: Cohen & West. Miller, Daniel, ed. 2005 Materiality. Durham: Duke University Press. Mills, James Phillip, 1926 The Ao Nagas, with a foreword by H. Balfour and supplementary notes and bibliography by J.H. Hutton. London: Macmillan. Mills, James Phillip, 1937 The Rengma Nagas. London: Macmillan. Moeran, Brian, 1997 Folk Art Potters of Japan: Beyond an Anthropology of Aesthetics. London: Routledge. Morphy, Howard, 1989 Animals into Art. London: Routledge. Morphy, Howard, 1991 Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Morphy, Howard, 1994 The Anthropology of Art. In Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Tim Ingold, ed. Pp. 648–685, London: Routledge. Morphy, Howard, 2001 Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery. Humanities Research 8(1):37–50. Morwood, Michael, 2002 Visions from the Past: The Archaeology of Australian Aboriginal Art. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Mountford, Charles, 1958 The Tiwi: Their Art, Myth and Ceremony. London: Phoenix; Melbourne: Georgian House. Mountford, Charles, 1961 Aboriginal Art. London: Longmans. Mountford, Charles, ed. 1956–64 Records of the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Munn, Nancy D., 1986[1976] The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Munn, Nancy, 1973 Walbiri Iconography: Graphic Representation and Cultural Symbolism in a Central Australian Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Myers, Fred, 2002 Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art. Durham: Duke University Press. National Gallery of Canada, 1927 Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada. Newton, Douglas, 1975 Massim: Art of the Massim Area, New Guinea. New York: Museum of Primitive Art. Nordenskio¨ld, Gustaf, 1973[1893] The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, South Western Colorado: Their Pottery and Implements, translated by D. Lloyd Morgan, with a new

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introduction by Watson Smith. New York: AMS Press for Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge. Norick, Frank Albert, 1976 An Analysis of the Material Culture of the Trobriand Islands Based upon the Collection of Bronislaw Malinowski, PhD thesis. University of California, Ann Arbor. O’Hanlon, M., 1995 Communication and Affect in New Guinea Art. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1(4):832–833. O’Hanlon, Michael and Robert Welsch, eds. 2000 Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s–1930s. New York: Berghahn Press. Penniman, T. K., 1953 The Pitt Rivers Museum. Museum Journal 52:243–46. Penniman, T. K., 1965 A Hundred Years of Anthropology, with contributions by B. Blackwood and J. S. Weiner. 3rd edition. London: Duckworth. Perkins, Morgan, 2001 Re-viewing Traditions: An Anthropological Examination of Contemporary Chinese Art Worlds. Doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford. Perkins, Morgan, 2004 Anthropologists and Artists Talk. Anthropology News, January: 26–28. Perkins, Morgan, 2005, ‘‘Do We Still Have No Word for Art?’’: A Contemporary Mohawk Question. In Exploring World Art. Eric Verbrux, Pamela Sheffield Rosi and Robert L. Welsch., eds. Longgrove, IL: Waveland Press. Pinney, Christopher, 2004 ‘‘Photos of the Gods:’’ The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. London: Reaktion Books. Pitt Rivers, Augustus Henry Lane-Fox, 1906 Evolution of Culture and Other Essays, J. L. Myres, ed., with an introduction by H. Balfour. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Price, Sally, 2001[1989] Primitive Art in Civilized Places. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald, 1927 Margaret Preston and Transition. Art in Australia, third series, no. 22, December. Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald, 1968[1952] Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses by A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, with a foreword by E. E. Evans-Pritchard and F. Eggan. London: Cohen & West. Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald, 1977, The Social Anthropology of Radcliffe-Brown. Adam Kuper, ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Rattray, Robert Sutherland, 1954 Religion and Art in Ashanti, with chapters by G. T. Bennett. London: Oxford University Press. Redfield, Robert, M. J. Herskovits and G. F. Ekholm, 1959 Aspects of Primitive Art. New York: Museum of Primitive Art. Sapir, Edward, 1951 Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality. D. G. Mandelbaum, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Scoditti, Giancarlo, 1990 Kitawa: A Linguistic and Aesthetic Analysis of Visual Art in a Melanesian Society. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Shack, William A., 1985 The Kula: A Bronislaw Malinowski Centennial Exhibition, Berkeley: Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology. Spencer, Baldwin and F. J. Gillen, 1904 The Northern Tribes of Central Australia. London: Macmillan. Spencer, Baldwin and F. J. Gillen, 1927 The Arunta: A Study of a Stone Age People. London: Macmillan. Steinen, Karl von den, 1969[1925–28], Die Marquesaner und ihre Kunst: Studien u¨ber die Entwicklung primitiver Sudseeornamentik nach eigenen Reiseergebnissen und dem Material der Mussen. Reprint of 1925–28 edition. New York: Hacker Art Books. Steinen, Karl von den, c. 1988 Von den Steinen’s Marquesan Myths. Marta Langridge, trans. Jennifer Terrell, ed. Canberra: Target Oceania/The Journal of Pacific History. [Available from The Journal of Pacific History, c/-Dept. of Pacific and South East Asian History, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2600]. Steiner, Christopher, 1994 African Art in Transit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Part I Foundations and Framing the Discipline

Introduction

The texts we have included in this part are the relatively recent foundations of a recognizable contemporary anthropology of art. We make no attempt to cover the early history of writings about non-European art, to examine the place of art in evolutionist theories, to summarize the debates between the diffusionists and the evolutionists, or probe the relationship between the anthropology of art and the culture history school or the technique and form theories of Semper (1989). A number of these issues have indeed been addressed in our general introduction. The essays in this part are foundational in the sense that many of the current themes and debates in the anthropology of art are foreshadowed in them. From the dates of the essays in this section the part could almost be titled the late foundations. The earliest essays are excerpts from Franz Boas’s Primitive Art. This book was first published in 1927, but was based on earlier research and writings. It is often credited as being the most synthetic of his writings (Wax 1956). As often with his work, the detailed exemplification obscures the coherent development of his argument. Primitive Art is interlaced with critical asides that challenge the presuppositions of evolutionary theorists. Boas engaged with the core arguments of art historians of the time concerning such issues as the relationship between designs and technical processes and the relationship between geometric and figurative representations. He examined ‘‘the theory that all artistic representation is by origin naturalistic and that geometricization grows up only when the artist tries to introduce ideas that are not inherent in the object itself.’’ He concluded that this ‘‘cannot be maintained, because realistic representation and geometric representation spring from distinctive sources’’ (Boas 1927:351). Boas’s writing on art emphasized the formal, technical and aesthetic dimensions, and his work is frustrating for those who want to explore the meaning of Northwest Coast art in context (but see the Rosman and Rubel chapter and Jonaitis chapter). Boas’s approach (ch. 1) provided a firm link with the art discourse of the 19th century but at the same time made art relevant to the anthropologists who followed him by freeing it from simple deterministic theories. He inspired students such as Herskovits, Mead and Kroeber to include art and aesthetics as an integral part of their data and yet also enabled anthropology to remain relevant to art-historical discourse though his emphasis on style. Boas was attuned to the role of individual creativity in art and at the same time sensitive to the role that technique and skill

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play in habituating artists to a particular form of bodily practice. But it is not so much that contemporary theories are latent in Boas’s work – it is more accurate to say that the range of his research topics and the questions that were left open by his open ended and somewhat atheoretical empiricism were a stimulus to the development of contemporary theories. The readings selected for this part illustrate the wide range of approaches adopted by anthropologists interested in art. Raymond Firth maintained a strong interest in indigenous art throughout his long life, writing on Maori and New Guinea (Firth 1936) art early on in his career and later producing more synthetic analyses (e.g. Firth 1992). In Tikopia, Firth, an anthropologist with a great personal interest in art, found himself – ironically – working in a society with very limited plastic arts though a rich heritage of music, song, poetry, and dance. However, in his analysis of headrests Firth shows how aesthetic values extend beyond works of art to material culture objects in general (c.f. Coote’s chapter (16)). Firth has something in common with Boas in his meticulous analysis of form and his attention to technique and stylistic detail. Firth’s is a study of quality both in terms of skill and craftsmanship but also in the sense later developed by Munn (Munn 1986) using Peirce’s concept of the qualisign. Firth connects the energy invested in the production of headrests to the structure of Tikopean society. There is almost a dialogic relationship between the form and composition of the headrests and structural features of Tikopean gender relations and social hierarchy. Le´vi-Strauss’s important analysis (ch. 2) of split representation also concerns the relationship between the form of art and structural features of society. The chapter is an exemplar of his structuralist method and from that perspective is highly theoretical. Yet it also has Boasian associations. Not only does Le´vi-Strauss base his analysis partly on Boas’s Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka’wakw) data, he takes up a problem of interpretation highlighted by Boas and¯ he¯ too pays close attention to the relationship between technique, surface and form. But in analyzing the data he does precisely what Boas avoids: he attempts to explain the representations by seeking relationships between apparently disparate kinds of data and drawing connections between different levels of analysis, between the form of art objects and structural features of society. Bateson’s chapter (4) is equally bold and fundamentally comparative in intent though he exemplifies his argument with an analysis of a Balinese painting. Bateson applies to art a model drawn from communication theory, a model connected to structuralism through its emphasis on underlying structures and transformation. He presents a theory of art that locates it as a mode of communication separate to that of everyday language, allowing artists and their audiences to engage, often unconsciously, with important themes that connect human beings together and with the deep and fundamental issues of their lives. Bateson’s approach to art is multilayered, focussing equally on the relationship between skill and pattern in the creation of aesthetic effect and on the domain of meaning. Bateson’s chapter is inspirational rather than being a totally convincing analysis of Balinese painting: it poses fundamental questions about the kind of objects art objects are, and the possibility of cross-cultural communication through art, and opens up avenues for research. Bateson would almost certainly have appreciated Le´vi-Strauss’s heartfelt cry ‘‘These [comparative] studies have been jeopardized even more by intellectual pharisees who prefer to deny obvious relationships because science does not yet

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provide an adequate method for their interpretation’’ (ch. 4, p. 57). Forge’s writings, though much more grounded in detailed ethnography than Bateson’s analysis, cover very much the same terrain. Forge was the first British anthropologist to focus primarily on art. At the center of Forge’s analysis of Abelam art is the relationship between style and meaning, concepts that link his work both to interests of art history and the symbolic anthropology of the 1960s (see e.g. Forge 1973). In contrast to societies such as the Northwest Coast (see chapters by Rosman and Rubel (19) and Jonaitis (20)) or the Yolngu of northern Australia (see Morphy chapter (17)) the Abelam lack a tradition of exegesis. Forge sought the underlying meanings of Abelam art through analyzing relationships between the formal elements and by placing the art in its social and religious context (see also Losche 2001 for a complementary analysis). In his chapter (6) Forge provides a rich ethnography of the Abelam artist at work and engages with issues of individuality, stylistic continuity, and change. William Fagg’s chapter (3) is also concerned as much with individuality as it is with definition of stylistic areas, even though, ostensibly, the aim of the book it introduces is to depict the typical styles of different African tribes by selecting representative art objects. The one tribe–one style approach to African art has been justly criticized by Kasfir (1984). However, in reading Fagg it is important to bear in mind who his audience was. Fagg’s chapter is directed against the ethnocentrism of European art history and the status given to the European canon. His aim was to show the diversity of African art by representing each tribe as a potential nation with Africa having a heritage of artistic expression every bit as complex and diverse as that of Europe. The works selected were tokens for difference. In much of his work Fagg was indeed concerned to emphasize the individual nature of artistic creativity. Towards the end of his life the identification of the individual hand that distinguished one set of Yoruba carvings from another became a major focus of his research. However there is unquestionably a contradiction between the roles given to tribal style and to individual creativity that remains unresolved in Fagg’s writing. While he emphasizes that the tribes have fuzzy boundaries, change over time, and mix together at the edges, they are still there as an important framework to explain difference. The problem is to see the patterns in art history, regional aspects to the distribution of styles, the relationships between art forms and society, the relationships between forms of art and temporality, without looking for a single explanatory framework and trying to contain all variation within little typological boxes. Style and identity, traditions of practice, forms of social organisation, religious systems, and regimes of meaning and value, are all structuring components of human action and it is essential that the explanation of form in art be approached from a diversity of perspectives. Fagg is unlikely to have disagreed. Many of the topics of the anthropology of art reflect wider debates within the discipline and are subject to the same cumulative processes of understanding. These include the issue of group definition, the relationship between cultural process and individual agency, the nature of language, and the concept of structure, and so on. Art has been a productive arena for debating these core themes but the anthropology of art has also created its own discourse. Anthropologists writing about art have had two quite different audiences in mind. On the one hand, they have been concerned to challenge the presuppositions of the Western art audience for Indigenous art and to use art as a means of extending cross-cultural discourse. On the other, they have

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been concerned to demonstrate to their fellow anthropologists the validity of the concept of art for cross-cultural analysis and the contribution its analysis can make to anthropological research and understanding. The anthropology of art has maintained a broadly comparative perspective, perhaps in part because the issue of relativism versus universalism is deeply embedded in discourse over aesthetics. All the authors in this part are concerned with the relationship between pattern, style, structure and individual creativity; all are attuned to the analysis of form. All are people who are passionately interested in art and are attuned to the possibility of universals perhaps because they sense that aesthetic values are widely shared across cultures.

REFERENCES Boas, Franz, 1927 Primitive Art. Oslo: Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning. Kasfir, Sydney, 1984 One Tribe One Style? Paradigms in the Historiography of African Art. History in Africa 9:163–193. Losche, Diane, 2001 Anthony’s Feast: the Gift in Abelam Aesthetics. Australian Journal of Anthropology 12(2): 155–165. Firth, Raymond, 1936 Art and Life in New Guinea. London: Studio. Firth, Raymond, 1992 Art and Anthropology. In Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics. Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton, eds. Pp. 15–39. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Forge, Anthony, 1973 Style and Meaning in Sepik Art. In Primitive Art and Society. Anthony Forge ed. Pp. 169–192. London: Wenner-Gren Foundation and Oxford University Press. Munn, Nancy, 1986 The Fame of Gawa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Semper, Gottfried 1989 The Four Elements of Architecture & Other Essays. Harry Mallgrave and Wolfgang Herrmann, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wax, Murray, 1956 The Limitations of Boas’ Anthropology, American Anthropologist, 58: 63–74.

1 Primitive Art Franz Boas

The general principles discussed in the preceding chapters, may now be elucidated by a discussion of the style of the decorative art of the Indians of the North Pacific Coast of North America. Two styles may be distinguished: the man’s style expressed in the art of wood carving and painting and their derivatives; and the woman’s style which finds expression in weaving, basketry, and embroidery. The two styles are fundamentally distinct. The former is symbolic, the latter formal. The symbolic art has a certain degree of realism and is full of meaning. The formal art has, at most, pattern names and no especially marked significance. We shall discuss the symbolic art first. Its essential characteristics are an almost absolute disregard of the principles of perspective, emphasis of significant symbols and an arrangement dictated by the form of the decorative field. While the Eskimo of Arctic America, the Chukchee and Koryak of Siberia, the Negroes and many other people use carvings in the round which serve no practical ends, but are made for the sake of representing a figure, – man, animal, or supernatural being, – almost all the work of the Indian artist of the region that we are considering serves at the same time a useful end. When making simple totemic figures, the artist is free to shape his

subjects without adapting them to the forms of utensils, but owing to their large size, he is limited by the cylindrical form of the trunk of the tree from which they are carved. The native artist is almost always restrained by the shape of the object to which the decoration is applied. The technical perfection of carvings and paintings, the exactness and daring of composition and lines prove that realistic representations are not beyond the powers of the artist. This may also be demonstrated by a few exquisite examples of realistic carvings. The helmet shown in figure 1.1 is decorated with the head of an old man affected with partial paralysis. Undoubtedly this specimen must be considered a portrait head. Nose, eyes, mouth and the general expression, are highly characteristic. In a mask (figure 1.2) representing a dying warrior, the artist has shown faithfully the wide lower jaw, the pentagonal face, and the strong nose of the Indian. The relaxing muscles of mouth and tongue, the drooping eyelids, and the motionless eyeballs, mark the agonies of death. Figure 1.3 represents a recent carving, a human figure of rare excellence. Posture and drapery are free of all the formal characteristics of North West coast style. Only the treatment of the eye and the facial painting betray its ethnic origin. Here belongs also the realistic head previously referred to, made by the Kwakiutl Indians of Vancouver Island

From Primitive Art (New York: Dover, 1955), pp. 183–188, 218–219, 222–230, 239–240, 251–255, 279–281.

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Figure 1.1 Tlingit helmet

Figure 1.2 Mask representing dying warrior, Tlingit

(figure 1.4), which is used in a ceremony and intended to deceive the spectators who are made to believe that it is the head of a decapitated dancer. When the artist desires realistic truth he is quite able to attain it. This is not often the case; generally the object of artistic work is decorative and the representation follows the principles developed in decorative art. When the form of the decorative field permits, the outline of the animal form is retained. The size of the head is generally stressed as against that of the body and of the limbs. Eyes and eyebrows, mouth and nose are given great prominence. In almost all cases the eyebrows have a standardized form, analogous to

Figure 1.3 Carved figure, British Columbia

that in which the Indian likes to trim his own eyebrows, – with a sharp edge on the rim of the orbits, and a sharp angle in the upper border, the brows being widest at a point a little outward from the center, tapering to the outer and inner angles and ending quite abruptly at both ends. The eye is also standardized. In many cases it consists of two outer curves which indicate the borders of the upper and lower eyelids. A large inner circle represents the eyeball. The lip lines are always distinct and border a mouth which is given an extraordinary width. Generally the lips are opened wide

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Figure 1.5 Carvings representing the beaver, from models of Haida totem poles carved in slate

Figure 1.4 Carved head used in ceremonial, Kwakiutl Indians

enough to show the teeth or the tongue. Cheeks and forehead are much restricted in size. The trunk is not elaborated. The ears of animals rise over the forehead (Figure 1.5). These are almost always applied in reproductions of mammals and birds, while they are generally missing in those of the whale, killerwhale, shark and often also of the sculpin. The human ear is represented in its characteristic form, on a level with the eye (figure 1.6). Whales and fish often have round eyes, but exceptions occur (figure 1.26). For clear presentation of the principles of this art it seems advantageous to treat the symbolism and the adjustment of the animal form to the decorative field before taking up the purely formal elements. Figure 1.5a is a figure from the model of a totem pole, which represents the beaver. Its face is treated somewhat like a human face, particularly the region around eyes and nose. The position of the ears, however, indicates an animal head. The two large incisors serve to identify the rodent par excellence, – the

Figure 1.6 Mask with eyebrows symbolizing the squid, Tlingit

beaver. The tail is turned up in front of the body. It is ornamented by cross-hatchings which represent the scales on the beaver’s tail. In its forepaws it holds a stick. The nose is short and forms a sharp angle with the forehead. The nostrils are large and indicated by spirals. The large incisors, the tail with cross-hatchings, the stick, and the form of the nose are symbols of the beaver and the first two of these are sufficient characteristics of the animal. Figure 1.5b is another representation of a beaver from the model of a totem pole. It resembles the former one in all details, except that the stick is missing. The beaver is merely

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holding its three-toed forepaws raised to the chin. In other carvings the beaver is shown with four or five toes, but the symbols described here never vary. On the handle of a spoon (figure 1.7), the head and forepaws of the beaver are shown; and in its mouth are indicated an upper pair of incisors, all the other teeth being omitted. The scaly tail is shown on the back of the spoon. The nose differs from the one previously described only in the absence of the spiral development of the nostril. Its form and size agree with the preceding specimens. In the centre of the front of a dancing headdress (figure 1.8), a beaver is represented in squatting position. The symbols mentioned before will be recognized here. The face is human, but the ears, which rise over the forehead, indicate that an animal is meant. Two large pairs of incisors occupy the center of the open mouth. The tail, with cross-hatchings, is turned up in front of the body, and appears between the two hind legs. The forepaws are raised to the height of the mouth, but they do not hold a stick (for additional representations of the beaver see figures 1.26, 1.29, 1.30,

Figure 1.7 Carving from handle of spoon representing beaver, Tlingit

Figure 1.8 Headdress representing beaver; a dragonfly is shown on the chest of the beaver, Haida

1.31). The nose is short, with large round nostrils and turns abruptly into the forehead. On the chest of the beaver another head is represented over which a number of small rings stretch upward. This animal represents the dragon-fly, which is symbolized by a large head and a slender segmented body. Its feet extend from the corners of its mouth towards the haunches of the beaver. Its face resembles a human face; but the two ears, which rise over the eyebrows, indicate that an animal is meant. In many representations of the dragon-fly there are two pairs of wings attached to the head. Combinations of two animals similar to the present one are found frequently, as in figures 1.14 and 1.19. In a painting from a Kwakiutl housefront (figure 1.9), which was made for me by an Indian from Fort Rupert, the large head with the incisors will be recognized. The scaly tail appears under the mouth. The broken lines (1) around the eyes, indicate the hair of the beaver. The design on each cheek (3) the bones of the face, the high point of the nose (2) its sudden turn. The nostrils are large and round as in the specimens described before. Under the corners of the mouth are the feet. The meaning of the two ornaments over the head is doubtful. [...] Having thus become acquainted with a few of the symbols of animals, we will next investigate in what manner the native artist adapts the animal form to the object he intends to decorate. First of all, we will direct our attention to a series of specimens which show that

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Figure 1.9 Painting for a house-front placed over the door, representing the beaver, Kwakiutl Indians

he endeavors, whenever possible, to represent the whole animal on the object that he desires to decorate. [...] Figure 1.10 represents a dish in the shape of a seal. The whole dish is carved in the form of the animal; but the bottom, which corresponds to the belly, is flattened, and the back is hollowed out so as to form the bowl of the dish. In order to gain a wider rim the whole

Figure 1.10 Grease dish representing seal

back has been distended so that the animal becomes inordinately wide as compared to its length. The flippers are carved in their proper positions at the sides of the dish. The hind flippers are turned back, and join the tail closely. A similar method of representation is used in decorating small boxes. The whole box is considered as representing an animal. The front of the body is painted or carved on the box front; its sides, on the sides of the box; the hind side of the body, on the back of the box (see figure 1.11). The bottom of the box is the animal’s stomach; the top, or the open upper side, its back. These boxes are bent of a single piece of wood and are represented here unbent. In the decoration of silver bracelets a similar principle is followed, but the problem differs somewhat from that offered in the decoration of square boxes. While in the latter case the four edges make a natural division between the four views of the animal, – front and right profile, back and left profile, – there is no such sharp line of division in the round bracelet, and there would be great difficulty in joining the four aspects artistically, while profiles offer no such difficulty. This is the method of representation adopted by the native artists (figure 1.12). The animal is imagined cut in two from head to tail, so that the two halves cohere only at the tip of the nose and at the tip of the tail. The hand is put through this hole, and the animal now surrounds the wrist. In this position it is represented on the bracelet. The method adopted is

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Figure 1.11 Carved trays

Figure 1.12 Design on a bracelet representing a bear, Nass River Indians

therefore identical with the one applied in the hat (figure 1.13), except that the central opening is much larger, and that the animal has been represented on a cylindrical surface, not on a conical one. An examination of the head of the bear shown on the bracelet (figure 1.12), makes it clear that this idea has been carried out rigidly. It will be noticed that there is a deep depression between the eyes, extending down to the nose. This shows that the head itself must not be considered a front view, but as consisting of two profiles which adjoin at mouth and nose, while they are not in contact with each other on a level with the eyes and forehead. The peculiar ornament rising over the nose of the bear, decorated with three rings, represents a hat with three rings which designate the rank of the bearer. We have thus recognized that the representations of animals on dishes and bracelets (and we may include the design on the hat, figure 1.13) must not be considered as perspective views, but as representing complete animals more or less distorted and split. The transition from the bracelet to the painting or carving of animals on a flat surface is

Figure 1.13 Wooden hat with carving representing sculpin

not a difficult one. The same principle is adhered to; and either the animals are represented as split in two so that the profiles are joined in the middle, or a front view of the head is shown with two adjoining profiles of the body. In the cases considered heretofore the animal was cut through and through from the

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mouth to the tip of the tail. These points were allowed to cohere, and the animal was stretched over a ring, a cone, or the sides of a prism. If we imagine the bracelet opened, and flattened in the manner in which it is shown in figure 1.12, we have a section of the animal from mouth to tail, cohering only at the mouth, and the two halves spread over a flat surface. This is the natural development of the method here described when applied to the decoration of flat surfaces. It is clear that on flat surfaces this method allows of modifications by changing the method of cutting. When the body of a long animal, such as that of a fish or of a standing quadruped, is cut in this manner, a design results which forms a long narrow strip. This mode of cutting is therefore mostly applied in the decoration of long bands. When the field that is to be decorated is more nearly square, this form is not favorable. In such cases a square design is obtained by cutting quadrupeds sitting on their haunches in the same manner as before, and unfolding the animal so that the two halves remain in contact at the nose and mouth, while the median line at the back is to the extreme right and to the extreme left. Figure 1.14 (a Haida painting) shows a design which has been obtained in this manner. It represents a bear. The enormous breadth of mouth observed in these cases is brought about by the junction of the two profiles of which the head consists. This cutting of the head is brought out most clearly in the painting, figure 1.15, which also represents the bear. It is the painting on the front of a Tsimshian house, the circular hole in the middle of the design being the door of the house. The animal is cut from back to front, so that only the front part of the head coheres. The two halves of the lower jaw do not touch each other. The back is represented by the black outline on which the hair is indicated by fine lines. The Tsimshian call such a design ‘‘bears meeting’’, as though two bears had been represented. In a number of cases the designs painted on hats must also be explained as formed by the junction of two profiles. This is the case in the painted wooden hat (figure 1.16), on which the design of a sculpin is shown. It will be noticed that only the mouth of the animal

Figure 1.14 Painting representing bear, Haida

Figure 1.15 Painting from a house-front representing a bear, Tsimshian

coheres, while the eyes are widely separated. The spines rise immediately over the mouth. The flippers are attached to the corners of the face, while the dorsal fin is split into halves, each half being joined to an eye.

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Figure 1.16 Wooden hat with the design of a sculpin, Haida

The beaver (figure 1.17) has been treated in the same manner. The head is split down to the mouth, over which rises the hat with four rings. The split has been carried back to the tail, which, however, is left intact, and turned up towards the centre of the hat. The importance of the symbols becomes very clear in this specimen. If the two large black teeth which are seen under the four rings, and the tail with

the cross-hatchings, were omitted, the figure would represent the frog. In other designs the cut is made in the opposite direction from the one described heretofore. It passes from the chest to the back, and the animal is unfolded so that the two halves cohere along the middle line of the back. This has been done in the Haida tattooings, figures 1.18 and 1.19, the former representing the duck, the latter the raven. In both the tail is left intact. The duck has been split along the back so that the two halves of the body do not cohere except in their lowest portions, while the two halves of the raven are left in contact up to the head. Figure 1.20 is a dancing-apron woven from mountain-goat wool, and fastened to a large piece of leather, the fringes of which are set with puffin beaks. The woven design represents the beaver. Its symbols, the two pairs of incisors and the scaly tail, are clearly represented. While in most carvings and paintings the tail is turned upward in front of the body, it is hanging down here between the two feet. The meaning of the ornaments in the upper part of the apron to the right and to the left of the head is not quite clear to me, but, if they are significant at all, I believe they must be considered as the back of the body split and folded along the upper margin of the blanket. If this explanation is correct, we have to

Figure 1.17 Hat made of spruce roots painted with design of a beaver, Haida or Tsimshian

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Figure 1.18 Tattooing representing a duck, Haida

Figure 1.19 Tattooing representing a raven, Haida

consider the animal cut into three pieces, one cut running along the sides of the body, the other one along the back. Figure 1.21 shows the design on a leather legging, a beaver squatting on a human head. In this specimen we observe that the proportions of the body have been much distorted owing to the greater width of the legging at its upper part. The head has been much enlarged in order to fill the wider portion of the decorative field. The gambling-leather (figure 1.22) is treated in a similar manner. It represents the

beaver, and must probably be explained as the animal cut in two. The symbols, – the large incisors and a scaly tail, – appear here as in all other representations of the beaver, but the lower extremities have been omitted. It might seem that this design could be explained as well as a front view of the animal, but the deep depression between the two eyes is not in favor of this assumption. The head consists undoubtedly of two profiles, which join at the nose and mouth; but the cut has not been continued to the tail, which remains intact. Figure 1.23 is one of a pair of leggings embroidered with quills on a piece of leather. The design, which represents the sea-monster, must also be explained as a representation of the animal split along its lower side, and flattened. In the lower portion of the legging the two profiles are seen, which are joined on a level with the eyes, while the two mouths are separated. The nostrils are shown in the small triangle below the line connecting the two eyes. Owing to the shape of the legging, the arms are not attached to the body, but to the upper part of the head. They appear at the right and left borders of the legging, and are turned inward along the lower jaws, the three-toed paws touching the lower border. The fins, which are supposed to grow out of the upper part of the arms, adjoin the elbows, and are turned upward. Another pair of fins, which do not appear in most representations of this monster, are attached to the upper part of the back, and form the two flaps to the right and left of the upper margin. On the back we see a series of circles, which probably represent the dorsal fin. The tail occupies the centre of the upper margin. The smaller ornaments in the outside corners of the head, adjoining the mouth, probably represent the gills. In the following figures we find a new cut applied. Figures 1.24 and 1.25 represent the shark. I explained, when discussing the symbols of the shark, that in the front view of the animal the symbols are shown to best advantage. For this reason side views of the face of the shark are avoided, and in representing the whole animal a cut is made from the back to the lower side, and the two sides are unfolded, leaving the head in front view. The painting (figure 1.24) has been made in this manner, the two halves of the body being

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Figure 1.20 Dancing-apron woven of mountain-goat wool, design representing a beaver, Tsimshian

Figure 1.22 Gambling-leather with engraved design representing a beaver, Tlingit

Figure 1.21 Painted legging with design representing a beaver sitting on a man’s head, Haida

entirely separated from each other, and folded to the right and to the left. The heterocerc tail is cut in halves, and is shown at each end turned downward. The pectoral fins are unduly enlarged, in order to fill the vacant space under the head.

The shark which is shown in figure 1.25 is treated in a slightly different manner. Again the head is left intact. The cut is made from back to chest, but the two halves of the animal are not separated. They cohere at the chest, and are unfolded in this manner, so that the pectoral fins and dorsal fins appear to the right and left of the body. The heterocerc tail is not clearly indicated in this specimen. The method of section applied in figure 1.26 is still different. The figure represents a painting on the border of a large skin blanket. The

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Figure 1.23 Embroidered legging representing a sea-monster with a bear’s head and body of a killer-whale, Haida

animal here represented is the killer-whale. The upper painting clearly represents the profile of the animal. The lower painting represents the other profile, so that both the right and the left halves are visible. Since there was no room for showing the dorsal fin on the lower painting, it is indicated by a curved line on one of the series of wider fringes at the

Figure 1.24 Painting representing a dog-fish, Haida

lower border. It is remarkable that the tails in the two halves of the animal are not drawn symmetrically; but it is possible that this is due to a mistake on the part of the painter, because the design is repeated on the opposite border of the blanket in the same manner, but with symmetrical tails. The two halves of the body differ in details, but their main features are identical. The flipper is shown on a very large scale. It is attached immediately behind the head, and extends to a point near the tail. Its principal part is occupied by a face, in front of which an eye is shown. [ . . . ] Figure 1.27 is a copy of a painting on the front of a box, made on paper with colored crayons by a Haida Indian named Wiha. It represents a frog. By far the greater portion of the box-front is occupied by the head of the animal, which, according to what was said before, must be considered as consisting of two adjoining profiles. The symbol of the frog’s head is its toothless mouth. The two black portions extending downward from the lower corners of the face are two halves of the body. To these are joined the fore paws, which occupy the space below the mouth; the upper arm and fore arm being turned inward, the fore feet being turned outward under the arm. The hind legs occupy the lateral field on both sides of the head. They are not connected in any way with the body of the animal. In figure 1.28 we find a novel representation of the killer-whale, which was given to me as illustrating the painting on a house of the Kwa-

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Figure 1.25 Slate dish design representing a shark, Haida

kiutl Indians. The sections that have been used here are quite complicated. First of all, the animal has been split along its whole back towards the front. The two profiles of the head have been joined, as described before. The painting on each side of the mouth represent gills, thus indicating that a water-animal is meant. The dorsal fin, which according to the methods described heretofore would appear on both sides of the body, has been cut off from the back before the animal was split, and appears now placed over the junction of the two profiles of the head. The flippers are laid along the two sides of the body with which they cohere only at one point each. The two halves of the tail have been twisted outward so that the lower part of the figure forms a straight line. This is done in order to fit it over the square door of the house.

Figure 1.26 Painting on edge of a blanket representing a killer-whale, Tlingit

Figure 1.27 Painting for a box front, design representing a frog, Haida

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Figure 1.28 Painting for a house-front, design representing a killer-whale, Kwakiutl

In figure 1.29 the same animal has been treated in still a different manner. The figure illustrates also the painting from a house-front of the Kwakiutl Indians. The central parts of the painting are the two profiles of the head of the killer-whale. The notch in the lower jaw indicates that it also has been cut, and joined in its central part. The cut on the upper part of the face has been carried down to the upper lip. The body has disappeared entirely. The cut

of the head has, however, been carried along backward the whole length of the body as far as the root of the tail, which latter has been cut off, and appears over the junction of the two profiles of the head. The dorsal fin has been split, and the two halves are joined to the upper part of the head, from which they extend upward and outward. Immediately below them the two halves of the blow-hole are indicated by two small faces, the upper parts of which bear a semicircle each. The flippers are attached to the lower corners of the face. The painting on the face next to the mouth represents gills. [...] We will turn now to the purely formal side of the treatment of the decorative field. There is a tendency to cover the entire surface with design elements. Vacant places are avoided. When the surface of the object represented has no features that lend themselves to decorative development, the artist resorts to devices that enable him to fill the surface with patterns. On totem poles the bodies of the animals represented occupy considerable space. The monotony of the surface is broken by placing the forelegs and hindlegs across the front of the body, by turning up the tail in front, and by adding small animal figures. Far more important is the application of a great variety of decorative elements, all of which consist of curved lines. The Indians have a decided disinclination to apply equidistant curves. In all work of the better class the

Figure 1.29 Painting for a house-front with design representing a killer-whale, Kwakiutl

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lines are so arranged that more or less crescent shaped surfaces result, or that narrow, curved areas, wide in the middle, narrower at the ends, are formed. The most striking decorative form which is used almost everywhere, consists of a round or oval field, the ‘‘eye design’’. This pattern is commonly so placed that it corresponds to the location of a joint. In the present stage of the art, the oval is used particularly as shoulder, hip, wrist, and ankle joint, and as a joint at the base of the tail and of the dorsal fin of the whale. It is considered as a cross section of the ball and socket joint; the outer circle the socket, the inner the ball. Often the oval is developed in the form of a face: either as a full face or a profile. The general disposition of this design demonstrates that the explanation is not by any means always tenable. Thus in the blanket,

Figure 1.30 Chilkat blanket

Figure 1.31 Chilkat blanket

figure 1.30, the eye pattern in the two lower corners has no connection with a joint. In this position, in the mouth of an animal, it is sometimes described as food. The two profile faces higher up on the side of the same blanket, are obviously fillers. They might be replaced by ‘‘eye designs’’. [...] The most characteristic filler, next to the eye, is a double curve, which is used to fill angular and round fields that rise over a strongly or gently curved line. Many fillers of this type have a dark colored band at the upper end, generally rounded in paintings or carvings, square in blankets (see figure 1.31, lower lateral design on central panel; the tail patterns, figure 1.32). In the blankets the angular form is perhaps due to the technique in weaving, although the frequent eye designs prove that round forms are not impossible. On blankets

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Figure 1.32 Styles of tails: above bird; below sea mammals

the heavy upper line is often drawn out into a tip (figure 1.33, over the ‘‘goggle’’ design on the side of the central panel). Examples of these forms have been collected by Lieutenant Emmons who states that the Tlingit call them

Figure 1.33 Chilkat blanket

‘‘the wing-feather of red-winged flicker’’ (figure 1.34). The use of the pointed form of this design for a bird feather agrees with the theoretical claim of the Kwakiutl but obviously the explanation does not always fit the meaning of the

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Figure 1.34 Design elements from Tlingit blankets

pattern as a whole, as is shown by the killerwhale design figure 1.30 or the whale design figure 1.33. [...] Our consideration of the fixed formal elements found in this art prove that the principles of geometric ornamental form may be recognized even in this highly developed symbolic art; and that it is not possible to assign to each and every element that is derived from animal motives a significant function, but that many of them are employed regardless of meaning, and used for purely ornamental purposes. The symbolic decoration is governed by rigorous formal principles. It appears that what we have called for the sake of convenience dissection and distortion of animal forms, is, in many cases, a fitting of animal motives into fixed ornamental patterns. We infer from a study of form and interpretation that there are certain purely geometric elements that have been utilized in the symbolic representation. Most important among these are the

double curve which appears always as a filler in an oval field with flat base, and the slit which serves to separate distinct curves. The typical eye design is presumably related to the circle and dot and may have developed from the double tendency of associating geometrical motives with animal forms and of the other, of standardizing forms derived from animal motives as ornamental elements. This art style can be fully understood only as an integral part of the structure of Northwest coast culture. The fundamental idea underlying the thoughts, feelings, and activities of these tribes is the value of rank which gives title to the use of privileges, most of which find expression in artistic activities or in the use of art forms. Rank and social position bestow the privilege to use certain animal figures as paintings or carvings on the house front, on totem poles, on masks and on the utensils of every day life. Rank and social position give the right to tell certain tales referring to ancestral exploits; they determine the songs which may be sung. There are other obligations and privileges related to rank and social position, but the most outstanding feature is the intimate association between social standing and art forms. A similar relation, although not quite so intimate, prevails in the relation of religious activities and manifestations of art. It is as though the heraldic idea had taken hold of the whole life and had permeated it with the feeling that social standing must be expressed at every step by heraldry which, however, is not confined to space forms alone but extends over literary, musical and dramatic expression. Who can tell whether the association between social standing and the use of certain animal forms, – that is the totemic aspect of social life, – has given the prime impetus to the art development or whether the art impetus has developed and enriched totemic life? Our observations make it seem plausible that the particular symbolic development of art would not have occurred, if the totemic ideas had been absent and that we are dealing with the gradual intrusion of ever fuller animal motives into a well established conventionalized art. On the other hand it seems quite certain that the exuberance of totemic form has been stimulated by the value given to the art form. We may observe among all the tribes that high chiefs claim highly specialized art forms that are built up on the

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general background of totemic representation. In the south, there is clear evidence of the late exuberant development of the totemic, or perhaps better, crest idea, owing to the strong endeavor to raise by the possession of art forms the standing of the social units to

which the individual belongs. The multiplicity of forms among the numerous small divisions of the Kwakiutl and the sporadic appearance of animal forms among the adjoining Salish are ample proof of these relations.

2 Split Representation in the Art of Asia and America Claude Le´vi-Strauss

Contemporary anthropologists seem to be somewhat reluctant to undertake comparative studies of primitive art. We can easily understand their reasons. Until now, studies of this nature have tended almost exclusively to demonstrate cultural contacts, diffusion phenomena, and borrowings. The discovery of a decorative detail or an unusual pattern in two different parts of the world, regardless of the geographical distance between them and an often considerable historical gap, brought enthusiastic proclamations about common origin and the unquestionable existence of prehistoric relationships between cultures which could not be compared in other respects. Leaving aside some fruitful discoveries, we know to what abuses this hurried search for analogies ‘‘at any cost’’ has led. To save us from these errors, experts in material culture even now need to define the specific characteristics which distinguish a trait, trait complex, or style that may be subject to multiple independent recurrences from one whose nature and characteristics exclude the possibility of repetition without borrowing. It is, therefore, with some hesitation that I propose to contribute several documents to a hotly and legitimately debated body of materials. This voluminous collection involves the Northwest Coast of America, China, Siberia, New Zealand, and perhaps even India and Per-

sia. What is more, the documents belong to entirely different periods: the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for Alaska; the first to second millennia b.c. for China; the prehistoric era for the Amur region; and a period stretching from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century for New Zealand. A more difficult case could hardly be conceived. I have mentioned elsewhere1 the almost insuperable obstacles generated by the hypothesis of pre-Columbian contacts between Alaska and New Zealand. The problem is perhaps simpler when one compares Siberia and China with North America: Distances are more reasonable and one need overcome only the obstacle of one or two millennia. Even in this case, however, and whatever the intuitive convictions which irresistibly sway the mind, what an immense marshalling of facts becomes necessary! For his ingenious and brilliant work, C. Hentze can be called the ‘‘scrapcollector’’ of Americanism, pulling his evidence together from fragments gathered from the most diverse cultures and often mounting insignificant details2 for exhibition. Instead of justifying the intuitive feeling of connectedness, his analysis dissolves it; nothing among these membra disjecta poetae appears to justify the deep sense of affinity which familiarity with both arts had so strongly elicited. And yet, it is impossible not to be struck by the analogies presented by Northwest Coast

From Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963), pp. 245–268, 385–398.

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and ancient Chinese art. These analogies derive not so much from the external aspect of the objects as from the fundamental principles which an analysis of both arts yields. This work was undertaken by Leonhard Adam, whose conclusions I shall summarize here.3 The two arts proceed by means of: (1) intense stylization; (2) schematization or symbolism, expressed by emphasizing characteristic features or adding significant attributes (thus, in Northwest Coast art, the beaver is portrayed by the small log which it holds between its paws); (3) depiction of the body by ‘‘split representation’’; (4) dislocation of details, which are arbitrarily isolated from the whole; (5) representation of one individual shown in front view with two profiles; (6) highly elaborate symmetry, which often involves asymmetric details; (7) illogical transformation of details into new elements (thus, a paw becomes a beak, an eye motif is used to represent a joint, or vice-versa); (8) finally, intellectual rather than intuitive representation, where the skeleton or internal organs take precedence over the representation of the body (a technique which is equally striking in northern Australia).4 These techniques are not characteristic solely of Northwest Coast art. As Leonhard Adam writes, ‘‘The various technological and artistic principles displayed in both China and North West America are almost entirely identical.’’5 Once these similarities have been noted, it is curious to observe that, for entirely different reasons, ancient Chinese and Northwest Coast art have been independently compared with Maori art in New Zealand.6 This fact is the more remarkable when we note that Neolithic art of the Amur – some of whose themes (such as the bird, with wings unfolded, whose abdomen is formed by a solar face) are almost identical with themes of the Northwest Coast – exhibits, according to some scholars, ‘‘an unexpectedly rich, curvilinear ornamentation related to that of the Ainu and Maori on one side and to the Neolithic cultures of China (Yangshao) and Japan (Jomon) on the other; consisting particularly of that type of ribbon ornamentation characterized by complex motifs such as the weave, spiral and meander in contradistinction to the rectangular geometric decoration of the Baikalian culture.’’7 Thus art forms from very different regions

and periods which exhibit obvious analogies suggest, each of them and for independent reasons, relationships which are, however, incompatible with geographical and historical requirements. Do we rest, then, on the horns of a dilemma which condemns us either to deny history or to remain blind to similarities so often confirmed? Anthropologists of the diffusionist school did not hesitate to force the hand of historical criticism. I do not intend to defend their adventurous hypotheses, but it must be admitted that the negative attitude of their cautious opponents is no more satisfactory than the fabulous pretensions which the latter merely reject. Comparative studies of primitive art have probably been jeopardized by the zeal of investigators of cultural contacts and borrowings. But let us state in no uncertain terms that these studies have been jeopardized even more by intellectual pharisees who prefer to deny obvious relationships because science does not yet provide an adequate method for their interpretation. The rejection of facts because they appear to be unintelligible is surely more sterile from the viewpoint of scientific progress than the formulation of hypotheses. Even if these should prove to be unacceptable, they will elicit, precisely because of their inadequacy, the criticism and research that will one day enable us to progress beyond them.8 We reserve, therefore, the right to compare American Indian art with that of China or New Zealand, even if it has been proved a thousand times over that the Maori could not have brought their weapons and ornaments to the Pacific Coast. Cultural contact doubtless constitutes the one hypothesis which most easily accounts for complex similarities that chance cannot explain. But if historians maintain that contact is impossible, this does not prove that the similarities are illusory, but only that one must look elsewhere for the explanation. The fruitfulness of the diffusionist approach derives precisely from its systematic exploration of the possibilities of history. If history, when it is called upon unremittingly (and it must be called upon first), cannot yield an answer, then let us appeal to psychology, or the structural analysis of forms; let us ask ourselves if internal connections, whether of a psychological or logical nature, will allow us to understand parallel recurrences whose

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frequency and cohesion cannot possibly be the result of chance. It is in this spirit that I shall now present my contribution to the debate. Split representation in Northwest Coast art has been described by Franz Boas as follows: ‘‘The animal is imagined cut in two from head to tail . . . there is a deep depression between the eyes, extending down the nose. This shows that the head itself must not have been considered a front view, but as consisting of two profiles which adjoin at mouth and nose, while they are not in contact with each other on a level with the eyes and forehead . . . either the animals are represented as split in two so that the profiles are joined in the middle, or a front view of the head is shown with two adjoining profiles of the body.’’9 Boas analyzes the two paintings in the following terms: Figure 1.14 (a Haida painting) shows a design which has been obtained in this manner. It represents a bear. The enormous breadth of mouth observed in these cases is brought about by the junction of the two profiles of which the head consists. This cutting of the head is brought out most clearly in the painting figure 1.15 which also represents the bear. It is the painting on the front of a Tsimshian house, the circular hole in the middle of the design being the door of the house. The animal is cut from back to front, so that ony the front part of the head coheres. The two halves of the lower jaw do not touch each other. The back is represented by the black outlines on which the hair is indicated by fine lines. The Tsimshian call such a design ‘‘bears meeting’’, as though two bears had been represented.10

Let us now compare this analysis with that given by H. G. Creel of a similar technique in the art of ancient China (figure 2.1): ‘‘One of the most distinctive characteristics of Shang decorative art is a peculiar method by which animals were represented in flat or in rounded surfaces. It is as if one took the animal and split it lengthwise, starting at the tip of the tail and carrying the operation almost, not quite, to the tip of the nose, then the two halves are pulled apart and the bisected animal is laid out flat on the surface, the two halves joined only at the tip of the nose.’’11 The same author, who apparently does not know Boas’ work, after having employed almost exactly the same terminology as the latter, adds: ‘‘In

Figure 2.1 Bronze discovered near An-Yang (China). In the middle panel a split t’ao t’ieh mask without a lower jaw. The ears make up a second mask above the first. The eyes in the second mask may also be seen as belonging to two small dragons represented by the ears of the first mask. The two small dragons are shown in profile and face to face, like those in the upper panel. The latter may in turn be seen as a ram mask shown in front view, the horns being represented by the bodies of the dragons. The design on the lid can be similarly interpreted. After W. P. Yetts, An-Yang: A Retrospect

studying Shang design I have constantly been aware of the feeling that this art has great resemblance, certainly in spirit and possibly in detail, to that of . . . the Northwest Coast Indians.’’12 This distinctive technique, which is found in ancient Chinese art, among the Siberian

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primitives, and in New Zealand, also appears at the other extremity of the American continent, among the Caduveo Indians. A drawing, which we reproduce here in figure 2.6, represents a face painted according to the traditional custom of the women of this small tribe of southern Brazil, one of the last remnants of the once flourishing Guaicuru nation. I have described elsewhere how these paintings are executed and what their function is in the native culture.13 For present purposes it is, therefore, sufficient to recall that these paintings have been known since the first contacts with the Guaicuru in the seventeenth century and that they do not seem to have evolved since that time. They are not tattooings, but cosmetic facial paintings, which must be renewed after a few days and which are executed with a wooden spatula dipped in the juices of wild fruit and leaves. The women, who paint one another’s faces (and who formerly also painted men), do not work from a model but improvise within the limits of a complex, traditionally defined range of themes. Among four hundred original drawings gathered in the field in 1935, I did not find two alike. The differences, however, stem more from the ever-varied arrangement of fundamental elements than from a renewal of these elements – whether simple and double spirals, hatching, volutes, frets, tendrils, or crosses and whorls. The possibility of Spanish influence should be excluded, given the remote date when this refined art was described for the first time. At present, only a few old women possess the ancient skill, and it is not difficult to foresee the time when it will have disappeared altogether. Figure 2.2 presents a good example of these paintings. The design is built symmetrically in relation to two linear axes, one of them vertical, following the median plane of the face, the other horizontal, dividing the face at eye level. The eyes are schematically represented on a reduced scale. They are used as starting points for two inverted spirals, one of which covers the right cheek and the other the left side of the forehead. A motif in the shape of a compound bow, which is located in the lower part of the painting, represents the upper lip and is applied on it. We find this motif, more or less elaborated and more or less transformed, in all the facial paintings, where it seems to constitute a constant element. It is not easy to ana-

lyze the design, because of its apparent asymmetry – which, nonetheless masks a real, though complex, symmetry. The two axes intersect at the root of the nose, thus dividing the face into four triangular sections: left side of the forehead, right side of the forehead, right wing of the nose and right cheek, and left wing of the nose and left cheek. Opposite triangles have a symmetrical design, but the design within each triangle itself is a double design, which is repeated in inverted form in the opposite triangle. Thus, the right side of the forehead and the left cheek are covered, first by a triangle of frets, and, after a separation in the form of an empty oblique strip, by two double spirals in alignment, which are decorated with tendrils. The left side of the forehead and the right cheek are decorated with a simple large spiral adorned with tendrils; it is topped by another motif in the shape of a bird or flame, which contains an element reminiscent of the empty oblique stripe in the opposite design. We thus have two pairs of themes, each of which is repeated twice in

Figure 2.2 Caduveo woman’s drawing representing a figure with a painted face. Author’s collection

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Figure 2.3 Caduveo woman with painted face. Photographed by the author, 1935

Figure 2.5 Caduveo woman with painted face. Drawing by Boggiani, an Italian painter who visited the Caduveo in 1892. After G. Boggiani, Viaggi d’un artista nell’ America Meridionale

Figure 2.4 Caduveo woman with painted face. Photographed by the author, 1935

symmetrical fashion. But this symmetry is expressed either in relation to one of the two horizontal and vertical axes, or in relation to the triangles defined by the bisection of these axes. While far more complex, this pattern

recalls that of playing cards. Figures 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 are other examples which illustrate variations on what is fundamentally the same pattern. In figure 2.2, however, it is not only the painted design which draws the attention. The artist, a woman approximately thirty years old, intended also to represent the face and even the hair. Now she obviously accomplished this by split representation: The face is not really seen in a frontal view; it consists of two joined profiles. This explains its extraordinary width and its heart-shaped outline. The depression dividing the forehead into two halves is a part of the representation of the profiles, which merge only from the root of the nose down to the chin. A comparison of figures 1.14, 1.15 and 2.2 shows that this technique is identical with that used by artists of the Northwest Coast of America. Other important traits are also characteristic of both North and South American art. We

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have already stressed the dislocation of the subject into elements which are recombined according to conventional rules having nothing to do with nature. Dislocation is just as striking in Caduveo art, where it takes, however, an indirect form. Boas minutely described the dislocation of bodies and faces in Northwest Coast art: The organs and limbs themselves are split and used to reconstitute an arbitrary individual. Thus, in a Haida totem pole, ‘‘the figure must be . . . explained in such a way that the animal is twisted twice, the tail being turned up over the back, and the head being first turned down under the stomach, then split and extended outward.’’14 In a Kwakiutl representation of a killer whale (Orca sp.), ‘‘the animal has been split along its whole back towards the front. The two profiles of the head have been joined . . . The dorsal fin, which according to the methods described heretofore [split representation] would appear on both sides of the body, has been cut off from the back before the animal was split, and appears now placed over the junction of the two profiles of the head. The flippers are laid along the two sides of the body, with which they cohere only at one point each. The two halves of the tail have been twisted outward so that the lower part of the figure forms a straight line.’’15 See figure 1.28. These examples could easily be multiplied. Caduveo art carries the dislocation process both further than, yet not as far as, Northwest Coast art. It does not carry it as far, because the face or body on which the artist works is a flesh-and-bone face and body, which cannot be taken apart and put together again. The integrity of the real face is thus respected, but it is dislocated just the same by the systematic asymmetry by means of which its natural harmony is denied on behalf of the artificial harmony of the painting. But since this painting, instead of representing the image of a deformed face, actually deforms a real face, the dislocation goes further than in the case previously described. The dislocation here involves, besides the decorative value, a subtle element of sadism, which at least partly explains why the erotic appeal of Caduveo women (expressed in the paintings) formerly attracted outlaws and adventurers toward the shores of the Paraguay River. Several of these now aging men, who intermarried with

Figure 2.6 Caduveo: facial design reproduced by a native woman on a sheet of paper. Author’s collection

the natives, described to me with quivering emotion the nude bodies of adolescent girls completely covered with interlacings and arabesques of a perverse subtlety. The tattooings and body paintings of the Northwest Coast, where this sexual element was probably lacking and whose symbolism, often abstract, presents a less decorative character, also disregarded symmetry in the human face.16 In addition, we observe that the arrangement of Caduveo paintings around a double axis, horizontal and vertical, divides the face according to a process of double splitting, so to speak – that is, the painting recombines the face not into two profiles but into four quarters (see figure 2.6). Asymmetry serves the formal function of insuring the distinction between quarters, which would merge into two profiles if the fields were to be symmetrically repeated to the right and left instead of being joined by their tips. Dislocation and splitting are thus functionally related. If we pursue this comparison between Northwest Coast and Caduveo art, several

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other points are worthy of consideration. In each case, sculpture and drawing provide the two fundamental means of expression; in each case, sculpture presents a realistic character, while drawing is more symbolic and decorative. Caduveo sculpture is probably limited, at least during the historical period, to fetishes and representations of gods, which are always of small size, in contrast to the monumental art of Canada and Alaska. But the realistic character and the tendency toward both portrait and stylization are the same, as well as the essentially symbolic meaning of drawn or painted motifs. In both cases, masculine art, centered on sculpture, expresses its representational intention, while feminine art – limited to weaving and plaiting on the Northwest Coast, but also including drawing among these natives of southern Brazil and Paraguay – is a non-representational art. This is true, in both cases, for textile motifs; as regards the Guaicuru facial paintings, we know nothing about their archaic character. It is possible that the themes of these paintings, whose import has become lost today, formerly had a realistic or at any rate symbolical meaning. Northwest Coast and Caduveo art both carry out decoration by means of stencils, and create ever-new combinations through the varied arrangement of basic motifs. Finally, in both cases, art is intimately related to social organization: Motifs and themes express rank differences, nobility privileges, and degrees of prestige. The two societies were organized along similar hierarchical lines and their decorative art functioned to interpret and validate the ranks in the hierarchy.17 I should now like to make a brief comparison between Caduveo art and another art which also used split representation – that of the Maori of New Zealand. Let us first recall that Northwest Coast art has been frequently compared, for other reasons, to the art of New Zealand. Some of these reasons turned out to be specious – for instance, the apparently identical character of woven blankets used in the two areas. Others seem more valid – for example, those deriving from the similarity between Alaskan clubs and the Maori patu mere. I have mentioned this enigma elsewhere.18

The comparison of Maori with Guaicuru art is based on other convergences. In no other region of the world has facial and corporal decoration attained such high levels of development and refinement. Maori tattooings are well known. I reproduce our of them (figures 2.7 and 2.8), which may be fruitfully compared with the photographs of Caduveo faces. The analogies between them are striking: complexity of design, involving hatching, meanders, and spirals (the spirals are often replaced in Caduveo art by frets, which suggest Andean influences); the same tendency to fill the entire surface of the face; and the same localization of the design around the lips in the simpler types. The differences between the two arts must also be considered. The difference due to the fact that Maori design is tattooed whereas Caduveo design is painted may be dismissed, since there is hardly any doubt that in South America, too, tattooing was the primitive technique. Tattooing explains why the Abipone women of Paraguay, as late as the eighteenth century, had ‘‘their face, breast, and arms covered with black figures of various shapes, so that they present the appearance of a Turkish carpet.’’19 This made them, according to their own words as recorded by the old missionary ‘‘more beautiful than beauty it-

Figure 2.7 Maori chief’s drawing representing his own tattooed face. After H. G. Robley, Moko, or Maori Tattooing

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Figure 2.8 Three Maori tattooing designs carved in wood, late nineteenth century: top row, men’s faces; bottom row, woman’s face. After A. Hamilton, The Art Workmanship of the Maori in New Zealand

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self.’’20 On the other hand, one is struck by the rigorous symmetry of Maori tattooings, in contrast with the almost licentious asymmetry of some Caduveo paintings. But this asymmetry does not always exist; and I have shown that it resulted from a logical development of the splitting principle. It is thus more apparent than real. It is clear, nevertheless, that as regards typological classification, Caduveo facial designs occupy an intermediary position between those of the Maori and those of the Northwest Coast. Like the latter, they have an asymmetrical appearance, while they present the essentially decorative character of the former. This continuity is also apparent when one considers the psychological and social implications. Among the Maori, as among the natives of the Paraguayan border, facial and corporal decoration is executed in a semi-religious atmosphere. Tattooings are not only ornaments. As we already noted with respect to the Northwest Coast (and the same thing may be said of New Zealand), they are not only emblems of nobility and symbols of rank in the social hierarchy; they are also messages fraught with spiritual and moral significance. The purpose of Maori tattooings is not only to imprint a drawing onto the flesh but also to stamp onto the mind all the traditions and philosophy of the group. Similarly, the Jesuit missionary Sanchez Labrador has described the passionate seriousness with which the natives devoted whole days to letting themselves be painted. He who is not painted, they said, is ‘‘dumb.’’21 And, like the Caduveo, the Maori use split representation. In figures 2.7, 2.9, 2.10 and 2.11, we note the same division of the forehead into two lobes; the same representation of the mouth where the two halves meet; the same representation of the body, as though it had been split in the back from top to bottom and the two halves brought forward on the same plane. We note, in other words, all the techniques which are now familiar to us. How shall we explain the recurrence of a far from natural method of representation among cultures so widely separated in time and space? The simplest hypothesis is that of historical contact or independent development from a common civilization. But even if this hypothesis is refuted by facts, or if, as seems more likely, it should lack adequate evidence, at-

Figure 2.9 Jade figure (tiki), New Zealand, characterized by the three-lobed division of the face. Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History

tempts at interpretation are not necessarily doomed to failure. I shall go further: Even if the most ambitious reconstructions of the diffusionist school were to be confirmed, we should still be faced with an essential problem which has nothing to do with history. Why should a cultural trait that has been borrowed or diffused through a long historical period remain intact? Stability is no less mysterious than change. The discovery of a unique origin for split representation would leave unanswered the question of why this means of expression was preserved by cultures which, in other respects, evolved along very different lines. External connections can explain transmission, but

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Figure 2.10 Maori wood carving, New Zealand, eighteenth century (?). After A. Hamilton, The Art Workmanship of the Maori in New Zealand

only internal connections can account for persistence. Two entirely different kinds of problems are involved here, and the attempt to explain one in no way prejudges the solution that must be given to the other. One observation immediately follows from the comparison between Maori and Guaicuru art. In both cases, split representation appears as a consequence of the importance that both cultures ascribe to tattooing. Let us consider figure 2.2 again and ask ourselves why the outline of the face is represented by two joined profiles. It is clear that the artist intended to draw, not a face, but a facial painting; it is upon doing the latter that she concentrated all her attention. Even the eyes, which are sketchily indicated, exist only as points of reference for starting the two great inverted spirals into whose structure they merge. The artist drew the facial design in a realistic manner; she respected its true proportions as if she had painted on a face and not on a flat surface.

She painted on a sheet of paper exactly as she was accustomed to paint on a face. And because the paper is for her a face, she finds it impossible to represent a face on paper, at any rate without distortion. It was necessary either to draw the face exactly and distort the design in accordance with the laws of perspective, or to respect the integrity of the design and for this reason represent the face as split in two. It cannot even be said that the artist chose the second solution, since the alternative never occurred to her. In native thought, as we saw, the design is the face, or rather it creates it. It is the design which confers upon the face its social existence, its human dignity, its spiritual significance. Split representation of the face, considered as a graphic device, thus expresses a deeper and more fundamental splitting, namely that between the ‘‘dumb’’ biological individual and the social person whom he must embody. We already foresee that split representation can be explained as a function of a sociological theory of the splitting of the personality. The same relationship between split image and tattooing may be observed in Maori art. If we compare figures 2.7, 2.9, 2.10 and 2.11, we will see that the splitting of the forehead into two lobes is only the projection, on a plastic level, of the symmetrical design tattooed on the skin. In the light of these observations, the interpretation of split representation proposed by Boas in his study of Northwest Coast art should be elaborated and refined. For Boas, split representation in painting or drawing would consist only in the extension to flat surfaces of a technique which is naturally appropriate in the case of three-dimensional objects. When an animal is going to be represented on a square box, for instance, one must necessarily distort the shape of the animal so that it can be adapted to the angular contours of the box. According to Boas, In the decoration of silver bracelets a similar principle is followed but the problem differs somewhat from that offered in the decoration of square boxes. While in the latter case the four edges make a natural division between the four views of the animal, – front and right profile, back and left profile, – there is no such sharp line of division in the round bracelet, and there would be great difficulty

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Figure 2.11 Three Maori wood carvings, eighteenth or nineteenth century. After A. Hamilton, The Art Workmanship of the Maori in New Zealand in joining the four aspects artistically, while two profiles offer no such difficulty. . . The animal is imagined cut in two from head to tail, so that the two halves cohere only at the tip of the nose and at the tip of the tail. The hand is put through this hole and the animal

now surrounds the wrist. In this position it is represented on the bracelet . . . The transition from the bracelet to the painting or carving of animals on a flat surface is not a difficult one. The same principle is adhered to.22

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Thus the principle of split representation would gradually emerge in the process of transition from angular to rounded objects and from rounded objects to flat surfaces. In the first case, there is occasional dislocation and splitting; in the second case, splitting is systematically applied, but the animal still remains intact at the level of the head and the tail; finally, in the third case, dislocation goes to the extreme of splitting the caudal tie, and the two halves of the body, now free, are folded forward to the right and left on the same plane as the face. This treatment of the problem by the great master of modern anthropology is remarkable for its elegance and simplicity. However, this elegance and simplicity are mainly theoretical. If we consider the decoration of flat and rounded surfaces as special cases of the decoration of angular surfaces, then nothing has been demonstrated with respect to the latter. And, above all, no necessary relationship exists a priori, which implies that the artist must remain faithful to the same principle in moving from angular to rounded surfaces, and from rounded to flat surfaces. Many cultures have decorated boxes with human and animal figures without splitting or dislocating them. A bracelet may be adorned with friezes or in a hundred other ways. There must, then, be some fundamental element of Northwest Coast art (and of Guaicuru art, and Maori art, and the art of ancient China) which accounts for the continuity and rigidity with which the technique of split representation is applied in them. We are tempted to perceive this fundamental element in the very special relationship which, in the four arts considered here, links the plastic and graphic components. These two elements are not independent; they have an ambivalent relationship, which is simultaneously one of opposition and one which is functional. It is a relationship of opposition because the requirements of decoration are imposed upon the structure and change it, hence the splitting and dislocation; but it is also a functional relationship, since the object is always conceived in both its plastic and graphic aspects. A vase, a box, a wall, are not independent, pre-existing objects which are subsequently decorated. They acquire their definitive existence only through the integration of the decoration with the utilitarian

function. Thus, the chests of Northwest Coast art are not merely containers embellished with a painted or carved animal. They are the animal itself, keeping an active watch over the ceremonial ornaments which have been entrusted to its care. Structure modifies decoration, but decoration is the final cause of structure, which must also adapt itself to the requirements of the former. The final product is a whole: utensilornament, object-animal, box-that-speaks. The ‘‘living boats’’ of the Northwest Coast have their exact counterparts in the New Zealand correspondences between boat and woman, woman and spoon, utensils and organs.23 We have thus pushed to its most abstract expression the study of dualism, which has been commanding our attention with increasing persistence. We saw in the course of our analysis that the dualism between representational and non-representational art became transformed into other kinds of dualism: carving and drawing, face and decoration, person and impersonation, individual existence and social function, community and hierarchy. We are thus led to acknowledge a dualism, which is also a correlation, between plastic and graphic expression, which provides us with a true ‘‘common denominator’’ of the diverse manifestations of the principle of split representation. In the end, our problem may be formulated as follows: Under what conditions are the plastic and graphic components necessarily correlated? Under what conditions are they inevitably functionally related, so that the modes of expression of the one always transform those of the other, and vice versa? The comparison between Maori and Guaicuru art already provided us with the answer to the latter question. We saw, indeed, that the relationship had to be functional when the plastic component consisted of the face or human body and the graphic component of the facial or corporal decoration (painting or tattooing), which is applied to them. Decoration is actually created for the face; but in another sense the face is predestined to be decorated, since it is only by means of decoration that the face receives its social dignity and mystical significance. Decoration is conceived for the face, but the face itself exists only through decoration. In the final analysis, the dualism is that of the actor and his role, and the concept of mask gives us the key to its interpretation.

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All the cultures considered here are, in fact, mask cultures, whether the masking is achieved predominantly by tattooing (as is the case for the Guaicuru and Maori) or whether the stress is placed literally on the mask, as the Northwest Coast has done in a fashion unsurpassed elsewhere. In archaic China, there are many references to the ancient role of masks, which is reminiscent of their role in Alaskan societies. Thus, the ‘‘Impersonation of the Bear’’ described in the Chou Li, with its ‘‘four eyes of yellow metal,’’24 recalls the multiple masks of the Eskimo and Kwakiutl. Those masks with louvers, which present alternately several aspects of the totemic ancestor – sometimes peaceful, sometimes angry, at one time human, at another time animal – strikingly illustrate the relationship between split representation and masquerade. Their function is to offer a series of intermediate forms which insure the transition from symbol to meaning, from magical to normal, from supernatural to social. They hold at the same time the function of masking and unmasking. But when it comes to unmasking, it is the mask which, by a kind of reverse splitting, opens up into two halves, while the actor himself is dissociated in the split representation, which aims, as we saw, at flattening out as well as displaying the mask at the expense of the individual wearing it. Our analysis thus converges with that of Boas, once we have explored its substructure. It is true that split representation on a flat surface is a special case of its appearance on a rounded surface, just as the latter is itself a special case on three-dimensional surfaces. But not on any three-dimensional surface; only on the three-dimensional surface par excellence, where the decoration and form cannot be dissociated either physically or socially, namely, the human face. At the same time, other curious analogies between the various art forms considered here are illuminated in a similar way. In the four arts, we discover not one but two decorative styles. One of these styles tends toward a representational, or at least symbolic, expression, and its most common feature is the predominance of motifs. This is Karlgren’s Style A for archaic China,25 painting and low relief for the Northwest Coast and New Zealand, and facial painting for the Guaicuru. But another style exists, of a more strictly formal

and decorative character, with geometric tendencies. It consists of Karlgren’s Style B, the rafter decoration of New Zealand, the woven or plaited designs of New Zealand and the Northwest Coast, and, for the Guaicuru, a style easily identifiable, ordinarily found in decorated pottery, corporal paintings (different from facial paintings), and painted leatherwork. How can we explain this dualism, and especially its recurrence? The first style is decorative only in appearance; it does not have a plastic function in any of the four arts. On the contrary, its function is social, magical, and religious. The decoration is the graphic or plastic projection of a reality of another order, in the same way that split representation results from the projection of a three-dimensional mask onto a two-dimensional surface (or onto a three-dimensional one which nevertheless does not conform to the human archetype) and in the same way that, finally, the biological individual himself is also projected onto the social scene by his dress. There is thus room for the birth and development of a true decorative art, although one would actually expect its contamination by the symbolism which permeates all social life. Another characteristic, shared at least by New Zealand and the Northwest Coast, appears in the treatment of tree trunks, which are carved in the form of superimposed figures, each of which occupies a whole section of the trunk. The last vestiges of Caduveo carving are so sparse that we can hardly formulate hypotheses about the archaic manifestations of it; and we are still poorly informed about the treatment of wood by Shang carvers, several examples of which came to light in the excavations at An-Yang.26 I would like to draw attention, nevertheless, to a bronze of the Loo collection reproduced by Hentze.27 It looks as though it could be the reduction of a carved pole, comparable to the slate reductions of totem poles in Alaska and British Columbia. In any case, the cylindrical section of the trunk plays the same role of archetype or ‘‘absolute limit’’ which we ascribed to the human face and body; but it plays this role only because the trunk is interpreted as a living being, a kind of ‘‘speaking pole.’’ Here again, the plastic and stylistic expression serves only as a concrete embodiment of impersonations.

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However, our analysis would be inadequate if it permitted us only to define split representation as a trait common to mask cultures. From a purely formal point of view there has never been any hesitation in considering the t’ao t’ieh of archaic Chinese bronzes as a mask. On his part, Boas interpreted the split representation of the shark in Northwest Coast art as a consequence of the fact that the characteristic symbols of this animal are better perceived in a front view28 (see figure 2.12). But we have gone further: We discovered in the splitting technique, not only the graphic representation of the mask, but the functional expression of a specific type of civilization. Not all mask cultures employ split representation. We do not find it (at least in as developed a form) in the art of the Pueblo of the American Southwest nor in that of New Guinea.29 In both these cultures, however, masks play a considerable role. Masks also represent ancestors, and by wearing the mask the actor incarnates the ancestor. What, therefore, is the difference? The difference is that, in contrast to the civilizations we have been considering here, there is no chain of privileges, emblems, and degrees of prestige which, by means of masks, validate social hierarchy through the primacy of genealogies. The supernatural does not have as its chief function the creation of castes and classes. The world of masks constitutes a pantheon rather than an ancestrality. Thus, the actor incarnates the god only on the intermittent occasions of feasts and ceremonies. He does not acquire from the god, by a continuous process of creation at each moment of social life, his titles, his rank, his position in the status hierarchy. The parallelism which we established is thus confirmed, rather than invalidated, by these examples. The mutual independence of the plastic and graphic components corresponds to the more flexible interplay between the social and supernatural orders in the same way that split representation expresses the strict conformity of the actor to his role and of social rank to myths, ritual, and pedigrees. This conformity is so rigorous that, in order for the individual to be dissociated from his social role, he must be torn asunder. Even if we knew nothing about archaic Chinese society, an inspection of its art would be sufficient to enable us to recognize prestige struggles, rivalry between hierarchies, and

competition between social and economic privileges – showing through the function of masks and the veneration of lineages. Fortunately, however, there are additional data at our disposal. Analyzing the psychological background of bronze art, Perceval Yetts writes: ‘‘The impulse seems almost invariably to have been selfglorification, even when show is made of solacing ancestors or of enhancing the family prestige.’’30 And elsewhere he remarks: ‘‘There is the familiar history of certain ting being treasured as emblems of sovereignty down to the end of the feudal period in the third century b.c.’’31 In the An-Yang tombs, bronzes were found which commemorate successive members of the same lineage.32 And the differences in quality between the specimens excavated can be explained, according to Creel, in terms of the fact that ‘‘the exquisite and the crude were produced side by side at Anyang, for people of various economic status or prestige.’’33 Comparative anthropological analysis, therefore, is in agreement with the conclusions of Sinologists. It also confirms the theories of Karlgren, who, unlike Leroi-Gourhan34 and others, states, on the basis of a statistical and chronological study of themes, that the representational mask existed before the mask’s dissolution into decorative elements and therefore could not have grown out of the experimentation of the artist who discovers resemblances in the fortuitous arrangement of abstract themes.35 In another work Karlgren showed how the animal decorations of archaic objects became transformed in the later bronzes into flamboyant arabesques, and he related phenomena of stylistic evolution to the collapse of feudal society.36 We are tempted to perceive in the arabesques of Guaicuru art, which are so strongly suggestive of birds and flames, the final stage of a parallel transformation. The baroque and affected quality of the style would thus represent the formal survival of a decadent or terminated social order. It constitutes, on the esthetic level, its dying echo. The conclusions of our work do not preclude in any respect the always-possible discovery of hitherto unsuspected historical connections.37 We are still faced with the question of finding out whether these hierarchical societies based on prestige appeared independently in different parts of the world, or whether some of them do not share a common

CLAUDE LE´VI-STRAUSS

Figure 2.12 Haida painting representing a shark. The head is shown in front view to bring out the features characteristic of the shark, but the body is split lengthwise, with the two halves laid out flat on the surface to the right and left of the head. After Bureau of American Ethnology, Tenth Annual Report, plate XXV

cradle. With Creel,38 I think that the similarities between the art of archaic China and that of the Northwest Coast, perhaps even with the arts of other American areas, are too marked

for us not to keep this possibility in mind. But even if there were ground for invoking diffusion, it would not be a diffusion of details – that is, independent traits traveling each on its

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own and disconnected freely from any one culture in order to be linked to another – but a diffusion of organic wholes wherein style, esthetic conventions, social organization, and religion are structurally related. Drawing a particularly striking analogy between archaic Chinese and Northwest Coast art, Creel writes: ‘‘The many isolated eyes used by the Northwest Coast designers recall most forcibly their similar use in Shang art and cause me to wonder if there was some magical reason for this which was possessed by both peoples.’’39 Perhaps; but magical connections, like optical illusions, exist only in men’s minds, and we must resort to scientific investigation to explain their causes.

NOTES 1 ‘‘The Art of the North West Coast,’’ Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1943). 2 Carl Hentze, Objets rituels, Croyances et Dieux de la Chine antique et de l’Ame´rique (Antwerp: 1936). 3 Leonhard Adam, ‘‘Das Problem der asiatisch-altamerikanischen Kulturbeziehungen mit besonderer Beru¨cksichtigung der Kunst,’’ Wiener Beitra¨ge zur Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Asiens, V (1931); ‘‘Northwest American Indian Art and Its Early Chinese Parallels,’’ Man XXXVI, no. 3 (1936). 4 See, for example, F. D. McCarthy, Australian Aboriginal Decorative Art (Sydney: 1938), fig. 21, p. 38. 5 Review of Carl Hentze, Fru¨hchinesische bronzen und Kultdarstellungen (Antwerp: 1937), in Man, XXXIX, no. 60 (1939). 6 For China and New Zealand, see R. Heine-Geldern in Zeitschrift fu¨r Rassenkunde, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: 1935). 7 Henry Field and Eugene Prostov, ‘‘Results of Soviet Investigation in Siberia, 1940– 1941,’’ American Anthropologist, XLIV (1942), p. 396. 8 In his book, Medieval American Art (New York: 1943), Pal Kelemen regards the resemblances between American art and some of the arts of the highest civilizations of the Eastern hemisphere as only ‘‘optical illusions’’ (vol. I, p. 377). He justifies this opinion by writing that ‘‘PreColumbian art was created and developed

10 11

12 13

14 15 16

18 19

20 21

22 23

by a mentality totally alien to ours’’ (p. 378). I doubt that in the whole work of the diffusionist school one could find a single statement so completely unwarranted, superficial, and meaningless. Franz Boas, Primitive Art, Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, series B, vol. VIII (Oslo: 1927), pp. 223–24 [pp. 43–44 in this vol.]. Ibid. pp. 224–25 [p. 45 in this vol.]. H. G. Creel, ‘‘On the Origins of the Manufacture and Decoration of Bronze in the Shang Period,’’ Monumenta Serica, vol. I (1935), p. 64. Loc. cit. ‘‘Indian Cosmetics,’’ VVV, no. 1 (New York: 1942). Tristes Tropiques (Paris: 1955). Franz Boas, p. 238. Ibid., p. 239 [p.50 in this vol.] and fig. 247 [figure 1.28 in this vol.]. See, for example, the Tlingit tattooings reproduced by J. R. Swanton in Bureau of American Ethnology, 26th Annual Report, plates XLVIII to LVI; and Franz Boas, op. cit., pp. 250–1 (body paintings). I have developed this analysis further in Tristes Tropiques, chapter XX (Paris: 1955). ‘‘The Art of the North West Coast.’’ M. Dobrizhoffer, An Account of the Abipones, trans. from the Latin, vol. II (London: 1822), p. 20. Ibid., p. 21. See also H. G. Creel: ‘‘The fine Shang pieces are executed with a care, extending to the most minute detail, which is truly religious. And we know, through the study of the oracle bone inscriptions, that almost all the motifs found on Shang bronzes can be linked with the life and religion of the Shang people. They had meaning and the production of the bronzes was probably in some degree a sacred task.’’ ‘‘Notes on Shang Bronzes in the Burlington House Exhibition,’’ Revue des Arts asiatiques, X (1936), p. 21. Boas, pp. 222–24 [pp. 43–44 in this vol.]. John R. Swanton, Tlingit Myths and Texts, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 59 (1909), pp. 254–255; E. A. Rout, Maori Symbolism (London: 1926), p. 280.

72 24

26 27

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Florance Waterbury, Early Chinese Symbols and Literature: Vestiges and Speculations (New York: 1942). Bernhard Karlgren, ‘‘New Studies on Chinese Bronzes,’’ The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Bulletin 9 (Stockholm: 1937). H. G. Creel, Monumenta Serica, vol. I (1935), p. 40. Carl Hentze, Fru¨hchinesische bronzen und Kultdarstellungen (Antwerp: 1937), table 5. Boas, p. 229 [p.47 in this vol.]. One should distinguish, however, between two forms of split representation – namely, split representation proper, where a face and sometimes a whole individual are represented by two joined profiles, and split representation as shown in figure 2.12, where one face is shown with two bodies. We cannot be certain that the two types derive from the same principle, and in the passage which we summarized at the beginning of this chapter, Leonhard Adam wisely distinguishes between them. The split representation so well illustrated in figure 2.12 reminds us, indeed, of a similar technique well known in European and Oriental archaeology This is the beast with two bodies, whose history E. Pottier attempted to reconstruct (‘‘Histoire d’une beˆte,’’ in Recueil E. Pottier, Bibliothe`que des Ecoles d’Athe`nes et de Rome, section 142). Pottier traces the beast with two bodies to the Chaldean representation of an animal whose head appears in a front view and the body in profile. A second body, also seen in profile, is assumed to have been subsequently attached to the head. If this hypothesis is correct, the representation of the shark analyzed by Boas should be considered either as an independent invention or as the easternmost evidence of the diffusion of an Asiatic theme. This last interpretation would be based on evidence which is far from negligible, namely the recurrence of another theme, the ‘‘whirl of animals’’ (see Anna Roes, ‘‘Tierwirbel,’’ Ipek [1936–37]) in the art of the Eurasian Steppes and in that of certain areas of America (especially in Moundville). It is also possible that the beast with two bodies derives

30 31

33 34

35 36

independently, in Asia and America, from a technique of split representation which has not survived in the archaeological sites of the Near East, but which left traces in China and may still be observed in certain areas of the Pacific and in America. The art of Melanesia presents rudimentary forms of split representation and dislocation. See, for example, the wooden containers of the Admiralty Islands reproduced by Gladys A. Reichard, ‘‘Melanesian Design: A Study of Style in Wood and Tortoise Shell Carving,’’ Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, II, no. 18 (1933), and the following comment by the same author: ‘‘Among the Tami, joints are represented by an eye motif. In the face of the fact that tattooing is exceedingly important to the Maori and that it is represented on the carvings, it seems to me more than possible that the spiral often used on the human figures may emphasize the joints’’ (p. 151). W. Perceval Yetts, The Cull Chinese Bronzes, London, 1939, p. 75. W. Perceval Yetts, The George Eumorphopoulos Collection Catalogue, Vol. I (London: 1929), p. 43. W. Perceval Yetts, ‘‘An-Yang: A Retrospect,’’ China Society Occasional Papers, n.s., no. 2 (1942). H. C. Creel, p. 46. A. Leroi-Gourhan, ‘‘L’Art animalier dans les Bronzes chinois,’’ Revue des Arts asiatiques (Paris: 1935). B. Karlgren, pp. 76–78. B. Karlgren, ‘‘Huai and Han,’’ The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Bulletin 13 (Stockholm: 1941). The problem of ancient relations across the Pacific Ocean has recently come to the fore again, owing to the surprising discovery, in a provincial museum of southeastern Formosa, of a low-relief in wood which could be of local origin. It represents three persons standing. Those located at the extremities are in the purest Maori style, while the person in the middle offers a kind of transition between Maori art and that of the Northwest Coast. See Ling Shun Sheng, ‘‘Human Figures with Protruding Tongue,’’ Bulletin of

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the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, no. 2 (September 1956), Nankang, Taipei, Taiwan. 38 H. C. Creel, pp. 65–66. 39 Ibid., p. 65.

REFERENCES Adam, L. Das Problem der AsiatischAltamerikanischen Kulturbeziehungen mit besonderer Beru¨cksichtigung der Kunst, Wiener Beitra¨ge zur Kunst und Kultur Geschichte Asiens, V, 1931. —— . Northwest American Indian Art and Its Early Chinese Parallels, Man, XXXVI, no. 3, 1936. Boas, F. Primitive Art. Oslo: 1927; New York: 1955. Boggiani, G. Viaggi d’un artista nell’ America Meridionale. Rome: 1895. Creel, H. G. On the Origins of the Manufacture and Decoration of Bronze in the Shang Period, Monumenta Serica, I, Section 1, 1935. —— . Notes on Shang Bronzes in the Burlington House Exhibition, Revue des Arts Asiatiques, X, 1936. Dobrizhoffer, M. An Account of the Abipones. 3 vols. Trans. from the Latin. London: 1822. Field, H., and E. Prostov. Results of Soviet Investigation in Siberia, 1940–1941, American Anthropologist, n.s., XLIV, 1942. Hamilton, A. The Art Workmanship of the Maori Race in New Zealand. Dunedin: 1896–1900. Hentze, C. Objets rituels, croyances et dieux de la Chine antique et de l’Ame´rique. Antwerp: 1936. —— . Fru¨hchinesische Bronzen. Antwerp: 1937. Karlgren, B. New Studies on Chinese Bronzes. The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities Bulletin no. 9. Stockholm: 1937. —— . Huai and Han. The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities Bulletin No. 13. Stockholm: 1941. Kelemen, P. Medieval American Art. 2 vols. New York: 1943.

Leroi-Gourhan, A. L’Art animalier dans les bronzes chinois, Revue des Arts Asiatiques, Paris, 1935. Le´vi-Strauss, C. Indian Cosmetics, VVV, No. 1, New York, 1942. —— . The Art of the Northwest Coast, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, New York, 1943. —— . Tristes Tropiques. Paris: 1955. Trans. John Russell. New York: 1961. Ling Shun Sheng. Human Figures with Protruding Tongue Found in the Taitung Prefecture, Formosa, and Their Affinities Found in Other Pacific Areas, Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, no. 2, Nankang, Taipei, Taiwan, 1956. McCarthy, F. D. Australian Aboriginal Decorative Art. Sydney: 1938. Pottier, E. Histoire d’une beˆte. In Recueil E. Pottier. Bibliothe`que des Ecoles d’Athe`nes et de Rome, Section 142, 1937. Reichard, G. A. Melanesian Design: A Study of Style in Wood and Tortoise Shell Carving. 2 vols. Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, no. 18. New York: 1933. Robley, H. G. Moko, or Maori Tattooing. London: 1896. Roes, A. Tierwirbel, Ipek, 1936–1937. Rout, E. A. Maori Symbolism. London: 1926. Swanton, J. R. Social Condition, Beliefs and Linguistic Relationship of the Tlingit Indians. Bureau of American Ethnology, 26th Annual Report. Washington, D.C.: 1908. —— . Tlingit Myths and Texts. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 59. Washington, D.C.: 1909. Waterbury, F. Early Chinese Symbols and Literature: Vestiges and Speculations. New York: 1942. Yetts, W. P. The George Eumorphopoulos Collection Catalogue. 3 vols. London: 1929. —— . The Cull Chinese Bronzes. London: 1939. —— . An-Yang: A Retrospect, China Society Occasional Papers, n.s., no. 2, London, 1942.

3 Introduction to Tribes and Forms in African Art William Fagg

Among the most striking and (for better or for worse) fruitful results of the vast development (I had almost said the hypertrophy) of world communications in this century is the present condition of art in the ‘‘civilized’’ world, a state of virtually complete eclecticism, of freedom from the blinkers formerly imposed by the Western tradition upon the vision of artists and of the patrons of art. Hence has arisen the International Style, which may look anywhere for its inspiration, subject only to the trammels of fashion and commerce. It is possible for M. Malraux to speak of the Universe of Forms – and to exclude from it no art known to mankind – precisely because we have now adopted into our own artistic universe the last of the exotic arts which used to be beyond the pale, in the exterior darkness. Yet here there arises a question of relativity. All these arts form a single universe for us; but they do not form a single universe absolutely. On the contrary, when we examine the tribal arts in themselves, we find that every tribe is, from the point of view of art, a universe to itself; and this great paradox is the central fact about African art (and all other tribal art) – a fact which is hardly yet appreciated by the Western world, and which it is the prime purpose of this book to illustrate. If the idea of a multitude of universes of art – rather than provinces of one universe – seems

at first strange and hardly acceptable to us, this is because, following the logic of civilization, we have enlarged our horizons until they are all-embracing. The use of the plural is justified only if the universes of which we speak are indeed mutually exclusive, with artistic horizons limited to the frontiers of each universe. Broadly, this appears to be a characteristic feature of tribal society: the tribe is an exclusive ‘‘in-group’’, which uses art among many other means to express its internal solidarity and self-sufficiency, and conversely its difference from all others. In a tribal art there is no problem of communication, such as is typical of the malaise of European art. Such an art is of the people, by the people and for the people; it expresses values, religious and philosophical, which the artist shares not only with his patron but with the whole community. He is using a ‘‘language’’ of form which all can ‘‘understand’’, even though it is never put into words; their comprehension and his composition are intuitive to an extent rarely known in Europe for several centuries past. It is the unity of art and belief which makes understanding and acceptance of the forms of art easy for members of the tribe, but correspondingly difficult for non-members, since they do not share the belief. Tribal art, then, is ‘‘functional’’ within the tribe, but not outside it. And since the concept of ‘‘art for art’s sake’’ is a modern

From Tribes and Forms in African Art (New York: Tudor, 1965), pp. 11–18.

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invention of the European decadence, and is not present in tribal Africa, it follows that the sculpture of one tribe will be meaningless and unintelligible to people of another tribe, because it is art divorced from its content of belief. Indeed, the tribal African will normally show less appreciation of the art of another tribe than does a European; this is because the European, indoctrinated, however slightly, with the eclectic attitude to art, may well be able to appreciate in it some of the universal values which are found in all good art, whereas the tribal African is likely to be biased by his own matrix of belief against responding to these universalities. (Any such inhibition is, of course, likely to leave him as and when his attachment to his tribal belief and culture falls away, though his ‘‘detribalisation’’ would only rarely be accompanied by the development of a positive appreciation of universal values in art.) Thus far, we have for the sake of simplicity spoken of the tribe as though it were a static and clearly defined entity, a kind of fixed datum to which we could attach each style of African art. In fact, the case is far more complicated: the tribe is essentially a dynamic phenomenon, constantly changing under gradual or violent pressures, and often very difficult to pin down in terms of the categories of Western science. Social anthropologists, political scientists and others concerned chiefly with the immaterial aspects of culture sometimes find it so difficult to apply the concept (especially in current conditions of accelerated change) that they often prefer to minimize or discard it. (In some countries of Africa, the hostility of the re´gime to ‘‘tribalism’’ – by which are meant the abuses of tribalism – creates strong pressures upon social scientists to adopt an obscurantist attitude towards the tribe and its works.) The two surest guides in the identification of tribes appear to be linguistics and material culture, and it is upon these that we have especially relied in this book. Material culture studies are especially valuable for the purpose because the data with which the student works are facts of the most concrete and incontrovertible kind (however vague their documentation may be), rather than observations, abstractions and opinions derived from human behaviour such as are the stuff of social anthropology and sociology.

Art therefore provides one of the principal criteria for the identification and delimitation of tribes. It is theoretically possible (though it would call for a vast amount of fieldwork by the rather small group of anthropologists who are both qualified and interested in these studies) to compile a tribal map of Africa on which the frontiers enclosing tribal styles of art are shown as a continuous line wherever the distinction between one style and the next is clear-cut and indisputable, and as a broken line where the artistic frontier is ‘‘open’’, permitting stylistic influences to pass in one direction or both, or where, for reasons which may now be obscure, it is difficult to draw a clear line. Such a map – which would need to be drawn as at a date such as 1900 or 1918, so heavy has been the erosion of African art since then by the processes of social and material decay and of commerce – would certainly include many lengths of broken line, but its main effect would be to exhibit a high degree of firm correlation between tribal styles and language frontiers, and the proportion of continuous line might well exceed 90 per cent. In the body of this book will be found many observations which would be relevant in the planning of such an enterprise, and although it is the main purpose of the book to draw attention to the extent of ‘‘tribality’’ in African sculptural form, every care has been taken not to weight the evidence in favour of the thesis but rather to define its nature by giving full emphasis to exceptions and qualifications. In a continent such as Africa, no tribe can be completely an island, for all must have relations with others. Such relations may or may not have visible effects upon a tribe’s art. The Balega have an art which is absolutely characteristic of them and, it seems, of no one else; their artistic universe, then, is completely circumscribed. The same would seem to be true of the Bakwele and the Kuyu, of the Tiv and probably of the Kisi. Many tribes have an effectively self-contained art which nevertheless forms a compromise or local fusion with one or other of the surrounding styles. The Yoruba provide an excellent example: it is astonishing that the art of this most prolific of all the art-producing tribes should retain its immediately identifiable Yoruba character so consistently while permitting a remarkable

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degree of local and individual variation; yet there is one direction, to the south-east, in which this consistency lapses, the Yoruba style being displaced by an almost pure version of western Ijo style, owing, we may surmise, to a failure of the inland-based Yoruba gods to cope so successfully with the watery environment of Okitipupa as the water spirits of the Ijo fishermen. The Basonge, again, have one of the ‘‘strongest’’ and, as one might think, most inflexible of African styles, with its severely cubistic abstractions of the human figure; yet in one small area a remarkably successful fusion has been achieved between this style and that of the Baluba, which in many ways is of an almost opposite character, favouring undulating, almost fleshy, surfaces. Another and more complicated kind of contact between styles is seen in the style clusters such as the Dan-Ngere complex, the Cameroons Grasslands complex, the Balumbo and other tribes using the white-faced mask style, and the great Lunda-Bajokwe complex. A similar case involving two tribes only is the Bayaka-Basuku grouping. In all these cases some degree of stylistic symbiosis exists between two or more tribes, although further research may reveal more definite regularities in the component styles which would lead us to modify our present assumption that these tribes inhabit multilaterally shared universes of art. In one sense, for example, the Grassland tribes may be said to accept and perhaps even appreciate each other’s styles, since Babanki carvings are frequently found in use among the Bamileke peoples, and Bamileke carvings among other tribes of the complex; yet each of these small tribes continued at least until recently to practise its own clearly identifiable style, and so may be regarded as having an artistic universe of its own, even though several of these universes may be said to be compatible with each other. Another complicated situation is found in tribes such as the Fang, the Bakota and the Bena Lulua, who, so far as their most characteristic forms are concerned, occupy their own exclusive universes, yet among their minor art forms have one or more which are shared with surrounding tribes. The Fang and the Bakota are famous for their reliquary figures in contrasting styles, and the Bena Lulua for their beautifully scarified standing figures, yet all

three have yielded (though much more rarely) a type of mask shared with one or more of their neighbours; for example, the Bakota have been found to use whitefaced masks typical of the Balumbo complex, while the Bena Lulua mask seems to be shared with, and more characteristic of, the southern Bakuba. It may well be significant that in all these three cases it is a mask which seems to have breached the exclusive universes of these tribes; for it appears that dance societies whose activities have a largely recreational purpose may provide a favourable mechanism for the transfer of cultural traits from one tribe to another. A remarkable example of this phenomenon has occurred in Eastern Nigeria, where the skin-covered heads used as dance headdresses by the Ekkpe society in the Ekoi cluster of tribes on the Cameroons border became so popular that they spread to the Ibibio, displacing the indigenous forms, and from the Ibibio spread to some Ibo groups notably in the Bende and Aba districts. This is no doubt because, when a masquerade is being played, almost everybody (including Christians) will turn out for it and the people of the next village, even if of another tribe and language group, may want to set up their own lodge for the same masquerade cult. These masquerades may have a very definite therapeutic value for the community if they are well performed, and there may be strong competition between rival cults. In this case the diffusion of the Ekoi type of headdress represented the progressive supplanting of more abstract by more naturalistic forms, and this change of fashion may have been influenced by the infiltration of European ideas into Eastern Nigeria during the past century. Some of the examples that we have been considering may be regarded as cases of cultural fission, a portion of a tribe becoming detached and modified under the influence of a neighbouring tribe, while others seem rather to represent incipient fusion of one style with another. But all are demonstrations of the dynamic character of the tribe and of tribal styles. Such phenomena are sometimes quoted as evidence in refutation of the view that African art is essentially tribal; in fact, of course, given that a tribe is to be regarded as a dynamic and not a static entity, they provide the best possible proof of tribality, for in each case

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we are able to analyse the modified styles into their component elements and assign tribal origins to them. Clearly it is through such processes – of fission probably more often than of fusion – that African art has differentiated itself through the ages into so rich a variety of sculptural forms. Such a development in art must have been more or less parallel to the proliferation of African languages during the last few millennia. What is the relevance for modern Africa of the facts presented in this book? Many Africans may regret that the evolutionary process has worked in the direction of the development of thousands of languages rather than of a few or of one, with the unavoidable result that they must speak and think in English or French; yet the oral literature of Africa is immeasurably richer as a result of this proliferation. How much more valuable to the world has been the proliferation of sculptural forms! For it is in this field surely that Africa has made her greatest and finest contribution to world civilization – a contribution far more fundamental and profound than the influence indirectly exerted by Africa on Western popular music. It is true that modern artists have not yet taken sufficient account of the fact that African art was an art of belief – nor should this surprise us, since for the most part their art is not an art of belief. Too often they have treated African sculptures as though they were objets trouve´s, a kind of compendium of artistic possibilities, to be drawn upon like a commonplace book. Yet even without the penetration of content (which may still be achieved in the future), western art, and especially sculpture, has greatly benefited from its encounter with the immense range of the exploration of form

by the tribal artists of Africa. The processes of evolution, working along the diverging lines of development of Africa’s innumerable tribes – and greatly assisted and accelerated by the destructive processes of nature – have produced for our time this great corpus of forms, in which few possibilities have remained unexplored; and the real importance of this for modern art lies in the freeing of artists from formal preconceptions. Freedom from preconceptions will not produce great art, which needs great artists, yet this process may be an essential one if the new kind of art – international art – is in the future to achieve anything comparable to the great periods of human art of the past. But perhaps the greatest contribution which Africa could make to world art would be to redress the balance of the intellect and the intuition. For whereas the dominance of the intellect in European art, established in the Renaissance, has become excessive in recent times, African art is a field in which intuitive judgment has had full expression. This is indeed only another aspect of the ‘‘directness’’ which has been so much admired by modern artists in tribal art, and it is of course natural enough that non-literate peoples should be free of that literariness in art which is equally present in the academic and the modern art of Europe and America. If Africa is to be able to act as a leaven in the art of the world, it is of the utmost importance that African intellectuals – who have an acquired bias towards the dominance of the intellect – should come to know and admire the qualities of the dying tribal arts of their past and if possible preserve them for the world.

4 Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art Gregory Bateson

Introduction This paper consists of several still separate attempts to map a theory associated with culture and the non-verbal arts. Since no one of these attempts is completely successful, and since the attempts do not as yet meet in the middle of the territory to be mapped, it may be useful to state, in non-technical language, what it is I am after. Aldous Huxley used to say that the central problem for humanity is the quest for grace. This word he used in what he thought was the sense in which it is used in the New Testament. He explained the word, however, in his own terms. He argued – like Walt Whitman – that the communication and behaviour of animals has a naı¨vete´, a simplicity, which man has lost. Man’s behaviour is corrupted by deceit – even self-deceit – by purpose, and by self-consciousness. As Aldous saw the matter, man has lost the ‘grace’ which animals still have. In terms of this contrast, Aldous argued that God resembles the animals rather than man: ideally he is unable to deceive and incapable of internal confusions. In the total scale of beings, therefore, man is as if displaced sideways and lacks that grace which the animals have and which God has.

I argue that art is a part of man’s quest for grace; sometimes his ecstasy in partial success, sometimes his rage and agony at failure. I argue also that there are many species of grace within the major genus; and also that there are many kinds of failure and frustration and departure from grace. No doubt each culture has its characteristic species of grace towards which its artists strive, and its own species of failure. Some cultures may foster a negative approach to this difficult integration, an avoidance of complexity by crass preference either for total consciousness or total unconsciousness. Their art is unlikely to be ‘great’. I shall argue that the problem of grace is fundamentally a problem of integration and that what is to be integrated is the diverse parts of the mind – especially those multiple levels of which one extreme is called ‘consciousness’ and the other the ‘unconscious’. For the attainment of grace, the reasons of the heart must be integrated with the reasons of the reason. In the previous chapter Edmund Leach (1973) presents in a compelling form the question: how is it that the art of one culture can have meaning or validity for critics raised in a different culture? My answer would be that, if art is somehow expressive of something like grace or

From Anthony Forge (ed.), Primitive Art and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 235–255. Reprinted by permission of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc., New York.

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psychic integration, then the success of this expression might well be recognizable across cultural barriers. The physical grace of cats is profoundly different from the physical grace of horses, and yet a man who has the physical grace of neither can evaluate that of both. And even when the subject-matter of art is the frustration of integration, cross-cultural recognition of the products of this frustration is not too surprising. The central question is: in what form is information about psychic integration contained or coded in the work of art?

Style and Meaning They say that ‘every picture tells a story’ and this generalization holds for most of art if we exclude ‘mere’ geometric ornamentation. But I want precisely to avoid analysing the ‘story’. That aspect of the work of art which can most easily be reduced to words – the mythology connected with the subject-matter – is not what I want to discuss. I shall not even mention the unconscious mythology of phallic symbolism, except at the end. I am concerned with what important psychic information is in the art object quite apart from what it may ‘represent’. ‘Le style est l’homme meˆme´’ (Buffon). What is implicit in style, materials, composition, rhythm, skill, and so on? Clearly this subject-matter will include geometrical ornamentation along with the composition and stylistic aspects of more representational works. The lions in Trafalgar Square could have been eagles or bulldogs and still have carried the same (or similar) messages about empire and about the cultural premisses of nineteenth-century England. And yet, how different might their message have been, had they been made of wood! But representationalism as such is relevant. The extremely realistic horses and stags of Altamira are surely not about the same cultural premisses as the highly conventionalized black outlines of a later period. The code whereby perceived objects or persons (or supernaturals) are transformed into wood or paint is a source of information about the artist and his culture. It is the very rules of transformation that are of interest to me – not the message but the code. My goal is not instrumental. I do not want to use the transformation rules when discov-

ered, to undo the transformation or to ‘decode’ the message. To translate the art object into mythology and then examine the mythology would be only a neat way of dodging or negating the problem of ‘what is art?’. I ask, then, not about the meaning of the encoded message but rather about the meaning of the code chosen. But still that most slippery word ‘meaning’ must be defined. It will be convenient to define meaning in the most general possible way in the first instance. ‘Meaning’ may be regarded as an approximate synonym of pattern, redundancy, information, and ‘restraint’, within a paradigm of the following sort: Any aggregate of events or objects (e.g. a sequence of phonemes, a painting or a frog or a culture) shall be said to contain ‘redundancy’ or ‘pattern’ if the aggregate can be divided in any way by a ‘slash mark’, such that an observer perceiving only what is on one side of the slash mark can guess, with better than random success, what is on the other side of the slash mark. We may say that what is on one side of the slash contains information or has meaning about what is on the other side. Or, in engineer’s language, the aggregate contains ‘redundancy’. Or, again, from the point of view of a cybernetic observer, the information available on one side of the slash will restrain (i.e. reduce the probability of) wrong guessing. Examples: The letter T in a given location in a piece of written English prose proposes that the next letter is likely to be an H or an R or a vowel. It is possible to make a better than random guess across a slash which immediately follows the T. English spelling contains redundancy. From a part of an English sentence, delimited by a slash, it is possible to guess at the syntactic structure of the remainder of the sentence. From a tree visible above ground, it is possible to guess at the existence of roots below ground. The top provides information about the bottom. From an arc of a drawn circle, it is possible to guess at the position of other parts of the circumference. (From the diameter of an ideal circle, it is possible to assert the length of the circumference. But this is a matter of truth within a tautological system.) From how the boss acted yesterday, it may be possible to guess how he will act today. From what I say, it may be possible to make

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predictions about how you will answer. My words contain meaning or information about your reply. Telegraphist A has a written message on his pad and sends this message over wire to B, so that B now gets the same sequence of letters on his message pad. This transaction (or ‘language game’ in Wittgenstein’s phrase) has created a redundant universe for an observer O. If O knows what was on A’s pad, he can make a better than random guess at what is on B’s pad. The essence and raison d’eˆtre of communication is the creation of redundancy, meaning, pattern, predictability, information, and/or the reduction of the random by ‘restraint’. It is, I believe, of prime importance to have a conceptual system which will force us to see the ‘message’ (e.g. the art object) as both itself internally patterned and itself a part of a larger patterned universe – the culture or some part of it. The characteristics of objects of art are believed to be about, or to be partly derived from, or determined by, other characteristics of cultural and psychological systems. Our problem might therefore be oversimply represented by the diagram: [Characteristics of art object/Characteristics of rest of culture]

where square brackets enclose the universe of relevance, and where the oblique stroke represents a slash across which some guessing is possible, in one direction or in both. The problem, then, is to spell out what sorts of relationships, correspondences, etc., cross or transcend this oblique stroke. Consider the case in which I say to you ‘it’s raining’ and you guess that if you look out the window you will see raindrops. A similar diagram will serve: [Characteristics of ‘It’s raining’/Perception of raindrops]

Notice, however, that this case is by no means simple. Only if you know the language and have some trust in my veracity will you be able to make a guess about the raindrops. In fact, few people in this situation restrain themselves from seemingly duplicating their information by looking out of the window. We like to prove that our guesses are right, and that

our friends are honest. Still more important, we like to test or verify the correctness of our view of our relationship to others. This last point is non-trivial. It illustrates the necessarily hierarchic structure of all communicational systems: the fact of conformity or non-conformity (or indeed any other relationship) between parts of a patterned whole may itself be informative as part of some still larger whole. The matter may be diagrammed thus: [(‘It’s raining’/raindrops)/you–me relationship]

where redundancy across the slash mark within the smaller universe enclosed in round brackets proposes (is a message about) a redundancy in the larger universe enclosed in square brackets. But the message ‘It’s raining’ is itself conventionally coded and internally patterned, so that several slash marks could be drawn across the message indicating patterning within the message itself. And the same is true of the rain. It too is patterned and structured. From the direction of one drop, I could predict the direction of others, and so on. But the slash marks across the verbal message ‘It’s raining’ will not correspond in any simple way to the slash marks across the raindrops. If, instead of a verbal message, I had given you a picture of the rain, some of the slashes on the picture would have corresponded with slashes on the perceived rain. This difference provides a neat formal criterion to separate the ‘arbitrary’ and digital coding characteristic of the verbal part of language from the iconic coding of depiction. But verbal description is often iconic in its larger structure. A scientist describing an earthworm might start at the head end and work down its length – thus producing a description iconic in its sequence and elongation. Here again we observe a hierarchic structuring, digital or verbal at one level and iconic at another.

Levels and Logical Types ‘Levels’ have been mentioned. It was noted: a. that the combination of the message ‘It’s raining’ with the perception of raindrops can itself constitute a message about a universe of personal relations; and b. that when we change

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our focus of attention from smaller to larger units of message material, we may discover that a larger unit contains iconic coding though the smaller parts of which it was made are verbal: the verbal description of an earthworm may, as a whole be elongated. The matter of levels now crops up in another form which is crucial for any epistemology of art: The word ‘know’ is not merely ambiguous in covering both connaıˆtre (to know through the senses, to recognize, or perceive) and savoir (to know in the mind), but varies – actively shifts – in meaning for basic systemic reasons. Something of what we know through the senses can be re-coded to become knowledge in the mind. ‘I know the way to Cambridge’ might mean that I have studied the map and can give you directions. It might mean that I can recall details all along the route. It might mean that when driving that route I recognize many details even though I could recall only a few. It might mean that when driving to Cambridge I can trust to ‘habit’ to make me turn at the right points, without having to think where I am going, and so on. In all cases, we deal with a redundancy or patterning of a quite complex sort: [(‘I know. . . ’/my mind)//the road]

and the difficulty is to determine the nature of the patterning within the round brackets or – to put the matter another way: what parts of the mind are redundant with the particular message about ‘knowing’. Last, there is a special form of ‘knowing’ which is usually regarded as adaptation rather than information. A shark is beautifully shaped for locomotion in water but the genome of the shark surely does not contain direct information about hydrodynamics. Rather the genome must be supposed to contain information or instructions which are the complement of hydrodynamics. Not hydrodynamics, but what hydrodynamics requires, has been built up in the shark’s genome. Similarly a migratory bird perhaps does not know the way to its destination in any of the senses outlined above but the bird may contain the complementary instructions necessary to cause it to fly right. Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaıˆt point. It is this – the complex layering

of consciousness and unconsciousness – that creates difficulty when we try to discuss art or ritual or mythology. The matter of levels of the mind has been discussed from many points of view at least four of which must be mentioned and woven into any scientific approach to art: 1. Samuel Butler’s insistence that the better an organism ‘knows’ something, the less conscious it becomes of its knowledge, i.e. there is a process whereby knowledge (or ‘habit’ – whether of action, perception, or thought) sinks to deeper and deeper levels of the mind. This phenomenon which is central to Zen discipline (cf. Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery, London, 1953), is also relevant to all art and all skill. 2. Adalbert Ames’ demonstrations that the conscious, three-dimensional visual images, which we make of that which we see, are made by processes involving mathematical premisses of perspective, etc. of the use of which we are totally unconscious. Over these processes, we have no voluntary control. A drawing of a chair with the perspective of Van Gogh affronts the conscious expectations and, dimly, reminds the consciousness of what had been (unconsciously) taken for granted. 3. The Freudian (especially Fenichel’s) theory of dreams as metaphors coded according to primary process. I shall consider style – neatness, boldness of contrast, etc. – as metaphoric and therefore as linked to those levels of the mind where primary process holds sway. 4. The Freudian view of the unconscious as the cellar or cupboard to which fearful and painful memories are consigned by a process of repression. Classical Freudian theory assumed that dreams were a secondary product, created by ‘dream work’. Material, unacceptable to conscious thought, was supposedly translated into the metaphoric idiom of primary process to avoid waking the dreamer. And this may be true of those items of information which are held in the unconscious by the process of repression. As we have seen, however, many other sorts of information are inaccessible to conscious inspection including most of the premisses of mammalian interaction. It would seem

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to me sensible to think of these items as existing primarily in the idiom of primary process, only with difficulty to be translated into ‘rational’ terms. In other words, I believe that much of early Freudian theory was upside down. At that time many thinkers regarded conscious reason as normal and self-explanatory while the unconscious was regarded as mysterious, needing proof, and needing explanation. Repression was the explanation, and the unconscious was filled with thoughts which could have been conscious but which repression and dream work had distorted. Today we think of consciousness as the mysterious, and of the computational methods of the unconscious, e.g. primary process, as continually active, necessary, and allembracing. These considerations are especially relevant in any attempt to derive a theory of art or poetry. Poetry is not a sort of distorted and decorated prose but rather prose is poetry which has been stripped down and pinned to a Procrustean bed of logic. The computer men who would programme the translation of languages sometimes forget this fact about the primary nature of language. To try to construct a machine to translate the art of one culture into the art of another would be equally silly. Allegory, at best a distasteful sort of art, is an inversion of the normal creative process. Typically an abstract relation, e.g. between truth and justice, is first conceived in rational terms. The relationship is then metaphorized and dolled up to look like a product of primary process. The abstractions are personified and made to participate in a pseudo-myth, and so on. Much advertising art is allegorical in this sense, that the creative process is inverted. In the cliche´ system of Anglo-Saxons, it is commonly assumed that it would be somehow better if what is unconscious were made conscious. Freud, even, is said to have said, ‘Where id was, there ego shall be,’ as though such an increase in conscious knowledge and control would be both possible and, of course, an improvement. This view is the product of an almost totally distorted epistemology and a totally distorted view of what sort of thing a man, or any other organism, is. Of the four sorts of unconsciousness listed above, it is very clear that the first three are necessary. Consciousness, for obvious mechanical reasons,1 must always be limited to a

rather small fraction of mental process. If useful at all, it must therefore be husbanded. The unconsciousness associated with habit is an economy both of thought and of consciousness; and the same is true of the inaccessibility of the processes of perception. The conscious organism does not require (for pragmatic purposes) to know how it perceives – only to know what it perceives. (To suggest that we might operate without a foundation in primary process would be to suggest that the human brain ought to be differently structured.) Of the four types, only the Freudian cupboard for skeletons is perhaps undesirable and could be obviated. But there may still be advantages in keeping the skeleton off the dining-room table. In truth, our life is such that its unconscious components are continuously present in all their multiple forms. It follows that in our relationships we continuously exchange messages about these unconscious materials, and it becomes important also to exchange metamessages by which we tell each other what order and species of unconsciousness (or consciousness) attaches to our messages. In a merely pragmatic way, this is important because the orders of truth are different for different sorts of messages. In so far as a message is conscious and voluntary, it could be deceitful. I can tell you the cat is on the mat when in fact she is not there. I can tell you ‘I love you’ when in fact I do not. But discourse about relationship is commonly accompanied by a mass of semi-voluntary kinesic and autonomic signals which provide a more trustworthy comment on the verbal message. Similarly, with skill, the fact of skill indicates the presence of large unconscious components in the performance. It thus becomes relevant to look at any work of art with the question: What components of this message material had what orders of unconsciousness (or consciousness) for the artist? And this question, I believe, the sensitive critic usually asks, though perhaps not consciously. Art becomes, in this sense, an exercise in communicating about the species of unconsciousness. Or, if you prefer it, a sort of play behaviour whose function is, amongst other things, to practise and make more perfect communication of this kind. I am indebted to Anthony Forge for a quotation from Isadora Duncan: ‘If I could tell you

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what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.’ Her statement is ambiguous. In terms of the rather vulgar premisses of our culture, we would translate the statement to mean: ‘There would then be no point in dancing it, because I could tell it to you, quicker and with less ambiguity, in words.’ This interpretation goes along with the silly idea that it would be a good thing to be conscious of everything of which we are unconscious. But there is another possible meaning of Isadora Duncan’s remark: if the message were the sort of message that could be communicated in words, there would be no point in dancing it, but it is not that sort of message. It is, in fact, precisely the sort of message which would be falsified if communicated in words, because the use of words (other than poetry) would imply that this is a fully conscious and voluntary message, and this would be simply untrue. I believe that what Isadora Duncan or any artist is trying to communicate is more like: ‘This is a particular sort of partly unconscious message. Let us engage in this particular sort of partly unconscious communication.’ Or perhaps: ‘This is a message about the interface between conscious and unconscious.’ The message of skill of any kind must always be of this kind. The sensations and qualities of skill can never be put in words and yet the fact of skill is conscious. The artist’s dilemma is of a peculiar sort. He must practise in order to perform the craft components of his job. But to practise has always a double effect. It makes him, on the one hand, more able to do whatever it is he is attempting; and, on the other hand, by the phenomenon of habit formation, it makes him less aware of how he does it. If his attempt is to communicate about the unconscious components of his performance, then it follows that he is on a sort of moving stairway about whose position he is trying to communicate but whose movement is itself a function of his efforts to communicate. Clearly, his task is impossible but, as has been remarked, some people do it very prettily.

Primary Process ‘The heart has its reasons which the reason does not perceive at all.’ Among Anglo-

Saxons, it is rather usual to think of the ‘reasons’ of the heart or of the unconscious as inchoate forces or pushes or heavings – what Freud called ‘Trieben’. To Pascal, a Frenchman, the matter was rather different, and he no doubt thought of the reasons of the heart as a body of logic or computation as precise and complex as the reasons of consciousness. (I have noticed that Anglo-Saxon anthropologists sometimes mis-understand the writings of Claude Le´vi-Strauss for precisely this reason. They say he emphasizes too much the intellect and ignores the ‘feelings’. The truth is that he assumes that the heart has precise algorithms.) These algorithms of the heart, or as they say, of the unconscious, are, however, coded and organized in a manner totally different from the algorithms of language. And since a great deal of conscious thought is structured in terms of the logics of language, the algorithms of the unconscious are doubly inaccessible. It is not only that the conscious mind has poor access to this material, but also the fact that when such access is achieved, e.g. in dreams, art, poetry, religion, intoxication, and the like, there is still a formidable problem of translation. This is usually expressed in Freudian language by saying that the operations of the unconscious are structured in terms of primary process, while the thoughts of consciousness (especially verbalized thoughts) are expressed in secondary process. Nobody, to my knowledge, knows anything about secondary process. But it is ordinarily assumed that everybody knows all about it, so I shall not attempt to describe secondary process in any detail, assuming that you know as much about it as I. Primary process is characterized (e.g. by Fenichel) as lacking negatives, lacking tense, lacking in any identification of linguistic mood (i.e. no identification of indicative, subjunctive, optative, etc.) and metaphorical. These characterizations are based upon the experience of psycho-analysts, who must interpret dreams and the patterns of free association. It is also true that the subject-matter of primary process discourse is different from the subject-matter of language and consciousness. Consciousness talks about things or persons, and attaches predicates to the specific things or

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persons which have been mentioned. In primary process the things or persons are usually not identified and the focus of the discourse is upon the relationships which are asserted to obtain between them. This is really only another way of saying that the discourse of primary process is metaphoric. A metaphor retains unchanged the relationship which it illustrates, while substituting other things or persons for the relata. In a simile, the fact that a metaphor is being used is marked by the insertion of the words ‘as if’ or ‘like’. In primary process (as in art) there are no markers to indicate to the conscious mind that the message material is metaphoric. (For a schizophrenic, it is a major step towards a more conventional sanity when he can frame his schizophrenic utterances or the comments of his voices in an ‘as if’ terminology.) The focus of ‘relationship’ is, however, somewhat more narrow than would be indicated merely by saying that primary process material is metaphoric and does not identify the specific relata. The subject-matter of dream and other primary process material is, in fact, relationship in the more narrow sense of relationship between self and other persons or between self and the environment. Anglo-Saxons who are uncomfortable with the idea that feelings and emotions are the outward signs of precise and complex algorithms, usually have to be told that these matters, the relationship between self and others, and the relationship between self and environment are, in fact, the subject-matter of what are called ‘feelings’ – love, hate, fear, confidence, anxiety, hostility, etc. It is unfortunate that these abstractions referring to patterns of relationship have received names, which are usually handled in ways that assume that the ‘feelings’ are mainly characterized by quantity rather than by precise pattern. This is one of the nonsensical contributions of psychology to a distorted epistemology. Be all that as it may, for our present purposes it is important to note that the characteristics of primary process as described above are the inevitable characteristics of any communicational system between organisms who must use only iconic communication. This same limitation is characteristic of the artist and of the dreamer and of the pre-human mammal or bird. (The communication of in-

sects is, perhaps, another matter.) In iconic communication, there is no tense, no simple negative, no modal marker. The absence of simple negatives is of especial interest because it often forces organisms into saying the opposite of what they mean in order to get across the proposition that they mean the opposite of what they say. Two dogs approach each other and need to exchange the message: ‘We are not going to fight.’ But the only way in which fight can be mentioned in iconic communication is by the showing of fangs. It is then necessary for the dogs to discover that this mention of fight was, in fact, only exploratory. They must, therefore, explore what the showing of fangs means. They therefore engage in a brawl; discover that neither ultimately intends to kill the other; and, after that, they can be friends. (Consider the peace-making ceremonials of the Andaman islanders. Consider also the functions of inverted statement or sarcasm, and other sorts of humour in dream, art, and mythology.) In general, the discourse of animals is concerned with relationship either between self and other or self and environment. In neither case is it necessary to identify the relata. Animal A tells B about his relationship with B and he tells C about his relationship with C. Animal A does not have to tell animal C about his relationship with B. Always the relata are perceptibly present to illustrate the discourse, and always the discourse is iconic in the sense of being composed of part actions (‘intention movements’) which mention the whole action which is being mentioned. Even when the cat asks you for milk, she cannot mention the object which she wants (unless it be perceptibly present). She says, ‘Mama, Mama’, and you are supposed from this invocation of dependency to guess that it is milk that she requires. All this indicates that primary process thoughts and the communication of such thoughts to others are, in an evolutionary sense, more archaic than the more conscious operations of language, etc. This has implications for the whole economics and dynamic structure of the mind. Samuel Butler was perhaps first to point out that that which we know best is that of which we are least conscious, i.e. that the process of habit formation is a sinking

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of knowledge down to less conscious and more archaic levels. The unconscious contains not only the painful matters which consciousness prefers not to inspect but also many matters which are so familiar that we do not need to inspect them. Habit, therefore, is a major economy of conscious thought. We can do things without consciously thinking about them. The skill of an artist or rather his demonstration of a skill becomes a message about these parts of his unconsciousness. (But not perhaps a message from the unconscious.) But the matter is not quite so simple. Some types of knowledge can conveniently be sunk to unconscious levels but other types must be kept on the surface. Broadly, we can afford to sink those sorts of knowledge which continue to be true regardless of changes in the environment, but we must maintain in an accessible place all those controls of behaviour which must be modified for every instance. The lion can sink into his unconscious the proposition that zebras are his natural prey but in dealing with any particular zebra he must be able to modify the movements of his attack to fit with the particular terrain and the particular evasive tactics of the particular zebra. The economics of the system, in fact, pushes organisms towards sinking into the unconscious those generalities of relationship which remain permanently true and towards keeping within the conscious the pragmatics of particular instances. The premisses may, economically, be sunk but particular conclusions must be conscious. But the ‘sinking’, though economical, is still done at a price – the price of inaccessibility. Since the level to which things are sunk is characterized by iconic algorithms and metaphor, it becomes difficult for the organism to examine the matrix out of which his conscious conclusions spring. Conversely, we may note that what is common to a particular statement and a corresponding metaphor is of a generality appropriate for sinking.

Quantitative Limits of Consciousness A very brief consideration of the problem shows that it is not conceivably possible for any system to be totally conscious. Suppose that on the screen of consciousness there are

reports from many parts of the total mind, and consider the addition to consciousness of those reports necessary to cover what is, at a given stage of evolution, not already covered. This addition will involve a very great increase in the circuit structure of the brain but still will not achieve total coverage. The next step will be to cover the processes and events occurring in the circuit structure which we have just added, and so on. Clearly, the problem is insoluble and every next step in the approach to total consciousness will involve a great increase in the circuitry required. It follows that all organisms must be content with rather little consciousness and that if consciousness has any useful functions whatever (which has never been demonstrated but is probably true), then economy in consciousness will be of the first importance. No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels. This is the economy achieved by habit formation.

Qualitative Limits of Consciousness It is, of course, true for the TV set that a satisfactory picture on the screen is an indication that many parts of the machine are working as they should; and similar considerations apply to the ‘screen’ of consciousness. But what is provided is only a very indirect report of the working of all those parts. If the TV suffers from a blown tube, or the man from a stroke, effects of this pathology may be evident enough on the screen or to consciousness, but diagnosis must still be done by an expert. This matter has bearings upon the nature of art. The TV which gives a distorted or otherwise imperfect picture is, in a sense, communicating about its unconscious pathologies – exhibiting its symptoms and one may ask whether some artists are not doing something similar. But this still won’t do. It is sometimes said that the distortions of art (say Van Gogh’s ‘Chair’) are directly representative of what the artist ‘sees’. If such statements refer to ‘seeing’ in the simplest physical sense (e.g. remediable with spectacles), I presume that they are nonsense. If Van Gogh could only see the chair in that wild way, his eyes would not serve properly to guide him in the very accurate placing of paint on canvas. And, conversely, a

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photographically accurate representation of the chair on the canvas would also be seen by Van Gogh in the wild way. He would see no need to distort the painting. But suppose we say that the artist is painting today what he saw yesterday – or that he is painting what he somehow knows that he might see. ‘I see as well as you do – but do you realize that this other way of seeing a chair exists as a human potentiality? And that that potentiality is always in you and in me?’ Is he exhibiting symptoms which he might have, because the whole spectrum of psychopathology is possible for us all? Intoxication by alcohol or drugs may help us to see a distorted world, and these distortions may be fascinating in that we recognize the distortions as ours. In vino pars veritatis. We can be humbled or aggrandized by realizing that this too is a part of the human self, a part of Truth. But intoxication does not increase skill – at best it may release skill previously acquired. Without skill is no art. Consider the case of the man who goes to the blackboard – or to the side of his cave – and draws, freehand, a perfect reindeer in its posture of threat. He cannot tell you about the drawing of the reindeer (‘If he could, there would be no point in drawing it’). ‘Do you know that this perfect way of seeing – and drawing – a reindeer exists as a human potentiality?’ The consummate skill of the draftsman validates the artist’s message about his relationship to the animal – his empathy. (They say the Altamira things were made for sympathetic hunting magic. But magic only needs the crudest sort of representations. The scrawled arrows which deface the beautiful reindeer may have been magical – perhaps a vulgar attempt to murder the artist, like moustaches scrawled on the Mona Lisa.)

The Corrective Nature of Art It was noted above that consciousness is necessarily selective and partial, i.e. that the content of consciousness is, at best, a small part of truth about the self. But if this part be selected in any systematic manner, it is certain that the partial truths of consciousness will be, in aggregate, a distortion of the truth of some larger whole.

In the case of an iceberg we may guess, from what is above surface, what sort of stuff is below; but we cannot make the same sort of extrapolation from the content of consciousness. It is not merely the selectivity of preference, whereby the skeletons accumulate in the Freudian unconscious, that makes such extrapolation unsound. Such a selection by preference would only promote optimism. What is serious is the cross-cutting of the circuitry of the mind. If, as we must believe, the total mind is an integrated network (of propositions, images, processes, neural pathology, or what have you – according to what scientific language you prefer to use), and if the content of consciousness is only a sampling of different parts and localities in this network; then, inevitably, the conscious view of the network as a whole is a monstrous denial of the integration of that whole. From the cutting of consciousness, what appears above the surface is arcs of circuits instead of either the complete circuits or the larger complete circuits of circuits. What the unaided consciousness (unaided by art, dreams, and the like) can never appreciate is the systemic nature of mind. This notion can conveniently be illustrated by an analogy: the living human body is a complex, cybernetically integrated system. This system has been studied by scientists – mostly medical men – for many years. What they now know about the body may aptly be compared with what the unaided consciousness knows about the mind. Being doctors, they had purposes: to cure this and that. Their research efforts were therefore focused (as attention focuses the consciousness) upon those short trains of causality which they could manipulate, by means of drugs or other intervention, to correct more or less specific and identifiable states or symptoms. Whenever they discovered an effective ‘cure’ for something, research in that area ceased and attention was directed elsewhere. We can now prevent polio but nobody knows much more about the systemic aspects of that fascinating disease. Research on it has ceased or is, at best, confined to improving the vaccines. But a bag of tricks for curing or preventing a list of specified diseases provides no overall wisdom. The ecology and population dynamics of the species has been disrupted; parasites have been made immune to antibiotics; the

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relationship between mother and neonate has been almost destroyed; and so on. Characteristically, errors occur wherever the altered causal chain is part of some large or small circuit structure or system. And the remainder of our technology (of which medical science is only a part) bids fair to disrupt the rest of our ecology. The point, however, which I am trying to make in this paper is not an attack on medical science, but a demonstration of an inevitable fact: that mere purposive rationality unaided by such phenomena as art, religion, dream, and the like is necessarily pathogenic and destructive of life; and that its virulence springs specifically from the circumstance that life depends upon interlocking circuits of contingency, while consciousness can see only such short arcs of such circuits as human purpose may direct. In a word, the unaided consciousness must always involve man in the sort of stupidity of which evolution was guilty when she urged upon the dinosaurs the commonsense values of an armaments race. She, inevitably, realized her mistake a few million years later and wiped them out. Unaided consciousness must always tend towards hate; not only because it is good common-sense to exterminate the other fellow, but for the more profound reason that, seeing only arcs of circuits, the individual is continually surprised and necessarily angered when his hard-headed policies return to plague the inventor. If you use D.D.T. to kill insects, you may succeed in reducing the insect population so far that the insectivores will starve. You will then have to use more D.D.T. than before to kill the insects which the birds no longer eat. More probably, you will kill off the birds in the first round when they eat the poisoned insects. If the D.D.T. kills off the dogs, you will have to have more police to keep down the burglars. The burglars will become better armed and more cunning . . . and so on. That is the sort of world we live in – a world of circuit structures – and love can survive only if wisdom (i.e. a sense or recognition of the fact of circuitry) has an effective voice. What has been said so far proposes questions about any particular work of art somewhat different from those which have been conventionally asked by anthropologists. The

‘culture and personality’ school, for example, has traditionally used pieces of art or ritual as samples or probes to reveal particular psychological themes or states. The question has been: Does the art tell us about what sort of person made it? But if art, as suggested above, has a positive function in maintaining what I called ‘wisdom’, i.e. in correcting a too purposive view of life and making the view more systemic, then the question to be asked of the given work of art becomes: What sorts of correction in the direction of wisdom would be achieved by creating or viewing this work of art? The question becomes dynamic rather than static.

Analysis of a Balinese Painting Turning now from the consideration of epistemology to a specific work of art, we note first what is most general and most obvious. With almost no exceptions, the behaviours called art or their products (also called art) have two characteristics: they require or exhibit skill and they contain redundancy or pattern. But those two characteristics are not separate: the skill is first in maintaining and then in modulating the redundancies. The matter is perhaps most clear where the skill is that of the journeyman and the redundancy is of comparatively low order. For example, in the Balinese painting (figure 4.1, by Ida Bagus Djati Sura of the village of Batuan, 19372), skill of a certain elementary but highly disciplined sort was exercised or practised in the background of foliage. The redundancies to be achieved involve rather uniform and rhythmical repetition of leaf forms, but this redundancy is, so to speak, fragile. It would be broken or interrupted by smudges or irregularities of size or tone in the painting of the successive leaves. When a Batuan artist looks at the work of another, one of the first things he examines is the technique of the leafy background. The leaves are first drawn, in free outline in pencil; then each outline is tightly redefined with pen and china ink. When this has been done for all the leaves, the artist begins to paint with brush and brick ink. Each leaf is covered with a pale wash. When these washes are dry, each leaf receives a smaller concentric wash and after this another still smaller and so on. The final

GREGORY BATESON

Figure 4.1 The start of a cremation procession, Bali. By Ida Bagus Djati Sura of Batuan, Bali, 1937. Reproduced by Permission of Lois Bateson.

result is a leaf with an almost white rim inside the inked outline, and successive steps of darker and darker colour towards the centre of the leaf. A ‘good’ picture has up to five or six such successive washes on every leaf. (This particular painting is not very ‘good’ in this sense. The leaves are done in only three or four steps.) The skill and the patterning so far discussed depend upon muscular rote and muscular accuracy – achieving the perhaps not negligible artistic level of a well laid-out field of turnips. I was watching a very gifted American carpenter-architect at work on the woodwork of a house he had designed. I commented on the sureness and accuracy of each step. He said:

‘Oh, that. That’s only like using a typewriter. You have to be able to do that without thinking.’ But on top of this level of redundancy is another. The uniformity of the lower level redundancy must be modulated to give higher orders of redundancy. The leaves in one area must be different from the leaves in another area and these differences must be, in some way, mutually redundant: they must be part of a larger pattern. Indeed, the function and necessity of the first level control is precisely to make the second level possible. The perceiver of the work of art must receive information that the artist can paint a uniform area of leaves because without this information, he

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will not be able to accept, as significant, the variations in that uniformity. Only the violinist who can control the quality of his notes can use variations of that quality for musical purposes. This principle is basic and accounts, I suggest, for the almost universal linkage in aesthetics between skill and pattern. The exceptions – e.g. the cult of natural landscapes, ‘found objects’, ink blots, scattergrams, and the works of Jackson Pollock – seem to exemplify the same rule in reverse. In these cases, a larger patterning seems to propose the illusion that the details must have been controlled. Intermediate cases also occur: e.g. in Balinese carving, the natural grain of the wood is rather frequently used to suggest details of the form or surface of the subject. In these cases, the skill lies not in the draftsmanship of the details, but in the artist’s placement of his design within the three-dimensional structure of the wood. A special ‘effect’ is achieved, not by the mere representationalism, but by the perceiver’s partial awareness that a physical system other than that of draftsmanship has contributed to determine his perception. We now turn to more complex matters, still concentrating attention upon the most obvious and elementary.

Composition 1. The delineation of leaves and other forms does not reach to the edge of the picture but shades off into darkness so that almost all around the rectangle there is a band of undifferentiated dark pigment. In other words, the picture is framed within its own fade-out. We are allowed to feel that the matter is in some sense ‘out of this world’; and this in spite of the fact that the scene depicted is familiar – the starting out of a cremation procession. 2. The picture is filled. The composition leaves no open spaces. Not only is none of the paper left unpainted but no considerable area is left in uniform wash. The largest such areas are the very dark patches at the bottom between the legs of the men. To occidental eyes this gives an effect of ‘fussiness’. To psychiatric eyes, the effect is of ‘anxiety’ or ‘compulsivity’. We are all familiar with the strange look of those letters from cranks, who feel that they must fill the page.

3. But before trying too fast to diagnose or evaluate, we have to note that the composition of the lower half of the picture, apart from this filling of background space, is turbulent. Not merely a depiction of active figures, but a swirling composition mounting upwards and closed off by the contrasting direction of the gestures of the men at the top of the pyramid. The upper half of the picture, in contrast, is serene. Indeed, the effect of the perfectly balanced women with offerings on their heads is so serene that, at first glance, it appears that the men with musical instruments must surely be sitting. (They are supposed to be moving in procession.) But this compositional structure is the reverse of the usual occidental. We expect the lower part of a picture to be the more stable and expect to see action and movement in the upper part – if anywhere. 4. At this point, it is appropriate to examine the picture as a sexual pun and, in this connection, the internal evidence for sexual reference is at least as strong as it is in the case of the Tangaroa figure discussed by Leach (1973) All you have to do is to set your mind in the correct posture and you will see an enormous phallic object (the cremation tower) with two elephants’ heads at the base. This object must pass through a narrow entrance into a serene courtyard and thence onward and upward through a still more narrow passageway. Around the base of the phallic object you see a turbulent mass of homunculi, a crowd in which Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack; But those behind cried ‘Forward!’ And those before cried ‘Back!’

And if you are so minded, you will find that Macaulay’s poem about how Horatius kept the bridge is no less sexual than the present picture. The game of sexual interpretation is easy if you want to play it. No doubt the snake in the tree to the left of the picture could also be woven into the sexual story. It is still possible, however, that something is added to our understanding of a work of art by the hypothesis that the subject-matter is double: that the picture represents both the start of a cremation procession and a phallus with vagina. With a little imagination, we

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could also see the picture as a symbolic representation of Balinese social organization in which the smooth relations of etiquette and gaiety metaphorically cover the turbulence of passion. And, of course, ‘Horatius’ is very evidently an idealized myth of nineteenth-century imperial England. It is probably an error to think of dream, myth, and art as being about any one matter other than relationship. As was mentioned earlier, dream is metaphoric and is not particularly about the relata mentioned in the dream. In the conventional interpretation of dream, another set of relata, often sexual, is substituted for the set in the dream. But perhaps by doing this we only create another dream. There indeed is no a priori reason for supposing that the sexual relata are any more primary or basic than any other set.3 In general, artists are very unwilling to accept interpretations of this sort, and it is not clear that their objection is to the sexual nature of the interpretation. Rather, it seems that rigid focusing upon any single set of relata destroys for the artist the more profound significance of the work. If the picture were only about sex or only about social organization, it would be trivial. It is non-trivial or profound precisely because it is about sex and social organization and cremation, and other things. In a word, it is only about relationship and not about any identifiable relata. 5. It is appropriate then to ask how the artist has handled the identification of his subject-matter within the picture. We note first that the cremation tower which occupies almost one third of the area of the picture is almost invisible. It does not stand out against its background as it should if the artist wanted to assert unequivocally ‘this is a cremation’. Notably also, the coffin, which might be expected to be a focal point, is appropriately placed just below the centre but, even so, does not catch the eye. In fact, the artist has inserted details which label the picture as a cremation scene but these details become almost whimsical asides, like the snake and the little birds in the trees. The women are carrying the ritually correct offerings on their heads, and two men appropriately bring bamboo containers of palm toddy, but these details, too, are only whimsically added. The artist plays down the subject identification and thereby gives major

stress to the contrast between the turbulent and the serene mentioned in section 3 above. 6. In sum, it is my opinion that the crux of the picture is the interwoven contrast between the serene and the turbulent. And a similar contrast or combination was also present, as we have seen, in the painting of the leaves. There too, an exuberant freedom was overlaid by precision. In terms of this conclusion, I can now attempt an answer to the question posed above: What sorts of correction, in the direction of systemic wisdom, could be achieved by creating or viewing this work of art? In final analysis, the picture can be seen as an affirmation that to choose either turbulence or serenity as a human purpose would be a vulgar error. The conceiving and creating of the picture must have provided an experience which exposed this error. The unity and integration of the picture assert that neither of these contrasting poles can be chosen to the exclusion of the other, because the poles are mutually dependent. This profound and general truth is simultaneously asserted for the fields of sex, social organization, and death.

NOTES 1

Consider the impossibility of constructing a television set which would report upon its screen all the workings of its component parts, including especially those parts concerned in this reporting. Three photographs of this artist at work have been published in G. Bateson and M. Mead, Balinese Character, New York, 1942, Pl. 23. Cf. Gregory Bateson, ‘Sex and Culture’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. XLVII, 9 May 1947, art. 5, pp. 647–60.

REFERENCE Leach, Edmund, 1973. ‘Levels of Communication and problems of Taboo in the Appreciation of Primtive Art.’ In Anthony Forge (ed.), Primitive Art and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

5 Tikopia Art and Society Raymond Firth

Most studies of primitive art heretofore have concentrated on cultures and aesthetic spheres in which the art could be described as ‘rich’ in character. The Tikopia offer a contrast to such studies. Generalizations about art in the broadest sense have often stressed its expressive function, its role as a material sign of ideas and emotions held collectively or manifested individually by different members of a particular society. For Lethaby ‘art is man’s thought expressed in his handwork’ (1949, p. 1). For Hinks and others it is the ‘concrete expression of abstract ideas’ (1935, p. 2), and so on. Art crystallizes aspirations and indicates consciousness of a particular era of national life. Different eras have their own particular method of aesthetic expression, a product of the traditions of art workmanship and the ‘national equation of the moment’ (Lethaby, p. 2). So the recognition of periods of art can be coincident with the recognition of periods of general development. Among the complex set of forces which becomes manifest in the art of a particular society at a particular period not only the aesthetic structure but also the social structure is held to be involved. Arnold Hauser (1952, pp. 35–9) connects a geometric style of neolithic peasantry, for example, with a uniformity of organization, stable institutions, an autocratic form of government, and a very largely religiously

oriented outlook on life. Such art, he thinks, is conventional, solid, stable, and inflexible, even invariable, in its form. These are merely samples of well-known views, some of them clearly exaggerated, which try to give some kind of explanation in social terms to the variation which appears in the character of art in different societies and at different periods. Sometimes a further factor is added, the degree to which the society itself is subject to change and development. Lethaby holds that periods of art have coincided with crests of general development, and emphasizes that the most important characteristic of art, apart from individual artistic genius, is its continuity and response to change (1949, p. 2).

The Poverty of Tikopia Graphic Art In the light of such views the Tikopia pose a problem. Evidence from their tradition and from observations on the state of their society over more than a century indicates that despite conflict and occasional violence the form of their society may be regarded as relatively stable. Again, their institution of chieftainship and the great respect shown to their chiefs, whose orders on critical occasions have until recent times been carried out without question, allow their form of government to be

From Anthony Forge (ed.), Primitive Art and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 25– 48. Reprinted by permission of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc., New York.

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categorized as relatively autocratic. In the pagan conditions which obtained until recently their outlook on life, with their elaborate ritual cycles and complex pantheon of spirits to whom prayers, offering, and libations were made, was religiously oriented to a high degree. Yet fascinating as all this has been, to an anthropologist interested in primitive art their culture has been disconcertingly barren. Their plastic arts traditionally and in recent times have been relatively undeveloped, simple in form and often poor in quality of workmanship. Their chiefs were not a leisured class but they did command some patronage; they and some other senior men in the community have been able to employ craftsmen of skill to make sea-going canoes, wooden bowls, clubs, dance bats of a reasonable degree of efficiency. Such things were ornamented, but very simply. The craftsmen responsible were recompensed for their effort and skill. But the emphasis has been upon securing effective working implements rather than objects of particular aesthetic interest. Plastic art as such in Tikopia has had no commercial value, that is, artist as distinct from craftsman has had no material reward and no special social status. In Tikopia fine craftsmanship has had some social approval but this has been primarily related to the technical workmanship and utilitarian elements of the product rather than to its aesthetic effect. Yet all this in itself would not necessarily inhibit the production of art objects of high quality. In some primitive societies men have produced ‘high art’ apparently irrespective of material recognition or perhaps even of status recognition of their aesthetic efforts. More important, perhaps, is the lack of any great degree of competitiveness in the craft sphere, of that emulative striving for excellence which might lead to a search for more effective, more striking, modes of presentation. Is one to conclude, however, that the Tikopia, lacking any developed plastic art, have lacked also any degree of sophistication in thought, feeling, or abstract ideas? My answer is decidedly in the negative. In many primitive societies art appears to be selective. In Tikopia, while plastic art has been relatively undeveloped, upon music and associated arts of poetry and dance the Tikopia have focused a great deal of attention. It is true that in

the field of poetry and dance in particular their aesthetic expression may be described as robust rather than refined, but in these fields they cannot be said to lack either sensibility or abstract ideas. In music, poetry, and dance Tikopia seem to have developed a very considerable range of variation and elaborate articulation, with many nuances of form and expression. They also seem to have associated these aesthetic products much more closely with the organization of their society, with the expression of social bonds and status differences, than their creations in the field of the plastic arts. What I am arguing is not novel, but perhaps needs restating – that a community which has been remote and very isolated for a long period may develop its aesthetic tradition differentially. It may lack certain kinds of aesthetic creation, or concentrate on one sphere to the neglect of others, without necessarily lacking a general vitality, capacity for abstract thought, aesthetic sensibility, and interest in new ideas and experiences. But a second question – is the lack of Tikopia plastic art due to a deficiency in the conceptual handling of solid form, to an absence of a specifically sculptural art tradition, or to some repressive influences in the society (comparable to the Muslim ban on religious iconography)? – is more difficult, perhaps impossible, to answer. In the sphere of plastic and graphic expression Tikopia offers a case of almost minimal art. Painting and drawing generally and their analogues in bodily decoration have had very limited scope. Bark-cloth is sometimes dyed orange with turmeric, though never painted; pandanus mats may be given a border of chevrons and allied design; tattooing has traditionally been applied in a limited range of naturalistic and geometric designs to the human body (Firth, 1936; 1947); white flowers are worn in ears and round the neck; beads, traditionally black or white, and later coloured from European sources, were strung round necks and wrists. But all these decorative elements, though very important to Tikopia as social indexes, were relatively minor as contributions to aesthetic production in any comparative sense. Minor also, though of potential interest to students of comparative design, are the elaborate systematic ‘geometrical’ variations in Tikopia string figures (Firth and Maude, 1968).

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Tikopia sculpture has been confined almost entirely to woodwork. On a small scale, neck pendants and wrist ornaments were constructed of clam shell, pearl shell, or horn (turtle shell). Pleasant in their simple shape, these too showed little aesthetic development. The greatest range of variation has been in the production of objects from wood. But almost none of these can be regarded as objects of primarily aesthetic interest in their manufacture. Possible exceptions were figures, conventionally described as birds (figure 5.1), set as decoration on temple ridgepole or canoe of the Fangarere chief. But even these had a strong ritual connotation and might be regarded as essentially symbolic presentations with religious orientation rather than primarily art objects (Firth, 1960). Only the decorative elements such as the rows of notches (fakatara) on many wooden objects, or the incised outline drawings of fish on houseposts, have had a non-utilitarian, elaborative, putatively aesthetic role (figures 5.2 and 5.3). The only painting applied to woodwork was a white clayey kind of stone sometimes roughly smeared on for general effect of contrast (Firth 1967, Pl. la). In woodwork the Tikopia have had a strong craft tradition. There has been no very specific system of instruction or apprenticeship in woodworking, but a fair amount of empirical information has been passed on, particularly from father to son or grandfather to grandson. But by no means every Tikopia is a woodcarver; this is certainly one society where not every man is a ‘natural artist’. Woodcarvers have tended to be professional specialists – not devoting all their time to the work but making it a definite occupation, sometimes

Figure 5.2 Coconut grating stool. Courtesy of the Museum of Primitive Art, New York

Figure 5.3 Fish ornament on house-post, Raniniu temple, 1966. Monberg Photo

Figure 5.1 ‘Bird’ carving on canoe

on commissioned jobs. There has been some tendency to role aggregation – men skilled in woodworking have often been expert fishermen and dancers too. (One lineage in particular in recent times, that of Avakofe, has had a special reputation in these fields.) The work of the woodcarvers has been pragmatic and technically effective. Manual

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dexterity has been admired but traditional forms have been given high value and scope for invention has been relatively limited. In canoes, bowls, dance bats, and most other objects of wood, experiment either in form or in ornament seems to have been extremely restricted. In myths and other traditional tales the author is unknown. But, as with songs and string figure designs, many wooden objects are labelled as items of named personal authorship. All the major items of recent workmanship, such as canoes and bowls, can have their maker identified not only by those who commissioned the work, but also by other people at large. This is not basically a matter of style recognition. The construction of such important objects is a matter of social interest and consequently the maker is borne in memory. Again, the Tikopia prize things which remind them of their ancestors, and often identify wooden objects as formerly the property of ancestors. In such a case they also may attribute the object to the workmanship of the ancestor concerned, crediting him with the reputation of a noted craftsman. This personalization of the manufacture of wooden objects, though possibly apocryphal, does mean that some elements of status are involved in the construction. But the status factor does not seem to have been strong enough and pointed enough to have resulted in stimulating any very specific aesthetic achievement. The form of Tikopia wooden objects has been fairly closely determined by their function. In general shape, line, and proportion Tikopia bowls, turmeric ovens, netting needles, or clubs offer few surprises. Many of their forms can be considered tasteful by western critics. Their simple notched-row ornament diversifies but does not radically modify their functional outline. Traditionally the Tikopia had nothing in the field of anthropomorphic figure sculpture. Unlike some other Polynesian peoples, they seem to have found it quite simple to symbolize their gods by stones of natural shape or structural members of buildings such as house-posts and rafters, whose primary purpose was to serve an architectural need. In Tikopia temples, houseposts were traditionally symbolic. But they were adorned with very little ornamentation – occasionally a fish design or a series of rough notches – and the aesthetic handling of

a post was almost irrelevant to its symbolic role. This does not entitle one to say that the Tikopia lack abstract ideas or powers of conceptualization. On the contrary, it may be argued that their power of conceptualization has been such that it has needed no stimulus of any quasi-representational kind. As with some ‘higher’ religions, they needed no graven images to assist them in the worship of their gods. Distressing though this lack of anthropomorphic iconography may seem from the aesthetic point of view, the Tikopia were able to invest their crude, functional items with strong symbolic value. It is difficult to give reasons for this lack of Tikopia aesthetic achievement in sculpture and lack of interest in aesthetic possibility of working in wood when they had canoes, bowls, and other objects with which to demonstrate their skill. It may perhaps reflect the absence of an artistic tradition dating back to the colonization of their island. It is feasible (if tradition has any relevance here) that their ancestors arrived in driblets, perhaps mainly as castaways, and may have carried with them no memory and technique of fine craftsmanship and artistic invention. But if tradition is to be believed (and it is supported by a little other evidence – Firth, 1961), there has been ample time for individual artistic impulses to develop and express themselves in some overt cultural form. Such indeed seems to have taken place in the musical and allied fields. The lack of tradition then is not a sufficient explanation. I cannot point to any simple set of factors which seems to be involved here. Tikopia preoccupation with ritual and social institutions in a non-iconographic milieu may have tended to militate against the devotion of elaborate time to aesthetic achievement. Relevant also perhaps is an attitude of acceptance of convention, of a notion of standardized shapes for objects of major cultural interest, and an unwillingness to incur criticism by departing from recognized standards.

Tikopia Headrests But some aesthetic interest, if only embryonic, emerges in a domestic context. In the production of headrests the Tikopia seem to have shown much less inhibition than in other fields of sculpture, much more freedom of individual

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expression. One may speculate that in this field, where the objects are of a highly personal character, traditional form is on the whole less important, and initiative and aesthetic interest can find play. This hypothesis is the reverse of a common view, that whereas religion provides a stimulus to ‘high’ art, the domestic field is one of convention and lack of experiment. I do not wish here to magnify the idea of variation in a small sector of Tikopia woodwork into the notion of a very serious field of personal artistic expression. But the problem of such individual expression is of interest – if only because of Hauser’s generalization that the geometric style of the autocratic, stable type of society is relatively invariant. Evidence from Tikopia shows that such a statement needs clarification and modification. During my first visit to Tikopia in 1928–9 I was struck by the wide range of variation to be seen in Tikopia wooden headrests. I collected about two dozen examples of these headrests, and on my second visit to Tikopia decided to investigate more closely this matter of variation. Further examples collected in 1952, and again in 1966,1 demonstrated still more the range of variation in style of these relatively simple articles of furniture. Moreover, I was able to obtain, though not easily, some Tikopia opinions on the significance of this variation.

Technical and Social Background The Tikopia have two major types of headrests, differentiated as part of what may be termed the ‘cultural signatures’ which marked sex division in that society. One type is a soft bundle of bark-cloth resembling a European pillow, but rolled and not stuffed. It is used by women and small children of both sexes. The other type, cut out of wood and the subject of discussion here, is used by men and adolescent males. In methods of dress, carrying loads and seating, conformity to the recognized sex pattern is very high, even from the earliest years. But whereas children follow these sex patterns from the time they begin to wear clothing, in the use of headrests small male children are assimilated to the resting pattern of the women who tend them. In this connection it is probably relevant that the use of the bark-cloth pillow is a pattern which makes no demands on bodily skill,

whereas use of a male type headrest normally requires some little care to keep it upright. A wooden headrest is less comfortable than a bark-cloth pillow, and Tikopia sometimes attribute bumps or indentations in the head to the use of such headrests from an early age. But until recent years male status required the use of such a headrest. (In modern times some men have been ready to use more ordinary types of pillow.) But though traditionally a male Tikopia would not use a bark-cloth pillow, the use of a properly constructed headrest was optional, not mandatory. An upturned bowl or a billet of wood was equally appropriate and was commonly used in huts in the orchards where often no ordinary headrest was available. (In 1952 I noted that a rectangular block of wood which had drifted ashore, apparently from some Japanese war vessel, had been used as a headrest by a Tikopia family.) Headrests of any kind are termed urunga, and wooden headrests are commonly known as urunga nga tangata (headrests of men). They are often made from fairly hard wood such as fetau (Calophyllum inophyllum), but softer timbers such as those of breadfruit, Plumeria, poumuri, and afatea may also be used. An average headrest weighs about two lb. The tool ordinarily used in cutting out a headrest, as for other woodwork, is a small adze with a European plane iron as a blade; a piece of coral rock is used as a rasp to rub down the rough edges of the wood. Making a headrest is not highly restricted but may be done by any man of ordinary skill. The opinion was expressed to me that to make a headrest is not difficult. ‘Any man picks up a piece of wood and hews out his headrest.’ Some men, however, tend to specialize in this work and turn out headrests in their spare time – one woodworker I knew had made thirteen over about twenty years. But any man who wishes may try his hand, and many headrests are clearly amateur jobs. One I saw (of ordinary single-foot type) had been made by a boy. Though not specifically encouraged to work in wood, male children are allowed to exercise initiative in this field, and may be helped by a father or other kinsman. One exception to all this is the most delicate type of headrest with high ‘wings’ and lashed legs (figure 5.24). This is usually made by a professional woodcarver, who

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constructs also canoes, bowls, etc. as commissioned items.

Headrest Styles I do not find the classification of styles in these Tikopia headrests at all easy. Tikopia themselves, including the woodcarvers, used simple descriptive categories such as ‘solid block’ type (urunga potu rakau), ‘holed’ type (urunga fakafotu), ‘legged’ type (urunga fai vae), etc., and I have broadly followed their divisions. But these are very rough. Three main criteria may be identified – general shape, principle of construction, and supporting or ancillary details. From a sample of forty headrests I examined, about a dozen styles may be recognized, though some are subdivided by the Tikopia themselves. These are illustrated in simplified form by the accompanying sketches. The simplest, figure 5.4, is a wooden block, usually hollowed slightly to take the neck and back of the head. Developing from this are various shapes, retaining the form of the block but removing some material to provide a neck platform and/or feet. Figure 5.5 illustrates one of these. A further development, figure 5.6, is to cut a hole from side to side through the middle of the block. This hole may be of varying size. If it is comparatively large, then the amount of material remaining at the base of the block as the foot platform is thin and the side pieces assume almost the form of legs (figure 5. 17). Instead of cutting the hole through the centre of the block, material may be cut away through the base so as to alter the particular style though not the general form.

Figure 5.4

Figure 5.5

Figure 5.6

An instance of this is cutting a large groove longitudinally at the base of the block and shaping the remainder so that the result is rather like a wooden shoe with a V-shaped hole underneath (figure 5.7). Another style is not to cut through the base of the block but to cut around the sides in such a way that a solid central pillar remains with a base platform or

Figure 5.7

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foot. Stylistically, three types may be recognized here: one, figure 5.8, deeply cut into the central column at the base to form a Yshaped headrest; another leaving the central column in a bulbous shape, figure 5.9; and still another, in which the central column is

Figure 5.10

Figure 5.8

Figure 5.11

Figure 5.9

rectangular, figure 5.10 (said by one informant in 1952 to be a modern style) (see figures 5.21 and 5.22). The major alternative to the single column support is to provide the headrest with two legs. Here again there are several different styles. In one, the most common, the

Figure 5.12

base of the block is cut out in approximately rectangular form so that the legs form two relatively straight columns (figures 5.11–5.15

Figure 5.13

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in various forms). Another style is similar except that the central space is triangular, not rectangular, and thus gives a different shape to the legs (figure 5.16). (Examples of both of these, as also of a couple of other twolegged varieties, were identified in 1952 as of traditional style.) Still another style, figure 5.17, may be classified as either a much extended version of figure 5.6 or as a variety with two legs joined together at the base by a platform. (This latter was the classification into which it was put by Tikopia themselves.) Another associated type (figures 5.18 and 5.23), has a bar hewn out of the solid adjoining the two legs. In all the types described so far the headrest has been cut completely out of the solid. But in one further type, figure 5. 24, the headrest is composite. It is made up of three sections, the top section where the head lies

Figure 5.14

Figure 5.16

Figure 5.15

Figure 5.17

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Figure 5.18

and two legs attached by coconut sinnet lashings to this. A normal distinguishing mark of this type of headrest is that one leg is straight and the other is forked with two feet, but a stylistic variant in one example I saw had both legs forked. (Naturalistic prototypes are shown in figures 5.19 and 5.20). What can be said about the origination and relationships of these styles, with particular reference to the relation between individual and social factors involved? It must be said at once that at the ordinary anthropological level of inquiry, granted the imperfections of field technique, I could obtain little direct information from the Tikopia themselves on this question. For any systematic answer to this question we must rely primarily on indirect evidence, even speculation. But one thing is clear – that this range of styles in Tikopia headrests is not primarily of overt symbolic significance. How far is it due to variations in taste among headrest makers or users?

The Demand for Headrests

Figure 5.19

Figure 5.20

The most general element in the Tikopia demand for headrests has been the wish for a pillow of the kind prescribed by custom for men. Yet despite the permissive attitude towards wooden headrest style, and the relative ease with which any man can cut one out for himself in rough form, there has been a strong differentiation in demand between individual pieces. One component of this demand has been interest in workmanship as such. But this has often been commingled with interest in a particular design. A man might wish to have something of greater comfort or utility than the ordinary. Pa Panapa, a well-known maker of headrests, made one of a solid block, hollowed out at top and sides and about five inches broad at the flat base. He was very proud of this. He said it was his own design and that his idea was that there should be three ways in which it could be used, each giving a different height to the head: upright, sideways, and upside down – when the straight base would give rather more height. This headrest was much praised by one of his friends, he said, who wanted him to make one like it. I doubt if he did.

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Figure 5.21 Pillared type of headrest

Figure 5.22 Pillared type of headrest

Figure 5.23 Headrest with bar

I was told in 1952 that sometimes a wellknown carver was commissioned to make a specified kind of headrest. The client would

go along with a basket of food to proffer his request, and then when the headrest was ready he would go to collect it bearing a gift of food, with three or four pieces of bark-cloth in payment. (No pandanus mat was given; this was a reciprocation for more weighty objects.) Alternatively, a man might wish for a certain headrest which he had seen in the carver’s home, and bear it off – with or without reciprocation. Pa Panapa told me how a man of rank from the other side of the island came over to visit him one evening with a basket of food, slept in his house and then said to him, ‘Uncle [mother’s brother], I am going with this headrest,’ and took it, unchallenged. Another headrest was in use by Pa Panapa in his house when an adopted son of his came and slept there one night. As he left the next day he took the

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headrest with him, saying nothing to anyone. A search was made and it was finally located. The man stoutly objected to giving it back, saying that he wanted to keep it, as a memorial of his ‘father’, the maker; so he was allowed to retain it. Altogether eight of Pa Panapa’s headrests were borne off by kinsmen, in each case by someone whose relation to him was such that he could carry off such property with impunity. A component in the demand, then, has often been not so much an interest in workmanship or design of a headrest as in an object associated with the personality of the maker or the user. A rather subtle balance may be involved here. When a kinsman bears off a headrest from the house of the maker, alleging that he wishes a personal memento, is this because he is moved primarily by affection, or is using kinship sentiment to cover his acquisitive spirit? After all, it can be argued, the woodworker can always make himself another one. But the non-utilitarian interpretation is supported by the general Tikopia evaluation of the place of headrests in their cultural scheme. A headrest (whether made by the owner or not) is ‘the valuable property of man’. It can be used as a weapon on occasion – if a thief is heard at night in the house the householder may take the headrest from under his neck and hurl it at him. But principally it has a peculiar association with its owner’s personality since it pillows his head, the most important part of the body, which it is forbidden to a man’s children to touch. Though not taboo, the headrest of a householder ordinarily is handled by others with discretion, as a piece of his private property. As a consequence of this, a man’s headrest tends to be one of the items of his property most commonly buried with him. A headrest is ‘the death property of this land; when a man dies, he is pillowed upon it. After a man has slept constantly upon it, when he is put into the ground, his head is laid upon it, then he is wrapped up and buried.’ One of Pa Panapa’s headrests, for example, was taken by Pae Avakofe, in his day the most respected senior man of rank in Tikopia, and a ‘grandfather’ of his; this headrest was buried with the old man when he died. But since the headrest has been so closely associated with the personality of the user, it can serve as a very convenient memorial to

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him, if it is preserved by his kin after his death. Hence sometimes a conflict of sentiment occurs. Some relatives argue for interring the dead man’s headrest with him, with the idea that he should not be separated from what he was so intimately linked with in life. Others argue for keeping it in the house as a visible reminder of him. I was shown one valued headrest, made by my informant’s brother, a noted craftsman of the Avakofe lineage, with the words, ‘This headrest is a token of sentiment (tau arofa); the headrest of our father the chief’ (long deceased). Another headrest, of type 3, was said to have been made by a great-grandfather of the Ariki Taumako and his kinsman Pa Fatumaru, and to have been used in turn by the chief’s grandfather and father. The latter left it as an heirloom to his ‘son’ Pa Fatumaru with the words, ‘This is our headrest. It shall remain for you as your headrest.’ It was a token of affection between ‘father’ and ‘son’ said Pa Fatumaru to me; he obviously prized it greatly. A man’s eldest son usually decides at his burial whether the headrest is to be interred with the corpse or not. So, there is a distinct non-utilitarian element in the appraisal of Tikopia headrests. But this has a sentimental, rather than an aesthetic, base. That headrests preserved as memorials or buried as intimate property seem usually to have been examples of relatively fine workmanship does not invalidate this stress upon the sentimental aspect. One further element in the demand for headrests has been the association of a special style with men of rank. The headrests with high wings, though not restricted to chiefs, have been regarded as being particularly appropriate for use by chiefs or by other men of high rank.2 The construction of such a headrest is a job of considerable skill and delicacy, and examples of this style seem always to have been relatively rare in Tikopia. According to one informant, himself a skilled carpenter, in 1952 only one man, Pa Nukutapu of Avakofe lineage, then knew how to make such headrests, though every man knew how to make ordinary headrests. I think this was an exaggeration, but it illustrates the particular value attached to this design. There are then several distinct elements recognizable in the Tikopia appraisal of their headrests: design; quality of craftsmanship;

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personal association with elder kinsman, or with men of rank. Aesthetic elements seem to have been present in the construction and evaluation, but in any individual case I found these almost impossible to separate out from the other factors in the situation. Tikopia recognition of differences in the value of headrests was exemplified by differences in the rates at which they were willing to exchange headrests with me. For most of the two dozen headrests which I collected on my first expedition I paid a standard rate of nine fishhooks each. But for a few older examples, heirlooms, the owners refused to accept such a price (or knowing this in advance I offered more); I paid ten fishhooks, a pipe, a belt, and even in one case a plane iron which the Tikopia regarded as extremely valuable. By 1952 the exchange rate had become about three times as great in fishhooks.3 In 1966, at the request of the people themselves, fishhooks and other trade goods were abandoned altogether, and exchange was conducted in money. Here the price range for a headrest was between about six shillings and ten shillings dependent upon the quality. In no case was any price differential asked for on account of the headrest being of better design than others.

The Maker’s Attitude to Design Having considered the consumer’s view of headrests, we now look at the maker’s view. When a Tikopia who is not a woodcarver by vocation makes himself a headrest, it is usually either a roughly shaped block of wood or a simple, single-footed design. But when a woodcarver of experience makes such an object his attitude is rather different. He may be guided by the interest of a client in having a headrest of a particular type, in which case his aim is primarily to produce a headrest of good workmanship in accordance with the request. A craftsman who is in the habit of making headrests for other men in this way tends to work in a recognized style. Other men later may identify headrests as his workmanship by such style, and I observed some cases of such identification.4 But the craftsman may also be motivated by experimental interest, as Pa Panapa described, seeking a design which is novel or a variant which seems more satisfac-

tory to him. It was said, too, that a craftsman hopes to make something by which he will be remembered and so tries to invent a new style which people can point to and link with his name: ‘This is the headrest of So-and-so.’ I could obtain from craftsmen no detailed reasons why they chose to work with one design rather than another. I did not actually sit down with a carver while he was making a headrest, though I did talk with craftsmen while they were making canoes, wooden bowls, and ritual objects, and with headrest makers at other times. In answer to a question as to why he chose to make a headrest with one foot rather than with two, one craftsman said: It is there in my desire. It carves according to the thought. Like you Europeans, one seeks skill. A man who has found his thought is a man of firm mind. Like you [he continued, referring to me], we say you are of firm mind because you are skilled in writing. Because thought is confused one seeks that one may be firm.

He was describing by this the process of a craftsman debating with himself, considering alternatives and rejecting them until he has found the design which suits his fancy. I could get from few Tikopia any overt expression that one kind of design was regarded as being better than any others, or even that they themselves had any definite preferences. But craftsmen did say that amateurs, men simply making headrests for themselves, would keep to the styles known as ‘billet of wood’ – that is, a simple wooden block – or ‘single-footed’, which are not difficult to carve. When asked about differences in style, craftsmen were apt to reply always, ‘It is the thought of the man. The styles are all equally good.’ Pa Motuata, a man of taste and judgement in most affairs, but not a craftsman in wood, described figure 5.5 as ‘bad’ – but added that some men liked it. I found that while craftsmen were usually ready to differentiate good and bad workmanship, they did not stand out more than ordinary men as judges of design. I got the most detailed description of the craftsman’s attitude from Pa Panapa, in speaking of the headrest he adapted from a solid block (see above). Of the originality of this he was proud. He said, ‘I sought an idea and as

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I went on and on it parted and turned round [crystallized] to cut out a single platform.’ He also had the idea that if he wished he could cut away part of the body of the block and round it off into a foot. But he decided to keep it as it was, partly to serve the needs of different men on different occasions. But he also gave another reason for not carving out this headrest further – that his good headrests were carried off by kinsmen or friends, and he thought that if he made this one as a mere ‘billet of wood’ no one would be tempted. He said also that by this time his working adze had become very worn!

Speculative Interpretation This is about as far as I could go in the time available in direct consultation with woodcarvers in the assignment of reasons why different types of headrests were made. Indirectly, however, at a more speculative level one may examine further the problem of headrest styles. The first point to make is that the description of parts of a headrest involves no special terms peculiar to woodcarving. The terms used are ordinary words from other fields of experience, utilizing in particular names for parts of the human body. (This is a convention which Europeans also commonly follow.) So the ‘foot’ of a headrest and its ‘body’ are known by the Tikopia equivalent of these terms, as they are applied also to animals and human beings. The platform on which the head is laid is known as the marae, a term used ordinarily for an open space for assembly – it conveys the notion of breadth and flatness. The ends of the platform, what we might call the ‘ears’ of the headrest, are known by the Tikopia as ‘ends’ or ‘noses’. (The term which when applied to a human face is translated as nose is used by the Tikopia to indicate a much wider range of protuberances, as with ourselves in English, e.g. the nose of a boat.) There is then a vague analogy between the headrest and the human body or, more accurately, headrest and human body are regarded as showing certain characteristics of shape in common. With this anthropomorphic analogy in mind, attention can be drawn to the fact that fairly clearcut distinctions exist between Tikopia domestic wooden objects according to the number of legs or feet which they display. At one end of the scale are ordinary food bowls

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and nearly all bowls of other kinds, e.g. for turmeric or coconut cream manufacture, which have no separate legs at all, but rest upon a single solid base. In more abstract classification this type might be said to be supported by one leg or foot, especially if the base is shaped. Most headrests have one leg or two legs. At the other end of the scale, four legs constitute the support of a special kind of bowl, the kava bowl, which was used for religious occasions alone; the heavy, low, flat stool used primarily as a seat by an expert engaged in turmeric filtration or occasionally by a chief or other man of rank on a more casual occasion was supported likewise. So, four legs were reserved for bowls and stools of ritual or semiritual use, while two legs and one leg – or no legs at all – were most characteristic of headrests and objects of personal, non-ritual association. Intermediate between these two classes of objects were certain others of more complex character. The coconut grating stool (figure 5.2) had one leg together with the seat and projection for attaching the grater carved out of the solid, while another leg was lashed on. This second leg, however, was forked so that the stool had two legs but three feet. To some extent the differences in type of support can be linked with different requirements for stability. The low seat used by the expert in turmeric filtration required to be absolutely steady. Hence four legs gave it the required stability. The coconut cream stool needed to be firm but could to some extent be supported by the legs of the person seated upon it – since when at work he faced forward with one leg on either side, his feet being in line with the two feet of the stool. Stability enough for the work was thus assured by three wooden and two human feet. With headrests, provided that the base platform was reasonably steady, one or two feet were adequate – and two feet seems to have been a traditional style. But stability was not the sole requirement – the four inward-sloping legs of the kava bowl were no more efficient, possibly rather less stable, than the solid, legless, flat base of an ordinary bowl for coconut cream. Differentiation for ritual emphasis would seem to be the reason for this special style; so also in the case of headrests with three feet (figures 5.19, 5.20, 5.24 and 5.25). These may be slightly more stable than the headrests with two feet or one

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Figure 5.24

foot, but the difference cannot be great. This design of headrest is clearly structurally closely related to the coconut cream stool. In its principle of support it is thus aligned with an object which raises a man more than does any other seat in Tikopia. Associated with this particular design of headrest, then, is the notion of elevation, a notion which is carried through further by the very high slender ‘wings’. It is thus no surprise to find that this type of head-

Figure 5.25

rest is regarded as particularly appropriate to chiefs and men of rank, who in many contexts are more elevated than ordinary men. In terms of legs then one can see a rough scale: four legs, ritual; three legs, social status; two legs, one leg, or no legs, ordinary domestic affairs. The scale is not perfect because three legs includes the coconut grating stool which serves a domestic purpose – but such stools are also commonly used by chiefs in general assembly and so have a kind of associated status. I have said that there is no overt symbolism in the design of Tikopia headrests. One type of headrest (figure 5.22), which was specifically said to be a recent style invented by a wellknown woodcarver, seems to me to have a distinct resemblance in form to the design of the ‘sacred bird’ carving which used to be set upon the canoes of the Ariki Fangarere (figure 5.1). But this resemblance was not recognized by my informants. In reviewing the material on Tikopia headrests the following points can be made: (a) The ornamentation on these headrests is simple and crude compared with the elaborate carving on many examples of New Guinea headrests. But the variety of styles is considerable, even surprising, for such a small community, and apparently much greater than for other Polynesian small island communities of analogous cultural development (cf. Burrows, 1937, pp. 121–2; MacGregor, 1937, p. 124). (b) Although the styles illustrated by these headrests apparently combined both traditional and modern features, all the examples quoted were contemporary, i.e. of recent manufacture. Even in 1966 none was regarded as of an archaic type not normally to be reproduced nowadays. In other words, the manufacture of these headrests represented a living tradition not an archaic survival. (c) The objects illustrated can be placed in a design sequence which might indicate a logical scheme of development. From the simplest wood block type there could develop either the pillared support with its variations or the pierced type with its free legs. From this latter a further development could be the composite type of refined headrest platform with attenuated side

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‘wings’, necessitating for symmetry delicate legs which could not be safely cut from the solid but had to be separately made and attached. (d) But such a sequence is quite hypothetical as regards any of the examples here illustrated. The block type may have been, and probably was, due to the inertia of the carver in not wishing to go to the trouble of cutting a more delicate support. The pierced type may have been initially purposeful or may have been due to the omission of the last stage of cutting out legs. Some headrests with three legs are not composite but have clearly taken advantage of the natural shape of the timber (figures 5.19 and 5.20). What we are dealing with in the range of Tikopia headrests, then, seems to be a field for the exercise of relatively free design interest. Some social factors do give certain designs a special appeal, but the influence of these factors is not overt. The result is that from a field of design untrammelled by many ritual or overtly symbolic rules, the Tikopia craftsman has produced a series of headrest styles in which a combination of cultural pattern and individual fantasy has been at work. Alternate stylistic principles of removal of the solid from the sides of a block to leave a central pillar, or removal of the centre of a block to leave supports at the sides, are regarded as equally good solutions to a problem of production of a pattern from a wooden block, and even retention of the solid block shape in itself is regarded as permissible. What is striking is the versatility of invention in this ‘free market’ for design of such a simple, mundane instrument.

Some General Conclusions Are these Tikopia headrests to be considered as art, if only as ‘minimal art’? I think so. In essence, aesthetic experience is the recognition, with affect, of relationship between elements of form. Art is that product which, in expressing formal relationships either directly or symbolically, communicates or evokes such aesthetic experience. Whether art can be solely in the private experience of creator or observer is arguable – for an anthropologist it would

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seem that relevant data should embody some element of public recognition. But for anthropologists, art has historically been considered primarily as a conventional field involving objects or actions in which the formal elements were a matter of strong public attention. Moreover, anthropological interest has focused mainly on ‘primitive’ cultural objects of striking design, often elaborated with ornament and often of ritual use and highly symbolic. Masks have probably been the high point of interest in this field. But art can also imply the scrutiny of relations of form in a broader sense. Meaning is regarded as obtainable in a more general, less culture-bound way by the observer’s perceptive construction and the affect related to this. Here I have been distinguishing in effect between art as an observer’s relation to material, as a producer’s relation, and as a consumer’s relation. These all cannot be assumed necessarily to coincide, and I would argue that the definition of art is not necessarily to be found in any one of them alone. Part of the problem in anthropological studies of art, which particularly involve an analytical culture-comparative standpoint, is to examine the relationship between these aspects of art definition. The difficulty is that for much of the field surveyed by the anthropologist only the observer is apt to be highly articulate. For producer and immediate consumer there may be non-explicit relations of form which the observer can hope to elucidate only inferentially. Sometimes all three standpoints may be combined. In my view the surrealists, however defective their theory of art in some directions, were right about classifying their ‘found objects’ as art. Here an observer discovers for himself in his environment an object with a set of elements so disposed that for him they constitute a pattern with symbolic or emotional content. From the apparent irrelevance of such external objects the observer has constituted himself a producer of relationships and a primary consumer of art. In a way this is a return to Clive Bell’s notion of ‘significant form’, but at another level. In line with modern conceptions, art may be regarded as a kind of communication, but from the everyday common sense point of view a communication in a code which may be difficult to comprehend.

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At first sight Tikopia headrests have a minimal element of communication. Superficially the meaning of their design is non-symbolic. They seem to involve no ‘other order of cultural fact’ (Forge, 1965, p. 23) such as ritual or myth; and they imply status factors only to a very limited degree. What they seem to indicate is, in Herbert Read’s words, an innate drive to pattern, superficial aesthetic values so simple that they can be reduced to skill (Read, 1961, pp. 17–19). But the variation in their design is expressive for the maker. As Tikopia craftsmen themselves have indicated, the forms in which they couch their craftsmanship are not irrelevant to them and it is not their skill alone which matters to them. Apart from the technical relevance of the different designs – the degree of physical comfort they offer, the social status they indicate – the maker shows his preference on a basis of what is plausibly recognizable as taste, with aesthetic components, however concealed. Also at a low level, but recognizable, there is differential interest on the part of consumers. The men who command or take away the maker’s headrests prefer one style to another, though the reasons they may state for this are often obscure. In an attempt to understand the communication implicit in the variety of forms of Tikopia headrests one becomes concerned with the categories in which Tikopia arrange the objects of their natural and social universe. Our anthropological techniques are still so relatively unsubtle that one can do little more than speculate here. But among the categories which appear to be of concern for the Tikopia in this field are those which relate body parts and posture to social status. Physical positions seen in contrast between standing, sitting, kneeling, lying are relevant for the interpretation of social positions.5 Relevant also is the interposition of an object between body and ground according to one’s position. If a Tikopia is standing or walking, traditionally he wears no foot covering. If he kneels it may be also on bare ground. But if he sits in any situation of social significance politeness demands that he be given a mat or some coconut frond or a block of wood, upturned bowl or a stool to sit upon. If he lies down his head should not only be supported but also kept off the ground by a headrest. Differentiated social values are also involved in these different types of contact

and the part of the body concerned. The sole of the foot, commonly in direct contact with the ground, is that part of the body to which the most abject apology can be directed. The knee may be also the site of a gesture of apology. But not so the fundament or the head. The form which the headrest may bear is not very finely oriented towards bodily features and social differences, but there is a broad relationship. In the headrest code recumbency demands head support. A simple block of wood may stand for firewood, or hewing into a betel mortar or other manufactured object. It may serve as a headrest, but it is of neutral or low status. A guest is not offered a rough block of wood for his head if a shaped headrest is available. The shaping of a headrest has then some social significance. It has little or no technical function in relation to coiffure, although in former times male Tikopia wore their hair long, except in mourning. More broadly, wooden headrests in general stand for men in domestic roles. Taboo as to head, when prone they may be objects of sympathy to others of the household and kin group. Headrests represent then ‘tokens of affection’ of a high order. In the very considerable latitude in headrest shaping, no significant value attaches very precisely to the different shapes. But, broadly, refinement of technique and elaboration of base-support convey association with higher status. Briefly my argument here is: Tikopia craftsmen have some aesthetic interest in sculpture, if only at a low level of development. This did not emerge in the field of their religious art, possibly because of the competing demands of ritual for time and energy and perhaps also because the Tikopia conceptual apparatus did not demand iconographic material. In some sculptural fields, e.g. production of wooden bowls, functional requirements tended to dictate considerable variation. In the field of headrests the functional demands were simple. But the domestic situation was relatively free for experiment, and the peculiar associations of headrest with the head as personality symbol, with bodily posture, and with social status promoted an awareness of individuality which stimulated the inventive potentialities of the craftsmen. Much may be made of the relation of art to ambiguities in experience. But the element of

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art in Tikopia headrests seems to be related not so much to expression of ambiguities in social status as to a statement in very generalized allusive terms of formally recognized differences in social status. One of the major expressions involved is the special position of men as distinguished from women – the latter have only rough packages of bark-cloth as headrests and by convention never use the shaped man’s headrest. Male headrests are always of wood, the material associated in canoes, bowls, house construction, and other fields especially with male activity. Moreover, the range of forms within which headrests are conceived is one in which attention may be focused to a considerable degree upon ‘feet’ or ‘legs’ as means of support. This in turn is linked with the social differentiation of male position on formal occasions. Tikopia headrests are a form of minimal art. They are made for use rather than aesthetic enjoyment. Experiment in their form or ornamentation is extremely restricted. The shapes they employ are hardly capable of generating any very subtle affect in the observer. Yet the variations in these shapes are an expression of personal creative activity, and they seem to be generated by diverse individual reactions to the significance of bodily features and positions in domestic situations. As such they seem to display a code for communication of generalized diffuse social values. The influence of society on art can vary greatly in its degree of organization. Tikopia headrests are an example of the relatively unorganized influence of society in a field of creative achievement in which there are almost no formal training patterns and very few rewards for the craftsman. Society provides the craftsman with traditional patterns and some guidelines of popular choice, but leaves him to develop his experimental interest in design. The result is art on a very low level. But elementary as the variations in Tikopia headrest design may be, they do suggest that Tikopia craftsmen have aesthetic interests, and that these are primarily in the field of geometric design. Moreover these variations convey, albeit in non-explicit fashion, statements about the structure of Tikopia society. Signs of a critical attitude by Tikopia artists to their own society or to the novel forces by which it is confronted in modern

times appear as yet only in their songs and not in their graphic art. What can be the role of an anthropologist in studying such minimal art? His systematic exploration and classification can uncover information about the objects from their makers and their consumers in the society, which while not necessarily altering his aesthetic experience as an observer, does amplify the communication received from the art material. From his general experience of the social behaviour of members of the society, too, the anthropologist can suggest clues to interpretation which are not explicit at the verbal level.

NOTES 1 In this I was helped by my colleagues James Spillius in 1952 and Torben Monberg in 1966. The specimens from 1928–9 were added to the Australian National Research Council collections in the University of Sydney; those from 1952 went to the Australian National University collection in Canberra, now housed in the Institute of Anatomy, to which the earlier material has now been joined. Monberg’s collections have gone to the Royal Danish Ethnographical Museum, in Copenhagen. I am grateful to Professor Monberg for Plate 1. The drawings have been done from photographs by Tass Hesom. 2 I saw one huge example of this type, attributed to Pu Kafika Lasi, a chief of the early nineteenth century. I was told by several informants that formerly such large headrests were provided with a bar across the high wings, to ward off a blow from the sleeper’s head in the troublous time when prominent men sought to seize power by killing one another (Firth, 1961). But this may be apocryphal. 3 For these and other rates, see Firth, 1959, p. 144. 4 Sometimes, however, the identification goes wrong. In 1952 a man of rank identified from a photograph a headrest which I had collected twenty-three years before as the work of the craftsman Pa Panapa who was with us. Pa Panapa did not deny this at the time, but later explained that the other man had been mistaken. He himself did

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pick out from the photographs other examples which he said quite categorically that he had actually made earlier. I discuss this in some detail in an article on posture and gesture (Firth, 1970).

REFERENCES Burrows, Edwin G., ‘Ethnology of Uvea (Wallis Island)’, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 145, Honolulu, 1937. Firth, Raymond, ‘Tattooing in Tikopia’, Man, no. 236, London, 1936. —— , ‘Bark-Cloth in Tikopia, Solomon Islands’, Man, no. 74, London, 1947. —— , Social Change in Tikopia, London, 1959. —— , ‘Tikopia Woodworking Ornament’, Man, no. 27, London, 1960. —— , History and Traditions of Tikopia, Wellington, N.Z., 1961. —— , Work of the Gods in Tikopia, 2nd edn. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology nos. 1 and 2, London, 1967. —— , ‘Postures and Gestures of Respect’ in J. Pouillon and P. Maranda (eds.), ‘E´changes et

communications; me´langes offerts a` Claude Le´vi-Strauss a` l’occasion de son 60e`me anniversaire, vol. I, The Hague, 1970. Firth, Raymond, and Honor C. Maude, Tikopia String Figures, Royal Anthropological Institute Occasional Paper no. 29, London, 1968. Forge, Anthony, ‘Art and Environment in the Sepik’, Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute for 1965, London, 1966, pp. 23–31. Hauser, Arnold, The Social History of Art, 2 vols., New York, 1952. Hinks, Roger, Carolingian Art, London, 1935. Lethaby, W. R., Medieval Art: From the Peace of the Church to the Eve of the Renaissance 312–1350 (rev. edn. by D. Talbot Rice), London, 1949. MacGregor, Gordon H., ‘Ethnology of Tokelau Islands’, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 146, Honolulu, 1937. Read, Herbert, ‘Art in an Aboriginal Society: A Comment’, The Artist in Tribal Society. Proceedings of a Symposium held at the Royal Anthropological Institute (ed. Marian W. Smith), London, 1961.

6 The Abelam Artist Anthony Forge

One of Raymond Firth’s earliest articles, ‘The Maori Carver’, published in 1925, testifies to the early formation of that interest in art which has remained with him ever since. It is an enthusiastic piece, establishing the right of the Maori artist to be judged by his own standards and not merely as a primitive whose attempts to reach the style and vision of the Greek artist are vitiated by his dull and brutish nature. That such arguments do not have to be repeated today is due to the change in attitude which Raymond Firth has had a part in shaping. Although he would hardly have called himself a social anthropologist in those days, his approach to the problem of the artist in society was basically sociological, and that it was also ahead of its time is amply demonstrated by the several officious and carping footnotes inserted by the editors of The Journal of the Polynesian Society. A quotation shows his approach well and might be taken as a text for the present essay in his honour. ‘It is important to know what kind of a person the carver was, what position he and his work occupied in the social scheme, and the seriousness with which both he and his labour were regarded.’ This attitude, which was elaborated and refined in his later publications (Firth, 1936a, and ‘The social framework of primitive art’ in Firth, 1951), has always distinguished him from his contemporaries and immediate successors in

social anthropology. He has always made it clear that to him art is not only a fit subject of study by social anthropologists but also a field of human activity which they ignore at their peril. Always opposed as he has been to any narrowing of the field of social anthropology, this attitude stems both from his interest in and appreciation of art, and from his view that it is in such highly regarded and deeply felt activities as art that human societies and their members express their values. This essay is rather heavily ethnographic. I wish it could be more analytical, but despite Firth’s advocacy we have still not developed the necessary concepts to be able to handle the relation of art and its creators to their society at anything above the descriptive level. However, it is at least now realized that such concepts are necessary, not only for plastic art, but for music, dance, architecture, and poetry as well as ritual and myth. The truism of art history, that art reflects the society that produced it, is usually expounded with reference to some period of history in which known artists expressed their view of their culture and times in terms of the acceptance or rejection, and subsequent modification, of the art of the period immediately before their own. The artist is envisaged, as is the poet or musician, as expressing himself and his times in two main ways: first, by developing and perfecting forms and

From Maurice Freedman (ed.), Social Organisation: Essays Presented to Raymond Firth (London: Cass, 1967), pp. 65–84, 291–294.

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techniques used by his predecessors; second, by expressing in his art different conceptions and values, either by modification of the available styles and forms, or by the introduction of new ones. In short, the artist is seen as an individual receptive to his social environment and capable of mirroring his view of it in his art. The artist also codifies change; he starts with the conception of beauty common to the society of his childhood, and if he is great, he leaves the society with a modified conception of beauty, with new standards – a changed aesthetic. This view of the artist in his social setting presupposes change both in the society and the art; not just actual change, but also a conception of change, frequently, but not always, of progress. What the artist really expresses is not the values of his culture in any direct way, but the change in those values. A study of the art can therefore tell us nothing about the artist or even his values unless we also know something of the society and culture in which he operated, as the reflections of aestheticians on prehistoric and ethnographic art have frequently demonstrated. Just as it is impossible to have history without some concept of change, so art history and its techniques, being concerned primarily with change, cannot be used in any simple way on the sort of material presented by New Guinea societies. These societies have no concept of history or indeed of change, although since the advent of various European administrations they have become aware of the effects of change. In the view of members of these societies, they had always been the same since they came into existence and should ideally remain the same for ever. Similarly, the art of these societies had magicoreligious value for them precisely because it re-created the art of the ancestors; its whole social function consisted in being unchanging. What then becomes of the artist as the supersensitive receiver and distiller of the essence of his culture and times? Does he become merely a craftsman skilfully reproducing traditional objects in the traditional style to satisfy social demands whose springs are in concepts of magico-religious efficiency rather than any ideal of beauty? Someone must have created the art, and to judge from the favour many, though by no means all, of the highly prized objects have found with European artists and

critics, the creator or creators were artists rather that craftsmen. I shall not be able to give final answers to the problems outlined above, but hope at least to clarify some of them. In this essay I shall be examining the artist in his society with reference to the Abelam tribe of New Guinea.1 The Abelam number about 30,000 and live in the southern foothills of the Prince Alexander mountains to the north of the Sepik River. They live in large villages from 300 to 800 in population, and have a vigorous art. They are also distinguished for a cult of long yams; single yams of up to twelve feet long have been recorded.

The Context of Abelam Art As in most New Guinea societies, all art among the Abelam is basically cult art and can only be displayed in the context of the ceremonials of the tambaran cult.2 Decorative art, of course, exists, but its motifs are entirely drawn from the art of the tambaran cult; and it carries with it overtones of status from that cult. Half coconut shells, polished black and beautifully engraved with designs filled with white, are among the finest small objects produced by the Abelam; they are used for drinking soup, but may be carried only by big-men or men fully initiated in the tambaran cult and successful in the yam cult; young men can and do inherit them but cannot use them until they have the full ceremonial status of organizers of ceremonies. Similarly the engraved pottery bowls, holding anything from one to four gallons of white soup, made by women but decorated by men, can be used for serving soup only when ceremonial exchanges are taking place. Such examples could be multiplied to cover the whole field of decorative art, showing that not only is it stylistically derived from the cult art, but that the use and display of decorated objects are limited, by virtue of their decoration, to prescribed contexts and statuses also stemming from the cult. There are therefore no artists who produce decorated objects who are not also cult artists, and it is in the context of the cult that they acquire and perfect their skills. There is one exception to this statement: the women who make netted string bags (wut) using red, yellow, white, and a sort of dark purple

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string, in various excellent designs. The use of the bags by the men is determined by their ceremonial status, one design being reserved for fully initiated men, another for those who have only one ceremony to go, and so on. The small bags used by young men gradually increase in size with the age and status of their users. The production of the bags, however, is regarded simply as a skill which a woman learns from her mother or mother’s or father’s sister, and the ability to produce any design, although highly prized, is no indicator of status. The tambaran cult shares its basic features with such cults throughout New Guinea. In essence it is a series of ceremonies at each of which the initiates are shown art objects of one sort or another and are told that these are the sacred spirits, tambaran. At the next ceremony they are told that the last one was just pretence but that this time they are going to see the real tambaran, and so on until the last of the ceremonies when they are in fact shown the most sacred objects; and as fully initiated men they may go through the cycle again, this time as stagers of the ceremonies and themselves initiators. Each ceremony is performed by one half of a dual organization, called ara, who initiate the sons of their exchange partners in the other ara; the initiators are fed by their partners while they prepare the ceremony, and after the initiation are presented with pigs. Ara perform ceremonies alternately: one will perform ceremonies 1, 3, 5, and 7, the other 2, 4, 6, and 8, going on then to 1, 3, 5, and 7, so that two full cycles have to be performed before an individual has been initiated into all the eight ceremonies. All ceremonial activity is regarded as balanced exchange between ara and the individual partners who compose them. There is three-way reciprocity with increasing exactness of return at each level. First the food and the live pig are regarded as a return for ceremonial services in preparing the ceremony, acting as initiators, and providing decorations for the initiate (the son of the donor). A man will reproach his partner if the decorations are not up to standard, asking whether he has been eating all the food provided just to produce this. Second, the next ceremony of the cycle will be performed by the other ara and the donor will now be recipient. Rough

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equivalence is expected in size of pig between each pair of ceremonies, 1 and 2, 3 and 4, etc.; the scale increases until 7 and 8, which may require three months each to prepare, a very large drain on the resources of the ara responsible for feeding the initiators, and demanding the most enormous pigs for presentation at the end. The third and final form of reciprocity, at which exact equivalence in the girth of the pig presented is essential, comes with the next cycle, when the ara who initiated at ceremony 1 last time are now paying for their sons to be initiated into the same ceremony. The lapse of time involved in the completion of a cycle can never have been less than ten years, and is nowadays, and probably always was, considerably longer. Although this is not the place for an analysis of the social structure, it is worth noting that these inescapable reciprocal obligations, stretching over the decades covered by two full cycles, are a potent factor in maintaining the stability of the component groups of the ceremonial organization, since to default imperils the ceremony and exposes the culprit to sanctions from the whole village and not just from his own clan or ceremonial partner. The preparation of tambaran ceremonies provides the context in which all Abelam artists work, and the ceremonies themselves the only opportunity for them to display their work to any large group of people. It is also during the preparations that the training, if it can be called that, of future artists takes place. All the ceremonies have as central features the display of some series of objects which stand for the nggwalndu, that is, the major clan spirits. The earliest of the sequence are said to be very simple, but I have never seen either of the first two in any part of the Abelam area, and it would seem that they have been dropped from the repertoire, at least since the war. To go by the descriptions of older informants, the tambaran consisted of patterns on the floor of the ceremonial house made with the four earth paints (red, yellow, white, and black) with the addition of flowers, particularly the scarlet single hibiscus, and certain leaves, those with a silvery grey back being present in all tambaran ceremonies. While these patterns are the focus of the initiation and the representation of the nggwalndu, and give little scope for artistic

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expression, they are surrounded by painted panels of sago spathe which line and provide the ceiling for the initiation chamber constructed inside the ceremonial house – the painting and arrangement of which provide ample opportunity for the artists to display their skill, and which are the basis on which visitors from other villages evaluate the success of the ceremony. These paintings on the flat are sacred in that they are associated with the nggwalndu and the ceremonial house, whose fac¸ade is decorated with similar paintings, but the designs are not tambarans, being open and visible on the fac¸ade to women and uninitiated males. When used inside the house the designs and the panels on which they are painted are called wut, and referred to as the beautiful string bags of the nggwalndu. Wut has, however, many other meanings and is one of the most emotionally loaded words in Abelam. In this instance the most obvious symbolic referent is nyan wut – womb (nyan meaning child) – the initiation chamber being a small dark room built inside the large female house with its low entrance through which the initiates crawl when entering and leaving. The women are not supposed to know that wut is used for the painted panels which they, of course, never see in place, and I have heard artists, as they paint, laughing at the women’s illusion that only they can make beautiful wut.3 Wut panels are to be found at all eight stages of initiation into the tambaran cult, but in later ceremonies the tambaran itself has a larger and more elaborate structure. There is a great deal of variation within the Abelam area in what is displayed at each stage, although there is far less variation in the names of the ceremonies, the same name being used for very different displays in different parts of the area. Much more is involved than simple wood-carving and painting on the flat in all parts of the area. For example, there is the setting up of 50 ft. poles with great masses of dry and thorny yam vines, and leaves of the spiny lawyer cane fastened on them to represent nggwalndu (see pl. III, Forge, 1966); bamboo roots are made into bird heads; and larger than life-size seated figures with extended arms and legs, covered with brightly painted patterned matting and stuffed with fibre, have to be constructed on armatures of wood and palm,

themselves difficult to construct, with only split cane lashings to fasten the pieces together. Of such a figure all that is saved after the break-up of the display is the carved wooden head. The fact that much of the work of the artist for such ceremonies is ephemeral does not mean that the demands of the public are less, or that a high degree of both technical skill and aesthetic sense is not essential in the artist. Each ceremony of the tambaran cycle has as its core a specified tambaran with a definite name and a prescribed form. The form is traditional and highly valued because it is believed to be that used by the ancestors and therefore the most powerful in a supernatural sense. Abelam tambaran ceremonies appear to the casual attender to be secular occasions; the emphasis is all on the magnificence of the decorations, both of the objects and of the initiators, and the desire to create an impression on the visitors. The fathers of the initiates are watchful that all should be correct, but when they do complain it is on the grounds of value for the food and pigs they are providing rather than out of concern for the proper instruction of their children. In general, the initiates, the ostensible purpose of the ceremony, get scant attention, the parts of the ceremony that concern them are often rushed, and they are hustled off and told to wait until wanted again. In most ceremonies a few initiates get lost at some stage, either because they have run away or have simply wandered off; their fathers may protest, but the rituals continue without them and they are considered fully initiated, whether they were there or not, as long as the father has fulfilled his exchange obligations. Nor is there any sort of instruction of the initiates; they are told what to do but never why to do it. There are puberty initiations which involve seclusion and a certain amount of instruction of youths, but these are usually separate from the tambaran ceremonies and the instruction is not about these ceremonies. The initiates have to observe some minor food taboos and a period of sexual abstinence before and after the ceremony, but it is on the initiators that the burden of the ritual restrictions falls. It is only during the preparations for a ceremony that the observer becomes aware of the magico-religious elements of the whole:

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elements that are represented during the ceremony by a brief invocation almost drowned by the noise of the audience, or the fumbling of the bewildered initiates as they try to perform some ritual actions of which they understand nothing. The supernatural benefit of the ceremony to the community, the other communities that assist, and the individuals concerned, accrues during the long and careful preparations, and the observance of a whole series of taboos and ritual performances by the initiators, some continuing for three months before and six months after the ceremony. All the artistic and other work of preparation is performed in the name of the nggwalndu, and their benevolence is assured, first by the performance of ritual and the observance of taboos, and second by the skill of the artists in creating the objects to which the nggwalndu names are given, and the magnificence of the ancillary wut and other decorations both of humans and objects. The magico-religious benefits of the ceremony may be released during the noisy and crowded public climax, but they are created by artists and organizers working in small groups during the preceding months behind sago palm frond fences which may not be passed by women, uninitiated men, or even initiated men of the other ara. There is a clear necessity for artists in Abelam society. Every ritual group has to be able to draw on artists with the varied skills necessary to produce displays adequate to please the nggwalndu and other spirits, maintain the prestige of the group vis-a`-vis other ritual groups and villages, and keep up the ceremonial exchange system within the group. The ara dual organization and the exchanges between partners which provide the social framework for ceremony also act to restrict the availability of artists from within the group. Each ceremony is prepared by one ara for the other, and members of the initiates’ ara, whether fully initiated or not, may not take any part in the preparations, or even see the raw materials used, until all is ready and displayed at the ceremony itself. Thus any artist, no matter how skilled, may only work on alternate ceremonies within his own ritual group. It is very rare for one ara of any ritual group to be able to supply all the necessary talent from its own ranks, and recruitment from outside is the rule.

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Peace is anyhow necessary for the performance of a ceremony, but neutrality is not enough; active co-operation is necessary between enemy villages for any of the more elaborate ceremonies. Peace ceremonies involve the exchange of men of equal age and social status between villages; each pair so exchanged become waunindu and call each other brother, and it is through these relationships that help is mobilized. Usually the work is sub-contracted, that is, so many painted panels of specified sizes and so much patterned matting are prepared in the enemy village and ceremonially carried in when the whole job has been done. The party bringing such contributions appears as a war party in full war paint, preceded by a screen of spearmen. They cut down young trees and lop branches off bigger ones, destroy banana plants, and generally leave a trail of licensed destruction in their wake. As they approach the ceremonial ground the spearmen advance and throw spears at warriors from the recipient group. These warriors are especially selected for their ability to dodge; no reciprocation is allowed and casualties are said to occur – certainly on the occasions when I have been present, great skill in dodging was very necessary. The rest of the party throw armfuls of rubbish and the remains of the ruined breadfruit and banana trees into the doorways of the dwelling houses. The demands of hostility are then superseded by the demands of hospitality, and the visitors are stuffed with the finest soup and yams, and laden with yams and pork to take away with them; but uneasiness prevails on both sides until the visitors are safely on the way home, having promised to attend the final ceremony and a further and major food distribution after it. Aid from friendly and allied villages is obtained in more informal ways, but again only by the activation of specific pre-existing interpersonal relationships. Help, whether for general labour or from a specific artist, can only be solicited through established relationships, and for a big ceremony every possible link, through kinship, clanship, and the various forms of quasi-brotherhood and exchange relationship, is utilized. From the point of view of the artist, the ara system means that although he may be debarred from half the ceremonies of his own ritual group, if he has any sort of reputation he will be in demand

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for the ceremonies of others, and his rewards are not only in the immediate return for his work in food, honour, and prestige, but in the activation of remote and otherwise dormant ties with men in other villages. Wide-spreading ties are of benefit to him in everyday life and enhance his prestige within his group. In short, a successful artist is sought after both within his ritual group and outside it, and if he can speak well in debate and grow reasonably long yams for presentation to his partner, he is assured of high prestige. An artist of considerable experience will often be called a big-man, but very rarely are artists bigmen in the aggressive entrepreneurial sense – they are not leaders in secular affairs and manipulators of public opinion as are the real big-men. Although I am neither competent nor possessed of adequate systematic material to make any generalizations about the temperament of Abelam artists and big-men, my entirely subjective impression from acquaintance or friendship with several dozens of each is that the artists are nearly always comparatively modest men (no Abelam could be called modest tout court!), not given to violent expressions of emotion; their debating style tends to be quiet and authoritative but not excessively controversial, and they can usually expect a respectful and attentive hearing; the practice of their skills gives them general prestige and particularly a reputation for understanding and knowledge of the supernatural which invests their opinions with something of wisdom. These differences have some social concomitants; successful carving and painting are believed to be incompatible with the practice of sorcery, whereas the entrepreneur big-man is usually believed to be an adept at sorcery. Furthermore, the artist’s reputation may be expected to grow until he is literally too weak to hold an adze or a paint brush, while the big-man is in constant danger of being displaced by more energetic rivals from the moment he achieves his position, and is virtually certain to have lost his position by late middle age. Whether it is due to an increased sense of security or a manifestation of the artistic genius, artists, in my experience, claim fewer homicides, their adulteries are more discreet, and they quarrel less flamboyantly with their wives and clansmen. In fact, the Abelam expect their artists

to be good men (yigen ndu), and by and large the artists conform to those expectations.

The Materials and Techniques of Abelam Art Although the tambaran cult demands the use of many materials for its ceremonies, an artist’s reputation is based primarily on his ability as a wood-carver and painter; skill in engraving on coconut shell, bone, and pottery is also highly valued, but is considered to go with ability as a carver, while the making of basketry masks, and shell decorated mannikins from string by a sort of crochet technique, are important, but much more widely distributed, skills. The traditional equipment for carving was thoroughly neolithic: polished stone adzes, pig, dog, and flying fox teeth mounted as awls, gravers, and chisels, certain lizard skins and even a rough-surfaced leaf for smoothing. Fire was used for hollowing out drums or the backs of large figures. Softwoods were used green and the splits that tended to occur were deplored but disregarded unless they seriously distorted the figure. Current tools, although vastly improved by the use of steel, have hardly changed; the steel plane blades are mounted in exactly the same way, with the same angle between blade and handle as before. Indeed, some of the handles, beautifully carved, were originally made for stone blades and have been inherited from the preceding generation of artists. Cheap trade knives or large nails replace the teeth, but the method of mounting and use is traditional; sides of tins full of nail holes make a sort of rasp, but finishing work, now less necessary because of the superior edge of steel tools, is often done with the old materials. European adzes may be used for roughing out, but never for carving. The adze is always used with short rapid strokes towards the carver, removing only very small amounts of wood at each stroke. Modern carvers using four or five graded adzes often carve so finely that no further smoothing is needed. The backs of figures and masks are usually left rough, or hollowed out to reduce the weight, but in the case of pierced plaques and wood head-dresses both sides are carved and engraved with equal care. All Abelam carvings are painted in polychrome and engraving is often added round

THE ABELAM ARTIST

the eyes, penis, and navel so that the effect of the paint is enhanced by low relief. Paint itself is highly valued by the Abelam, and almost all magic involves some form of coloured mineral substance that is classified as paint; a form of paint is also the active principle of sorcery and long yam magic. The paint used for tambaran ceremonies is not, unlike the other types, inherently powerful; it is obtained locally or in open trade, and large quantities are assembled, whereas the powerful paints are always obtained in small quantities in secrecy from distant villages. Red and yellow ochres and white and black are the only colours used, the first three being stored in the form of powders; the black, however, has to be made as required by chewing scrapings from the bottoms of cooking pots, sap from a species of shrub, and leaves from a tree, and spitting the result into a paintpot as needed. This rather unpleasant task is delegated to young assistants, and forms a part of the apprenticeship of the would-be artist.4 Although the paint itself is not intrinsically powerful, painting is a sacred activity, and after the paint has been used on tambaran carvings, or wut, or on the initiators themselves, it becomes the principal vehicle by which the benefit of the ceremony is transmitted to the participants. Carving, although carried on in seclusion either in the bush or in an enclosure near the ceremonial house, is hardly a ritual activity; some artists have their own spells to stop the unseasoned wood splitting, but carving has no communal ritual connected with it. It is only when the artist has finished the carving and put in the eyes and pubic hair with a piece of charcoal that the figure becomes an object of concern to the whole ritual group. If the charcoaling is done in the village, the log gongs are beaten to announce the arrival of the tambaran. This call also serves to warn everybody that the final phase of preparations is about to begin. Stocks of paint are checked and augmented, and the final food distribution before the ceremony takes place. The work of painting is carried out under taboos similar to and almost as stringent as those of the long yam cult; men who are going to participate in the painting bleed their penes and must abstain from all sexual contact until after the ceremony; meat and certain vegetable foods are forbidden, but they can and do eat

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large quantities of the yam soup and finest steamed yams provided by their exchange partners. Painting is done at great speed – usually all the workers sleep within the ceremonial enclosure and work from dawn till dusk with frequent but short breaks for food and betel nut. To begin with, any old figures that are being re-used have to be washed, and this is done in running water, the standard Abelam way of disposing of potentially dangerous material. Then both wood and the sago spathe wut have to be coated with the mud base on which the painting is done. A good deal of technical expertise is needed to get just the right sort of mud mixed to the right consistency, so that it will provide a smooth absorbent surface and adhere to the material. Sago spathe, which has a very shiny surface, is particularly difficult and is usually rubbed down before the mud is applied with stinging nettles and the bulb of a species of wild ginger (?), both substances which, in the Abelam view, bite and therefore improve the adhesion. The mud base used is black throughout the southern and eastern Abelam but grey in the north. On the grey mud, black has to be applied as a separate colour, but with the black mud those portions of the design calling for black are usually left unpainted, simply being glazed with tree sap when the painting is finished. Abelam painting technique is extraordinary because it combines great speed with firm control by the artist. All the preparers of the ceremony join in the painting and all are found employment regardless of their lack of talent. The artist outlines the design to be painted in thin white lines. He may use lengths of split cane to help him work out the proportions of the design relative to the panel, or cane tied in rings to give him a guide for a smooth curve or circle; but he usually just starts from one edge and builds up the design as a series of elements as he works across the panel. With carved figures, artists usually start with the head, which is the most intricate part; the proportions are of course given by the form of the carving, but otherwise the techniques for figures and panels are identical. As soon as the artist has painted a few white lines for one part of the design, he instructs an assistant to paint a red or yellow line just beside it. Abelam art rarely uses a single line – multiple lines of

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varied colour, often further emphasized by white dots on one of the colours, are the rule. The artist now moves on to the next part of the design but keeps an eye on his first assistant. When the white lines have been satisfactorily doubled or trebled by the assistant or assistants, a second grade of assistant is employed to fill in solid areas of a single colour: subordinate grades of assistant are employed to put on the lines of white dots and glaze the black mud with tree sap or chew up black paint if the painting is on grey. Other men will be employed powdering and mixing paints and coating objects and panels with mud. An artist at work on painting usually keeps from eight to ten men more or less busy while still maintaining complete control over the design and its execution. The paints are mixed with water in which certain very bitter species of wild lime have been steeped; again the idea of bite is produced as an explanation. The containers are usually half coconut shells, but they must be lined with a portion of wild taro leaf; wild taro is an important plant in all Abelam ceremonial – intimately connected with the ancestors, it is also a symbol of the ara and their rivalry, and is much used in tambaran ceremonies. Brushes are made from fibres tied to the end of a splinter of wood; small feathers or the chewed end of a fibrous twig are similarly used. For the drawing of white lines a long narrow single chicken feather, made pliable by bending, is drawn along with about two inches of the feather flat on the surface. This technique, which properly used produces a narrow line but manages to keep a reasonable charge of paint on the brush, is employed with great boldness by experienced artists and enables them to draw the sweeping curves characteristic of Abelam design with speed and accuracy.5 Although supplies of mud base are kept handy in case of mistakes, artists rarely need it; they refer to no model or sketch and appear to lay out the whole design in their heads. When several artists are painting together, as happens during the painting of a ceremonial house fac¸ade, they share out the available width between them and each paints his own section of the bands of identical motifs that stretch across the fac¸ade. In such a case they agree in advance on the proportions and number each is going to paint; while working they

watch one another’s progress to ensure that the styles are reasonably matched and that the meeting of their respective zones will be harmonious, but there is nothing like copying involved; no artist who is not known to be capable of producing the required designs in isolation would be employed on a fac¸ade. At the conclusion of the painting stage, when the display has been completed, the log gongs are beaten to announce the fact to the entire area, and the artists are honoured by having the log gong calls of their totems beaten immediately after the announcement. The initiation chamber is now sealed and final arrangements are made about facepaint, feathers, head-dresses, and other decorations by the initiators, and about pigs by their exchange partners. The ceremony follows in three or four days.

The Artist in Society Every initiated Abelam man aspires to be an artist in some way or other. All, in the context of the tambaran ceremonies, have a place in the process of artistic production. The amount of time they spend helping with the actual painting and carving, as opposed to the many other activities necessary in the preparation of ceremony, is largely a matter of choice. A rebuff to a middle-aged man for bad work from one of the directing artists can be expected to disillusion him with artistic activity for the rest of that ceremony, but younger men are less conscious of their dignity and stay and learn.6 The training and selection of artists are completely informal. A youth who shows aptitude will be encouraged and allowed to perform increasingly difficult tasks under supervision until he is allowed to try the painting of a minor figure and later a small wut panel for himself. The artist will correct and guide him, taking over now and then when difficulties occur. A young man will have to do all stages of the painting himself, unless a friend will help him, since the various grades of assistant are attracted only to artists of established prestige. A young man with interest in becoming an artist is not restricted to his own village for tuition, nor does he attach himself to one artist as an apprentice; he can of course attend all the ceremonial preparations in his own village for which he is qualified as an initiator, and assist

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and learn from all the artists who are at work there. He can also, through ties of kinship or clanship, help in ceremonies at allied villages or with contracted-out work which his own or allied villages are performing for enemy villages, always provided he has been initiated into the ceremony concerned. In this way a young man may well be able to work every year on some preparations or other, and come into contact with artists from villages five or more miles apart. Since considerable variation in style and type of production is to be found even in such short distances among the densely packed Abelam, a would-be artist will acquire a wider range and understanding of tambarans and their production than would be possible if he were confined to the set traditional to his natal village. What has been said about training applies to the painting and constructional phases of ceremonial preparation; to obtain instruction in carving is more difficult, while a reputation as a carver is essential if an artist is to have prestige. Every Abelam male claims to be able to paint, and painting is a semi-sacred activity, the responsibility of personnel laid down by the social structure (particularly the system of initiation grades and the dual organization), performed at a prescribed time during the ceremonial preparations, preceded and closed by essential ritual, and governed by a series of taboos which apply to all the initiators whether in fact they paint or not. Carving, on the other hand, is a much more personal activity and not subject to the formal prescriptions of painting. All carving is undertaken either for the clan of the carver or as a commission from another clan or village, and except for the head board that goes across the base of the painted fac¸ade of a ceremonial house, a carving is the responsibility of a single artist. ‘Commission’ does not imply a contract with a stated reward. Carvings are occasionally produced in return for a stipulated payment in shell rings and pigs, but usually only under exceptional circumstances for a major undertaking such as the carving of new nggwalndu when the village and its immediate allies lack sufficient talent, or in the introduction of new types of figure or tambaran where what is being bought is not just the carvings but also the right to display them and to reproduce them in the future. In general, however, carvers are recruited with the

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promise of no more than good food, as much betel and tobacco as they need, and, of course, the prestige that will accrue to them. All the work of preparation is divided up among the initiators according to their clans and subclans; each sub-clan owns its own figures and assumes responsibility for them as well as its share of the wut panels and other decorations. Large clans have one nggwalndu and are split into sub-clans divided between the ara so that there is always a group among the initiators to care for the nggwalndu; clans too small to have sub-clans have to form pairs, one in each ara, and look after two nggwalndu at any ceremony. It is the responsibility of the clan to provide the necessary artistic talent, and it is through the social relationships of individual clan members that the artists are recruited. In addition to the panels or figures necessary for the particular ceremony, each clan has minor figures, often unnamed, which it also includes in the display. Their number and beauty reflect the prestige of the clan, although in many cases they are so numerous that they have to be placed on top of one another and sometimes even obscure the tambarans that are the focus of the ceremony. A big-man would usually commission at least one minor figure at an important ceremony as a mark of his prestige. Such a new carving would become the property of his exchange partner at the end of the ceremony and exchanges; the exchange partner of course would provide all the food for the artist, and reciprocation would be expected at the next suitable opportunity. A carver selects his timber on the land of the commissioning clan, and they cut it and drag it to his studio, also doing the cutting to size and other unskilled tasks. The studio may be on the ceremonial ground. If so, it will be away from other activities; more frequently it is in a secluded patch of bush near the artist’s house; it will always be in the shade to minimize the risks of splitting. The artist does not welcome company or conversation, and spends a good deal of time sitting in silence and looking at his work – this is in great contrast to normal Abelam activity, and especially to painting, where speed, movement, and noise are predominant. An assistant is usually present, but some artists carve entirely alone; anyone else, such as the curious ethnographer, is regarded as a pest. Young men who cheerfully help in the painting

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do not always care to spend days in silence and inactivity doing occasional minor tasks, and it is only the minority who persist and start to acquire carving skills. These gradually undertake more and more skilled parts of the work until they try some small simple object themselves, showing it to the artist at each stage and relying on him to give the finishing touches. When such a piece is accepted for inclusion in a display the apprenticeship phase is coming to an end. It is here, in the carving and the acceptance of their work for display, that the relationship between the artist and his society can be seen most clearly. From the view of the Abelam as a whole the tambaran cult and the art associated with the long yam cult are means of creating and releasing magico-religious power and benefit; the art is essential for the performance of ceremonial, and the artist is a technician whose chief virtue is his power to reproduce exactly the powerful patterns and designs used by the ancestors. The tambarans and their benefit are traditional; to be effective they must be re-creations of the original tambarans, and, furthermore, the fathers of the initiates are anxious to ensure that the ceremony they are paying for is full and correct. These are both forces opposed to innovation, but at the same time the ceremonies are opportunities for display and the acquisition of prestige by the village, ritual group, ara, clan, and individuals concerned; magnificence is consciously sought; magical bundles are fastened to the newly painted figures and carvings, not connected with the ritual but solely so that the eyes of the beholders shall be dazzled by the brightness of the paint and the beauty of the workmanship. Obviously this aspect of the ceremonial allows an element of fashion into the art, but since the benefits of the ceremony extend beyond the village, innovation that has not some good magico-religious justification or precedent will be subject to wide disapproval. The Abelam artist works within fairly narrow stylistic limits sanctioned by the total society in which he lives; any work he produces cannot be shown outside the tambaran cult, and will only be accepted for that if it satisfies the criteria of magico-religious effectiveness. A young man of Malmba village who had found a growth on a tree that resembled in general shape the human head, had taken it home and

carved on it eyes, nose, and mouth and painted it in the traditional style. When he produced it during the preparations for a ceremony at which he was an initiator, the organizers refused to display it or allow it in the ceremonial house; although the painting was in correct style, the shape of the head was nothing like any of the head shapes of tambaran figures. His plea that it was the shape of a human head carried no weight and he was forced to wrap it up and hide it in his hut until he sold it to me in 1959. In 1962, at Yanuko village a mile or so to the south, two artists painting the fac¸ade of a new ceremonial house introduced a very narrow band of stylized leaf decoration similar to a traditional form but with important differences. There was some doubt about it, and some of the older men were against it; the two artists and their helpers were adamant – they were both of high reputation and no alternative artists were available; in the event this innovation was much admired in the surrounding villages. The artists were courted by people from other villages who wished to be able to call on them for houses in the future, while the ritual group whose house it was won more prestige than the other ritual group of Yanuko village whose new house, without any innovation, opened at much the same time. A much more important example of innovation occurred at Wingei village in 1959. While a new house was under construction the organizers and the six artists involved decided to abandon the traditional style of fac¸ade-painting in favour of one that was used around Kalabu, a village about ten miles to the west; the reason for the change was the superior length of long yam grown in Kalabu. The experiment was not a great success – the bottom row of huge nggwalndu heads, which was the principal innovation, was badly painted, mainly because of the unaccustomed style. That Wingei changed the style of their ceremonial house fac¸ade to get longer yams, rather than change the planting season which is three months earlier in Kalabu, indicates the confidence the Abelam have in the power of art, and brings into focus the position of the artist who, if not exactly a mediator between man and the supernatural, is in contact with it and able to influence it through his skill as a carver and painter. The latter point is reinforced by the explanation offered for the

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bad painting: one of the artists died a week after the painting had been completed; the sorcery that killed him had obviously been working in him and prevented him and his fellows from correctly releasing the supernatural energy inherent in the design. Since this explanation was accepted even among traditional enemies of Wingei it was presumably sincerely believed and representative of Abelam thought on these matters. The Abelam language has no vocabulary of aesthetics; there are two words of approbation used about art; one means ‘good’ and can be used about almost anything; the other appears to mean primarily ‘correct’, that is, traditional, powerful. Neither has any necessary connotations of beauty and I know of no word that has. The social demand for art is concerned with its magico-religious power. This is said to depend on the correct placing of the elements of any design with no prescription of a harmonious relation between them. Criticism of art is always in terms of correctness and effectiveness. Artists, particularly when carving, discuss among themselves such things as the shape and size of a limb and its relation to other parts of the figure, but these things are not appreciated by the non-artist. I have heard carvers reproached for holding up the beginning of the painting by fiddling about, taking a piece off here and there, when the figure already had all the necessary attributes, legs, penis, navel, arms, and head. The artists, although they lack any specific terms, do talk about such things as form and proportion, and derive considerable pleasure from carving and painting things satisfying to their aesthetic sense. They carefully examine and discuss works by other artists and rate one another as more or less talented by criteria that are primarily aesthetic. Although not capable of, or not interested in, discussing art in the same terms, most non-artists asked to rate a group of figures or paintings in order of effectiveness, both in ritual power and secular prestige, rank them in the same order as do the artists and the ethnographer. Since, with Raymond Firth, I believe in a universal human aesthetic, this is not surprising; what is important, I think, is that the skilful artist who satisfies his aesthetic sense and produces beauty is rewarded not for the beauty itself but because the beauty, although not recognized as such, is regarded by the rest as power.

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Apart from conscious innovation seen as such by the whole community, there also occurs a gradual change in style which is much more difficult to document. Several villages possess very old nggwalndu, and at least two villages have a series of nggwalndu obviously made at various dates. How far back these specimens go it is difficult to say, but genealogical information about their carvers suggests that the oldest might be eighty to a hundred years old. These old figures invariably show a different style from that of the present; those in series show a consistent change in style, the development of the recent style from the antecedent one. The differences are much greater than could be attributable to a change from stone tools to steel – there are definitely changes in the way the human form has been conceived over the period. This situation leads to some difficulties, since the present style is the correct style, that is the ancestral style, yet it is different from the style in which the old nggwalndu were actually carved by the ancestors. When such nggwalndu are washed and repainted, as they are for the final ceremony of each tambaran cycle, the current style of painting does not fit happily on the old style of carving; the surfaces and their relationship to each other are different and the painted designs sit uncomfortably on forms intended for different designs. While the painting is going on such difficulties are recognized. Normally, however, the stylistic difference does not worry anyone; it is simply ignored; only when the impertinent ethnographer holding an artist firmly by the wrist has pointed out all the differences, will he admit their existence; otherwise, the insistence is firm on all sides that the present style is the ancestral style. In discussion with me, artists have speculated on the change in style, wondering whether their style or the old style is the right one, ending by saying that anyhow they know how to carve only in their present style and could not re-create the old style if they wanted to. It is interesting to note in passing that the older figures invariably have much more definite sculptural form – the features are boldly carved and in general they do not seem to be merely pleasant surfaces for painting as much of the present Abelam carving is. Their forms, though varied, are often more reminiscent of the Iatmu¨l styles of the Middle

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Sepik to the south. It seems possible that the very high development of polychrome painting so much admired among the Abelam may have resulted in the declining interest in sculptural form evident in the figure sequences. With its conscious desire for ostentation and display it has to be confessed that some Abelam sculpture tends to be rather vulgar by European standards. This gradual stylistic change makes it obvious that whatever they believe, Abelam artists do not slavishly reproduce the work of their predecessors. It would be surprising if they did since, as already mentioned, they never copy one another or any model. A famous artist of Kalabu, asked by a village across a dialect boundary to produce a type of figure that was used in their ceremonies but not at Kalabu, was given a 2-foot-high carving to work from. This he studied but kept in his house, never taking it to his bush studio until the 10-foot carving was finished, when he satisfied himself that he had done it correctly. As everything an artist produces comes from his picture of what the object required should look like, every artist must to some extent impose his own vision of a ‘good’ piece on the work in hand. The artist is free to express himself within the stylistic limits prevailing at the time, and by so doing may marginally change those limits. There is of course a feedback here; the society may impose stylistic limits on what is acceptable for a tambaran ceremony and so control the artist, but the artist creates all the art and therefore forms the society’s conceptions of what is acceptable. In such a situation gradual change is probably inevitable. It offers the artist self-expression, and keeps the art vital and capable of expressing the changing values of the society, while at the same time ensuring that it can continue to fulfil its main function of being the traditional and powerful mode of access to the supernatural. I have argued elsewhere (Forge, 1966) that Abelam art is intimately connected with the values of Abelam society, and that it makes statements about Abelam society that are not made by other means. If this is so the artist must be the essential link. Up till now the contact with the Australian administration and the missions has not affected the art in style or content. The war and its aftermath virtually stopped artistic ac-

tivity, but it has been taken up again, at least in the north, with great vigour. This revival has coincided with, and been a symbol of, a withdrawal from excessive contact with European values and a reaffirmation of traditional values. In fact up to now, the art, far from changing, has been reinforced in its conservatism by taking on the additional value of acting as a symbol of Abelam culture in the face of colonial culture.

NOTES 1

I am grateful to the Emslie Horniman Scholarship Fund of the Royal Anthropological Institute and to the Bollingen Foundation, New York, for financing two trips to the Abelam, in 1958–9 and 1962–3 respectively. For a general description of Abelam society see Kaberry, 1941 and 1966. The Pidgin English (Neo-Melanesian) words tambaran and big-man have become part of anthropological terminology, so I use them here without italics. Tambaran corresponds to the Abelam word maira, while nemandu is exactly translated as big-man. In view of the anomalous position of wut as an artistic production of both sexes, it is worth noting that for a man to use the words nyan wut in the presence of a woman is a formidable insult, certain to result in a quarrel, and possibly leading to a hostile exchange relationship with her protector, or even to a complex villagewide ceremony of cross-sex hostility. For a fuller discussion of the manufacture and use of paints and their magical character, see Forge, 1962. In the Wosera area, S. W. Abelam, a further type of brush is used, made of a single short feather, found between the tail plumes of the lesser bird of paradise, mounted in a grass stem. This will produce exceptionally fine lines, which are used mainly in polychrome cross-hatching. Bands of such cross-hatching are typically used to replace the polychrome multiple lines of the northern Abelam, and as an embellishment to certain other patterns otherwise common to both styles. The technique is laborious

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but aesthetically effective. Painting with these brushes cannot be delegated to the less skilled, and the number and size of the wut panels so painted were a sure index of prestige. Although painting with the fine line technique was visible on the fac¸ades of Wosera ceremonial houses, the means by which these results were produced was secret, the brushes themselves being regarded as a tambaran and very carefully concealed; they were called vi (spear) and were integrated into the spear/ penis symbolic complex. Brushes elsewhere in the Abelam area are not specially regarded and are abandoned without concern. 6 Since the only two essential qualifications for initiation into a ceremony are that the initiate be alive and that the father or guardian be prepared to pay, babies are frequently initiated; it follows that youths of fifteen or so appear among the initiators.

REFERENCES Firth, R., 1925. ‘The Maori Carver’, Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 34. Firth, R., 1936. We, The Tikopia, A Sociological Study of Kinship in Primitive Polynesia, London. Firth, R., 1951. Elements of Social Organization, London. Forge, A., 1962. ‘Paint – A Magical Substance’, Palette, no. 9, Basle. Forge, A., 1966. ‘Art and Environment in the Sepik’, Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1965, London. Kaberry, P. M., 1941. ‘The Abelam Tribe, Sepik District, New Guinea’, Oceania, vol. 11, nos. 3, 4. Kaberry, P. M., 1966. ‘Political Organization among the Northern Abelam’, Anthropological Forum, vol. 1, nos. 3, 4.

Part II Primitivism, Art, and Artifacts

Introduction

Concerns regarding the ‘‘primitive’’ question have been central to the anthropological study of art ever since Boas used the term in his extensive cross-cultural study (ch. 1). Many anthropologists who study art have addressed the obvious negative connotations of this term. The concern is closely tied to the discipline’s past theoretical evolutionism – approaching some contemporary indigenous cultures as if they represented earlier stages in the evolution of Western cultures. The term ‘‘primitive’’ implies a lack of development and sophistication that seems incongruous when paired with the term ‘‘art’’ – the achievement of which is often held up as an indicator of a culture’s achievement of the highest levels of development. Yet the difficulty in defining a general rubric for a range of objects produced from cultures that have been defined at various times by terms such as indigenous, small-scale, tribal, or non-Western, alludes both to the seeming need to categorize objects from vastly disparate cultures into general frameworks, and to the hazards of that generalization beyond a case-by-case basis. Modern art in the West and anthropology both have complex relationships with the objects produced in different cultures (see Clifford 1988 for a related discussion of Le´vi-Strauss, Surrealism, and the collection of culture) and most of the articles in this part explore those relationships with particular reference to a 1984 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and debates over the relationship between art and artifacts. The MOMA exhibition, ‘‘‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art,’’ was a catalyst for considerable debate among anthropologists due in part to issues that had been increasingly at the fore of the discipline – changes in the predominant concern with small-scale societies and the problems with the study of cultures as bounded entities in an increasingly globalized system. The relative merits of the exhibition were debated at length in the art press through a series of exchanges between Thomas McEvilley and the exhibition curators, William Rubin and Kirk Varnedoe (McEvilley 1984, 1985a, 1985b; see McEvilley 2002 for a later reflection on the exhibition). The excerpted text from Rubin’s introduction to the exhibition catalogue included in this volume outlines the rationale behind the exhibition and the affinities that it explores between objects produced in different cultural contexts. The comparisons are primarily based upon visual similarities and, in some cases, these affinities are based on contact of a speculative nature – that a particular artist may have seen a certain variety of objects and then been influenced by that encounter. Not all of these

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contacts were hypothetical since Picasso’s exposure to the works of various unknown Africans is well known. Indeed Picasso made the now notorious comment to Rubin: ‘‘Everything I need to know about Africa is in those objects’’ (Rubin, ch. 7, n. 5). The anonymity of those producers was secured, not by the fact that the person or persons who made an object were unknown to the community where and when they were made, but by the preference by Western collectors and artists to have those objects stand for a culture, or rather, the idea of a culture and its projected emotional qualities. The recognition of skill and quality became a fundamental consideration in the elevation of a vast range of unrelated objects to the category of ‘‘primitive art’’ (see Goldwater 1967 on this process in relation to the ‘‘Primitivist’’ style in Western art) and was often paired with the simultaneous disregard for their indigenous meanings. The review of the exhibition by Arthur Danto gives a very concise appraisal of the exhibition’s unmet potential as an important cross-cultural encounter that brought together such a wide range of materials for potential analysis. A primary criticism of the exhibition has been its focus on visual resemblance and its subsequent neglect of the many levels on which other, perhaps more significant, comparisons could be made based upon other qualities. James Clifford’s essay provides the next layer of context by exploring some of these other comparisons based on a range of other affinities – such as appropriations and collections – that demonstrate the complex relationships underlying these cross-cultural encounters. The selections from the book by Price (2001) place these debates in the particular ethnographic context of Maroon art to demonstrate how Western categories of art contrast with and influence the understanding of objects produced in different cultural contexts. The article by Craig Clunas demonstrates how objects of Chinese material culture were initially categorized as primitive in museum collections before being separated into a distinct category. This highlights how the Western system of art has reinterpreted objects according to its own changing categories, even when those objects come from cultural systems with long art historical traditions of their own. In order to lay the ‘‘primitive’’ question to rest, the anthropological analysis of art must occur in the broadest cross-cultural context. Artists in different cultures have always been influenced by different cultural forms and contemporary artists working in a variety of cultural traditions often include the appropriation of Western art forms and categories (see, for example, the work of Gordon Bennett, ch. 28, figure 28.3). The essays by Vogel and Gell address the debates that have circulated around the relevance of using either the terms ‘‘art’’ or ‘‘artifact’’ by exploring the relationship between form and function. The terminology reflects general differences between the art historical and the anthropological approach that are slowly changing – the former having generally been more interested in the formal or artistic qualities of an object and the latter being more concerned with function and context. The pairing of the two essays demonstrates that these two views are not mutually exclusive since many objects can be viewed or used in multiple ways without one necessarily negating the other. Vogel’s introduction to an exhibition entitled ‘‘Art/artifact’’ presents this debate in the context of the display of objects from Africa. This exhibition and an accompanying catalogue essay by Arthur Danto (1988) form the basis for the critique by Alfred Gell who explores the relationship between traps (embodying forms that reflect their functional nature) and contemporary conceptual art (see Spring 1997 for a

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critique of Gell’s approach and Gell 1997 for the reply). While the conceptual contrast between the formal qualities of art and the functional qualities of the artifact may be tempting in comparing Western art to that of other cultures it must be remembered that, even in the ‘‘art for art’s sake’’ model, Western art serves a wide range of functions – as investment, political commentary, expression of emotion, status, taste, and so on. The question of intention and the related argument that some objects cannot be viewed as ‘‘art’’ because the people who produce them do not have that specific word in their indigenous language, has become less relevant as an increasing number of producers define themselves as artists. In short they intend that the work they produce should be considered art. It could be argued that since in many cases there is no direct equivalent in the ‘‘art-makers’’ own language to the English word ‘‘art,’’ the intentional production of a work to fit in with the category ‘‘art’’ is the result of the imposition of Western terms and values on another cultural system. However, in addition to failing to recognize the complexity of the English word itself, this would be to place too much of a load on the absence of a direct translation of the term in the languages concerned. There is often an extensive vocabulary that can be applied to objects in the artist’s own language and which encompass much of the ground covered by the English term (see, for example, the terms used in Maroon design elements described by Price (ch. 10) and the complex language and system of Yoruba art criticism described by Thompson (ch. 14) in this volume). We do not, of course, deny the existence of a global discourse over art that can influence the categorization of objects cross-culturally. Certainly the market has created a forum where objects acquire a new function as commodities and the work of contemporary practitioners (whether or not they define themselves as artists) has encouraged the use of the term ‘‘art’’ to describe a level of quality and promote respect on a crosscultural level. The increasingly self-conscious adoption of the category of art by those producing objects that may in the past have been used exclusively for ritual, political, or any combination of functional purposes thereof has made the question less relevant.

REFERENCES Clifford, James, 1988 On Collecting Art and Culture. In The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Danto, Arthur 1988 Artifact and Art. In ART/Artifact. Susan Vogel, ed. New York: Center for African Art and Prestel Verlag. Gell, Alfred 1997 Reply to Spring (1997). Journal of Material Culture 2(1):129–131. Goldwater, Robert 1967 Primitivism in Modern Art. New York: Random House. McEvilley, Thomas 1984 Letters on ‘‘Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief: ‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art’’ at the Museum of Modern Art in 1984. Artforum 23(3):54–61. McEvilley, Thomas 1985a Letters on ‘‘Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief: ‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art’ at the Museum of Modern Art in 1984,’’ Artforum 23(6):51–52. McEvilley, Thomas 1985b Letters on ‘‘Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief: ‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art’’ at the Museum of Modern Art in 1984, II. Artforum 23(9):63–71.

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McEvilley, Thomas 2002 Whose Day is This? Reflections on Multiculturalism as History and Theory. In Under [De]construction: Perspectives on Cultural Diversity in Visual and Performing Arts. Helsinki: Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art. Price, Sally, 2001[1989] Primitive Art in Civilized Places. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Spring, Chris 1997 Slipping the Net: Comments on Gell (1996). Journal of Material Culture 2(1):125–129.

7 Modernist Primitivism: An Introduction William Rubin

No pivotal topic in twentieth-century art has received less serious attention than primitivism – the interest of modern artists in tribal1 art and culture, as revealed in their thought and work. The immense bibliography of modern art lists only two instructive books on the subject: the pioneering text by Robert Goldwater, first published almost half a century ago, and that of Jean Laude, written two decades ago, considerably more limited in scope, never translated from the French, and long out of print.2 Neither author had access to certain important collections, that of Picasso among them, or to much significant documentation now available. The need for a scholarly literature consistent with the historical importance of the subject is reflected in the unusual scope of the present undertaking – though, at best, this book is but a beginning. Upon reflection, it is perhaps not surprising that primitivism has received so little searching consideration, for intelligent discourse on the subject requires some familiarity with both of the arts whose intersection in modern Western culture accounts for the phenomenon. The studies of the two have traditionally remained separate. Until fairly recently, tribal objects were largely the preserve, at least in scholarly and museological terms, of ethnologists. Only

since World War II has the discipline of art history turned its attention to this material; however, graduate-level programs in Primitive3 art are still comparatively rare, and few of their students are also involved in modern studies. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that much of what historians of twentieth-century art have said about the intervention of tribal art in the unfolding of modernism is wrong. Not familiar with the chronology of the arrival and diffusion of Primitive objects in the West, they have characteristically made unwarranted assumptions of influence. As an example, I cite the fact that none of the four types of masks proposed by eminent scholars as possible sources for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon could have been seen by Picasso in Paris as early as 1907 when he painted the picture. On the other hand, few experts in the arts of the Primitive peoples have more than a glancing knowledge of modern art, and their occasional allusions to it sometimes betray a startling naivete´.4 The quite different kinds of illumination cast upon tribal objects by anthropologists and by art historians of African and Oceanic cultures are ultimately more complementary than contradictory. Both naturally focus on understanding tribal sculptures in the contexts

From ‘‘Primitivism’’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (New York: Museum of Modern Art, [1985] 1999), pp. 1–79. Reprinted by permission of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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in which they were created. Engaged with the history of primitivism, I have quite different aims; I want to understand the Primitive sculptures in terms of the Western context in which modern artists ‘‘discovered’’ them. The ethnologists’ primary concern – the specific function and significance of each of these objects – is irrelevant to my topic, except insofar as these facts might have been known to the modern artists in question. Prior to the 1920s, however, at which time some Surrealists became amateurs of ethnology, artists did not generally know – nor evidently much care – about such matters. This is not to imply that they were uninterested in ‘‘meanings,’’ but rather that the meanings which concerned them were the ones that could be apprehended through the objects themselves.5 If I therefore accept as given a modernist perspective on these sculptures (which like any other perspective is by definition a bias), I shall nevertheless try to make a virtue of it, hoping that despite the necessarily fragmentary character of our approach – whose primary purpose is the further illumination of modern art – it may nevertheless shed some new light even on the Primitive objects. Discourse on our subject has suffered from some confusion as to the definition of primitivism. The word was first used in France in the nineteenth century, and formally entered French as a strictly art-historical term in the seven-volume Nouveau Larousse illustre´ published between 1897 and 1904: ‘‘n.m. B.-arts. Imitation des primitifs.’’6 Though the Larousse reference to ‘‘imitation’’ was both too extreme and too narrow, the sense of this definition as describing painting and sculpture influenced by earlier artists called ‘‘primitives’’ has since been accepted by art history; only the identity of the ‘‘primitives’’ has changed. The Larousse definition reflected a mid-nineteenth-century use of the term insofar as the ‘‘primitives’’ in question were primarily fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italians and Flemings. But even before the appearance of the Nouveau Larousse illustre´, artists had expanded the connotations of ‘‘primitive’’ to include not only the Romanesque and Byzantine, but a host of non-Western arts ranging from the Peruvian to the Javanese – with the sense of ‘‘primitivism’’ altering accordingly. Neither word, however, as yet evoked the tribal arts

of Africa or Oceania. They would enter the definitions in question only in the twentieth century. While primitivism began its life as a specifically art-historical term, some American dictionaries subsequently broadened its definition. It appears for the first time in Webster in 1934 as a ‘‘belief in the superiority of primitive life,’’ which implies a ‘‘return to nature.’’ Within this expanded framework, Webster’s art-related definition is simply ‘‘the adherence to or reaction to that which is primitive.’’7 This sense of the word was evidently firmly entrenched by 1938 when Goldwater used it in the title of Primitivism in Modern Painting. The general consistency of all these definitions of primitivism has not, however, prevented certain writers from confusing primitivism (a Western phenomenon) with the arts of Primitive peoples.8 In view of this, we have drawn attention to the former’s very particular arthistorical meaning by enclosing it within quotation marks in the title of our book. Nineteenth-century primitivist painters had appreciated pre-Renaissance Western styles for their ‘‘simplicity’’ and ‘‘sincerity’’ – which they saw in the absence of complex devices of illusionist lighting and perspective – and for their vigor and expressive power, qualities these artists missed in the official art of their own day, which was based on Classical and academic models. The more that bourgeois society prized the virtuosity and finesse of the salon styles, the more certain painters began to value the simple and naive, and even the rude and the raw – to the point that by the end of the nineteenth century, some primitivist artists had come to vaunt those non-Western arts they called ‘‘savage.’’ Using this word admiringly, they employed it to describe virtually any art alien to the Greco-Roman line of Western realism that had been reaffirmed and systematized in the Renaissance. Given the present-day connotations of ‘‘primitive’’ and ‘‘savage,’’ we may be surprised to discover what art these adjectives identified for late nineteenthcentury artists. Van Gogh, for example, referred to the high court and theocratic styles of the ancient Egyptians and the Aztecs of Mexico as ‘‘primitive,’’ and characterized even the Japanese masters he revered as ‘‘savage’’ artists. Gauguin used the words ‘‘primitive’’ and ‘‘savage’’ for styles as different

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as those of Persia, Egypt, India, Java, Cambodia, and Peru. A self-proclaimed ‘‘savage’’ himself, Gauguin later annexed the Polynesians to his already long list of ‘‘primitives,’’ but he was less drawn to their art than to their religion and what remained of their life-style. Decades before African or Oceanic sculpture would become an issue for artists, the exotic arts defined as ‘‘primitive’’ by Gauguin’s generation were being admired for many qualities that twentieth-century artists would prize in tribal art – above all, an expressive force deemed missing from the final phases of Western realism, which late nineteenth-century vanguard artists considered overattenuated and bloodless. With the exception of Gauguin’s interest in Marquesan and Easter Island sculpture, however, no nineteenth-century artist demonstrated any serious artistic interest in tribal art, either Oceanic or African.9 Our contemporary sense of Primitive art, largely synonymous with tribal objects, is a strictly twentiethcentury definition. The first decades of the twentieth century saw both a change in meaning and a shrinkage in the scope of what was considered Primitive art. With the ‘‘discovery’’ of African and Oceanic masks and figure sculptures by Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, and Picasso in the years 1906–07, a strictly modernist interpretation of the term began. As the fulcrum of meaning shifted toward tribal art, the older usages did not fall away immediately. ‘‘Primitive art’’ simply became increasingly identified, during the following quarter-century, with tribal objects. As far as vanguard artists of the beginning of the century were concerned, this meant largely African and Oceanic art, with a smattering (in Germany) of that of American Indians and Eskimos (which would become better known among Paris artists only in the twenties and thirties). In Paris, the term ‘‘art ne`gre’’ (Negro art)10 began to be used interchangeably with ‘‘primitive art.’’ This seemingly narrowed the scope of meaning to something like tribal art.11 But as a term that should have been reserved for African art alone, it was in fact so loosely employed that it universally identified Oceanic art as well. It was not until the 1920s that Japanese, Egyptian, Persian, Cambodian, and most other non-Western court styles ceased to be called Primitive, and the word came to be

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applied primarily to tribal art, for which it became the standard generic term.12 In Goldwater’s book, written the following decade, the ‘‘primitive’’ is synonymous with African and Oceanic art. To be sure, pre-Columbian court styles such as the Aztec, Olmec, and Incan continued to be called Primitive (and artists did not always distinguish between them and tribal art). But this was an inconsistency, and should now be recognized as such. In their style, character, and implications, the preColumbian court and theocratic arts of Mesoamerica and South America should be grouped with the Egyptian, Javanese, Persian, and other styles that together with them had consituted the definition of the Primitive during the later nineteenth century.13 The progressive change in the meaning of the word after 1906 was a function of a change in taste. Consistent with it, pre-Columbian court art enjoyed – except for Moore, the Mexican muralists, and, to a lesser extent, Giacometti – a relatively limited interest among early twentieth-century vanguard artists. Picasso was not unique in finding it too monumental, hieratic, and seemingly repetitious. The perceived inventiveness and variety of tribal art was much more in the spirit of the modernists’ enterprise.14 The inventiveness just mentioned, which led in some African and Oceanic societies to an often astonishing artistic multiformity, constitutes one of the most important common denominators of tribal and modern art. Few remaining sculptures of the Dan people, to take perhaps the most startling example, are much more than a century old; yet the range of invention found in their work far outdistances that of court arts produced over much longer periods – even millennia of Ancient Egypt after the Old Kingdom.15 And unlike Egyptian society, which placed a positive value upon the static as regards its imagery, the Dan not only explicitly appreciated diversity but recognized the value of a certain originality. As the fascinating study by the ethnologist P. J. L. Vandenhoute showed, the Dan were even willing ‘‘to recognize a superior social efficacity in [such originality].’’16 Although tribal sculptors were guided by established traditional types, the surviving works themselves attest that individual carvers had far more freedom in varying and developing these types than many commenta-

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tors have assumed. This relative variety and flexibility, along with the concomitant incidence of change, distinguish their art from the more static, hieratic – and often monumental – styles of the court cultures in question (which for the sake of convenience I shall refer to generically as Archaic, in what amounts to but a slight broadening of that term’s usual art-historical application).17 During the last two decades, [since the 1980s], the words Primitive and primitivism have been criticized by some commentators as ethnocentric and pejorative, but no other generic term proposed as a replacement for ‘‘primitive’’ has been found acceptable to such critics, none has even been proposed for ‘‘primitivism.’’ That the derived term primitivism is ethnocentric is surely true – and logically so, for it refers not to the tribal arts in themselves, but to the Western interest in and reaction to them. Primitivism is thus an aspect of the history of modern art, not of tribal art. In this sense, the word is comparable to the French ‘‘japonisme,’’ which refers not directly to the art and culture of Japan, but to the European fascination with it. The notion that ‘‘primitivism’’ is pejorative, however, can only result from a misunderstanding of the origin and use of the term, whose implications have been entirely affirmative. Objections to the adjective ‘‘primitive,’’ on the other hand, focus not unfairly on the pejorative implications of certain of its many meanings.18 These have had no place, however, in its definition or use as an arthistorical term. When Picasso, in the ultimate compliment, asserted that ‘‘primitive sculpture has never been surpassed,’’19 he saw nothing contradictory – and certainly nothing pejorative – in using the familiar if now-contested adjective ‘‘primitive’’ to identify the art. It is precisely the admiring sense with which he and his colleagues invested the word that has characterized its use in art writing. Employed in this restricted way, the word has a sense no less positive than that of any other aesthetic designations (including Gothic and Baroque, which were both coined as terms of opprobrium).20 The ‘‘effective connotations’’ of ‘‘primitive’’ when ‘‘coupled with the word art,’’ as Robert Goldwater concluded, are of ‘‘a term of praise.’’21 As we are using the term Primitive essentially in an art-historical

spirit, we have decided to insist upon this sense of its meaning by capitalizing its initial letter (except within quotation marks). All this does not mean that one would not happily use another generic term if a satisfactory one could be found.22 And, to be sure, William Fagg, dean of British ethnologists of Africa, proposed that ‘‘tribal’’ be universally substituted for ‘‘primitive.’’23 But the critics who object to ‘‘primitive,’’ object with equal if not greater vehemence to ‘‘tribal.’’24 It is clear that art history is not the only discipline that has sought and failed to find a generic term for the Primitive that would satisfy critics. After struggling with the problem for some time, Claude Le´vi-Strauss noted that ‘‘despite all its imperfections, and the deserved criticism it has received, it seems that primitive, in the absence of a better term, has definitely taken hold in the contemporary anthropological and sociological vocabulary.’’ ‘‘The term primitive,’’ he continued, ‘‘now seems safe from the confusion inherent in its etymological meaning and reinforced by an obsolete evolutionism.’’ Le´vi-Strauss then added a reminder hardly necessary for those who admire tribal art. ‘‘A primitive people,’’ he insisted, ‘‘is not a backward or retarded people; indeed, it may possess, in one realm or another, a genius for invention or action that leaves the achievements of other peoples far behind.’’25 This last was recognized by modern artists at the beginning of this century, well before the attitudes summarized by Le´viStrauss were to characterize anthropological or art-historical thinking. For the bourgeois public of the nineteenth century, however, if not for the art lovers of the twentieth, the adjective ‘‘primitive’’ certainly had a pejorative meaning. Indeed, that public considered any culture outside Europe, or any art outside the parameters of Beaux-Arts and salon styles – which meant all non-Western and some Western art – inherently inferior. (Even Ruskin opined that there was ‘‘no art in the whole of Africa, Asia or America.’’) To the extent that the ‘‘fetishes’’ of the tribal peoples were known at all, they were considered the untutored extravagances of barbarians. In fact, tribal objects were not then considered art at all. Gathered first in cabinets de curiosite´s, the masks and figure sculptures (along with other material) were increasingly preserved during

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the later nineteenth century in ethnographic museums, where no distinctions were made between art and artifact. As artifacts were considered indices of cultural progress, the increasing hold of Darwinian theories could only reinforce prejudices about tribal creations, whose makers were assigned the bottom rung of the cultural evolutionary ladder. We shall explore in depth in our chapter on Gauguin a quite opposite Western view of the Primitive that had already begun to form in the eighteenth century, especially in France. But this affirmative attitude, of which Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Noble Savage is the best-known embodiment, involved only a segment of the small educated public. It remained, moreover, literary and philosophical in character – never comprehending the plastic arts. Antipodal to the popular view, it tended to idealize Primitive life, building upon it the image of an earthly paradise, inspired primarily by visions of Polynesia, especially Tahiti. If we trace this attitude to its source in Montaigne’s essay ‘‘On Cannibals,’’ we see that from the start the writers in question were primarily interested in the Primitive as an instrument for criticizing their own societies, which they saw as deforming the innately admirable spirit of humankind that they assumed was still preserved in the island paradises. Needless to say, most of these writers knew little of life in Polynesia or other distant lands, and the body of ideas they generated may be justly characterized as ‘‘the myth of the primitive.’’ Indeed, even among those having firsthand contact with tribal peoples, the fantasy of the Primitive often overrode reality. The French explorer Bougainville, for example, one of the discoverers of Tahiti, saw evidence there of cannibalistic practices. But all of this is forgotten in this classic description of the island as ‘‘la Nouvelle Cythe`re,’’ the New Cythera. By identifying Tahiti with the island of Greek mythology where, under the reign of Venus, humans lived in perpetual harmony, beauty, and love, Bougainville was equating the ‘‘myth of the primitive’’ with the already longestablished but almost equally unreal ‘‘myth of the antique.’’ It mattered little, however, that the affirmative view of the Primitive we have been describing had almost as little relation to reality as the negative one. The myth was from the start the operative factor, and until the third decade of the twentieth century, it had far more

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influence on artists and writers than did any facts of tribal life, of which, in any case, the first social scientists themselves knew but little. This interest in the Primitive as a critical instrument – as a countercultural battering ram, in effect – persisted in a different form when early twentieth-century vanguard artists engendered a shift of focus from Primitive life to Primitive art. Modernism is unique as compared to the artistic attitudes of past societies in its essentially critical posture, and its primitivism was to be consistent with this. Unlike earlier artists, whose work celebrated the collective, institutional values of their cultures, the pioneer modern artists criticized – at least implicitly – even when they celebrated. Renoir’s Boating Party, for example, affirmed the importance of gaiety, pleasure, and informality, in short, the life of the senses. But by that very fact, it criticized the repressive and highly class-conscious conventions of contemporary Victorian morality. The Cubist artist’s notion that there was something important to be learned from the sculpture of tribal peoples – an art whose appearance and assumptions were diametrically opposed to prevailing aesthetic canons – could only be taken by bourgeois culture as an attack upon its values. That the modern artists’ admiration for these tribal objects was widespread in the years 1907–14 is sufficiently (if not very well) documented in studio photographs, writings, reported remarks, and, of course, in their work itself. Artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and Brancusi were aware of the conceptual complexity and aesthetic subtlety of the best tribal art, which is only simple in the sense of its reductiveness – and not, as was popularly believed, in the sense of simple-mindedness.26 That many today consider tribal sculpture to represent a major aspect of world art, that Fine Arts museums are increasingly devoting galleries, even entire wings to it, is a function of the triumph of vanguard art itself.27 We owe to the voyagers, colonials, and ethnologists the arrival of these objects in the West. But we owe primarily to the convictions of the pioneer modern artists their promotion from the rank of curiosities and artifacts to that of major art, indeed, to the status of art at all. [...] That tribal art influenced Picasso and many of his colleagues in significant ways is

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beyond question. But that it caused no fundamental change in the direction of modern art is equally true. Picasso himself put it succinctly when he said: ‘‘The African sculptures that hang around . . . my studios are more witnesses than models.’’28 That is, they more bore witness to his enterprise than served as starting points for his imagery. Like the Japanese prints that fascinated Manet and Degas, Primitive objects had less to do with redirecting the history of modern painting than with reinforcing and sanctioning developments already under way. Nevertheless, Picasso – who had an instinct for the mot juste – chose his words carefully, and his ‘‘more . . . than’’ construction must be looked at with care. Though more ‘‘witnesses’’ than ‘‘models,’’ the sculptures were admittedly thus models to some extent. Hence, while first elected for their affinity to the artist’s aims, once in the studio, the tribal objects took on a dual role, and exerted some influence. Just how much and what kind of influence these objects exerted is, as noted, extremely difficult to gauge. In his classic text, Goldwater took a very conservative position on this question, to which Laude’s book largely adhered. While arguing a ‘‘very considerable influence of the primitive on the modern’’29 in very general terms (‘‘allusion and suggestion’’), Goldwater insisted on the ‘‘extreme scarcity of the direct influence of primitive art forms’’ on twentieth-century art.30 As our study will show, Goldwater substantially underestimated that aspect of the issue. Moreover, he considered most of the influence of tribal art to be poetic, philosophical, and psychological, granting it only a ‘‘very limited direct formal influence.’’31 It was his view that Brancusi, for example, never adapted ‘‘specific forms of Negro sculpture, and . . . his work is never related to any particular tribal style.’’ Yet the attitude, shape, and convex-concave structure of the head and the elongated form of the neck (as well as the obliquely projecting coiffure or ‘‘comb’’) of Brancusi’s Madame L. R. (1914–18) seem to me unquestionably derived from Hongwe reliquary figures. Moreover, as Geist has shown, the peculiarly shaped mouth in the head that remains from the otherwise destroyed First Step, 1913, was almost certainly derived from a Bambara sculpture in the Trocade´ro Museum. Comparable ex-

amples can be adduced in the work of many artists whose primitivism was discussed by Goldwater only in general terms. In the examples mentioned above, the juxtapositions of the modern and African works speak for themselves. But I am firmly of the opinion that there exists a whole body of other influences, no less dependent on particular forms in individual tribal objects, where a simple comparison of the modern and tribal works involved would not signal the relationship between them. Indeed, I consider it axiomatic that among modern artists who admired and collected tribal works, many of the most important and profound influences of ‘‘art ne`gre’’ on their work are those that we do not recognize and will never know about. While artists of all periods have taken the shape of a head, the position of a body, or a particular pattern from the work of other artists, their assimilation of their colleagues’ work often takes a more complicated, less recognizable form – all the more so in the twentieth century, given the degree of metamorphosis of visual raw materials in most modern styles.32 By the time the plastic idea – borrowed knowingly or unconsciously – is fully digested and reemerges in the context of the borrower’s very different style, it is often ‘‘invisible.’’ The influence of tribal art is no exception to this principle. Since this sort of direct influence is not recognizable through the juxtaposition of particular objects (at least without some guidance), the reader might well ask on what basis I postulate it. Apart from the testimony of a few artists, the answer lies in my sense of how the artistic mind operates, by what byways and indirect paths it achieves its goals. [...] [Rubin develops a distinction between affinities and influences and illustrates this through a discussion of some works by Max Ernst with tribal objects to which they bear a striking resemblance.] When we compare Ernst’s BirdHead to an African mask of the Tusyan people, for example, we find among their common characteristics – apart from a general sense of the apparitional – such particulars as a flat rectangular head, straight horizontal mouth, small round eyes, and a bird’s head projecting from the forehead. Let us also take Ernst’s

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engraved stone sculpture, Oval Bird, of that same year (1934), comparing it to the BirdMan relief from Easter Island in the British Museum. Both Oval Bird and the Easter Island image are egglike in contour and depict a syncretistic birdman whose rounded forms echo the contour of the sculptural field.33 The upper arm of both figures descends in a curve and the forearms project forward; both birdmen have a large round eye. Though the oversized hand of the Easter Island figure gives way in the Ernst stone to a second bird’s head (birdmen with large hands are, however, found in other works by Ernst), and while the head of Ernst’s personnage projects forward like that of the Easter Island relief, it is much less beaklike in form. Nevertheless, that form is almost exactly matched in another Ernst bird head, also in an oval field, in the painting Inside the Sight: The Egg. One of the most celebrated of Polynesian objects, the Easter Island Bird-Man relief was collected in 1915 and acquired by the British Museum in 1920; it was reproduced in a number of publications beginning in 1919. Unlike his Cubist predecessors – and even more than most of his Surrealist colleagues – Ernst was a great amateur of ethnology and possessed a considerable library on the subject, probably including, both Maurer and Spies believe,34 one or more of the early publications in which the Easter Island relief was reproduced. Hence we would be on reasonably solid ground in speaking here of an influence of the Bird-Man relief on his work. On the other hand, the resemblance between Ernst’s BirdHead and the Tusyan mask, striking as it is, is fortuitous, and must therefore be accounted a simple affinity. Bird-Head was sculpted in 1934, and no Tusyan masks appear to have arrived in Europe (nor were any reproduced) prior to World War II. That such striking affinities can be found is partly accounted for by the fact that both modern and tribal artists work in a conceptual, ideographic manner, thus sharing certain problems and possibilities. In our own day it is easy to conceive of art-making in terms of problemsolving. But this was also substantially true for tribal artists, though their solutions were arrived at incrementally – as in much Western art – over a period of generations.35 Ethnologists might argue that I am falsely attributing to

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the tribal artists a sense of Western art-making, that the tribal sculptor creating ritual objects for a cult had no consciousness whatever of aesthetic solutions. (The latter is simply their assumption, of course, based on the fact that many tribal cultures had no word for ‘‘art.’’)36 Even if this could be proven true, however, it would not contradict my contention insofar as the finding of artistic solutions is ultimately an intuitive rather than an intellectual activity. The art-making process everywhere has certain common denominators, and as the great ethnologist Robert Lowie quite rightly observed, ‘‘the aesthetic impulse is one of the irreducible components’’ of mankind.37 The ‘‘art-ness’’ of the best tribal objects alone demonstrates that great artists were at work and that a variety of aesthetic solutions were arrived at, however little the artists themselves might have agreed with our description of the process. Now these solutions, insofar as they were to problems held in common – a sign for ‘‘nose,’’ for example – were certainly likely to bear a resemblance to one another in ways that are independent of influences and traditions. Hence the similarity of tribal works from entirely unrelated regions, as in the head of a New Hebrides (Melanesia) fern sculpture and an African Lwalwa mask. Is it so surprising, then, that Picasso’s solution for the head of the upper right maiden in the Demoiselles should resemble a mask from the Etoumbi region of Africa of a type he could not have seen at the time?38 To say that Picasso’s solution and that of the Etoumbi artist resemble each other is not, of course, to equate them. Quite apart from the fact that the Picasso head is painted and the Etoumbi mask carved – so that a different set of artistic conventions apply – there are many aspects of the Picasso image that presuppose ontogenetically the whole phylogeny of Western art. Moreover, the aesthetic affinities between signifiers, such as they are, do not permit us to assume comparable relationships on the level of the signified. Thus Herbert Read was rightly criticized for attributing Expressionist anxiety (angst) – a peculiarly modern state of mind – to African sculpture.39 And Picasso’s reference to the exorcistic character of African art, which he said was created to make man ‘‘free,’’ turned on a definition of freedom in terms of private psychological

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emancipation of a kind that would make no sense to a member of a tribal society. [...] The modernist tendency to interpret certain signs in tribal art in ways alien to Primitive cultures – to attribute to its signifiers twentiethcentury signifieds – is only one of the many ways in which we respond to tribal art ethnocentrically. Underinterpretation is another. To the extent that certain modern artists (Matisse, for example) savored tribal objects purely for their plastic beauty, they detached them from the symbolic and thaumaturgic role central to their place in the matrix of Primitive culture. To be sure, some modern artists, beginning with Picasso and extending into our own day, have responded intuitively to the animistic aspects of most tribal art, though these artists soon abut the limits of their ethnological knowledge.40 Lack of familiarity with the cultural context of tribal objects is just one of many factors that condemn the modern artist to see them fragmentarily. More literal aspects of this fragmentariness include the fact that tribal objects often arrive in the West incomplete. A mask, for example, may be shorn of its fiber ‘‘beard’’ or headdress as well as other symbolic accouterments. Masks are seen, moreover, in isolation from the costumes of which they were a part. By the same token, costumes are ‘‘fragments’’ of the dance, which is in turn a ‘‘fragment’’ of a more extended rite. Thompson observes, moreover, that many of the forms of African art were conceived to be seen in motion.41 And while this is probably not true of most ritual figures, it does necessarily further distance us from some of the art that has most influenced modern painters and sculptors. This general situation is hardly unique, however. We experience the entire history of past art in varying degrees fragmentarily and largely shorn of context. Few artists who appreciated Egyptian or Japanese art knew any more about its purpose or its cultural context than they did about that of Africa or Oceania. This ethnocentrism is a function nevertheless of one of modernism’s greatest virtues: its unique approbation of the arts of other cultures. Ours is the only society that has prized a whole spectrum of arts of distant and alien cultures.42 Its consequent appropriation of these arts has invested modernism with a par-

ticular vitality that is a product of cultural cross-fertilization. [...] The Surrealists preferred Oceanic to African art in part for its seemingly greater closeness to nature and its more varied, more aleatory use of natural materials. It is sometimes said that African art is Classic and Oceanic art Romantic, and although such generalizations can obscure as much as clarify, one could certainly agree that Melanesian art is more Romantic than that of Africa in the character of its identification with the world of nature. While there are numerous hybrids of men and animals among African masks and figure sculptures, they tend conceptually to be further removed, further abstracted from nature than the more ubiquitous monsters of the Melanesian peoples. Relative to many Oceanic arts, African sculpture could almost be characterized in terms of a prevailing anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism, both qualities of the Classic.43 The New Guinea artist, on the other hand, tends to find his monsters more nearly ‘‘ready-made’’ in the very substance of nature. Nowhere in African art, for example, do we find anything comparable to the malevolent hybrid Imunus of the Papuan Gulf region, which are largely made up of branches or roots of trees. The result of this ‘‘natural selection’’ is an accident-accommodating, meandering, linear object, the near formlessness of whose contours is antipodal to African aesthetic ideals. But not to modern taste – especially that of the Surrealists, who particularly liked such objects. We see affinities to their structures, if not direct echoes of them, in the contouring of many works by Ernst and Miro´, as well as later, in the work of Dubuffet. But it is in the art of Calder, who was close to the Surrealists in the thirties, that one discovers what appears to be a direct influence of an Imunu. Calder, whose interest in tribal art began early, had formed a fairly extensive collection of Primitive art by the later thirties. He was friendly with the dealer Pierre Loeb who, aside from exhibiting such Surrealists as Giacometti and Miro´, did much to advance the cause of tribal art from the South Seas in general and Papua in particular.44 Calder’s Apple Monster, 1938 – largely formed from the branches of an apple tree – is

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an altogether unusual work in his oeuvre and responds directly, I believe, to the artist’s fascination with an Imunu. Like the Imunus, whose ‘‘serendipitous’’ character was bound to appeal to vanguard taste, Calder’s piece consists largely of found objects subjected to a minimum of alteration after their selection. Both Calder and the New Guinea artist divined the monster while it still lurked in the raw material of nature. Such seerlike prescience especially appealed to the Surrealists, who would have categorized both the Imunu and Apple Monster as ‘‘objets trouve´s aide´s.’’ The New Guinea object has, however, the mordant and truly hallucinatory quality of a work whose creator really believes in monsters. None of that malevolence is present in the Calder, which expresses rather a whimsical and decidedly unthreatening sense of the forces of nature. Like the monsters in Klee and Miro´, Calder’s does not frighten us because neither he nor we still believe in monsters – at least in nature. For us, the truly monstrous emanates from man’s mind – as was expressed so forcefully by Picasso’s 1930s Minotaur (the beast-inthe-head instead of in-the-body), which is now stamped so indelibly on the modern psyche. [...] The early twentieth-century emancipation from the restrictions of a perceptually based art encouraged a variety of aesthetic attributes that parallel those of tribal art. Not the least of these was the freedom to sacrifice the essentially naturalistic proportions to which European artists – however different their styles – had adhered from the Gothic period through Post-Impressionism (and even into the Fauvism of 1905–06). During those centuries, the proportion of the height to the width of the body, and the proportion of the head to the body’s total height, varied only within distinct limits.45 The change in favor of extreme ratios of proportion is anticipated in the latter part of 1906 in Picasso’s ‘‘Iberian’’ style, in such pictures as Two Women. But it is in 1907 – in the Demoiselles (the lower right-hand figure particularly), and in Matisses such as Le Luxe – that freedom from the older conventions was definitively established. It was soon adapted by the German artists to a practice of ‘‘expressive disproportion.’’ Their art tended, as Meyer Schapiro observed, to polarize into

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two figure types, as represented by the work of Lehmbruck and Barlach: tall, attenuated ‘‘dolichocephalic’’ figures and squat, ‘‘brachycephalic’’ ones respectively.46 We see a comparable contrast in Fang masks that flatten the oval proportions of the human face into perfect circles or elongate them in the extreme. The modernist tendency toward such a polarization could only have been reinforced by familiarity with the astonishing proportions of some tribal objects. Giacometti probably saw the extraordinarily attenuated Nyamwezi figure, a sculpture owned for decades, beginning in the thirties, by Andre´ Lefebvre, one of the great collectors of modern art. However, tribal material constituted only one of many possible precedents for his elongated figures. Giacometti was thoroughly familiar, for example, with the attenuated Etruscan figures at the Villa Giulia in Rome. And I suspect that as compared to Picasso’s ‘‘broomstick’’ sculptures of 1931, both Primitive and Etruscan models probably functioned more as a reinforcement than an inspiration for the unusual proportions of Giacometti’s later work.47 That Picasso should have made the first modern construction sculpture in the same year he invented collage, and that these interdependent developments should have been launched at a time when he was deeply involved with tribal art, appear to me quite logical. The seeming simplicity and rawness of collage certainly constituted for Picasso a second primitivizing reaction, in this case against the hermeticism and belle-peinture of high Analytic Cubism. It paralleled that of six years earlier when he had overcome the late Symbolist refinement of his Blue and Rose Period paintings with the primitivism that culminated in the Demoiselles. In the spring of 1912, when Picasso glued a piece of oilcloth on his Still Life with Chair Caning and ordered an ‘‘endless’’ mariner’s rope to go round it in place of a frame, he not only short-circuited the refined painterly language of high Analytic Cubism, but undercut its ‘‘classical’’ structure by introducing a me´lange of materials previously considered incompatible with the Fine Arts. His subsequent application of the collage technique to constructed sculpture created the hybrid form known as ‘‘assemblage.’’

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While Picasso’s admixture of cloth and rope was unprecedented in the Western tradition, the principle of such me´langes was familiar to him in tribal sculptures whose makers often utilized cloth, raffia, string, bark, metal, mud, and found objects in conjunction with wood and other materials (as in fetishes and emblems . . . ). Picasso’s reliefs were constructed, moreover, to hang upon and project outward from the wall – which is precisely the way the European artists displayed their tribal masks. I do not want to imply this means that tribal objects were necessarily the primary inspiration of collage or assemblage, for the latter have other possible precedents, but given Picasso’s deep involvement with tribal art in 1912, they had to have played an important role in his thinking. Picasso’s use of variegated materials did not lead to objects resembling tribal art. That was not his way. Picasso usually abstracted the principle involved, but used it to his own ends. However, the use of such materials in the hands of the Dadaists and Surrealists reflected a conscious desire to evoke Primitive prototypes. The same is certainly true with regard to many contemporary examples. Italo Scanga’s Potato Famine #1 recalls the Berlin Museum Dog Fetish in its cloth streamers, while its inclusion of an animal horn reminds one of Fon and Songye fetishes. Conner’s Cross, which may be compared to an assemblage-like Ejagham emblem, turns the tables on Christianity by recasting it in the animist spirit of the tribal religions (while also recalling fetishistic aspects of Christian devotion in ex-votos and the cult of relics). [...] An undertaking such as this book, and the exhibition to which it is ancillary, must inevitably raise questions in the curator’s mind as to its necessity – if for no other reason than its cost in time, effort, and money. Nor can the curator, though he has seen the works individually over the years in differing contexts, truly foresee the effect of bringing them together – the revelation, or lack thereof, that their confrontation may engender. Indeed, in a sense he organizes the exhibition to see what will happen. It would be disingenuous, nevertheless, to pretend that in proposing our exhibition I did not feel fairly certain that it would

result in a significant correction of the received history of modern art, and draw to the attention of that art’s very large public some unfamiliar but particularly relevant masterpieces from other cultures. There was also the thought that some modern works we know quite well might seem all the richer for being seen from a new perspective. However presumptuous it may seem, all this lies within the realm of my expectations. In the realm of my hopes, however, there is something less explicit, more difficult to verbalize. It is that the particular confrontation involved in our exhibition will not only help us better to understand our art, but in a very unique way, our humanity – if that is not saying the same thing. The vestiges of a discredited evolutionary myth still live in the recesses of our psyches. The vanguard modernists told us decades ago that the tribal peoples produced an art that often distilled great complexity into seemingly simple solutions. We should not therefore be surprised that anthropology has revealed a comparable complexity in their cultures.48 I hope our effort will demonstrate that at least insofar as it pertains to works of the human spirit, the evolutionary prejudice is clearly absurd. The various metamorphoses of Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon were but the visible symbols of the artist’s search within his own psyche. This self-analysis, this peeling away of layers of consciousness, became associated with a search into the origins of man’s way of picturing himself. Having retraced those steps through the Archaic in his Iberian studies, Picasso was prepared for the ‘‘revelation’’ of Primitive art at the Trocade´ro Museum, which led him to the deeper, more primordial solution for which he was searching. At the Trocade´ro, Picasso apprehended something of profound psychological significance that Gauguin had failed to discover in the South Seas. That Picasso would call the Demoiselles his ‘‘first exorcism picture’’ suggests that he understood the very making of it as analogous to the kind of psycho-spiritual experiences or rites of passage for which he assumed the works in the Trocade´ro were used. The particular kind of personal freedom he experienced in realizing the Demoiselles, a liberating power that he associated with the original function of the tribal objects he saw, would have been meaningless –

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as the anthropologists would be the first to insist – to tribal man. Yet there is a link, for what Picasso recognized in those sculptures was ultimately a part of himself, of his own psyche, and therefore a witness to the humanity he shared with their carvers. He also realized that the Western artistic tradition had lost much of the power either to address or to change the inner man revealed in those sculptures. Like all great art, the finest tribal sculptures show images of man that transcend the particular lives and times of their makers. Nevertheless, the head of the African figure has for us at first an almost shocking sense of psychological otherness, while the New Guinea carving has a comparable otherness in terms of the way we understand our bodies. Nothing in Western (or Eastern) art prepares us for them. Yet they move us precisely because we do see something of ourselves in them – a part of ourselves that Western culture had been unwilling to admit, not to say image, before the twentieth century. If the otherness of the tribal images can broaden our humanity, it is because we have learned to recognize that otherness in ourselves. ‘‘Je,’’ as Rimbaud realized, ‘‘est un autre.’’ I spoke earlier about Picasso’s notion of the affinity of modern and tribal art as paralleling, in certain respects, the relationship between the arts of the Renaissance and Classical Greece. The analogy does not, however, capture the furthest reaches of implication in the affinity . . . For while the Italians of the fifteenth century were not in many significant ways, material or spiritual, advanced over the Greeks of the fifth century b.c., we, technologically speaking, are far beyond both, and with our consciousness of this we think of ourselves as having progressed light years beyond the tribal peoples. But insofar as art is a concrete index to the spiritual accomplishments of civilizations, the affinity of the tribal and the modern should give us pause.

NOTES 1 During the past twenty years, the word ‘‘tribal’’ has been frequently used in preference to ‘‘primitive’’ in characterizing a wide variety of arts of more or less noncentralized societies with simple technologies.

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Both words are profoundly problematic; we use them reluctantly (and interchangeably) . . . to answer the need for a generalizing collective term for the art we are addressing. No adequate or generally agreed-upon substitutes for ‘‘tribal and ‘‘primitive’’ have been proposed. Among some specialists, ‘‘tribal’’ has been used in preference to ‘‘primitive’’ because the latter is felt to contain too many negative Darwinian connotations. Others prefer ‘‘primitive’’ to ‘‘tribal’’ because many of the cultures commonly referred to as tribal (in Africa especially) are not tribal in the ethnological sense of the term. Our use of ‘‘tribal’’ is obviously not anthropological in spirit. It corresponds roughly to Webster’s (New International Dictionary, 2nd edn.) third definition of ‘‘tribe’’ – as the word is used ‘‘more loosely’’: ‘‘Any aggregation of peoples, especially in a primitive or nomadic state, believed to be of common stock and acting under a more or less central authority, like that of a headman or chief.’’ The word ‘‘tribal’’should thus be understood as simply a conventional counter. The Africanist Leon Siroto observes: ‘‘Tribal’’ in this connection would have to be no more than an arbitrary convention chosen to avoid the pitfalls of the term ‘‘primitive’’ as an expedient minimal designation in general discourse. It has been used so long and so widely that it seems to have gained significant acceptance. Caution is indicated: many, if not most, of the peoples intended by the term do not form tribes in the stricter sense of the concept. They may speak the same languages and observe more or less the same customs, but they are not politically coordinated and have no pragmatic recognition or corporate identity. Moreover, a number of them, for these reasons, have disparate iconographies and practice markedly contrastive styles, tendencies that should caution against the notion that their art is tribal (i.e., ethnically unitary and distinctive) . . . Anthropologists tend to agree that tribal groups are more of a European creation than a fact of life. (Letter to W. R. of November 1983.)

Until the 1960s, ‘‘tribal’’ was still widely used by anthropologists to fill the need for a general term cutting across cultures and

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continents. Hence, for example, the collection of essays edited by Daniel Biebuyck for the University of California Press in 1969 was called Tradition and Creativity in Tribal Art. Today it might be titled differently; but the problem of nomenclature has not been solved. William Fagg has been the most eloquent proponent of the concept of ‘‘tribality in African art.’’ This art, he insists, ‘‘is a product and a function of the tribal system,’’ though he observes that ‘‘tribal is not a static concept, but a dynamic one’’ and that ‘‘tribal styles are subject to constant change’’ (‘‘The African Artist’’ in Biebuyck, ed., p. 45). African scholars (among others) have criticized ‘‘tribal’’ as ‘‘Eurocentric’’ (Ekpo Eyo, cited in the New York Times, October 12, 1980, p. 70), and their point is well taken, although the anathema cast on the word in Africa (it has literally been banned by one African parliament) probably responds in part to the political problem of melding unified nations and a national consciousness from ethnically diverse populations. That the ‘‘Eurocentrism’’ in question still exists – despite efforts to overcome it – is hardly surprising considering that the disciplines of art history and anthropology are themselves European inventions. When addressing individual cultures, art historians can easily avoid such problematic terms as ‘‘tribal.’’ But the need for a general term arises from the wish to allude to characteristics that appear (to some Western eyes, at least) similar in a variety of cultures in different parts of the world. The most upto-date histories of world art still employ, if somewhat gingerly, the words ‘‘tribal’’ and ‘‘primitive’’ (e.g., Hugh Honour and John Fleming, The Visual Arts: A History [Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1982], p. 547). Some anthropologists would argue that any perceived common characteristics implied in such use of the word ‘‘tribal’’ are fictions – which explains why the word has largely disappeared from anthropological literature. Even if true, however, this does not mean that it is inappropriate in the study of modernist primitivism. On the contrary, precisely because we are not directly addressing the cultures in question, but investigating the ideas formed of them in the West over the last hundred years, the use of the word ‘‘tribal’’ – which

is a function of such ideas and the context in which they were formed – is not misleading. The word’s ethnocentric drawbacks become, in effect, illuminating, for they characterize the nature of the primitivist perspective. Goldwater’s Primitivism in Modern Painting was first published in 1938; a revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1967 under the title Primitivism in Modern Art (New York: Random House, Vintage Books). Laude’s La Peinture franc¸aise (1905–1914) et ‘‘l’art ne`gre’’ (Paris: Editions Klincksieck) appeared in 1968. These are the only completely serious general treatments of the subject in anything like reasonable wholeness. Charles Wentinck’s lay-oriented Modern and Primitive Art (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1979 [originally published in the Netherlands 1974 as Moderne und Primitive Kunst]) is an inadequate account which fails to distinguish satisfactorily between actual (or possible) historical influences and chance resemblances. Failure to make this crucial distinction also dogs the chapters on modernism and African and Oceanic art in the catalog World Cultures and Modern Art. The Encounter of 19th and 20th Century European Art and Music with Asia, Africa, Oceania, Afro- and Indo-America (Exhibition on the occasion of the games of the Twentieth Olympiad, Munich 1972) (Munich: Haus der Kunst, June 16–September 30, 1972). More valuable is the treatment of our subject as limited to modern sculpture in the catalog Gauguin to Moore: Primitivism in Modern Sculpture, by Alan Wilkinson (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, November 7, 1981–January 3, 1982). To these books one might add Werner Schmalenbach, Die Kunst der Primitiven als Anregungsquelle fu¨r die europa¨ische Kunst bis 1900 (Cologne: DuMont-Schauberg, 1961), and his ‘‘Grundsa¨tzliches zur primitiven Kunst,’’ Acta tropica 15, no. 4 (1958), pp. 289–323. As explained, . . . we have retained the term ‘‘primitive’’ but have decided to capitalize it (except within quotation marks) in order to underline that aspect of its many meanings having to do with art-historical designation (as opposed to using it as a strictly descriptive term).

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4 Symptomatic of this is the tendency of one of the leading authors on African art to characterize masks as ‘‘cubist’’ simply because they have rectilinear geometrical structures. 5 Anthropologists, especially those who consider the characterization of tribal objects as art irrelevant to their concerns, often write as if only the scientifically verifiable and verbalizable anthropological constituents of these objects have meaning. Art historians’ interests naturally include the aesthetic and expressive potential of many of these objects. In general, artists usually consider only the direct apprehension of the latter as truly meaningful. This is exemplified in a remark made to me by Picasso to this effect: ‘‘Everything I need to know about Africa is in those objects.’’ 6 Nouveau Larousse illustre´, 7 vols. and 1 suppl. (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1897– 1904), vol. 7, p. 32. 7 Webster’s New International Dictionary, 2nd edn., s.v. ‘‘primitivism.’’ 8 Ekpo Eyo (Two Thousand Years of Nigerian Art [Lagos, 1977], p. 28) wrongly uses the word ‘‘primitivism’’ simply to characterize Europeans’ use of the word ‘‘primitive’’ in relation to non-Western art. In regard to the same use, he stated (as quoted in the New York Times) that Western scholars ‘‘invented the notion of primitivism [sic] and spread it to wherever their influence reached.’’ 9 This does not mean that they did not collect such art as ‘‘curiosite´s’’. Beyond Gauguin’s limited interest in Polynesian art . . . he may also have owned two small African figures. 10 This took place in the years preceding World War I. The usual translation of ‘‘art ne`gre’’ as ‘‘Negro art,’’ loses something of the pejorative flavor of the French ‘‘ne`gre’’ (as in ‘‘travail de ne`gre,’’ for example). This connotation notwithstanding, many cultivated French still use the term ‘‘art ne`gre’’ although they might eschew the word ‘‘ne`gre’’ in other contexts. 11 It should be kept in mind that early in the century the term ‘‘art ne`gre’’ universally evoked the tribal art of Oceania as well as Africa. The same was true of the word ‘‘Negerkunst’’ and its variants. Both

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editions (1915 and 1920) of Carl Einstein’s Negerplastik contain some examples of Oceanic art. The designation ‘‘art ne`gre’’ was used for the court art of the kingdom of Benin as well as for tribal styles. 12 In the period between the two World Wars, and for some time afterward, ‘‘primitive’’ was used in the titles of books and university courses and for classification in finearts museums (the forerunner of the Michael C. Rockefeller wing at the Metropolitan Museum was known as the Museum of Primitive Art, and the relevant department of the Metropolitan is still called the Department of Primitive Art). Until fairly recently the word was widely if sometimes reluctantly used by anthropologists as well (see citation from Le´vi-Strauss, p. 132). A collection of anthropological essays published by Oxford University Press in 1973 (Anthony Forge, ed.) was titled Primitive Art and Society. 13 Pre-Columbian civilization was (and still is) popularly identified by artists and others primarily with art from large-scale, complex, later-period theocratic societies of the Maya, Toltec, and Aztec in Mesoamerica and the Inca in Peru. These societies were characterized by a high degree of both specialization and social, economic, and political hierarchization, which are reflected in their monumental architecture and sculpture, which I would classify as more Archaic than Primitive in nature. Less known, but certainly not unknown to some artists, were many simpler pre-Columbian socio-cultural entities that did not have state-level government, monumental public works, written languages (which were, in any case, confined to the Maya), and other features of more complex societies. Notable among these were the Chrotega, Chiriqui, Chibcha, and many other chiefdoms that occupied the area between Mesoamerica and the northern Andes. If, in terms of their art, the Maya, Toltec, Aztec, and Inca should be grouped with such cultures as the Cambodian or Egyptian, they present an exception insofar as the social and religious fabric of all the pre-Columbian cultures was marked by certain characteristics otherwise generally associated with Primitive rather than court cultures. Since, however,

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modern artists knew little or nothing of this, and approached pre-Columbian cultures entirely through works of art (or their reproductions), these works entered modernism in the late nineteenth century not in the company of the tribal arts of Africa and Oceania (which were overlooked by artists at that time) but as Archaic arts, like those of the other court cultures such as the Egyptian that had passed for ‘‘primitive’’ to Gauguin and van Gogh. The ‘‘primitive’’ aspects of pre-Columbian technology, sociology, and communications account for the cultures’ still being sometimes classified as Primitive in terms of their art (which, at the Metropolitan Museum and most others, is in the same department as African and Oceanic art). Monumental Mesoamerican architecture and sculpture were visible in museums and world’s fairs (the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle had a reconstruction of an ‘‘Aztec House’’) and were of interest to artists generations before ‘‘art ne`gre’’ was known. Museum collections also contained a certain amount of material from the more remote, less centralized pre-Columbian regions, which art had somewhat more in common with tribal art. Yet how much of the latter was seen by artists, at least before the 1920s and 1930s, is open to question. Pre-Columbian art unquestionably had an influence on modern art, but most of that influence was from the Archaic sculpture of the Aztec, Maya, Toltec, and Olmec cultures. After Gauguin and van Gogh, interest in it is largely associated with the generation of the 1930s (although, on a conceptual more than an aesthetic level, pre-Columbian civilizations have been of interest to recent artists). The measure of how deep or widespread this influence was will require a study that can satisfactorily distinguish demonstrable influences from simple affinities. Barbara Braun, with whom I have consulted on the organization of ‘‘Primitivism’’ in Twentieth Century Art, is presently at work on a book about preColumbian sources of modern art. In addition to pre-Columbian objects, most natural history museums also possessed some specimens of the tribal arts of Mesoamerica and South America. Examples of these more recent objects are

the Mundurucu´ trophy head that Nolde included in his painting Masks. Picasso seems to have had conflicting emotions about what he called ‘‘I’art azte`que,’’ by which he meant the whole of pre-Columbian art as he knew it. My notes of conversations with him contain a reference to this art which I set down from memory as ‘‘boring, inflexible, too big . . . figures without invention.’’ However, he praised the beauty of an ‘‘Aztec head’’ in a conversation with Brassaı¨ (Picasso and Company, trans. Francis Price from the French Conversations avec Picasso [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966], p. 242). As recorded by Brassaı¨ (for May 18, 1960), Picasso and he were looking at an album of his photographs. The chapter in the album entitled ‘‘Primitive Images,’’ an ‘‘Aztec head,’’ Brassaı¨ tells us, ‘‘makes Picasso pause abruptly, and then he cries: ‘That is as rich as the fac¸ade of a cathedral.’ ’’ Picasso’s feeling for the inventiveness of tribal art was a response to a reality – African and Oceanic art is more variegated and inventive than pre-Columbian art – as is evident if one compares visits to Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropologia and the Oceanic wing of Berlin’s Museum fu¨r Vo¨lkerkunde, the two most beautiful and elaborate presentations of these respective arts that I know. But Picasso’s attitude was also partly a matter of his perspective, hence my phrase ‘‘perceived inventiveness.’’ What Picasso saw in the Trocade´ro and the curio shops as the art of ‘‘les ne`gres’’ was thought of by him as issuing, broadly speaking, from a single cultural entity, Africa, when in fact the variety of African styles is in part a function of an immense number of ethnic groups of different religions, languages, and traditions covering an area far more vast than Western Europe. Note that I differentiate here between the Old Kingdom, on the one hand, and the Middle Kingdom and New Empire, on the other. Old Kingdom art strikes me as very rich in invention. Such ‘‘academicism’’ (as opposed to simple ‘‘Traditionalism’’) as one finds in Egyptian art becomes a factor only after that period. Invention, however,

MODERNIST PRIMITIVISM: AN INTRODUCTION

is a quantitative aspect of a work of art and has no necessary relation to quality. To find more invention in the work of Old Kingdom artists than subsequent ones is not to deny the quality of the many masterpieces that come down to us from the Middle Kingdom and New Empire. ‘‘Classification stylistique du masque dan et gue´re´ de la Coˆte d’lvoire Occidentale (A.O.F.),’’ Medelingen van het Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden, no. 4. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1948). This impressive study, though published in 1948, was based upon research done prior to World War II. Goldwater (Primitivism in Modern Art, as in note 2, p. 150) quite rightly used ‘‘Archaic’’ to characterize the Iberian sculpture that interested Picasso and that subsequently ‘‘leads into the ‘Negro’ paintings.’’ Picasso’s interest in that sculpture was continuous with his even earlier interest in Egyptian art. The latter shares sufficient common denominators with certain non-Western court arts – at least as perceived by artists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – to warrant a global term; ‘‘Archaic,’’ I believe, serves this purpose better than does any other adjective. In the 1897–1904 Nouveau Larousse illustre´ (in which the word ‘‘primitivisme’’ made its first appearance, see pp. 130–1 and note 6), ‘‘primitive’’ was given (as both adjective and noun) sixteen different definitions, ranging from the algebraic and geological to the historical and ecclesiastical. Two of the sixteen were pejorative in connotation, notably the one marked ‘‘ethnological’’: ‘‘Les peuples qui sont encore au degre´ le moins avance´ de civilisation.’’ The fine-arts definition, given as a noun, was simply: ‘‘Artistes, peintres ou sculpteurs qui ont pre´ce´de´ les maıˆtres de la grande e´poque.’’ In conversation with Sabarte´s in his studio at villa Les Voiliers, Royan, 1940. (See Jaime Sabarte´s, Picasso, An Intimate Portrait, trans. Angel Flores from the Spanish Picasso, Retratos y Recuerdos [New York, 1949], p. 213.) ‘‘Gothic’’ was traditionally paired with ‘‘barbaric’’ in the classicist critique of

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Western art. Only in the nineteenth century did the word begin to attain respectability. The speed at which pejorative connotations can drop away from art-historical terms may be measured by the rapidity with which the designation ‘‘Impressionist’’ was accepted by the public and even the painters themselves, despite the fact, as Meyer Schapiro has observed, that it had pejorative connotations relating to artisanal house decoration (‘‘peinture d’impression’’). Robert Goldwater, ‘‘Judgments of Primitive Art, 1905–1965,’’ in Tradition and Creativity in Tribal Art, ed. Biebuyck, p. 25. Such candidates as ‘‘ethnic’’ and ‘‘indigenous’’ have been found to have so many art-historical and/or sociological drawbacks that no serious attempt has been made to substitute them for ‘‘primitive.’’ ‘‘The Dilemma Which Faces African Art,’’ The Listener, September 13, 1951, pp. 413–15. This is particularly true of African scholars, for the political reasons referred to in note 1. Structural Anthropology, trans. C. Jacobsen and B. G. Schoepf (London, 1963), pp. 101–02. ‘‘Simplicity’’ was an idea to which Picasso returned frequently in my discussions with him, sometimes in terms of his own work or (more often) that of other modern artists (e.g., Matisse) and on two occasions in connection with ‘‘art ne`gre.’’ It was clear that what he meant by this was not just the absence of elaborate effects but an economy that implied the distillation of complexities. ‘‘Simplicity’’ was generally used in his conversation as an antonym for the type of complexity characteristic of nineteenth-century salon illusionism. Picasso’s overall criticism of the received art of his youth was that artists had forgotten how to be simple. With Sabarte´s, as with me, he lauded Primitive artists for their simplicity. (See Sabarte´s, Picasso, An Intimate Portrait, e.g., note 20, p. 213.) The Michael C. Rockefeller wing of the Metropolitan Museum is the classic instance of this. It depended directly upon

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Nelson Rockefeller’s passion for tribal art, which had led to his earlier founding of the Museum of Primitive Art. This in turn depended on and followed from his taste for and involvement with twentiethcentury art and his knowledge of the importance of tribal art for many modern artists. Statement made to Florent Fels, in the course of successive conversations that led to the ‘‘interview’’ published by Fels (in Les Nouvelles litte´raires, artistiques et scientifiques, no. 42, August 4, 1923, p. 2): ‘‘Je vous ai de´ja` dit que je ne pouvais plus rien dire de ‘l’art ne`gre’. . . . C’est qu’il m’est devenu trop familier, les statues africaines qui traıˆnent un peu partout chez moi, sont plus des te´moins que des exemples.’’ Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art, p. xvi. Ibid., p. xxi. Ibid., p. 254. It is not by chance, as I will show, that the tribal form of modernist primitivism begins simultaneously with the inception of radical metamorphosis in modernist formal structures (in the Demoiselles of 1907). Thus it is that the very process of conceptualizing common to both Primitive and twentieth-century art made the latter’s debt to the former more difficult to identify. This would apply, in the case of the Easter Island stone, only to the surface that is relieved and painted . . . Unlike the stone engraved by Ernst, the Polynesian one is otherwise irregular in contour. From Maurer and Spies in conversation with the author. The first association of the Easter Island stone and work of Max Ernst that I know is in Lucy Lippard’s introductory essay ‘‘The Sculpture’’ for the exhibition catalog Max Ernst: Sculpture and Recent Painting, ed. Sam Hunter (New York: The Jewish Museum, March 3–April 17, 1966), pp. 38–39, where Ernst’s untitled painted granite sculpture of 1934 and the Easter Island stone carving of a birdheaded man are reproduced across from each other without commentary in the text.

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This is a universally shared assumption. We do not, however, possess enough tribal sculpture unquestionably predating colonial times – nor is that which we possess datable with sufficient accuracy – to know the extent to which tribal art altered over the centuries. As noted above, there is – and no doubt was – discourse among tribal peoples regarding at least certain aesthetic aspects of cult objects. The proof, however, that tribal artists solved aesthetic problems is in the objects themselves. That the majority of artists merely imitated received ideas is true for all cultures, though this fact is ably ‘‘masked’’ by many recent Western artists. What certainly differs is the degree of consciousness of the artists that they are, in fact, solving aesthetic problems. But the solutions of genius in the plastic arts are all essentially instinctual, regardless of such intellectual superstructures as might be built around them after the fact by the artists themselves, other artists, or critics and art historians. Primitive Religion (New York, 1924), p. 260. For the history of this mask, see Leon Siroto, ‘‘A Mask from the Congo,’’ Man 54, October 1954, pp. 149–50, and an unpublished memorandum on file in the collection of the Museum. ‘‘Tribal Art and Modern Man’’ in The Tenth Muse: Essays in Criticism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957). This essay originally appeared in The New Republic, September 1953. Few modern artists have been readers of ethnological books. Nolde and Kirchner seem to have consulted some of the specialized literature of their day, but Carl Einstein’s Negerplastik (1915), which approached tribal sculpture from a purely aesthetic point of view, was of far greater interest to them. Max Ernst was exceptional in having read very widely in ethnology. Picasso, on the other hand, gleaned his impressions of the function of tribal objects in the Muse´e d’Ethnographie du Trocade´ro from his imagination and from labels. Although Lydia Gasman

MODERNIST PRIMITIVISM: AN INTRODUCTION

suggests the contrary in her strongly argued dissertation ‘‘Mystery, Magic and Love in Picasso, 1925–1938’’ (Columbia University, 1981), pp. 476–82, Picasso surely did not read Mauss or other early twentieth-century French ethnologists. Indeed, scholarly literature, as he said to me with regard to art history, bored him. Moreover, his grasp of French in the crucial period (1907–08) was such that reading Mauss would have been beyond him. It is perfectly possible, nevertheless, that Picasso absorbed some much-generalized, watered-down versions of ethnological ideas through his passing contacts with Me´cislas Golberg and J. Deniker, and to that extent Gasman has a point. The ideas of the French school of ethnologists could well have been ‘‘in the air’’ of some Paris vanguard studios in much the same way as what passed for ‘‘Existentialism’’ – a studio catchword in the New York of the late forties and fifties – was known to the Abstract Expressionists. Picasso’s grasp of the nature of Primitive art was, however, unquestionably instinctive. 41 This is the underlying thesis of Robert Farris Thompson’s African Art in Motion: Icon and Art in the Collection of Katherine Coryton White, exhibition catalog (Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, and Los Angeles, Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, University of California, 1974). See esp. pp. xii–xiv, 1–5, 47–48, 111–12, 117, 152, 154. 42 The modern West is not the first society to prize the art of other cultures, but is the first to prize cultures which (unlike Antiquity in its relation to the Renaissance) are not consonant with its own received traditions, and the first simultaneously to value a large number of alien cultures whose value systems are mutually contradictory. 43 Susan Vogel carries the analogy between the sculpture of Africa and of classical antiquity even further than similar statements by Fagg (‘‘The African Artist’’) and others. In ‘‘The Buli Master and Other Hands’’ (Art in America, no. 5, May 1980, pp. 132–42) she states: ‘‘Traditional African art . . . is in fact a classical art in its insistence upon order and con-

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formity to tradition, and in its low regard for radical innovations and personal expression . . . African art’s concern with controlled emotion, balance and proportion, and its general restraint, make it fundamentally classical.’’ In African Aesthetics (Milan, forthcoming) she underlines the fact that African words for beauty used in connection with works of art have a moral connotation, as in the Greek kalokagathia, which means simultaneously the beautiful and the good. She also stresses ‘‘the cardinal value of moderation which underlies all African aesthetic systems,’’ which is the counterpart of the Greek ideal of sophrosyne. Loeb was responsible for financing important trips to Oceania, particularly Lake Sentani, by Jacques Viot. The extreme of these limits was set by Mannerist art, notably El Greco. The special popularity of El Greco in the first years of the century – he was singled out by such writers as Salmon, and the angularities and distortions of his work influenced Picasso in the Gosol work of 1906 and in the Demoiselles – reflects his proximity to primitivist concerns. Kirk Varnedoe has pointed out that the typological treatment of human proportions was virtually parodied in Nazi ‘‘science,’’ where the squat proportions of modern sculpture were compared with those of victims of elephantiasis (cf. Helmut Lehmann-Haupt, Art under a Dictatorship [New York, 1954], pp. 38–41). It is quite impossible – nor should one even try – to sort out the many different influences fused in the refining fire of creative work in such a way as to assign them specific degrees of importance. My own impression is that what I have called the ‘‘broomstick’’ sculptures – which Picasso actually whittled, according to Werner Spies, from the wood of picture stretchers – had an important meaning for Giacometti even though their influence would not be felt for many years. This type of Picasso carving (see William Rubin, ed., Picasso: A Retrospective [New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1980], p. 284) – elliptically related to a motif in nature rather than devised

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wholly from the imagination as was Giacometti’s art in 1931 – subsequently provided, along with Ce´zanne, models for the artist’s attenuated figures. If the latter were also as I believe – at least as regards their proportions – influenced by Archaic (Etruscan) and Primitive art, the same is probably also indirectly true of the Picasso figures, which were made at a

time when his larger sculptures reflected his interest in Baga sculpture. This is the burden of Le´vi-Strauss’s structuralist analysis of Primitive language, kinship patterns, and myth (see Structural Anthropology: the comparison of the workings of the ‘‘primitive’’ and modern mind on p. 230).

8 Defective Affinities ‘‘Primitivism’’ in 20th Century Art Arthur C. Danto

In one of its less felicitous efforts to instruct its readership in matters of high culture, Life once ran a photographic essay on Abstract Expressionism. It consisted of juxtapositions of paintings with objects in the world that resembled them, sometimes quite precisely: heavy black scaffolding silhouetted against a blank sky went with a painting by Franz Kline; tangles of waterweeds were put next to a Jackson Pollock; perhaps – my memory here grows vague – faded and peeling posters on a worn fence, a found collage, were placed beside a Willem de Kooning. All this was meant to reassure readers that these new and perplexing artists had not really abandoned the mimetic imperatives of Western art but had merely changed the subjects to be imitated, copying fragments of reality heretofore neglected. The implied rule of appreciation was to treat the paintings somewhat like the photographs of most-wanted criminals in the post office: carry the image around until you find something to match it, then collect your reward. It would be difficult to think of a more serious perversion of the art movement this essay set out to clarify. If the artists in question had not altogether forsaken what was referred to as The Image, they never used images in the man-

ner of exact resemblance that the Life juxtapositions required. I am reminded of that dim didactic effort by the publicity for ‘‘Primitivism’’ in 20th Century Art at the Museum of Modern Art, which sets beside one another examples of primitive and modern art: an elongated Nyamwezi effigy is yoked with Alberto Giacometti’s ‘‘Tall Figure’’ of 1949; a Zuni war god is put alongside Paul Klee’s ‘‘Mask of Fear’’ of 1932; a Mbuya mask from Zaire keeps company – both have concave noses! – with one of the heads from the right side of ‘‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,’’ and so on. All this is placed under the teasing title ‘‘Which is primitive?’’ The difficulty of answering that question on the basis of visual data alone – there are, admittedly, the resemblances, making the title teasing in a different way from, say, placing a wigwam beside the Chateau de Versailles – is doubtless meant to make the observer rethink his or her concept of primitivism. If those dark exotic cultures could produce objects indistinguishable from artworks produced by some of the most celebrated artists of our culture, well, either they are not so primitive or we are not so advanced as we might have thought. Nothing, I believe, could more seriously impede the understanding

From The Nation 37226. New York: 1984. Reprinted by permission of The Nation.

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either of primitive or of modern art than these inane pairings and the question they appear to raise. If there is a single lesson to be learned from recent philosophical analyses of art, it is that it is possible to imagine objects that are visually indistinguishable though one is a work of art and the other not; or where both might be works of art with such different meanings, styles, structures, references and thematizations that their perfect resemblance is incidental to any point save the demonstration of its irrelevance. That lesson could be nowhere more usefully kept in mind than in approaching so stupendously misconceived an exhibition as the present one, which obligingly deconstructs itself by making that very point midway through. Next to an Ibibio mask from Nigeria is installed Edvard Munch’s celebrated lithograph ‘‘The Shriek.’’ The print provides the visual equivalent of an auditory phenomenon in that we not only see that the woman on the bridge is screaming, we in effect see the scream, since the artist has transduced the landscape into a pattern of soundwaves. The mask, like Munch’s screamer, has an open mouth, and it is covered with a linear pattern which, if read like the one in the Munch, would yield the stunning interpretation that the mask bears a scream on its forehead. I heard a number of visitors express doubts about this pairing, but had they read the guide booklet, they would have seen it was made precisely to raise that doubt. ‘‘This association would be fortuitous on the formal level,’’ the booklet reads, ‘‘and badly misguided with regard to meaning.’’ But where in this entire display are the pairings not, in this fashion, fortuitous and misguided? Picasso, who collected and admired primitive objects, certainly gave the heads of his crouching demoiselles the power of African masks, but the connotations of primitiveness available to him were scarcely available to the mask makers themselves, for whom masks meant whatever they did mean in the magical transactions of tribal existence, but certainly not whatever heart of darkness Picasso may have meant to paint in a harlot’s corner. He was not painting pictures of masks in the way in which Max Weber painted a Congo figure in one of the still lifes shown, one of the few cases where there is a convincing but almost point-

less connection between a primitive and a modern work: the former is the subject of the latter, as if it were a plate of apples or a vase. Nor was he simply borrowing exotic forms, as Victor Brauner did in an awful 1934 canvas which takes over a frightening image of the God A’a from the Austral Islands. Mostly, as with the Picasso, we are told of ‘‘affinities,’’ ‘‘prototypes,’’ ‘‘influences,’’ ‘‘reflections,’’ ‘‘compelling resemblances,’’ ‘‘uncanny similarities’’ and similar tenuous relationships conveyed with the thin and dreary lexicon of the art-appreciation course. One watches the visitors playing the imposed game of resemblances, pointing with excitement to the meaningless similarities the framers of the exhibition have assembled for their edification. It is an unhappy experience to observe these hopeful pilgrims coerced by as acute an example of museological manipulation as I can think of. The only outcome can be a confusion as deep as that which underlies the entire array. I don’t think we really know the first thing about primitive art, not even whether it is right to treat it as art, however handsome and strong its objects may be. We do not know whether there is sufficient parity of purpose and content among all cultures identified as ‘‘primitive’’ to justify bracketing them together under an overarching designation. Indeed, this habit of identification may be as vivid a transport of cultural imperialism as the concept of Orientalism is according to Edward Said’s famous polemic. In one room of the show there is a case with figures from New Guinea, Zambia, Zaire, Nigeria. But what do they have in common, really, with one another, or with objects from Easter Island or the American Southwest or Papua or New Ireland or the Arctic? One may speculate that whatever ends they serve will not be esthetic, or will rarely be that, and that they typically exist in a universe of forces, powers, gods and magic with which they may put their users in touch. There is in this respect a possible ‘‘affinity’’ with some Western works, Byzantine icons, for example, in which the saints were believed not so much to be depicted as to be actually and mysteriously present. Such a concept of presentness contrasts sharply with the distancing manner of representation that animates a good bit of Western art, including most of the modern

DEFECTIVE AFFINITIES

works in the exhibition. Primitive art, if indeed primitive in this sense, was not meant for audiences, viewers, dealers and collectors, but for participants and celebrants. The objects are instruments of ritual existence to which the suitable response might be a dance or a howl, not the peering and pointing that goes on in museums. In saying they are not works of art I do not mean that they cannot be treated esthetically but that treating them so is at odds with their raison d’eˆtre. The cultures they came from almost certainly lacked a Western concept of art, and these things answered to something deeper and – well – more primitive than art as art can tap. In a sense, their appropriate habitat in our culture is the glass case of the ethnographic museum, where they squat in a kind of quarantine that underscores their aboriginal dangerousness. The only primitive pieces that look at home in MOMA just now are some exhibited in a case brought over from the Muse´e d’Ethnographie de Trocade´ro to show us where Picasso – ‘‘in all likelihood’’ – made his acquaintance with objects that expressed? influenced? stimulated? reinforced? his own use of primitive motifs. Liberated from their cases, allowed to be perceived as ‘‘art objects,’’ they become decorative touches destined for tasteful interiors, as in the failed Rockefeller Wing of the Metropolitan Museum, which looks like a detached segment of Bloomingdale’s. Because we only know how to treat these objects as artifacts or bibelots, they are crudely manhandled to suit our own concepts of art: as expressive objects or, more often, as objects which satisfy the ever-ready formalistic premises, enabling curators to do violence to things that have no real business with one another just because they may look enough alike to be perceived as exercises in good design. A section of this exhibition is called ‘‘Affinities,’’ grouping objects together with reference to the shallowest criteria of similitude, like seeing faces in clouds. There is no other way to describe wrestling into contiguity a Miro´ and an Eskimo mask. Under formalist principles, all works are brothers and contemporaries, but at the cost of sacrificing whatever makes them interesting or vital or important. The idea of such an exhibition is, of course, a splendid one. There is little doubt that primi-

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tivism plays the role in twentieth-century art that Orientalism did in the nineteenth century or that classical forms did in the Renaissance. But then what must be shown is not adventitious visual congruities but what these objects meant to artists and how, not especially caring to understand them, they made them their own. Sometimes the impact was moral and transformative, if the same impulses that drove Gauguin to employ aboriginal forms explain as well his going native in Tahiti. Sometimes the connection is more narrowly artistic. There is the fascinating question of why Picasso and not Braque, both shown here in wonderful old photographs with some of the things they collected, used primitive objects to recognizable artistic purpose. Here one must conjecture, but the way the primitive masks rearrange features of faces, leaving them all the while identifiable as faces, must have been a powerful stimulus to the art of rearrangement and reinvention that is the mark of Picasso. And perhaps the license furnished by the primitives must enter partially into the explanation of Cubism, even when direct citation of primitive orderings is absent, as from the still lifes and interiors of Braque, who may after all have responded to the same stimuli as Picasso. But to show such things requires something more than finding explicit counterparts for the eye to make out, especially because they may only conceal the vast distances that separate primitive from modern object. Giacometti, for example, did make totemiclooking objects. But the thin presence forced here to share space with the marvelous Nyamwezi figure surely derives from different formal impulses, even if Giacometti ‘‘probably saw this particular object.’’ His attenuated figures are drawn up out of their heavy feet in an almost godlike gesture making man out of earth, and possess the verticality of cathedrals. ‘‘Primitivism’’ in 20th Century Art is a failed product of misapplied ingenuity, a ransacking of the ethnographic collections to compose parallels which yield a triple misunderstanding, first of primitive art, then of modern art, then of the relationships between them. A three-way failure in a show meant to be educational raises serious doubts about how qualified MOMA is to use its exceptional resources to carry out its didactic aims.

9 Histories of the Tribal and the Modern James Clifford

You do not stand in one place to watch a masquerade. An Igbo Saying During the winter of 1984–85 one could encounter tribal objects in an unusual number of locations around New York City. This chapter surveys a half-dozen, focusing on the most controversial: the major exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), ‘‘ ‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern.’’ The chapter’s ‘‘ethnographic present’’ is late December 1984. The ‘‘tribal’’ objects gathered on West Fiftythird Street have been around. They are travelers – some arriving from folklore and ethnographic museums in Europe, others from art galleries and private collections. They have traveled first class to the Museum of Modern Art, elaborately crated and insured for important sums. Previous accommodations have been less luxurious: some were stolen, others ‘‘purchased’’ for a song by colonial administrators, travelers, anthropologists, missionaries, sailors in African ports. These nonWestern objects have been by turns curiosities, ethnographic specimens, major art creations. After 1900 they began to turn up in European flea markets, thereafter moving between avant-garde studios and collectors’ apart-

ments. Some came to rest in the unheated basements or ‘‘laboratories’’ of anthropology museums, surrounded by objects made in the same region of the world. Others encountered odd fellow travelers, lighted and labeled in strange display cases. Now on West Fiftythird Street they intermingle with works by European masters – Picasso, Giacometti, Brancusi, and others. A three-dimensional Eskimo mask with twelve arms and a number of holes hangs beside a canvas on which Joan Miro´ has painted colored shapes. The people in New York look at the two objects and see that they are alike. Travelers tell different stories in different places, and on West Fifty-third Street an origin story of modernism is featured. Around 1910 Picasso and his cohort suddenly, intuitively recognize that ‘‘primitive’’ objects are in fact powerful ‘‘art.’’ They collect, imitate, and are affected by these objects. Their own work, even when not directly influenced, seems oddly reminiscent of non-Western forms. The modern and the primitive converse across the centuries and continents. At the Museum of Modern Art an exact history is told featuring

From The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 189–214, 349–369.

HISTORIES OF THE TRIBAL AND THE MODERN

individual artists and objects, their encounters in specific studios at precise moments. Photographs document the crucial influences of nonWestern artifacts on the pioneer modernists. This focused story is surrounded and infused with another – a loose allegory of relationship centering on the word affinity. The word is a kinship term, suggesting a deeper or more natural relationship than mere resemblance or juxtaposition. It connotes a common quality or essence joining the tribal to the modern. A Family of Art is brought together, global, diverse, richly inventive, and miraculously unified, for every object displayed on West Fifty-third Street looks modern. The exhibition at MOMA is historical and didactic. It is complemented by a comprehensive, scholarly catalogue, which includes divergent views of its topic and in which the show’s organizers, William Rubin and Kirk Varnedoe, argue at length its underlying premises (Rubin 1984). One of the virtues of an exhibition that blatantly makes a case or tells a story is that it encourages debate and makes possible the suggestion of other stories. Thus in what follows different histories of the tribal and the modern will be proposed in response to the sharply focused history on display at the Museum of Modern Art. But before that history can be seen for what it is, however – a specific story that excludes other stories – the universalizing allegory of affinity must be cleared away. This allegory, the story of the Modernist Family of Art, is not rigorously argued at MOMA. (That would require some explicit form of either an archetypal or structural analysis.) The allegory is, rather, built into the exhibition’s form, featured suggestively in its publicity, left uncontradicted, repetitiously asserted – ‘‘Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern.’’ The allegory has a hero, whose virtuoso work, an exhibit caption tells us, contains more affinities with the tribal than that of any other pioneer modernist. These affinities ‘‘measure the depth of Picasso’s grasp of the informing principles of tribal sculpture, and reflect his profound identity of spirit with the tribal peoples.’’ Modernism is thus presented as a search for ‘‘informing principles’’ that transcend culture, politics, and history. Beneath this generous umbrella the tribal is modern and the modern more richly, more diversely human.

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The power of the affinity idea is such (it becomes almost self-evident in the MOMA juxtapositions) that it is worth reviewing the major objections to it. Anthropologists, long familiar with the issue of cultural diffusion versus independent invention, are not likely to find anything special in the similarities between selected tribal and modern objects. An established principle of anthropological comparative method asserts that the greater the range of cultures, the more likely one is to find similar traits. MOMA’s sample is very large, embracing African, Oceanian, North American, and Arctic ‘‘tribal’’ groups.1 A second principle, that of the ‘‘limitation of possibilities,’’ recognizes that invention, while highly diverse, is not infinite. The human body, for example, with its two eyes, four limbs, bilateral arrangement of features, front and back, and so on, will be represented and stylized in a limited number of ways.2 There is thus a priori no reason to claim evidence for affinity (rather than mere resemblance or coincidence) because an exhibition of tribal works that seem impressively ‘‘modern’’ in style can be gathered. An equally striking collection could be made demonstrating sharp dissimilarities between tribal and modern objects. The qualities most often said to link these objects are their ‘‘conceptualism’’ and ‘‘abstraction’’ (but a very long and ultimately incoherent list of shared traits, including ‘‘magic,’’ ‘‘ritualism,’’ ‘‘environmentalism,’’ use of ‘‘natural’’ materials, and so on, can be derived from the show and especially from its catalogue). Actually the tribal and modern artifacts are similar only in that they do not feature the pictorial illusionism or sculptural naturalism that came to dominate Western European art after the Renaissance. Abstraction and conceptualism are, of course, pervasive in the arts of the non-Western World. To say that they share with modernism a rejection of certain naturalist projects is not to show anything like an affinity.3 Indeed the ‘‘tribalism’’ selected in the exhibition to resemble modernism is itself a construction designed to accomplish the task of resemblance. Ife and Benin sculptures, highly naturalistic in style, are excluded from the ‘‘tribal’’ and placed in a somewhat arbitrary category of ‘‘court’’ society (which does not, however, include large chieftanships). Moreover, pre-Columbian

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works, though they have a place in the catalogue, are largely omitted from the exhibition. One can question other selections and exclusions that result in a collection of only ‘‘modern’’-looking tribal objects. Why, forexample, are there relatively few ‘‘impure’’ objects constructed from the debris of colonial culture contacts? And is there not an overall bias toward clean, abstract forms as against rough or crude work? The ‘‘Affinities’’ room of the exhibition is an intriguing but entirely problematic exercise in formal mix-and-match. The short introductory text begins well: ‘‘affinities presents a group of tribal objects notable for their appeal to modern taste.’’ Indeed this is all that can rigorously be said of the objects in this room. The text continues, however, ‘‘Selected pairings of modern and tribal objects demonstrate common denominators of these arts that are independent of direct influence.’’ The phrase common denominators implies something more systematic than intriguing resemblance. What can it possibly mean? This introductory text, cited in its entirety, is emblematic of the MOMA undertaking as a whole. Statements carefully limiting its purview (specifying a concern only with modernist primitivism and not with tribal life) coexist with frequent implications of something more. The affinity idea itself is wide-ranging and promiscuous, as are allusions to universal human capacities retrieved in the encounter between modern and tribal or invocations of the expansive human mind – the healthy capacity of modernist consciousness to question its limits and engage otherness.4 Nowhere, however, does the exhibition or catalogue underline a more disquieting quality of modernism: its taste for appropriating or redeeming otherness, for constituting nonWestern arts in its own image, for discovering universal, ahistorical ‘‘human’’ capacities. The search for similarity itself requires justification, for even if one accepts the limited task of exploring ‘‘modernist primitivism,’’ why could one not learn as much about Picasso’s or Ernst’s creative processes by analyzing the differences separating their art from tribal models or by tracing the ways their art moved away from, gave new twists to, nonWestern forms?5 This side of the process is unexplored in the exhibition. The prevailing

viewpoint is made all too clear in one of the ‘‘affinities’’ featured on the catalogue’s cover, a juxtaposition of Picasso’s Girl before a Mirror (1932) with a Kwakiutl half-mask, a type quite rare among Northwest Coast creations (figure 9.1). Its task here is simply to produce an effect of resemblance (an effect actually created by the camera angle). In this exhibition a universal message, ‘‘Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern,’’ is produced by careful selection and the maintenance of a specific angle of vision. The notion of affinity, an allegory of kinship, has an expansive, celebratory task to perform. The affinities shown at MOMA are all on modernist terms. The great modernist ‘‘pioneers’’ (and their museum) are shown promoting formerly despised tribal ‘‘fetishes’’ or mere ethnographic ‘‘specimens’’ to the status of high art and in the process discovering new dimensions of their (‘‘our’’) creative potential. The capacity of art to transcend its cultural and historical context is asserted repeatedly (Rubin 1984: 73; this vol., p. 139). In the catalogue Rubin tends to be more interested in a recovery of elemental expressive modes, whereas Varnedoe stresses the rational, forward-looking intellect (which he opposes to an unhealthy primitivism, irrational and escapist). Both celebrate the generous spirit of modernism, pitched now at a global scale but excluding – as we shall see – Third World modernisms. At West Fifty-third Street modernist primitivism is a going Western concern. It is, Varnedoe tells us, summing up in the last sentence of the catalogue’s second volume, ‘‘a process of revolution that begins and ends in modern culture, and because of that – not in spite of it – can continually expand and deepen our contact with that which is remote and different from us, and continually threaten, challenge, and reform our sense of self’’ (Rubin 1984: 682). A skeptic may doubt the ability of the modernist primitivism exhibited at MOMA to threaten or challenge what is by now a thoroughly institutionalized system of aesthetic (and market) value; but it is appropriate, and in a sense rigorous, that this massive collection spanning the globe should end with the word self. Indeed an unintended effect of the exhibition’s comprehensive catalogue is to show once and for all the incoherence of the modern

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Figure 9.1 The making of an affinity. (a) Pablo Picasso, Girl before a Mirror, 1932 (detail), oil on canvas. Courtesy the Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Mrs Simon Guggenheim. (b) Kwakiutl mask, painted wood. Photograph by Gisela Oestreich. Courtesy Museum fu¨r Vo¨lkerkunde. (c) Picasso, Girl before a Mirror (detail). This detail from the Picasso painting and the Kwakiutl mask were juxtaposed on the cover of the exhibition catalog Primitivism in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and Modern, vol. 1.

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Rorschach of ‘‘the primitive.’’ From Robert Goldwater’s formalism to the transforming ‘‘magic’’ of Picasso (according to Rubin); from Le´vy-Bruhl’s mystical mentalite´ primitive (influencing a generation of modern artists and writers) to Le´vi-Strauss’s pense´e sauvage (resonating with ‘‘systems art’’ and the cybernetic binarism of the minimalists); from Dubuffet’s fascination with insanity and the childish to the enlightened rational sense of a Gauguin, the playful experimentalism of a Picasso or the new ‘‘scientific’’ spirit of a James Turrell (the last three approved by Varnedoe but challenged by Rosalind Krauss, who is more attached to Bataille’s decapitation, bassesse, and bodily deformations6); from fetish to icon and back again; from aboriginal bark paintings (Klee) to massive pre-Columbian monuments (Henry Moore); from weightless Eskimo masks to Stonehenge – the catalogue succeeds in demonstrating not any essential affinity between tribal and modern or even a coherent modernist attitude toward the primitive but rather the restless desire and power of the modern West to collect the world. Setting aside the allegory of affinity, we are left with a ‘‘factual,’’ narrowly focused history – that of the ‘‘discovery’’ of primitive art by Picasso and his generation. It is tempting to say that the ‘‘History’’ section of the exhibition is, after all, the rigorous part and the rest merely suggestive association. Undeniably a great deal of scholarly research in the best Kunstgeschichte tradition has been brought to bear on this specific history. Numerous myths are usefully questioned; important facts are specified (what mask was in whose studio when); and the pervasiveness of tribal influences on early modernist art – European, English, and American – is shown more amply than ever before. The catalogue has the merit of including a number of articles that dampen the celebratory mood of the exhibition: notably the essay by Krauss and useful contributions by Christian Feest, Philippe Peltier, and Jean-Louis Paudrat detailing the arrival of non-Western artifacts in Europe. These historical articles illuminate the less edifying imperialist contexts that surrounded the ‘‘discovery’’ of tribal objects by modernist artists at the moment of high colonialism.

If we ignore the ‘‘Affinities’’ room at MOMA, however, and focus on the ‘‘serious’’ historical part of the exhibition, new critical questions emerge. What is excluded by the specific focus of the history? Isn’t this factual narration still infused with the affinity allegory, since it is cast as a story of creative genius recognizing the greatness of tribal works, discovering common artistic ‘‘informing principles’’? Could the story of this intercultural encounter be told differently? It is worth making the effort to extract another story from the materials in the exhibition – a history not of redemption or of discovery but of reclassification. This other history assumes that ‘‘art’’ is not universal but is a changing Western cultural category. The fact that rather abruptly, in the space of a few decades, a large class of nonWestern artifacts came to be redefined as art is a taxonomic shift that requires critical historical discussion, not celebration. That this construction of a generous category of art pitched at a global scale occurred just as the planet’s tribal peoples came massively under European political, economic, and evangelical dominion cannot be irrelevant. But there is no room for such complexities at the MOMA show. Obviously the modernist appropriation of tribal productions as art is not simply imperialist. The project involves too many strong critiques of colonialist, evolutionist assumptions. As we shall see, though, the scope and underlying logic of the ‘‘discovery’’ of tribal art reproduces hegemonic Western assumptions rooted in the colonial and neocolonial epoch. Picasso, Le´ger, Apollinaire, and many others came to recognize the elemental, ‘‘magical’’ power of African sculptures in a period of growing ne´grophilie, a context that would see the irruption onto the European scene of other evocative black figures: the jazzman, the boxer (Al Brown), the sauvage Josephine Baker. To tell the history of modernism’s recognition of African ‘‘art’’ in this broader context would raise ambiguous and disturbing questions about aesthetic appropriation of non-Western others, issues of race, gender, and power. This other story is largely invisible at MOMA, given the exhibition’s narrow focus. It can be glimpsed only in the small section devoted to ‘‘La cre´ation du monde,’’ the African cosmogony staged in 1923 by Le´ger, Cendrars, and Milhaud, and in the broadly pitched if still

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largely uncritical catalogue article by Laura Rosenstock devoted to it. Overall one would be hard pressed to deduce from the exhibition that all the enthusiasm for things ne`gre, for the ‘‘magic’’ of African art, had anything to do with race. Art in this focused history has no essential link with coded perceptions of black bodies – their vitalism, rhythm, magic, erotic power, etc. – as seen by whites. The modernism represented here is concerned only with artistic invention, a positive category separable from a negative primitivism of the irrational, the savage, the base, the flight from civilization. A different historical focus might bring a photograph of Josephine Baker into the vicinity of the African statues that were exciting the Parisian avant-garde in the 1910s and 1920s; but such a juxtaposition would be unthinkable in the MOMA history, for it evokes different

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affinities from those contributing to the category of great art (figure 9.2). The black body in Paris of the twenties was an ideological artifact. Archaic Africa (which came to Paris by way of the future – that is, America) was sexed, gendered, and invested with ‘‘magic’’ in specific ways. Standard poses adopted by ‘‘La Bakaire,’’ like Le´ger’s designs and costumes, evoked a recognizable ‘‘Africanity’’ – the naked form emphasizing pelvis and buttocks, a segmented stylization suggesting a strangely mechanical vitality. The inclusion of so ideologically loaded a form as the body of Josephine Baker among the figures classified as art on West Fifty-third Street would suggest a different account of modernist primitivism, a different analysis of the category ne`gre in l’art ne`gre, and an exploration of the ‘‘taste’’ that was something more than just a backdrop for

Figure 9.2 Affinities not included in the MOMA ‘‘Primitivism’’ show. 1. Bodies. (a) Josephine Baker in a famous pose, Paris ca. 1929. Courtesy the Granger Collection, New York. (b) Wooden figure (Chokwe, Angola). Published in Carl Einstein, Negerplastik, 1915; (c) Fernand Le´ger, costume design for The Creation of the World, 1922–23. Courtesy of the Kay Hillman Collection, New York

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the discovery of tribal art in the opening decades of this century.7 Such a focus would treat art as a category defined and redefined in specific historical contexts and relations of power. Seen from this angle and read somewhat against the grain, the MOMA exhibition documents a taxonomic moment: the status of non-Western objects and ‘‘high’’ art are importantly redefined, but there is nothing permanent or transcendent about the categories at stake. The appreciation and interpretation of tribal objects takes place within a modern ‘‘system of objects’’ which confers value on certain things and withholds it from others (Baudrillard 1968). Modernist primitivism, with its claims to deeper humanist sympathies and a wider aesthetic sense, goes hand-in-hand with a developed market in tribal art and with definitions of artistic and cultural authenticity that are now widely contested. Since 1900 non-Western objects have generally been classified as either primitive art or ethnographic specimens. Before the modernist revolution associated with Picasso and the simultaneous rise of cultural anthropology associated with Boas and Malinowski, these objects were differently sorted – as antiquities, exotic curiosities, orientalia, the remains of early man, and so on. With the emergence of twentiethcentury modernism and anthropology figures formerly called ‘‘fetishes’’ (to take just one class of object) became works either of ‘‘sculpture’’ or of ‘‘material culture.’’ The distinction between the aesthetic and the anthropological was soon institutionally reinforced. In art galleries non-Western objects were displayed for their formal and aesthetic qualities; in ethnographic museums they were represented in a ‘‘cultural’’ context. In the latter an African statue was a ritual object belonging to a distinct group; it was displayed in ways that elucidated its use, symbolism, and function. The institutionalized distinction between aesthetic and anthropological discourses took form during the years documented at MOMA, years that saw the complementary discovery of primitive ‘‘art’’ and of an anthropological concept of ‘‘culture’’ (Williams 1966).8 Though there was from the start (and continues to be) a regular traffic between the two domains, this distinction is unchallenged in the exhibition. At MOMA treating tribal objects as art means excluding

the original cultural context. Consideration of context, we are firmly told at the exhibition’s entrance, is the business of anthropologists. Cultural background is not essential to correct aesthetic appreciation and analysis: good art, the masterpiece, is universally recognizable.9 The pioneer modernists themselves knew little or nothing of these objects’ ethnographic meaning. What was good enough for Picasso is good enough for MOMA. Indeed an ignorance of cultural context seems almost a precondition for artistic appreciation. In this object system a tribal piece is detached from one milieu in order to circulate freely in another, a world of art – of museums, markets, and connoisseurship. Since the early years of modernism and cultural anthropology non-Western objects have found a ‘‘home’’ either within the discourses and institutions of art or within those of anthropology. The two domains have excluded and confirmed each other, inventively disputing the right to contextualize, to represent these objects. As we shall see, the aesthetic-anthropological opposition is systematic, presupposing an underlying set of attitudes toward the ‘‘tribal.’’ Both discourses assume a primitive world in need of preservation, redemption, and representation. The concrete, inventive existence of tribal cultures and artists is suppressed in the process of either constituting authentic, ‘‘traditional’’ worlds or appreciating their products in the timeless category of ‘‘art.’’ Nothing on West Fifty-third Street suggests that good tribal art is being produced in the 1980s. The non-Western artifacts on display are located either in a vague past (reminiscent of the label ‘‘nineteenth-twentieth century’’ that accompanies African and Oceanian pieces in the Metropolitan Museum’s Rockefeller Wing) or in a purely conceptual space defined by ‘‘primitive’’ qualities: magic, ritualism, closeness to nature, mythic or cosmological aims (see Rubin 1984:10, 661–689). In this relegation of the tribal or primitive to either a vanishing past or an ahistorical, conceptual present, modernist appreciation reproduces common ethnographic categories. The same structure can be seen in the Hall of Pacific Peoples, dedicated to Margaret Mead, at the American Museum of Natural History (figure 9.3 (b) ). This new permanent hall is a

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Figure 9.3 Affinities not included in the MOMA ‘‘Primitivism’’ show. 2. Collections. (a) Interior of Chief Shake’s house, Wrangel, Alaska, 1909. Neg. no. 46123. Photograph by H. I. Smith. Courtesy Department Library Services, American Museum of Natural History, New York. (b) View of the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples. Courtesy Department of Library Services, American Museum of Natural History

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superbly refurbished anthropological stopping place for non-Western objects. In Rotunda (December 1984), the museum’s publication, an article announcing the installation contains the following paragraph: Margaret Mead once referred to the cultures of Pacific peoples as ‘‘a world that once was and now is no more.’’ Prior to her death in 1978 she approved the basic plans for the new Hall of Pacific Peoples. (p. 1)

We are offered treasures saved from a destructive history, relics of a vanishing world. Visitors to the installation (and especially members of present Pacific cultures) may find a ‘‘world that is no more’’ more appropriately evoked in two charming display cases just outside the hall. It is the world of a dated anthropology. Here one finds a neatly typed page of notes from Mead’s much-disputed Samoan research, a picture of the fieldworker interacting ‘‘closely’’ with Melanesians (she is carrying a child on her back), a box of brightly colored discs and triangles once used for psychological testing, a copy of Mead’s column in Redbook. In the Hall of Pacific Peoples artifacts suggesting change and syncretism are set apart in a small display entitled ‘‘Culture Contact.’’ It is noted that Western influence and indigenous response have been active in the Pacific since the eighteenth century. Yet few signs of this involvement appear anywhere else in the large hall, despite the fact that many of the objects were made in the past 150 years in situations of contact, and despite the fact that the museum’s ethnographic explanations reflect quite recent research on the cultures of the Pacific. The historical contacts and impurities that are part of ethnographic work – and that may signal the life, not the death, of societies – are systematically excluded. The tenses of the hall’s explanatory captions are revealing. A recent color photograph of a Samoan kava ceremony is accompanied by the words: ‘‘status and rank were [sic] important features of Samoan society,’’ a statement that will seem strange to anyone who knows how important they remain in Samoa today. Elsewhere in the hall a black-and-white photograph of an Australian Arunta woman and child, taken around 1900 by the pioneer ethnographers Spencer and Gillen, is captioned

in the present tense. Aboriginals apparently must always inhabit a mythic time. Many other examples of temporal incoherence could be cited – old Sepik objects described in the present, recent Trobriand photos labeled in the past, and so forth. The point is not simply that the image of Samoan kava drinking and status society presented here is a distortion or that in most of the Hall of Pacific Peoples history has been airbrushed out. (No Samoan men at the kava ceremony are wearing wristwatches; Trobriand face painting is shown without noting that it is worn at cricket matches.) Beyond such questions of accuracy is an issue of systematic ideological coding. To locate ‘‘tribal’’ peoples in a nonhistorical time and ourselves in a different, historical time is clearly tendentious and no longer credible (Fabian 1983). This recognition throws doubt on the perception of a vanishing tribal world, rescued, made valuable and meaningful, either as ethnographic ‘‘culture’’ or as primitive/modern ‘‘art.’’ For in this temporal ordering the real or genuine life of tribal works always precedes their collection, an act of salvage that repeats an all-too-familiar story of death and redemption. In this pervasive allegory the non-Western world is always vanishing and modernizing – as in Walter Benjamin’s allegory of modernity, the tribal world is conceived as a ruin (Benjamin 1977). At the Hall of Pacific Peoples or the Rockefeller Wing the actual ongoing life and ‘‘impure’’ inventions of tribal peoples are erased in the name of cultural or artistic ‘‘authenticity.’’ Similarly at MOMA the production of tribal ‘‘art’’ is entirely in the past. Turning up in the flea markets and museums of late nineteenth-century Europe, these objects are destined to be aesthetically redeemed, given new value in the object system of a generous modernism. The story retold at MOMA, the struggle to gain recognition for tribal art, for its capacity ‘‘like all great art . . . to show images of man that transcend the particular lives and times of their creators’’ (Rubin 1984: 73; this vol.: p. 139), is taken for granted at another stopping place for tribal travelers in Manhattan, the Center for African Art on East Sixty-eighth Street. Susan Vogel, the executive director, proclaims in her introduction to the catalogue of its inaugural

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exhibition, ‘‘African Masterpieces from the Muse´e de l’Homme,’’ that the ‘‘aesthetic-anthropological debate’’ has been resolved. It is now widely accepted that ‘‘ethnographic specimens’’ can be distinguished from ‘‘works of art’’ and that within the latter category a limited number of ‘‘masterpieces’’ are to be found. Vogel correctly notes that the aesthetic recognition of tribal objects depends on changes in Western taste. For example it took the work of Francis Bacon, Lucas Samaras, and others to make it possible to exhibit as art ‘‘rough and horrifying [African] works as well as refined and lyrical ones’’ (Vogel 1985:11). Once recognized, though, art is apparently art. Thus the selection at the Center is made on aesthetic criteria alone. A prominent placard affirms that the ability of these objects ‘‘to transcend the limitations of time and place, to speak to us across time and culture . . . places them among the highest points of human achievement. It is as works of art that we regard them here and as a testament to the greatness of their creators.’’ There could be no clearer statement of one side of the aesthetic anthropological ‘‘debate’’ (or better, system). On the other (anthropological) side, across town, the Hall of Pacific Peoples presents collective rather than individual productions – the work of ‘‘cultures.’’ But within an institutionalized polarity interpenetration of discourses becomes possible. Science can be aestheticized, art made anthropological. At the American Museum of Natural History ethnographic exhibits have come increasingly to resemble art shows. Indeed the Hall of Pacific Peoples represents the latest in aestheticized scientism. Objects are displayed in ways that highlight their formal properties. They are suspended in light, held in space by the ingenious use of Plexiglas. (One is suddenly astonished by the sheer weirdness of a small Oceanic figurine perched atop a three-foot-tall transparent rod.) While these artistically displayed artifacts are scientifically explained, an older, functionalist attempt to present an integrated picture of specific societies or culture areas is no longer seriously pursued. There is an almost dadaist quality to the labels on eight cases devoted to Australian aboriginal society (I cite the complete series in order): ‘‘ceremony, spirit figure, magicians and sorcerers, sacred art, spear throwers, stone axes

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and knives, women, boomerangs.’’ Elsewhere the hall’s pieces of culture have been recontextualized within a new cybernetic, anthropological discourse. For instance flutes and stringed instruments are captioned: ‘‘music is a system of organized sound in man’s [sic] aural environment’’ or nearby: ‘‘communication is an important function of organized sound.’’ In the anthropological Hall of Pacific Peoples non-Western objects still have primarily scientific value. They are in addition beautiful.10 Conversely, at the Center for African Art artifacts are essentially defined as ‘‘masterpieces,’’ their makers as great artists. The discourse of connoisseurship reigns. Yet once the story of art told at MOMA becomes dogma, it is possible to reintroduce and co-opt the discourse of ethnography. At the Center tribal contexts and functions are described along with individual histories of the objects on display. Now firmly classified as masterpieces, African objects escape the vague, ahistorical location of the ‘‘tribal’’ or the ‘‘primitive.’’ The catalogue, a sort of catalogue raisonne´, discusses each work intensively. The category of the masterpiece individuates: the pieces on display are not typical; some are one of a kind. The famous Fon god of war or the Abomey shark-man lend themselves to precise histories of individual creation and appropriation in visible colonial situations. Captions specify which Griaule expedition to West Africa in the 1930s acquired each Dogon statue (see Leiris 1934 and Chapter 2 [in Clifford 1988]). We learn in the catalogue that a superb Bamileke mother and child was carved by an artist named Kwayep, that the statue was bought by the colonial administrator and anthropologist Henri Labouret from King N’Jike. While tribal names predominate at MOMA, the Rockefeller Wing, and the American Museum of Natural History, here personal names make their appearance. In the ‘‘African Masterpieces’’ catalogue we learn of an ethnographer’s excitement on finding a Dogon hermaphrodite figure that would later become famous. The letter recording this excitement, written by Denise Paulme in 1935, serves as evidence of the aesthetic concerns of many early ethnographic collectors (Vogel and N’diaye 1985:122). These individuals, we are told, could intuitively distinguish masterpieces

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from mere art or ethnographic specimens. (Actually many of the individual ethnographers behind the Muse´e de l’Homme collection, such as Paulme, Michel Leiris, Marcel Griaule, and Andre´ Schaeffner, were friends and collaborators of the same ‘‘pioneer modernist’’ artists who, in the story told at MOMA, constructed the category of primitive art. Thus the intuitive aesthetic sense in question is the product of a historically specific milieu. See Chapter 4 [in Clifford 1988].) The ‘‘African Masterpieces’’ catalogue insists that the founders of the Muse´e de l’Homme were art connoisseurs, that this great anthropological museum never treated all its contents as ‘‘ethnographic specimens.’’ The Muse´e de l’Homme was and is secretly an art museum (Vogel 1985:11). The taxonomic split between art and artifact is thus healed, at least for self-evident ‘‘masterpieces,’’ entirely in terms of the aesthetic code. Art is art in any museum. In this exhibition, as opposed to the others in New York, information can be provided about each individual masterpiece’s history. We learn that a Kiwarani antelope mask studded with mirrors was acquired at a dance given for the colonial administration in Mali on Bastille Day 1931. A rabbit mask was purchased from Dogon dancers at a gala soire´e in Paris during the Colonial Exhibition of the same year. These are no longer the dateless ‘‘authentic’’ tribal forms seen at MOMA. At the Center for African Art a different history documents both the artwork’s uniqueness and the achievement of the discerning collector. By featuring rarity, genius, and connoisseurship the Center confirms the existence of autonomous artworks able to circulate, to be bought and sold, in the same way as works by Picasso or Giacometti. The Center traces its lineage, appropriately, to the former Rockefeller Museum of Primitive Art, with its close ties to collectors and the art market. In its inaugural exhibition the Center confirms the predominant aesthetic-ethnographic view of tribal art as something located in the past, good for being collected and given aesthetic value. Its second show (March 12–June 16, 1985) is devoted to ‘‘Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos.’’ It tells another story, locating art forms, ritual life, and cosmology in a specific, changing African society – a past and present heritage.

Photographs show ‘‘traditional’’ masks worn in danced masquerades around 1983. (These include satiric figures of white colonists.) A detailed history of cultural change, struggle, and revival is provided. In the catalogue Chike C. Aniakor, an Igbo scholar, writes along with co-editor Herbert M. Cole of ‘‘the continually evolving Igbo aesthetic’’: ‘‘It is illusory to think that which we comfortably label ‘traditional’ art was in an earlier time immune to changes in style and form; it is thus unproductive to lament changes that reflect current realities. Continuity with earlier forms will always be found; the present-day persistence of family and community values ensures that the arts will thrive. And as always, the Igbo will create new art forms out of their inventive spirit, reflecting their dynamic interactions with the environment and their neighbors and expressing cultural ideals’’ (Cole and Aniakor 1984: 14). Cole and Aniakor provide a quite different history of ‘‘the tribal’’ and ‘‘the modern’’ from that told at the Museum of Modern Art – a story of invention, not of redemption. In his foreword to the catalogue Chinua Achebe offers a vision of culture and of objects that sharply challenges the ideology of the art collection and the masterpiece. Igbo, he tells us, do not like collections (figure 9.4). The purposeful neglect of the painstakingly and devoutly accomplished mbari houses with all the art objects in them as soon as the primary mandate of their creation has been served, provides a significant insight into the Igbo aesthetic value as process rather than product. Process is motion while product is rest. When the product is preserved or venerated, the impulse to repeat the process is compromised. Therefore the Igbo choose to eliminate the product and retain the process so that every occasion and every generation will receive its own impulse and experience of creation. Interestingly this aesthetic disposition receives powerful endorsement from the tropical climate which provides an abundance of materials for making art, such as wood, as well as formidable agencies of dissolution, such as humidity and the termite. Visitors to Igboland are shocked to see that artifacts are rarely accorded any particular value on the basis of age alone. (Achebe 1984:ix)

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Figure 9.4 The Earth Deity, Ala, with her ‘‘children’’ in her mbari house, Obube Ulakwo, southwest Nigeria, 1966. Photograph by Herbert M. Cole.

Achebe’s image of a ‘‘ruin’’ suggests not the modernist allegory of redemption (a yearning to make things whole, to think archaeologically) but an acceptance of endless seriality, a desire to keep things apart, dynamic, and historical. The aesthetic-anthropological object systems of the West are currently under challenge, and the politics of collecting and exhibiting occasionally become visible. Even at MOMA evidence of living tribal peoples has not been entirely excluded. One small text breaks the spell. A special label explains the absence of a Zuni war god figure currently housed in the

Berlin Museum fu¨r Vo¨lkerunde. We learn that late in its preparations for the show MOMA ‘‘was informed by knowledgeable authorities that Zuni people consider any public exhibition of their war gods to be sacrilegious.’’ Thus, the label continues, although such figures are routinely displayed elsewhere, the museum decided not to bring the war god (an influence on Paul Klee) from Berlin. The terse note raises more questions than it answers, but it does at least establish that the objects on display may in fact ‘‘belong’’ somewhere other than in an art or an ethnographic museum. Living traditions have claims on them, contesting (with a distant but increasingly

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Figure 9.5 Affinities not included in the MOMA ‘‘Primitivism’’ show. 3. Appropriations. (a) Mrs. Pierre Loeb in her family apartment with modern and tribal works, rue Desbordes-Valmore, Paris, 1929. Courtesy Albert Loeb Gallery, Paris. (b) New Guinea girl with photographer’s flash bulbs (included in the ‘‘Culture Contact’’ display at the Hall of Pacific Peoples). Neg. no. 336443. Photograph by E. T. Gilliard. Courtesy Department Library Services, American Museum of Natural History, New York

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palpable power) their present home in the institutional systems of the modern West.11 Elsewhere in New York this power has been made even more visible. ‘‘Te Maori,’’ a show visiting the Metropolitan, clearly establishes that the ‘‘art’’ on display is still sacred, on loan not merely from certain New Zealand museums but also from the Maori people. Indeed tribal art is political through and through. The Maori have allowed their tradition to be exploited as ‘‘art’’ by major Western cultural institutions and their corporate sponsors in order to enhance their own international prestige and thus contribute to their current resurgence in New Zealand society (Mead 1984).12 Tribal authorities gave permission for the exhibition to travel, and they participated in its opening ceremonies in a visible, distinctive manner. So did Asante leaders at the exhibition of their art and culture at the Museum of Natural History (October 16, 1984– March 17, 1985). Although the Asante display centers on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artifacts, evidence of the twentieth-century colonial suppression and recent renewal of Asante culture is included, along with color photos of modern ceremonies and newly made ‘‘traditional’’ objects brought to New York as gifts for the museum. In this exhibition the location of the art on display – the sense of where, to whom, and in what time(s) it belongs – is quite different from the location of the African objects at MOMA or in the Rockefeller Wing. The tribal is fully historical. Still another representation of tribal life and art can be encountered at the Northwest Coast collection at the IBM Gallery (October 10– December 29, 1984), whose objects have traveled downtown from the Museum of the American Indian. They are displayed in pools of intense light (the beautifying ‘‘boutique’’ decor that seems to be modernism’s gift to museum displays, both ethnographic and artistic). But this exhibition of traditional masterpieces ends with works by living Northwest Coast artists. Outside the gallery in the IBM atrium two large totem poles have been installed. One is a weathered specimen from the Museum of the American Indian, and the other has been carved for the show by the Kwakiutl Calvin Hunt. The artist put the finishing touches on his creation where it stands in the atrium; fresh wood chips are left scattered

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around the base. Nothing like this is possible or even thinkable at West Fifty-third Street. The organizers of the MOMA exhibition have been clear about its limitations, and they have repeatedly specified what they do not claim to show. It is thus in a sense unfair to ask why they did not construct a differently focused history of relations between ‘‘the tribal’’ and ‘‘the modern.’’ Yet the exclusions built into any collection or narration are legitimate objects of critique, and the insistent, didactic tone of the MOMA show only makes its focus more debatable. If the nonWestern objects on West Fifty-third Street never really question but continually confirm established aesthetic values, this raises questions about ‘‘modernist primitivism’s’’ purportedly revolutionary potential. The absence of any examples of Third World modernism or of recent tribal work reflects a pervasive ‘‘selfevident’’ allegory of redemption. The final room of the MOMA exhibition, ‘‘Contemporary Explorations,’’ which might have been used to refocus the historical story of modernism and the tribal, instead strains to find contemporary Western artists whose work has a ‘‘primitive feel.’’13 Diverse criteria are asserted: a use of rough or ‘‘natural’’ materials, a ritualistic attitude, ecological concern, archaeological inspiration, certain techniques of assemblage, a conception of the artist as shaman, or some familiarity with ‘‘the mind of primitive man in his [sic] science and mythology’’ (derived perhaps from reading Le´viStrauss). Such criteria, added to all the other ‘‘primitivist’’ qualities invoked in the exhibition and its catalogue, unravel for good the category of the primitive, exposing it as an incoherent cluster of qualities that at different times have been used to construct a source, origin, or alter ego confirming some new ‘‘discovery’’ within the territory of the Western self. The exhibition is at best a historical account of a certain moment in this relentless process. By the end the feeling created is one of claustrophobia. The non-Western objects that excited Picasso, Derain, and Le´ger broke into the realm of official Western art from outside. They were quickly integrated, recognized as masterpieces, given homes within an anthropological-aesthetic object system. By now this process has been sufficiently celebrated. We

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need exhibitions that question the boundaries of art and of the art world, an influx of truly indigestible ‘‘outside’’ artifacts. The relations of power whereby one portion of humanity can select, value, and collect the pure products of others need to be criticized and transformed. This is no small task. In the meantime one can at least imagine shows that feature the impure, ‘‘inauthentic’’ productions of past and present tribal life; exhibitions radically heterogeneous in their global mix of styles; exhibitions that locate themselves in specific multicultural junctures; exhibitions in which nature remains ‘‘unnatural’’; exhibitions whose principles of incorporation are openly questionable. The following would be my contribution to a different show on ‘‘affinities of the tribal and the postmodern.’’ I offer just the first paragraph from Barbara Tedlock’s superb description of the Zuni Shalako ceremony, a festival that is only part of a complex, living tradition (1984:246): Imagine a small western New Mexican village, its snow-lit streets lined with white Mercedes, quarter-ton pickups and Dodge vans. Villagers wrapped in black blankets and flowered shawls are standing next to visitors in blue velveteen blouses with rows of dime buttons and voluminous satin skirts. Their men are in black Stetson silver-banded hats, pressed jeans, Tony Lama boots and multicolored Pendleton blankets. Strangers dressed in dayglo orange, pink and green ski jackets, stocking caps, hiking boots and mittens. All crowded together they are looking into newly constructed houses illuminated by bare light bulbs dangling from raw rafters edged with Woolworth’s red fabric and flowered blue print calico. Cinderblock and plasterboard white walls are layered with striped serapes, Chimayo´ blankets, Navajo rugs, flowered fringed embroidered shawls, black silk from Mexico and purple, red and blue rayon from Czechoslovakia. Rows of Hopi cotton dance kilts and rain sashes; Isleta woven red and green belts; Navajo and Zuni silver concha belts and black mantas covered with silver brooches set with carved lapidary, rainbow mosaic, channel inlay, turquoise needlepoint, pink agate, alabaster, black cannel coal and bakelite from old ’78s, coral, abalone shell, mother-of-pearl and horned oyster hang from poles suspended from the ceiling. Mule and white-tailed deer trophy-heads wear-

ing squash-blossom, coral and chunk-turquoise necklaces are hammered up around the room over rearing buckskins above Arabian tapestries of Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers, The Last Supper, a herd of sheep with a haloed herder, horses, peacocks.

NOTES 1

The term tribal is used here with considerable reluctance. It denotes a kind of society (and art) that cannot be coherently specified. A catchall, the concept of tribe has its source in Western projection and administrative necessity rather than in any essential quality or group of traits. The term is now commonly used instead of primitive in phrases such as tribal art. The category thus denoted, as this essay argues, is a product of historically limited Western taxonomies. While the term was originally an imposition, however, certain non-Western groups have embraced it. Tribal status is in many cases a crucial strategic ground for identity. In this essay my use of tribe and tribal reflects common usage while suggesting ways in which the concept is systematically distorting. See Fried 1975 and Sturtevant 1983. These points were made by William Sturtevant at the symposium of anthropologists and art historians held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on November 3, 1984. A more rigorous formulation than that of affinity is suggested in Leiris 1953. How, Leiris asks, can we speak of African sculpture as a single category? He warns of ‘‘a danger that we may underestimate the variety of African sculpture; as we are less able to appreciate the respects in which cultures or things unfamiliar to us differ from one another than the respects in which they differ from those to which we are used, we tend to see a certain resemblance between them, which lies, in point of fact, merely in their common differentness’’ (p. 35). Thus, to speak of African sculpture one inevitably shuts one’s eyes ‘‘to the rich diversity actually to be found in this sculpture in order to concentrate on the respects in which it is not what our own sculpture

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generally is.’’ The affinity of the tribal and the modern is, in this logic, an important optical illusion – the measure of a common differentness from artistic modes that dominated in the West from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century. See, for example, Rubin’s discussion of the mythic universals shared by a Picasso painting and a Northwest Coast halfmask (Rubin 1984:328–330). See also Kirk Varnedoe’s association of modernist primitivism with rational, scientific exploration (Rubin 1984:201–203, 652–653). This point was made by Clifford Geertz at the November 3, 1984, symposium at the Museum of Modern Art (see n.2). The clash between Krauss’s and Varnedoe’s dark and light versions of primitivism is the most striking incongruity within the catalogue. For Krauss the crucial task is to shatter predominant European forms of power and subjectivity; for Varnedoe the task is to expand their purview, to question, and to innovate. On ne´grophilie see Laude 1968; for parallel trends in literature see Blache`re 1981 and Levin 1984. The discovery of things ‘‘ne`gre’’ by the European avant-garde was mediated by an imaginary America, a land of noble savages simultaneously standing for the past and future of humanity – a perfect affinity of primitive and modern. For example, jazz was associated with primal sources (wild, erotic passions) and with technology (the mechanical rhythm of brushed drums, the gleaming saxophone). Le Corbusier’s reaction was characteristic: ‘‘In a stupid variety show, Josephine Baker sang ‘Baby’ with such an intense and dramatic sensibility that I was moved to tears. There is in this American Negro music a lyrical ‘contemporary’ mass so invincible that I could see the foundation of a new sentiment of music capable of being the expression of the new epoch and also capable of classifying its European origins as stone age – just as has happened with the new architecture’’ (quoted in Jencks 1973:102). As a source of modernist inspiration for Le Corbusier, the figure of Josephine Baker was matched only by monumental, almost Egyptian, concrete grain elevators, rising from the American plains and built by nameless ‘‘primitive’’ engineers (Banham

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1986: 16). The historical narrative implicit here has been a feature of twentieth-century literary and artistic innovation, as a redemptive modernism persistently ‘‘discovers’’ the primitive that can justify its own sense of emergence. The twentieth-century developments traced here redeploy these ideas in an intercultural domain while preserving their older ethical and political charge . . . On the recognition of masterpieces see Rubin’s confident claims (1984:20– 21). He is given to statements such as the following on tribal and modern art: ‘‘The solutions of genius in the plastic arts are all essentially instinctual’’ (p. 78, n.80). A stubborn rejection of the supposed views of anthropologists (who believe in the collective production of works of tribal art) characterizes Rubin’s attempts to clear out an autonomous space for aesthetic judgment. Suggestions that he may be projecting Western aesthetic categories onto traditions with different definitions of art are made to seem simplistic (for example p. 28). At the November 3, 1984, symposium (see n.2) Christian Feest pointed out that the tendency to reclassify objects in ethnographic collections as ‘‘art’’ is in part a response to the much greater amount of funding available for art (rather than anthropological) exhibitions. The shifting balance of power is evident in the case of the Zuni war gods, or Ahauuta. Zuni vehemently object to the display of these figures (terrifying and of great sacred force) as ‘‘art.’’ They are the only traditional objects singled out for this objection. After passage of the Native American Freedom of Religion Act of 1978 Zuni initiated three formal legal actions claiming return of the Ahauuta (which as communal property are, in Zuni eyes, by definition stolen goods). A sale at Sotheby Parke-Bernet in 1978 was interrupted, and the figure was eventually returned to the Zuni. The Denver Art Museum was forced to repatriate its Ahauutas in 1981. A claim against the Smithsonian remains unresolved as of this writing. Other pressures have been

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applied elsewhere in an ongoing campaign. In these new conditions Zuni Ahauuta can no longer be routinely displayed. Indeed the figure Paul Klee saw in Berlin would have run the risk of being seized as contraband had it been shipped to New York for the MOMA show. For general background see Talbot 1985. An article on corporate funding of the arts in the New York Times, Feb. 5, 1985, p. 27, reported that Mobil Oil sponsored the Maori show in large part to please the New Zealand government, with which it was collaborating on the construction of a natural gas conversion plant. In places the search becomes self-parodic, as in the caption for works by Jackie Winsor: ‘‘Winsor’s work has a primitivist feel, not only in the raw physical presence of her materials, but also in the way she fabricates. Her labor – driving nails, binding twine – moves beyond simple systematic repetition to take on the expressive character of ritualized action.’’ [See also ch. 13, p. 221 and figure 13.3.]

REFERENCES Achebe, Chinua. 1984. ‘‘Foreword.’’ Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos, ed. H. M. Cole and C. C. Aniakor, pp. vii–xi. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, UCLA. Benjamin, Walter. 1977. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. London: New Left Books. Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cole, Herbert, and Chike Aniakor, eds. 1984. Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, UCLA. Einstein, Carl. 1915. Negerplastik. Trans. T. and R. Burgard as La sculpture africaine. Paris: Cre`s, 1922.

Fried, Morton. 1975. The Notion of Tribe. Menlo Park, Calif.: Cummings. Jencks, Charles. 1973. Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture. London: Penguin. Laude, Jean. 1968. La peinture franc¸aise (1905–1914) et ‘‘I’art ne`gre.’’ Paris: Editions Klincksieck. Leiris, Michael. 1934. L’Afrique fantoˆme. Reprinted with new introduction. Paris: Gallimard, 1950. —— 1953. ‘‘The African Negroes and the Arts of Carving and Sculpture.’’ In Interrelations of Cultures, pp. 316–351. Westport, Conn.: UNESCO. Mead, Sidney Moka, ed. 1984. Te Maori: Maori Art from New Zealand Collections. New York: Harry Abrams. Rubin, William, ed. 1984. ‘‘Primitivism’’ in Modern Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. 2 vols. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Sturtevant, William. 1983. ‘‘Tribe and State in the Sixteenth and Twentieth Centuries.’’ In The Development of Political Organization in Native North America, ed. Elizabeth Tooker, pp. 3–15. Washington: The American Ethnological Society. Talbot, Steven. 1985. ‘‘Desecration and American Indian Religious Freedom.’’ Journal of Ethnic Studies 12(4):1–18. Tedlock, Barbara. 1984. ‘‘The Beautiful and the Dangerous: Zun˜i Ritual and Cosmology as an Aesthetic System.’’ Conjunctions 6:246–265. Vogel, Susan. 1985. Introduction. In African Masterpieces from the Muse´e de l’Homme, pp. 10–11. New York: Harry Abrams. —— , and Francine N’Diaye, eds. 1985. African Masterpieces from the Muse´e de l’Homme. New York: Harry Abrams. Williams, Raymond. 1966. Culture and Society, 1780–1950. New York: Harper and Row.

10 A Case in Point and Afterwords to Primitive Art in Civilized Places Sally Price

A Case in Point The huts along the rivers of Surinam are like the huts beside the Congo, as they were in the days of Stanley and the early explorers. And in these huts, polygamously, the Bush Negroes live. Morton C. Kahn1 As we near the end of this little book, it is time to explore more pointedly what the generalities and abstractions discussed up to this point mean in the actual lives of real people. Rather than continuing to build a patchwork of anecdotal secondhand evidence from around the world, it will be useful to lend some firsthand attention to a single case, looking at the ways in which Western notions about Primitive Art have operated. The Suriname Maroons, descendants of Africans imported to South America as slaves in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, will be the focus of this chapter, simply because I have, together with Richard Price, been studying their way of life since 1966 and have extended experience with their arts, both in their villages and in museological settings.

The Maroons are united by a heritage of rebellion from the oppression of plantation slavery but divide into six politically distinct groups; the Saramaka and Djuka each number some 22,000, while the Paramaka, Aluku, Matawai, and Kwinti together include roughly 6,000 people. Their ancestors’ sustained wars of liberation ended with peace treaties in the eighteenth century which granted them independence from the Dutch colonial government, territorial rights in the interior, and periodic tribute in the form of manufactured goods from the coast such as soap, cooking pots, cloth, guns, and axes. The Djuka, Paramaka, and Aluku (in eastern Suriname) speak variants of one language, the Saramaka, Matawai, and Kwinti (in central Suriname) variants of another; and cultural differences (in dress, diet, rituals, and so on) tend to follow the same bipartite division. When Suriname became independent from the Netherlands in 1975, the bulk of the Maroon population still lived in small villages strung along the rivers of the tropical rain forest, though the men (like their fathers and grandfathers) spent a significant part of their adult lives engaged in wage labor outside of tribal territories, and even

From Primitive Art in Civilized Places, 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1989] 2001) pp. 108–136 (1st edition), 134–145 (2nd edition). Reprinted by permission of Chicago Univerity Press.

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women were participating in this pattern, as communities began allowing lineage daughters to accompany their husbands to the coast for periods of a year or more. In 1986, the peaceful expansion of Maroon involvements with the other population groups of Suriname was brutally arrested, as a new rebellion (a Djuka-led attack on the regime of Desi Bouterse) met with the military resources and tactics of the Modern World. The Maroon populations have been decimated by death squads, the bombing of villages, and ‘‘interrogation’’ sessions in the courtyard of the seventeenth-century fort that, as the Suriname National Museum, once housed the artistic treasures of Maroons and other inhabitants of this culturally diverse republic. As of this writing, the future of the Suriname Maroons – as individuals and as social-cultural groups – is very much in question. The artistry of the Maroons is one of the better documented aspects of their cultural life. Their best-known medium is woodcarving, which Maroon men produce both for internal use and for sale to outsiders. In the villages, handsomely carved objects – from combs, food stirrers, winnowing trays, and peanut-grinding boards to paddles, canoes, doors, and whole housefronts – serve as gifts to wives and lovers. In return, women sew garments elaborately decorated with embroidery, patchwork, and applique´, as well as crocheting colorful calfbands for the men to wear and carving elegant calabash utensils to serve at their meals. The art of cicatrization, too, is focused on sexual relations; women (and to a lesser extent men) adorn themselves with raised keloids designed to contribute to their erotic appeal through both visual and tactile means. In contrast, ritual objects – from funeral masks to ancestor shrines – are decorated crudely and do not, in the Maroon vision of things, belong to the realm of aesthetic concerns. In these societies, then, art is more part of social than religious life. Indeed, art objects are the primary currency in the ongoing exchanges between the sexes.2 Black, cicatrized, polygynous, nonliterate, snake- and ancestor-worshipping, and either naked, barebreasted or loincloth-clad (depending on age and sex), the Maroons (or ‘‘Bush Negroes’’) meet the most demanding criteria for primitive exoticism. That their communities were formed in response to European co-

lonialism only adds to the image, imbuing it with the proud defiance of rebel warriors against an imperialist society distant enough in time to pose no threat of association with Ourselves. Those aspects of their life that outside observers gloss as ‘‘the arts’’ – dancing and drumming, songs in both everyday and esoteric languages, a variety of decorative media, and carved ‘‘fetishes,’’ ancestral shrines, and masks – contribute importantly to the fascination of Westerners with their way of life. The Maroons’ historical and cultural ties with Africa have been central to the image. One commentator suggested that they constituted a ‘‘little Africa in America’’ (Kahn 1954), another wrote a book called Bush Negro Art: An African Art in the Americas (Dark 1954), and a third labeled Maroon woodcarving ‘‘an original African art form’’ (Volders 1966: 141). The titles of articles written about Maroon life are sometimes quite explicit: ‘‘We Find an African Tribe in the South American Jungle’’ (Vandercook 1926b), ‘‘African Customs and Beliefs Preserved for Two Centuries in the Interior of Dutch Guiana’’ (van Panhuys 1934), and ‘‘Africa’s Lost Tribes in South America: An On-the-spot Account of Bloodchilling African Rites of 200 Years Ago Preserved Intact in the Jungle of South America by a Tribe of Runaway Slaves’’ (Kahn 1939). The pioneer Afro-Americanist, Melville J. Herskovits, whose first foreign fieldwork was with the Saramaka, wrote an article called ‘‘Bush Negro Art,’’ which characterized Maroons as ‘‘having remained faithful to their African traditions [thus presenting] the unique phenomenon of an autonomous civilization of one continent – Africa – transplanted to another – South America’’ (1930: 160). The recent assertion that twentieth-century Maroon communities are ‘‘more African than much of Africa’’ (Counter and Evans, n.d.) suggests how unbounded the enthusiasm for this idea can be. In addition to the implication of primitivism in such depictions of the Maroons, the assertion that their customs have been ‘‘preserved intact’’ over the centuries is of central relevance for the problems we have been confronting in these pages. As one author expressed the vision, The flush tides of imperialism have passed over these people, leaving them practically unaltered and unknown, unique among the

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Negro peoples of the world. They still maintain the life of jungle dwellers of the immemorial past. Today they are hunting game with the long bow. Tonight their bodies will be contorted with the sinuous movements of African dances, to the dull thudding of the tomtom. (Kahn 1931: 3–4)

Or, as a more recent description put it, We had never expected the people to be this classical, . . . this purely African and isolated from the outside world. . . . it seemed that for every mile we had traveled into the rain forest we had traveled back about a year in time, until we had gone back more than two centuries. (Counter and Evans 1981: 32–33)

Like other aspects of Maroon life, the arts are understood by many outsiders as static traditions, originally imported to Suriname in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by enslaved Africans whose descendants now faithfully carry them forward in time, intact and unaltered. The demonstration that this view has been created and nurtured by Western preconceptions at least as much as by valid historical or ethnographic documentation has been presented elsewhere (Price and Price 1980: chap. 8; R. Price 1970; S. Price 1984, 1986). Rather than rehearsing the full, and rather complex, argument here, I cite just a few of the findings that have persuaded me of the relevance, for the Maroon case, of the concept of ‘‘art history’’ – including the presence of stylistic and technical change, recognized individual creativity, and communal attention to chronological development. It is important to note that the existence of a Maroon ‘‘art history’’ emerged from discussions in the field (between Maroons and us or, more frequently, among Maroons within range of our hearing), and was only later confirmed and enhanced by our consultation of museum collections and written documentation. Dealing mainly (but not exclusively) with Saramakas, we learned about the named styles and techniques that characterized different periods since the mid-nineteenth century, the individuals responsible for introducing them, the ways in which particular innovations were adopted and expanded, and the relationships among different media, with designs and styles often passing from one to the other. If Joseph Alsop had scrutinized traditional schol-

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arly resources for evidence of a known art history in the villages of the Suriname interior, he surely would have concluded that such a notion did not exist. Maroons have no museums and no written documents, nor do they maintain a body of oral historical traditions, transmitted formally from generation to generation, of the sort one can find in many African kingdoms. There is, however, a great deal of knowledge of the past and, more important, interest in it. Saramakas think about their art of woodcarving in terms of four named styles, which they can place quite precisely in time (not in terms of dates, but by association with individual personalities and contemporaneous events). Similarly, they are aware of important changes in their calabash art (e.g., the shift from external to internal decoration, and the associated transfer of the medium from men to women). And they show equal knowledge and articulateness about the periodization of their textile arts, which have gone from free-form embroidery to a mosaiclike style of patchwork, to narrow-strip compositions, and finally to an elaborate art of cross-stitch embroidery. Their discourse differs in its rhetoric from Western ‘‘art history’’ and the examples they cite are not preserved in local museum cases, but the level of analysis constitutes in every respect the kind of attention to artistic developments in time, as well as the aesthetic ideas that accompanied them, that we associate with our own notion of art history. Images of timelessness, . . . are often reinforced by assumptions of anonymity, and the treatment of Maroon art is no exception. One literary device that has frequently served to bolster the anonymity of Maroon artists is the use of the masculine singular to refer to the roughly 50,000 men, women, boys, and girls who belong to the six Maroon groups. Many authors tell us about ‘‘the Maroon’’ (or ‘‘the Bush Negro’’) and ‘‘his’’ wives and children. ‘‘He’’ clears the forest for gardens, hunts and fishes, performs rites for spirits and ancestors, and fashions beautiful woodcarvings for ‘‘his’’ women. This practice not only helps perpetuate distortions in the depiction of Maroon women as artists (see, for discussion of this point, S. Price 1982/1988, 1984), but also contributes to the process of forgetting that the people under

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discussion are as varied in personality, temperament, and talents as, for example, Ce´zanne, Gauguin, and Matisse. Maroons, however, do not generalize their fellows, past or present. Nor do they ignore or minimize the particular contributions of individual artists. Saramakas from the Upper River region recognize the work of Seketima, a carver of the early twentieth century, as readily as an habitue´ of the Museum of Modern Art recognizes a Jackson Pollock. Most women distinguish with confidence and accuracy calabashes carved in the 1960s by Keekete from the many imitations they inspired. And innovations in both design and technique in any medium are credited to the persons originally responsible for developing them. In short, the blurring of individuals to form a composite ‘‘Bush Negro artist’’ is one aspect of Maroon art history for which the Maroons themselves cannot properly be given credit. The Universality Principle is also relevant to the representation of Maroon art. As we saw in chapter 3 [Price 1989], Primitives are often taken to represent human nature stripped to its essentials and are thus central figures within the Brotherhood of Man. In this context, Maroons, like other Primitives, are depicted as simpler, more childlike versions of ourselves, subject to the same ‘‘primal drives,’’ but less encumbered by the ‘‘overlay of civilization’’ that blankets our own, more sophisticated, life experience. Linguistic support for this view is particularly pervasive. The Guinness Book of World Records memorializes the languages of ‘‘bush blacks’’ (misunderstood as a single language, mislabeled as ‘‘Taki Taki’’ [a pejorative term for the language of coastal Surinamers], and mislocated in French Guiana) by crowning it the ‘‘Least Complex’’ of the world’s languages and asserting that its vocabulary, with an alleged total of only 340 words, is the smallest in the world (see R. Price 1976: 44). The presence of English-derived words in the actual languages spoken by Maroons has encouraged many observers to conceptualize their speech as a kind of badly broken English or baby talk. This facilitates the citation of direct discourse in writing for English-speaking readers. Morton Kahn’s report of an attempt to secure woodcarvings gives an idea of the style. He begins by offering some practical advice:

The only way to acquire these objects is to bargain for them in Dutch money or tobacco, or cheap knick-knacks. Among the more distant villages money is useless. Blue beads are very effective in bargaining, for blue is the Djuka’s favourite colour. Ear-rings are also good, but not perfume; they prefer the acrid odour of insecticides.

Kahn then goes on to relate his own experience: We say: ‘‘Me wanny buy timbeh’’ – ‘‘I want to buy wooden pieces.’’ The Negro’s common reply is that he has none to part with: ‘‘Me no habbe, massra.’’ The word massra is a corruption of ‘‘master,’’ a vestige of the slave days. We point to a pierced and inlaid stool and say ‘‘How many?’’ meaning, how much does he want for it. ‘‘Me no wanny fu selly’’ – ‘‘I don’t want to sell it.’’ To show him we mean business, a concrete offer is made, ‘‘Me gon gibbe sixa banknoto’’ – ‘‘I’m going to give six banknoto.’’ The bargaining is in silver half-guilder pieces, called banknoto. The Dujkas do not understand large sums of money, except when counted in half-guilder pieces. If he refuses six coins, we offer seven, eight, nine, and throw in the added temptation of some tobacco leaves. To each of these offers he shakes his head in negation, saying doggedly, ‘‘No, no.’’ Finally, in a tone of voice that indicates we are amazed at our own generosity, we say: ‘‘Me gon gibbe tena banknoto, nanga twee weefee tabak.’’ – ‘‘I’m going to give ten banknoto, as well as three leaves of tobacco.’’ The reply is short and spirited. ‘‘Gimme.’’ Which does not have to be translated. (1931: 48–50)

This utterance (and perhaps the entire dialogue) does not have to be translated for Kahn’s readers, but it might well for the Maroons who are alleged to have participated in it. The exchange took place, according to Kahn’s account, in Saramaka territory, where, even making generous allowances for orthographic liberties, the words reported have little overlap with the local language. If we were to adopt Kahn’s spelling conventions, ‘‘I want’’ could be rendered Me kay, but not Me wanny; ‘‘I’m

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going to give you’’ would be Me o da-ee, not Me gon gibbe; and ‘‘three leaves’’ would be dee uwee, not twee weefee. The Saramaka language does contain English cognates (e.g., the word for ‘‘tobacco’’ is – in Kahn’s orthography – tabaku and ‘‘six’’ is seekeessee), and Saramaka men do employ the more anglicized coastal language for contact situations, but that does not mean that their speech is mutually intelligible with American baby talk.3 Kahn’s linguistic fallacy is far from being simply a relic of early twentieth-century innocence. During a summer that I spent in Suriname in the late 1970s, I heard two Saramaka men reminiscing with considerable amusement about how an Afro-American visitor to their village from the United States had recently combined gesticulations with simple English utterances, appropriately simplified for a tropical context, to present his own vision of crosscultural Brotherhood; with an index finger poking first at the forearm of the Saramaka listener and then at his own, the speaker is said to have insisted repeatedly, ‘‘You blackah. Me blackah. We bruddahs.’’ Morton Kahn’s account of bargaining in the bush reflects, in addition to linguistic misunderstandings, the nature of the encounters which allow Maroon art to be transferred into non-Maroon hands. Beginning the bargaining with ‘‘cheap knick-knacks’’ and a claim that insecticides are preferred over perfume, the escalation of prices never threatens to exceed the White Man’s admittedly amazing generosity. All that is then required is perseverance. Melville and Frances Herskovits gave another account of bargaining for woodcarvings in the same region of Saramaka. When we suggested that we might care to acquire the board, the woman became apprehensive. She took up the board, and excusing herself, disappeared with it inside her hut. ‘‘No, no,’’ she called from the house, when her brother went to tell her of the offer we had made for it. ‘‘I don’t want money for it. I like it. I will not sell it.’’ The sum we offered was modest enough, but not inconsiderable for this deep interior. We increased it, then doubled our original offer. There was still no wavering on the woman’s part, but the offer began to interest her family. Such wealth should not be refused. Bassia Anaisi began to urge her in our behalf.

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‘‘With this money you can buy from the white man’s city a hammock, and several fine cloths. You should not refuse this.’’ The old woman took up the discussion, then another sister, and a brother. At last the bassia took us aside, and asked us to leave his sister alone with them. ‘‘We will have a krutu [meeting], and tomorrow you will hear. She is foolish not to sell. But she cares for the board. It is good, too, when a woman loves what her man has carved for her. We will krutu about it, and you shall hear.’’ Three days passed before the woman’s permission was given to dispose of the piece. ‘‘When they see this, your people will know our men can carve!’’ she exclaimed in a voice which held as much regret as pride. (1934: 281)

Interpretations of the meaning of this art have followed a similar pattern, with Maroons giving in to the determination and apparent power of outside visitors. Here, Western preconceptions about erotic symbolism pervading the life of Primitives have been reinforced by Maroon attitudes toward literacy, which has always been viewed as a powerful and somewhat mystical phenomenon. Although very few Maroons have had the opportunity to learn to read, they have always had contact with people who are literate (plantation bookkeepers, government officials, missionaries, store-owners, employers, etc.), and have great respect for the power it conveys. In principle, they view any marking as potentially communicative, but themselves as untrained in the art of deciphering. It is for this reason that Maroons use blank (undecorated) calabash bowls for ritual purposes. Any carved calabash, they reason, must carry some message, but since they are unable to ‘‘read,’’ they do not know what it says; rather than risk offending the spirits for whom a particular ritual is being performed, then, they utilize special unmarked bowls. Books and articles on Maroon art, however, give no hint that this is the case and present a unanimous vision of symbol-laden motifs. An urban Surinamer named F. H. J. Muntslag wrote a very popular book on Maroon art (1966, 1979), which is essentially a dictionary of motifs and their (alleged) iconographic meaning. One page, for example, illustrates a

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circular design element, identifying it as koemba, a word that in the language of eastern Maroons means ‘‘navel.’’ The text explains that ‘‘the navel has a very mystical significance to the Bush Negro. Young women are frequently tattooed [sic; their decorations are cicatrizations, not tattooing] around the navel. It is the symbol of erotic love’’ (1979: 59). Another page presents a crescent-shaped design element with the label liba, a word that in the language of central Maroons means ‘‘moon’’; the text is about fertility and love symbols, projecting onto a more poetic plane the Herskovitses’ assertion that it represented ‘‘the male member’’ (1934: 280). How, we asked ourselves in the course of our fieldwork, do Maroons react to this sort of lexicon? First, Maroons do, in fact, attach labels such as koemba and liba to design elements, as part of a larger practice of assigning names to everything in the physical environment, from particular cloth patterns and styles of hairbraiding to subtly differentiated varieties of rice and kinds of machetes. For them, however, these names are descriptive labels, not symbolic allusions. A design element known as koemba (‘‘navel’’) is being identified in much the same way that we might use the term ‘‘navel’’ in talking about a kind of orange – that is, without implications of fertility, eroticism, or mystical associations. Claims that a crescent shape has sexual meaning are put in perspective by the reaction of a 60-year-old Maroon who had divided his adult residence between eastern and central Maroon villages. When we reported the Herskovitses’ discourse on this motif, the man looked somewhat puzzled and declined to comment, but the next day he returned to ask the question that had been bothering him; with apologies for his ignorance on the matter, he wanted to know whether perhaps white men’s penises took on a curved and pointed shape like that when erect. Those writers who include descriptions of their encounters in the field give us some insight into the process by which the Maroons’ reputation as symbolism-focused artists maintains its vigor in spite of its lack of fit with the Maroons’ intentions and understandings. The Herskovitses, for example, described with frustration being ‘‘completely balked by the unwillingness of the Bush Negroes to discuss their carvings’’ during the first of their two

visits (1934: 276), but they also made clear their own refusal to take no for an answer on the matter of symbolic interpretation. On their second trip they prodded Saramakas with explanations of their own invention which their hosts finally accepted, along with enough money to pay for the pieces under discussion (1934: 276–77). This approach has been adopted by many subsequent visitors to the Suriname interior. Even when Maroons refuse to acquiesce to a proposed interpretation, it is always the person who writes up the report who has the last word. In an article on ‘‘folk art in general and that of Suriname in particular,’’ the author’s determination to establish a ‘‘pagan’’ meaning for an embroidered cloth hanging in the doorway of a Christian Maroon’s house was pursued as follows: On inquiry concerning the meaning of [the central] motif, no one gave a direct answer. The women of the village . . . answered: . . . ‘a flower.’ As this response was not very enlightening, a very old man was asked. His unsatisfactory answer was the same, ‘a flower.’ Obviously, people considered it inappropriate to clarify the meaning of this private decoration to foreign visitors, especially when it referred to religious beliefs that were no longer (openly) professed. (De Vries-Hamburger 1959: 109)

Sometimes native exegeses have been reported only as examples of faulty thinking; the prolific student of Maroon culture L. C. van Panhuys, for example, favored this method. One design, he wrote, depicted ‘‘a human form, even though the Bush Negroes explained to us . . . [etc.].’’ Another represented ‘‘what my informant thought to be perhaps . . . [etc.], but what is, in reality. . . [etc.].’’ Regarding a third, a Maroon informant ‘‘could give no other explanation than . . . [etc.]. But if we place the drawing upside down as is done in our illustration, we presume the whole represents . . . [etc.]’’ (1928, 1930). The most recent attempt to establish a lexicon of symbols for Maroon art was carried out by Jean Hurault, who declared his aim as the pursuit of ‘‘a better understanding of the intention of the artists and of their principles of composition’’ (1970: 94, emphasis added). He described his method as follows:

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We have enumerated and classified the entire body of symbolic and ornamental motifs on these [4000] objects by examining the way in which they are grouped and opposed [in this book’s analysis]. This inventory has allowed us to establish with almost absolute certainty the meaning and value of a large number of motifs that have been forgotten by presentday Maroons. (1970: 94)

While Hurault’s technique is ostensibly more systematic and scientific than those of van Panhuys or the Herskovitses, it still shares with them a disregard for what Maroons have to say about the meaning of their art. They all allow the tradition of interpreting Maroon art to be relatively unperturbed by the understandings and intentions of the Maroons themselves. The consequences of such cavalier attitudes toward the interpretation of other people’s art are varied. When Western authors write books for Western readers, the dissemination of ideas that would puzzle Maroons (such as a pointed crescent representing a penis) rarely creates a problem. But sometimes such misunderstandings make their way into contact situations, and when this happens it is usually members of the Primitive rather than the Civilized world who end up making concessions in order to maintain harmonious relations. An example may illustrate. In the 1960s, a Saramaka man set up a stall next to the road leading to the Suriname airport, where he carved a variety of objects and offered them for sale to passing tourists. In response to his customers’ repeated requests for the symbolic meaning of the pieces they were buying, the artist explained each time that his carvings were intended only to be decorative. Perceiving their dissatisfaction in one case after another, and sometimes being drawn into arguments with them on the subject, he finally gave up and adopted a different strategy. He purchased Muntslag’s dictionary of Maroon motifs (the source of the ‘‘navel’’ and ‘‘crescent’’ examples discussed earlier in this chapter), even though he could not understand it because he had never learned to read. He then used its illustrations as models for the motifs in his carvings, and simply showed the book to his customers so they could look up the meaning of their purchases. Through this self-service technique, the man’s life became

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more tranquil, his profits picked up considerably, the tourists boarded their planes in better spirits, and the myth of a pervasive iconography in the arts of the Maroons circumvented a potentially troubling setback.4 The ‘‘collecting’’ of Primitive Art, whether by field anthropologists or by souvenir-buying tourists, often allows discrepancies between the views of artists and patrons to surface (at least momentarily) simply because both parties are involved in the encounter. Once an art object leaves its original setting, however, intercultural dialogue is transformed into intracultural discourse. The criteria for evaluating interpretive claims are then drawn from the realm of related knowledge, as preserved in written form and in Westerners’ conceptual understandings. With the fit between native and outside exegesis unavailable for assessment, the fit between the general body of Western knowledge and a new candidate for inclusion in that body becomes the crucial factor. The mode of presentation for a particular art form from an ‘‘exotic’’ setting is thus often selected on the basis of its compatibility with received ideas, on its lack of abrasion with what an audience already has in mind. Again, a specific example from my own experience will serve to illustrate the point. As curators of an exhibition of Maroon art that traveled across the United States during 1980–82, Richard Price and I participated in numerous aspects of its organization and promotion. One of these involved the designing of a poster to publicize the exhibit in each of the four cities where it would appear (figure 10.1). We suggested featuring a textile that was both attractively colorful and stylistically representative of the little-known Maroon art of patchwork, and this proposal was greeted with enthusiasm by the designer of the catalog, who even adopted a piece of the same textile for the cover and dust jacket. Once the idea reached the public relations office of the sponsoring institution, however, objections were raised, and it was only after a certain amount of debate that our choice was reluctantly approved. The problem, we were told, was that the cloth looked too much like a painting by Mondrian to be effective in publicizing an exhibit of Primitive Art. We were strongly urged to select instead a mask or a ‘‘fetish.’’

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Figure 10.1 Ad for American Museum of Natural History exhibit Afro-American Arts from the Suriname Rain Forest, New York Times, 6 November 1981, p. C30. Courtesy American Museum of Natural History

Indeed, nothing about this cloth makes the statement: ‘‘Primitive Art.’’ The raw materials are not woven fibers stained with local dyes, but rather a cheap trade cotton imported to Suriname and sold to Maroon men during their wage-labor trips to the coastal region. Its colors are not the muted tones of earth,

shells, and berries, but rather commercial hues ranging from yellow and blue to red and even shocking pink. Its design is not irregular and free-form, but rather symmetrical and rigidly geometric. And, unlike a mask or ‘‘fetish,’’ this patchwork cape appears unlikely to lend itself to symbolic interpretation of motifs

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or to associations with exotic rituals. It should be no surprise, then, that a public relations officer – thinking about how best to promote a collection of art objects made by people with immodest clothing, scarified faces, pagan beliefs, ‘‘talking’’ drums, polygynous marriages, lineage-based kinship, menstrual taboos, and slash-and-burn tropical gardens – leaned toward a poster that would convey that ensemble of characteristics through a quickly absorbed, unambiguous visual image. The debate about this cloth’s appropriateness as an emblem of Primitive Art came up again over a year later, when a professional agency designed an ad for the exhibition that appeared, full-page, in the New York Times. Playing on the same apparent irony of primitive forest dwellers producing a design that resembled the work of one of the Western world’s most famous modern painters, the ad writers counted on New Yorkers’ familiarity with Mondrian’s colorful geometric compositions and left the comparison implicit on the level of visual imagery. In spite of its single-object focus, however, the ad was a direct forerunner of the riddle-ad that was used some three years later to promote the MOMA’s ‘‘Primitivism’’ exhibit. Is it Primitive or is it Modern? It would be possible to argue that while the first publicist shied away from correcting the stereotype of Primitive Art, the New York ad agency boldly challenged it. Yet it is worth keeping in mind that the primary goal of ads is to sell a product, not to educate; in this context, rather than being contradicted, the stereotype was being exploited to attract the attention of readers. Like the later ‘‘Primitivism’’ ads (and the MOMA show they promoted), the message here was clearly not that Maroon artists are like Mondrian in being individuals who engage in deliberate, dynamic creative expression; despite the detailed documentation available in the exhibition catalog, the man’s cape illustrated in the ad is described, not as being designed by a particular Maroon woman, but rather as being ‘‘designed and worn by the Suriname Maroons.’’ The point of the comparison, then, is that Maroon art, in spite of being ‘‘a way of life’’ for people living in the rain forest, has nonetheless come up with some objects that bear a bizarre and rather uncanny resemblance to paintings that

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represent their antithesis in terms of artistic creativity, independence, innovation, and self-awareness. The ad writers hoped New Yorkers would be jolted enough by this unexpected look-alike to want to see the rest of the exhibit. But, like their colleagues who juxtaposed the $80 imitation with the $800 designer top, they certainly did not expect the illustrated cape and the unillustrated Mondrian to be conceptualized by their audience as equivalent except in the sense of an intriguing trompe-l’oeil. Another aspect of our experience with the Maroon exhibition that shed light on the Western conceptualization of Primitive Art involved reactions to our goal of presenting Maroon artistry in the context of Maroon aesthetic ideas. Descriptions of the exhibit, as well as the text of the accompanying catalog, made explicit our efforts to follow Maroon aesthetic concepts and criteria in the selection of pieces, the arrangement of displays, and the composition of interpretive label texts. That is, our intent was to eschew both apparently ‘‘pure,’’ or ‘‘universal,’’ principles of the sort that, for example, Nelson Rockefeller might have drawn on and the social, cultural, and technological criteria that might have structured a traditional anthropology-museum exhibit. We did our best to present Maroon art as Maroon art and as Maroon art, complete with its makers’ well-articulated aesthetic principles and consciousness of art history, as these had been laid out to us during our several years’ residence in the interior of Suriname. Because the exhibition was mounted in four major museums (in Los Angeles, Dallas, Baltimore, and New York), it had excellent exposure within the United States. But we wanted to make it available also to people from the Caribbean, and especially to Surinamers. An installation in Suriname was ruled out because of the lack of climate controls and security measures adequate to meet the conditions of some of the lenders. The Netherlands, with its Suriname population of over 200,000, was the next logical choice, and we therefore tried very hard to find a Dutch museum that was interested in hosting the exhibit. All of the museums we approached (except one that was unable to raise the necessary funds) rejected the exhibit, but the reasons they gave divided into two very different kinds of discourse.

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Art museums in the Netherlands responded that the material in the exhibit was too contextualized to be appropriate for their galleries. Here were objects presented in the midst of photographs, musical recordings, charts of style progressions, and commentary on native aesthetic principles. If we were willing to isolate the pieces from all the ethnographica, they suggested, they would be happy to reconsider their decision. But as the exhibit was currently envisioned, it was ‘‘anthropology,’’ not ‘‘art.’’ Anthropology museums – operating in the context of a post-1968 social consciousness – also made a redefinition of the exhibit’s aims a precondition for their acceptance of it. It would be necessary to add, they said, extensive information on the current political situation of this Third World republic, on the economic oppression of Maroons, and on the ecological threats to their environment. There would have to be a stronger political message. Art museums categorized all anthropological contextualization as alien to the aesthetic character of objects; if the displays were intended to show ‘‘art,’’ they would need to do so according to Western conventions, which kept aesthetic considerations purely implicit. Anthropology museums categorized the recognition of another society’s art historical consciousness and aesthetic sophistication as being alien to the promotion of social liberalism; if the displays were intended to communicate a political message, they would need to do so according to the accepted canons. Both rejected our contention that to recognize Maroon objects as art, maintained in the context of a legitimate aesthetic system and possessing a history of its own, constituted a radical intellectual and political argument. Neither ‘‘art’’ nor ‘‘anthropology’’ according to then-current definitions, the exhibition never made it to Europe and was seen by no more than a few dozen Surinamers.5 The collective message of the Dutch museums is not unrelated to Joseph Alsop’s stance that other people simply do not have a concept in any sense equivalent to the one that defines and vertebrates our own art world. What this implies is that objects can be presented either in terms of that concept (in which case they are ‘‘art,’’ are best appreciated on the basis of an unmediated visual experience, and have no need of further explanation) or in terms of

their place within a sociocultural context (in which case someone viewing them as art would be guilty of ‘‘ethnocentrism’’). If one subscribes to this division, the question then becomes, as an African Arts editorial put it, whether we respond to a particular set of objects as Art or merely from a sense of ‘‘social curiosity.’’ It may be, however, that a merger of the ‘‘art’’ and the ‘‘anthropology’’ of non-Western cultural expression, would require little more on our part than a less proprietorial attitude toward the idea of aesthetic sensitivity.

Afterword In a discussion of Arthur Danto’s concept of an ‘‘artworld,’’ B. R. Tilghman considers the hypothetical possibility of a world in which art is isolated from all of the related activities that we expect to cluster about it. We can imagine a tribe that draws and paints, plays music, and recites poetry, but keeps its talk about it all to a minimum. Instruction is carried out mostly by example along with occasional comments such as ‘‘make this line thicker.’’ ‘‘Play it like this,’’ and so on. There are no schools of criticism, no reviews in the papers, and certainly no art history. People nevertheless take it all very seriously and are most attentive to what they see and hear; they react with gestures and facial expressions, and sometimes shift their preferences with their moods. (1984: 62–63)

In this nonartworld, not only are newspaper reviews and art schools unknown, but even evaluative language itself. In spite of their painting and music and poetry, Tilghman’s hypothetical tribal beings call on gestures and facial expressions to convey their aesthetic reactions, which are, in any case, little more than the product of shifting moods. The tribal world in this example is explicitly fictional, purposefully created to advance a logical philosophical argument about the nature of art. But it has close cousins on other shelves of our libraries, where the same image sheds its philosophical function and assumes the appearance of descriptive prose. Tribal peoples become, in those pages, faceless producers of art who cannot appreciate or assess or review or document their work except through grunts

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and shrugs. Their world is imagined to be less hypothesized than ‘‘documented’’ as having neither history nor aesthetics, neither scholarship nor connoisseurship, neither humor nor irony. A classical Western education offers little protection against the seductive attractions of this image, which casts such flattering light on our own higher sensibilities. E. H. Gombrich’s elaboration of the attributes of Tribal Society adds yet another example to those already cited in earlier chapters, authenticating for current and future generations of readers stereotypic images of the Third World as a land of ignorance, confusion, and childishness. In a chapter that makes repeated use of the word ‘‘strange,’’ the latest edition of Gombrich’s The Story of Art explains that If most works of these civilizations look weird and unnatural to us, the reason lies probably in the ideas they are meant to convey. . . . Negroes in Africa are sometimes as vague as little children about what is a picture and what is real . . . they even believe that certain animals are related to them in some fairy-tale manner. . . [they] live in a kind of dream-world. . . . It is very much as if children played at pirates or detectives till they no longer knew where playacting ended and reality began. But with children there is always the grown-up world about them, the people who tell them, ‘‘Don’t be so noisy’’, or ‘‘It is nearly bed-time’’. For the savage there is no such other world to spoil the illusion. (1966: ch.1, ‘‘Strange Beginnings’’)

Gombrich illustrates his point by the reactions that ‘‘we’’ and ‘‘they’’ would experience to a scrawled doodle of a face: ‘‘To us all this is a joke, but to the native it is not.’’ He thus corroborates William Rubin’s analysis of the difference between look-alike sculptures by Alexander Calder and his counterpart from New Guinea. From this perspective, the Primitive World is a sober place indeed, where doodled faces and sculpted branches are perceived as living monsters. No wonder, then, that its inhabitants have no time or inclination for such pleasurable pursuits as aesthetic discussion, intellectual history, or art-for-art’s sake, preoccupied as they are with chasing spirits and demons from their midst, with no grown-ups to remind them that it is all just a game.

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It is rarely necessary to mention explicitly the racial component of this other world. Like Leonard Bernstein, we can express warm pride in our Persian princes, conveying benevolence and admiration while maintaining our cultural boundary and the position of dominance that it protects. At a time when revisionist art history is reassessing the traditional isolation of that discipline’s subject matter from the fabric of social and cultural life, and at a time when anthropology is delving more and more insistently into the nature of culture in modern industrial societies, we are also at a time when our qualitative division of world art into ‘‘ours’’ and ‘‘theirs’’ stands ready for a serious reappraisal. A part of that change is already underway, as distinguished institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art invite into their galleries selected Primitive Masterpieces. But their doors have been opened more willingly to the objects themselves than to the aesthetic sensibilities that gave them birth. The final, and more meaningful, step will be to recognize that the vision of Western art lovers is neither more nor less conditioned by cultural ideas – both prejudices and insights – than that of their counterparts in other societies and to follow through on our newly invigorated appreciation of ‘‘exotic’’ art by acknowledging the cultural diversity, intellectual vitality, and aesthetic integrity of its creators.

Afterword to the Second Edition First the good news. In the dozen or so years since this book was written, the discourse surrounding what, for purposes of discussion, we call ‘‘art’’ has opened up noticeably to perspectives outside of its traditional territory. A determinedly optimistic reading of these developments might run roughly as follows. In the field of ‘‘fine’’ arts, the complex workings – social, cultural, economic, political – that give structure, texture, and (contested or uncontested) meaning to the more traditional matter of art objects and their collective history have been moving into greater prominence. Both scholarly and popular writings on art have been engaging in the scrutiny of museum ethics, curatorial strategies, auction politics, market dynamics, and collecting agendas.

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Even the very sensitive possibility that ethnocentrism lurks in the foundations of the edifice of connoisseurship has become more widely recognized. Artworks once viewed as visual entities set into more or less elaborate wooden borders are now being framed in a completely different sense, as contextualized productions undergoing contextualized readings. Setting art objects, artists’ biographies, and the evolution of stylistic sequences more forcefully in the context of perceptions conditioned by social and cultural factors brings them closer to long-standing anthropological concerns and interests, and acts to erode the lingering temptation (stronger in some commentators than others) to view art history as the pristine, apolitical study of aesthetic forms. And sacred territories of art historical scholarship, where original works authenticated by erudite connoisseurship once held pride of place, are being quietly invaded by a growing interest in copies, fakes, appropriations, and derivative forms. Approaches to art from beyond the Eurocultural orbit have also undergone significant changes over the past decade or two. Especially pivotal has been a diminished focus on cultural isolates, a by-product of the tendency for today’s anthropologists to set the societies and cultures they study in broader fields of vision than did their predecessors of the midtwentieth century. While scholars once strained to discern the stylistic essences of particular arts in particular cultures, they are now directing their gaze more frequently toward the doorways where artistic and aesthetic ideas jostle each other in their passage from one cultural setting to the next. While the site of artistic production was once located in lineages of convention within bounded communities, it now spreads into the global arena, pulling in players from every corner of the world, from every kind of society, and from every chamber of the artworld’s vast honeycomb. And while the emphasis was once on abstracting back from an overlay of modernity to discover uncorrupted artistic traditions (think of Franz Boas holding up a blanket to block out the two-story houses behind the Kwakiutl natives he was filming for the anthropological record, as captured in the Odyssey series video devoted to this father of American anthropology), modernization is now seen as lying at the heart of the enterprise,

providing a springboard for explorations of cultural creativity and self-affirmation. Not surprisingly, these shifts are being accompanied by a marked, if gradual, rapprochement among the various sectors of the popular and scholarly art world. In museums, the most visible evidence has been an explosion, over the past couple of decades, of exhibitions integrating anthropological and art historical issues and scholarship, juxtaposing arts from previously segregated categories, and calling attention to the defining (and redefining) power of display context.6 Community museums, with vigorous local participation, have sprung up in unprecedented numbers, providing active loci for grassroots cultural creativity and self-representation. Rights of interpretation are under lively discussion; cultural authority is being renegotiated; the privileged status of long established canons is under attack; and museum acquisition policies designed to maximize the preservation of data and the growth of scientific knowledge are being contested by more ethically-focused debates aimed at responsible de-accessioning and repatriation. The legal definitions of both cultural property and artistic authorship in a video-and-computer age of sampling and photoshop have begun to be recognized as a thorny bundle deeply entangled in multicultural ideologies and highly inflated economic stakes.7 The social/cultural atmosphere created by these changes has, among other things, brought the specific critiques made in this book more frequently into mainstream art critical discourse. Associations that have long relegated ‘‘primitive art’’ to a world of irrationality, superstition, voodooesque rituals in flickering torchlight, and symbolic meanings linked to fertility and witchcraft still pop up in texts authored by variably informed commentators, but their frequency is diminishing significantly, giving way to a less generalizing gaze that recognizes the staggering diversity of art worlds in the non-Eurocultural universe. Exhibitions of works owned by particular collectors continue to be mounted, implicitly reinforcing the logic critiqued in chapter 7 [in Price 1989] that ‘‘pedigree’’ deserves to trump ‘‘signature’’ when aesthetic merit depends on the eye of the connoisseur rather than the sensitivities of the artist, but at the same time it is

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becoming increasingly common to run across arguments that, as Roslyn Adele Walker puts it, ‘‘Anonymous Has a Name’’ (1994), which confront head-on stereotypic notions of generic natives plodding mindlessly in the art-producing footsteps of their communal ancestors. We’re also witnessing, across the board, a growing tendency for the hierarchies that assigned distinct roles (and value) to fine and folk, art and craft, primitive and modern, high and low to give way to an investigation of these categories’ interpenetrations and a deconstruction of the categories themselves. Concern with the ethics of cultural ownership is also moving center-stage, thanks largely to the rising volume of voices coming from thirdand fourth-world populations, cultural studies programs, and spectators of the postmodern scene from the fields of anthropology, literature, history, philosophy, economics, and political science.8 Although these changes are extremely multifaceted, they all operate in the direction of breaking down long-established barriers – barriers between disciplinary perspectives, between geographical focuses, between hierarchized settings, between elite and popular media, and more. While much of the initiative for the reorientation has taken place in North America (Canada at least as much as the United States), Europe has shown signs of shifting along similar lines. To cite just a few indications: Paris’s global-art extravaganza, Magiciens de la Terre, constituted a magisterial (if flawed, according to many of its reviewers) effort to embrace the ‘‘arts of the world’’ as a single conceptual whole (Muse´e d’Art Contemporain 1989; see also Michaud 1989), and the more recent debates sparked by Jacques Chirac’s agenda for establishing a museum of ‘‘arts premiers’’ have produced thoughtful reflections on the place of premier/ primitive arts in the supremely civilized setting of central Paris (for example, Vaillant and Viatte 1999, Taffin 2000; see also Price 2001). In the Netherlands, an exhibition of ‘‘Art from Another World’’ in Rotterdam brought together ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘low’’ art from non-Western settings in 1988; scholars have been asking hard questions about the political and ethical dimensions of collecting practices and museum displays (for example, Bouquet 1999, Corbey 2000, Lavreysen 1998, Leyten

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1995, Leyten and Damen 1993), and a museum of Aboriginal Art has just opened (March 2001) in the city of Utrecht. In Austria, a special issue of the Archiv fu¨r Vo¨lkerkunde published an important collection of 32 essays on ‘‘Museums of Ethnology on the Eve of the Third Millennium’’ that covered developments throughout the world, from Greenland, Rome, St. Petersburg, and New York to Australia, South Africa, Mexico, and Kuala Lumpur. In England, Routledge has been bringing out one volume after another devoted to the same series of issues (for example, Greenberg, Ferguson, and Nairne 1996, Barringer and Flynn 1998). In Germany, a collection of essays on ‘‘ethnographic and modern’’ art spans commentators from Boas to Clifford (Prussat and Till 2001). And in Switzerland, a recent exhibit-cum-book focused attention on contact zones, cultural strategies behind today’s art critical discourse, the international traffic in art, the classificatory transfer of objects from ‘‘ethnography’’ to ‘‘art,’’ and the overlaps in categories of art such as contemporain, applique´, populaire, classique, pompier, pauvre, transgressif and convenu (Gonseth, Hainard, and Kaehr 1999). Around the globe, the art of Australian aborigines has been providing a testing ground for every legal and ethical dilemma in the book, supplying the media with a steady stream of news items involving issues of ethnic identity, cultural property, artistic authenticity, and market concerns.9 All this complicates the cultural geography of art, the hierarchy of traditional art scholarship, and the division between producers and commentators. It means, for example, that while the ‘‘affinities’’ between the ‘‘tribal’’ and the ‘‘modern’’ could be analyzed in terms of a comfortably agreed-upon definition of a ‘‘here’’ (homes, galleries, museums, and studios in Europe and North America) and a ‘‘there’’ (remote settlements and ‘‘exotic’’ cultures), with objects being imported to the former on the basis of the importers’ criteria, artworld traffic is now recognized as running along a much busier thoroughfare. We’re forced to notice that it’s not a one-way route and that it’s not just the objects that are traveling. While Picasso’s exploitation of African masks as inspiration for the prostitutes in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon may have caused European art history to turn a corner in the early years of the twentieth century, today’s

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appropriative possibilities are being defined in more multifaceted terms. Faith Ringgold’s The Picnic at Giverny (an acrylic-and-fabric story quilt), for example, casts Picasso as the nude model in a gender-reversal of Manet’s Le De´jeuner sur l’Herbe, set in the garden of Monet’s Nymphe´as, with ten (fully clothed) American women artists and writers having a picnic and discussing the role of women in art. And as bell hooks has noted, in the hands of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who took from Pollock, de Kooning, and Rauschenberg on the one end and ‘‘the guys painting on the trains’’ on the other, a depiction of ‘‘him and Andy Warhol duking it out in boxing attire is not as innocent and playful as it appears to be’’ (1995: 36, 42).10 As the ‘‘traffic in culture’’ continues to erode the distinctions once segregating first- and third- or fourth-artworlds, ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘low’’ genres, producers and critics, and even anthropologists and art historians, lanes are being opened up in many exciting directions. Anthropologists are reading art historical literature and art historians are reading anthropology, artists are increasingly demanding an interpretive role, and the influx of voices from previously underrepresented groups is gaining momentum. And yet, if the goal is to liberate the study of art from its Eurocentric shell, much still remains to be done. My own reading of the situation suggests that the most underdeveloped aspect of artworld globalization lies less in the realm of art than in the realm of art criticism. Supplying the product is one thing, but having a say over what it represents (aesthetically, iconographically, referentially, historically) is quite another. Making the case for African American art, bell hooks cited a Time magazine cover story called ‘‘Black Renaissance: African American Artists Are Truly Free At Last.’’ She lamented that the article assessed the development and public reception of works by black artists without engaging, in any way, the ideas and perspectives of African American scholars who write about the visual arts. The blatant absence of this critical perspective serves to highlight the extent to which black scholars who write about art, specifically about work created by African American artists, are ignored by the mainstream. Ironically, the insistence in this essay that the ‘‘freedom’’ of black artists can be measured solely

by the degree to which the work of individual artists receives attention in the established white-dominated art world exposes the absence of such freedom. (1995: 110–11)

Carrying this observation further from home territory, and setting it in a more explicitly anthropological context, I would second Clifford Geertz’s argument that ‘‘art talk’’ has been reported as rarely as it has for non-Western societies, not because people in such societies don’t engage in it, but because they frequently do it through forms that are different from those of Western art criticism (1983: 94–120). If we wish to tune in to the aesthetic frameworks of other cultures, we need to make a special effort to push aside our everyday understandings of how art is talked or written about and open ourselves to different modes of discourse. Often this means softening the distinction between artist and critic and paying closer attention to what art producers themselves have to say. And once we begin to listen, the commentary is abundantly available, as an eyeopening complement to European traditions of art criticism, both academic and journalistic. The rapid globalization of recent years – from migrations of work forces and the proliferation of tourism to the border-crashing forces of the Internet or CNN’s soundbite coverage of what it calls ‘‘Hotspots’’ – brings the absurdity of a monovocal Eurocentric criticism into full view and presents exciting new challenges for intercultural conversations about the nature and meaning of art in all its varied settings. We are profoundly enriched by being able to read the interpretive texts bordering Faith Ringgold’s acrylic and strip-cloth story quilts, . . . by being able to talk to inhabitants of the Amazonian rain forest about the meaning of the dances they are performing on the Washington Mall, . . . by being able to view Maori arts from New Zealand as presented by a tribal elder formally trained in traditional Western art history, . . . by being able to visit an exhibition of Malaysian, Nigerian, Filipino, and other ‘‘Black British’’ art from London conceptualized by Caribbean-born curators based in New York, . . . and by being able to study Romare Bearden’s analysis of compositional principles, in which paintings of the Italian Renaissance are seen through the eyes of an artist equally familiar with the one in Harlem.11

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The need to redefine the scaffolding of art critical discourse along more multicultural lines is being argued in countless outposts of the international art world. In a consistently insightful Jamaican journal called Small Axe, for example, Annie Paul has cited Gerardo Mosquera’s distinction between ‘‘curating cultures’’ and ‘‘curated cultures,’’ and pointed the finger at a curatoriat that invests in the construction of what it passes off as ‘‘universal values’’ on the basis of Eurocentric and even ‘‘Manhattan-centric’’ criteria (1999: 66). She writes: High modern avatars of art have gone through many transformations this century, always mirroring Europe’s own response to the discovery of extra-European forms of life in the Universe. One such has been the idea of art as the release of messages from the unconscious, automatic art as it were, simple and immediate no matter whether the artist comes from the most technologically sophisticated society or the most primitive. In this particular narrative, the primitive artist represents the noble savage, a superior sensibility trapped in prehistoric circumstances. In opposition to this is the figure of the modern artist, the savage noble who can psychically tap into the collective unconscious by courting the irrational and systematically flouting convention. Both are based on a concept of the artist as a ‘‘primal’’ creature. . . . These two groups are locked in a strategic embrace by Jamaican art history. (1999: 62)

Paul’s depiction of the artist (whether primitive or modern) as a primal creature with special gifts for tapping into the unconscious is very close to the one I found in the heads of many of the French and American art collectors I interviewed in the 1980s. The effect that this pervasive conception has had on art criticism (which is, as bell hooks understands so well, where the real power lies) has been to keep artists locked up in their studios, painting or sculpting like the silent natives of the stereotype critiqued by Clifford Geertz (1983: 97), or the Baule artist ventriloquized by Susan Vogel (see chapter 2 [in Price 1989]), rather than entering the discourse. But we’re clearly turning a corner, and there are promising indications that the History of Art, as a Western-authored metanarrative, is being challenged with growing success by a

multiplicity of alternative frameworks. In place of the comprehensive texts familiar to anyone who’s taken a course in introductory art history, where an impeccably credentialed Ph.D. narrates a unilinear evolution from cave paintings to Andy Warhol, we are now beginning to discern at least a Table of Contents for a multi-authored anthology of art histories that reflects and celebrates the variety of ways people around the world enrich their lives through artistic creativity – and, perhaps even more importantly, the variety of discourses they call on to think and talk about it. NOTES 1 Djuka: The Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana (New York: Viking, 1931), p. 4. 2 For discussion of art and exchange, see S. Price 1984; for further illustrations of Maroon art, see also Hurault 1970 and Price and Price 1980. 3 Kahn (1931) mentions in passing that ‘‘Djukas,’’ as he calls Saramakas, also speak another language, but minimizes its importance by contrasting it with what he claims is their ‘‘ordinary tongue’’ and describing it as a device for the preservation of tribal lore, historical accounts of slave rebellions, and other carefully guarded secrets. His discussion of language, such as it is, also comes at the end of his book (chap. 10, Djuka Talk), long after the image of the baby-talking native has settled into the consciousness of his readers. (Given its popular reputation for simplicity, it is perhaps worth pointing out that the very real complexities of the Saramaka language have come to constitute a major focus of historical and theoretical linguistics, spawning numerous recent articles and books.) 4 Vladimir Nabokov captured the spirit of this aggressive faith in the sexual symbolism of human behavior, drawing his illustration from its child-psychology incarnation – an only lightly modified variant of its presence in Primitive Art studies. Victor was a problem child insofar as he refused to be one. From the Winds’ [his psychiatrist-parents’] point of view, every male child had an ardent desire to castrate

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his father and a nostalgic urge to re-enter his mother’s body. But Victor did not reveal any behavior disorder, did not pick his nose, did not suck his thumb, was not even a nail biter. Dr. Wind, with the object of eliminating what he, a radiophile, termed ‘‘the static of personal relationship,’’ had his impregnable child tested psychometrically at the Institute by a couple of outsiders, young Dr. Stern and his smiling wife (I am Louis and this is Christina). But the results were either monstrous or nil: the seven-year-old subject scored on the so-called Godunov Drawing-of-the-Animal Test a sensational mental age of seventeen, but on being given a Fairview Adult Test promptly sank to the mentality of a two-year-old. How much care, skill, inventiveness have gone to devise those marvelous techniques! What a shame that certain patients refuse to co-operate! There is, for instance, the Kent-Rosanoff Absolutely Free Association Test, in which little Joe or Jane is asked to respond to a Stimulus Word, such as table, duck, music, sickness, thickness, low, deep, long, happiness, fruit, mother, mushroom. There is the charming Bievre Interest-Attitude Game (a blessing on rainy afternoons), in which little Sam or Ruby is asked to put a little mark in front of the things about which he or she feels sort of fearful, such as dying, falling, dreaming, cyclones, funerals, father, night, operation, bedroom, bathroom, converge, and so forth; there is the Augusta Angst Abstract Test in which the little one (das Kleine) is made to express a list of terms (‘‘groaning,’’ ‘‘pleasure,’’ ‘‘darkness’’) by means of unlifted lines. And there is, of course, the Doll Play, in which Patrick or Patricia is given two identical rubber dolls and a cute little bit of clay which Pat must fix on one of them before he or she starts playing, and oh the lovely doll house, with so many rooms and lots of quaint miniature objects, including a chamber pot no bigger than a cupule, and a medicine chest, and a poker, and a double bed, and even a pair of teeny-weeny rubber gloves in the kitchen, and you may be as mean as you like and do anything you want to Papa doll if you think he is beating Mama doll when they put out the lights in the bedroom. But bad

Victor would not play with Lou and Tina, ignored the dolls, struck out all the listed words (which was against the rules), and made drawings that had no subhuman significance whatever. (1957: 90–91)

In a sense, what distinguishes Saramaka artists from little Victor is nothing more than their perceptiveness of outsiders’ expectations for their psyches, plus a rather cynical willingness to play along, upon occasion, with the game. 5 The resistance to presenting art in nonestablished niches is not limited to Primitive Art. According to a journalistic account, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, which opened in Washington in 1987, was originally opposed by feminists because it did not propose to cover women’s social history and by other critics because it segregated women’s art from that of men. This project, too, was inspired by a wish to recognize the achievements of artists who had been subjected to more than their fair share of anonymity (Conroy 1987). 6 Reactions to these exhibits have often been more stimulating than the exhibits themselves. Witness the tidal wave of discussion that came on the heels of the ‘‘Primitivism’’ show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1984, ‘‘Into the Heart of Africa’’ at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum in 1989 (for an overview, see Butler 1999), and ‘‘Africa: The Art of a Continent’’ at London’s Royal Academy in 1995. K. Anthony Appiah’s reflections on Asante goldweights, inspired by this last exhibit but fueled by memories of his childhood in Ghana, represent to my mind the best of this rich literature (1997). 7 Appearing the same year as the present book’s original publication, Jeanette Greenfield’s The Return of Cultural Treasures and Phyllis Messenger’s edited volume, The Ethics of Collecting Cultural Property, heralded an attention to cultural property rights that was to develop into a pervasive wave of soul-searching on the part of anthropologists, museum personnel, and others interested in Western practices for collecting artifacts in third- and fourth-world societies.

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8 For an update of the specific example presented here, see S. and R. Price 1999. 9 The bibliography of works reflecting post1990 perspectives on the representation of art and culture in ‘‘civilized places’’ is extensive enough to make any selection both partial and arbitrary, but a reasonable English-language starter list might include Clifford 1997, Coombes 1994, Coote and Shelton 1992, Dilworth 1996, Errington 1998, Henderson and Kaeppler 1996, Hilden 2000, Jonaitis 1991, Karp and Lavine 1991, Karp, Kreamer, and Lavine 1992, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, MacClancy 1997, Marcus and Myers 1995, Pearce 1993, Phillips and Steiner 1999, R. and S. Price 1992 and 1995, Root 1995, Schildkrout and Keim 1998, Sherman and Rogoff 1994, Simpson 1996, Thomas 1999, Tucker 1992, and Ziff and Rao 1997. (See also Price 1999.) 10 For more on such appropriations, see Tawadros 1996. 11 See Cameron et al. 1998, R. and S. Price 1994, Mead 1984, Beauchamp-Byrd et al. 1997, Bearden and Holty 1969; these references are but a sampling from a much larger reservoir.

REFERENCES Appiah, K. Anthony. 1997. ‘‘The Arts of Africa.’’ New York Review of Books, 24 April, pp. 46–51. Barringer, Tim, and Tom Flynn (eds.) 1998. Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum. New York and London: Routledge. Bearden, Romare, and Carl Holty. 1969. The Painter’s Mind: A Study of the Relations of Structure and Space in Painting. New York: Crown Publishers. Beauchamp-Byrd, Mora J., and M. Franklin Sirmans (eds.) 1998. Transforming the Crown: African, Asian & Caribbean Artists in Britain 1966–1996. New York: Caribbean Cultural Center. Bouquet, Mary (ed.) 1999. ‘‘Academic Anthropology and the Museum: Back to the Future.’’ Special issue (#34) of Focaal: Tijdscrift voor Antropologie (Utrecht, Netherlands).

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Butler, Shelley Ruth. 1999. Contested Representations: Revisiting Into the Heart of Africa. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach. Cameron, Dan, et al. 1998. Dancing at the Louvre: Faith Ringgold’s French Collection and Other Story Quilts. Berkeley: University of California Press. Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Coombes, Annie E. 1994. Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press. Coote, Jeremy, and Anthony Shelton (eds.) 1992. Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Corbey, Raymond. 2000. Tribal Art Traffic: A Chronicle of Taste, Trade and Desire in Colonial and Post-Colonial Times. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute. Counter, S. Allen, Jr., and David L. Evans. N.d. ‘‘The Bush Afro-Americans of Surinam and French Guiana: The Connecting Link.’’ Pamphlet. —— . 1981. I Sought My Brother: An AfroAmerican Reunion. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Dark, Philip, J. C. 1954. Bush Negro Art: An African Art in the Americas. London: Tiranti. De Vries-Hamburger, L. 1959. ‘‘Over Volkskunst in het Algemeen en die van Suriname in het Bijzonder.’’ Kultuurpatronen 1: 106–10. Dilworth, Leah. 1996. Imagining Indians in the Southwest: Persistent Visions of a Primitive Past. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Errington, Shelly. 1998. The Death of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales of Progress. Berkeley: University of California Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1983. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Gombrich, E. H. 1966. The Story of Art. 11th ed., revised and enlarged. London: Phaidon Press. Gonseth, Marc-Olivier, Jacques Hainard, and Roland Kaehr (eds.) 1999. L’art c’est l’art. Neuchaˆtel: Muse´e d’Ethnographie. Greenberg, Reesa, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne (eds.) 1996. Thinking about Exhibitions. London: Routledge.

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Greenfield, Jeanette. 1989. The Return of Cultural Treasures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Henderson, Amy, and Adrienne L. Kaeppler (eds.) 1997. Exhibiting Dilemmas: Issues of Representation at the Smithsonian. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Herskovits, Melville J. 1930. ‘‘Bush Negro Art.’’ Arts 17(51): 25–37, 48–49. Herskovits, Melville J., and Frances S. Herskovits. 1934. Rebel Destiny: Among the Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hilden, Patricia Penn. 2000. ‘‘Race for Sale: Narratives of Possession in Two ‘Ethnic’ Museums.’’ The Drama Review 44(3):11– 36. hooks, bell. 1995. Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. New York: The New Press. Hurault, Jean. 1970. Africains de Guyane: La vie mate´rielle et l’art des Noirs re´fugie´s de Guyane. Paris and the Hague: Mouton. Jonaitis, Aldona (ed.) 1991. Chiefly Feasts: The Enduring Kwakiutl Potlatch. New York: American Museum of Natural History; Seattle: University of Washington Press. Kahn, Morton C. 1931. Djuka: The Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana. New York: Viking Press. —— . 1939. ‘‘Africa’s Lost Tribes in South America: An On-the-Spot Account of Blood-Chilling African Rites of 200 Years Ago Preserved Intact in the Jungles of South America by a Tribe of Runaway Slaves.’’ Natural History 43: 209–15, 232. —— . 1954. ‘‘Little Africa in America: The Bush Negroes.’’ Americas 6(10): 6–8, 41–43. Karp, Ivan, and Steven D. Lavine (eds.) 1991. Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Karp, Ivan, Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Steven D. Lavine (eds.) 1992. Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1998. Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lavreysen, Ria. 1998. Global encounters in the world of art: Collisions of tradition and modernity. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute. Leyten, Harrie (ed.) 1995. Illicit traffic in cultural property: museums against pillage.

Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute; Bamako: Muse´e National du Mali. Leyten, Harrie, and Bibi Damen (eds.) 1993. Art, anthropology, and the modes of representation: Museums and contemporary nonWestern art. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute. MacClancy, Jeremy (ed.) 1997. Contesting Art: Art, Politics and Identity in the Modern World. Oxford: Berg. Marcus, George E., and Fred R. Myers (eds.) 1995. The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mead, Sidney Moko (ed.) 1984. Te Maori: Maori Art from New Zealand Collections. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Messenger, Phyllis Mauch (ed.) 1989. The Ethics of Collecting Cultural Property: Whose Culture? Whose Property? Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Michaud, Yves (ed.) 1989. Magiciens de la Terre. Special issue of Les Cahiers du Muse´e National d’Art Moderne no. 28. Muntslag, F. H. J. 1966. Tembe: Surinaamse Houtsnijkunst. Amsterdam: Prins Bernhard Fonds. —— . 1979. Paw a Paw Dindoe: Surinaamse Houtsnijkunst. Paramaribo: VACO. Muse´e National d’Art Moderne. 1989. Magiciens de la Terre. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou. Paul, Annie. 1999. ‘‘Uninstalling the Nation: The Dilemma of Contemporary Jamaican Art.’’ Small Axe 6:57–78. Pearce, Susan M. 1993. Museums, Objects, and Collections: A Cultural Study. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Phillips, Ruth B., and Christopher B. Steiner (eds.) 1999. Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Price, Richard. 1970. ‘‘Saramaka Woodcarving: The Development of an Afroamerican Art. Man 5: 363–78. —— . 1976. The Guiana Maroons: A Historical and Bibliographical Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Price, Richard, and Sally Price. 1992. Equatoria. New York: Routledge. —— 1994. On The Mall. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

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—— 1995. Enigma Variations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Price, Sally. 1982/1988. ‘‘Sexism and the Construction of Reality: An Afro-American Example.’’ American Ethnologist 10: 460–76. Reprinted in Johnnetta B. Cole (ed.), Anthropology for the Nineties, pp. 126–48. New York: Free Press. —— . 1984. Co-wives and Calabashes. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. —— . 1986. ‘‘L’esthe´tique et le temps: commentaire sur l’histoire orale de l’art.’’ Ethnologie 82(98–99): 215–25. —— . 1989. Primitive Art in Civilized Places, 2. Chicago: Chicago University Press. —— 1999. Representations of Art and Arts of Representation. American Anthropologist 101:841–44. —— 2001. Museums of the World a` la franc¸aise. American Anthropologist 103. Price, Sally, and Richard Price. 1980. AfroAmerican Arts of the Suriname Rain Forest. Berkeley: University of California Press. —— . 1999. Maroon Arts: Cultural Vitality in the African Diaspora. Boston: Beacon Press. Prussat, Margrit, and Wolfgang Till (eds.) 2001. ‘‘Neger im Louvre’’: Texte zu Kunstethnographie und moderner Kunst. Dresden: Verlag der Kunst. Root, Deborah. 1995. Cannibal Culture: Art, Appropriation, and the Commodification of Difference. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Schildkrout, Enid, and Curtis A. Keim (eds.) 1998. The Scramble for Art in Central Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sherman, Daniel J., and Irit Rogoff (eds.) 1994. Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Simpson, Moira G. 1996. Making Representations: Museums in the Post-Colonial Era. London: Routledge. Taffin, Dominique (ed.) 2000. Du muse´e colonial au muse´e des cultures du monde. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. Tawadros, Gilane. 1996. ‘‘Beyond the Boundary: The Work of Three Black Women Art-

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ists in Britain.’’ In Houston A. Baker, Jr., Manthia Diawara, and Ruth H. Lindeborg (eds.), Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader, pp. 240–277. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Thomas, Nicholas. 1999. Possessions: Indigenous Art / Colonial Culture. New York: Thames and Hudson. Tilghman, B. R. 1984. But Is It Art? The Value of Art and the Temptation of Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Tucker, Marcia (ed.) 1992. Different Voices: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Framework for Change in the American Art Museum. New York: Association of Art Museum Directors. Vaillant, E´milia, and Germain Viatte (eds.) 1999. Le muse´e et les cultures du monde. Paris: E´cole nationale du patrimoine. Van Panhuys, L. C. 1928. ‘‘Quelques ornements des ne`gres des bois de la Guyane Ne´erlandaise.’’ Proceedings of the International Congress of Americanists 22: 231–74. —— . 1934. ‘‘African Customs and Beliefs Preserved for Two Centuries in the Interior of Dutch Guiana.’’ Proceedings of the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences 1: 247–48. Tilghman, B. R. 1984. But Is It Art? The Value of Art and the Temptation of Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Vandercook, John Womack. 1926. ‘‘We Find an African Tribe in the South American Jungle.’’ Mentor 14(3): 19–22. Volders, J. L. 1966. Bouwkunst in Suriname: Driehonderd Jaren Nationale Architectuur. Hilversum: G. van Saanen. Walker, Roslyn Adele. 1994. ‘‘Anonymous Has a Name: Olowe of Ise.’’ In Rowland Abiodun, Henry J. Drewal, and John Pemberton III (eds.), The Yoruba Artist: New Theoretical Perspectives on African Arts, pp. 90– 106. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Ziff, Bruce, and Pratima V. Rao (eds.) 1997. Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

11 Oriental Antiquities/Far Eastern Art Craig Clunas

When I was fourteen I came to London with my father. We were on the way to Cambridge, where I was to investigate the possibility of studying Chinese. I visited the Victoria and Albert Museum for the first time, and there in a large room titled ‘‘Far Eastern Art’’ I was enthralled to see a great carved lacquer seat, labeled ‘‘Throne of the Emperor Ch’ien-lung.’’ While the uniformed warder looked or pretended to look away, I knelt down and put my forehead to the black linoleum in homage. These are not the tales curators tell. Their role in maintaining objects (in both senses of the word) demands that they suppress such embarrassing personal engagements and secret fetishisms, which threaten to reopen the space between the viewer and the artifact. The throne was there, and the Emperor of China sat on it. Now it is here, and you the visitor view it. Do not ask how it got here, or where it was from 1770 to now; that does not matter. You are here to engage with ‘‘China,’’ not with ‘‘Britain,’’ so do not ask what the presence of the throne of the emperor of China might tell you about Britain and its narratives about

China over the two centuries since the thing was made. Admission of this bit of adolescent theatricality may undermine my professional identification as a member of the staff of that same museum, entrusted by the British state with the power to place that same ‘‘throne,’’ write about it, and display it. Failure to admit to it, however, to accept the object’s presence in South Kensington as being an untroubling and natural occurrence, which need not touch anyone’s fantasy life today, can only in the end reproduce a stifling identity of self-regard. What follows is a step toward compilation of the inventory that Gramsci saw as necessary, if a consciousness of myself and my colleagues as a product of the historical process to date is to be produced. The dates, deeds, and institutional affiliations of past scholars that I write down here are presented not simply as what happened but rather as an essential part of any critical elaboration of present practice in the production of ‘‘Chinese Art’’ in Britain, in a context where the displays of the major public museums are the principal visible construc-

From Tani Barlow (ed.), Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 413–446. ß 1997 Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the publisher.

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tions from which a discourse of ‘‘Chinese culture’’ can be derived.

Possessions/Identities C. B. Macpherson’s work on the political theory of possessive individualism in eighteenthcentury England has made familiar the notion that possessions are seen as constitutive of identity within the dominant discourses of political and moral economy in Britain.1 More recently, the works of Susan Stewart and James Clifford have extended this notion to the position that possessing is also central to the generation and sustaining of the identities of collectivities.2 This is particularly so in the case of the imagined community of the nation-state. The National Museum acts as a key site of promotion of the existence and validity of the state formation. It does so with particular force in that the discursive practices at the heart of the museum lay claim to scientific objectivity, to a transcendental mimesis of what is ‘‘out there.’’ It thus can act with particular force to validate the claims to sovereignty and independence by proving through displays of archaeology and ethnography the inevitability of the existence of the actually contingent conditions that give it its very existence. This role of the museum as constitutive of national identity emerges very sharply in historical contexts such as postHabsburg central Europe, but it is no less well developed in the museums of imperial and postimperial Britain, where the refusal to privilege the presentation of distinctively ‘‘British’’ material (and if anything rather the reverse) within the collections is constitutive of an identity that eschews national definition in favor of a claim of universal hegemony, as a transcendent fixed point which observes all other ‘‘cultures.’’ The British Museum could never be restricted to British things, for to do so would set a limit to the reach of British power, as well as to the gaze of the all-comprehending and autonomous subject. British museums of the imperial era are a cultural technology of display that form part of what Carol Breckenridge has termed an ‘‘imagined ecumene’’: This Victorian ecumene encompassed Great Britain, the United States and India (along with other places) in a discursive space that was global, while nurturing nation-states that

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were culturally highly specific. One condition for the construction of cultural specificity. . . was a concept of the cultural other, for these new technologies, routines and rituals of rule were frequently developed in relation to this imperialized or imperializing other.3

The British colonial presence in China differed from that in India in duration and intensity, but many of the same practices in the field of culture can be observed, practices constitutive of a ‘‘British’’ identity differentiated not only from the other of Asia but from more immediate colonial rivals such as France and then the United States. However, this type of identity is in no sense a fixed one; it is subject to contestation both from within and without. The works of Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff on the social life of things, and the biography of the object, should have made us sensitive to the proposition that while social situations encode objects with fluctuating meanings, methodologically a close attention to the particulars of the objects will illuminate those very social contexts.4 I would wish here to extend this idea to take in the social life of the collection. They too shift their meaning over time. In what follows I want to look at some changes in the presentation of material from China in the British Museum and in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, two institutions directly patronized and supported by the British state, conscious that the framing of Chinese objects in these institutions conditions their viewing as expressive of discourses of national and imperial identity. The interplay of private and public possession, between individual collectors and public museums that they patronized and supported, and which ultimately came to possess the objects they had amassed, is of particular importance in forming the collections of material out of which representations of ‘‘China’’ and ‘‘Chinese art’’ were manufactured in Britain. The number of men who made a full-time living out of explaining China to Britain at this period was very small but tightly integrated through personal and professional networks, even if formal structures, other than the national museums, were very few. No women formed part of this project before the 1970s. Having told one story that should not be told, I will write further, with intentional ambiguity, about

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Figure 11.1 Throne, carved lacquer on a wood core. Made about 1775–80, taken from the Nan yuan hunting park in 1901. W.399-1922, Swift gift. Photo courtesy of the Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum

Britain’s possession of the ‘‘throne’’ of China (figure 11.1), to which I bowed as a teenager.

Commodities and Works of Art In eighteenth-century Britain, not only members of the aristocracy and gentry but also those whom Jonathan Swift called ‘‘the middling sort’’ encountered luxury goods from Asia in their daily lives. These included a broad range of goods from China: silk piece goods for clothing and furnishings, tea, and the porcelain vessels necessary for brewing and drinking it, lacquered and hardwood furniture, small-scale carving in a number of materials, and pictures.5 These goods were available through a network of specialist retailers, called ‘‘Chinamen’’ in London, a considerable number of whom were women. They might employ other women, and a significant portion of their clientele was made up of women, too.6 Certainly it was an article of faith among male

arbiters of taste that the fashion for Asian imported goods was concentrated in two groups rigorously marginalized in elite cultural discourse – namely, the nouveaux riches, grown wealthy on trade rather than by the more socially prestigious route of landholding, and women, whose irrational desire for the hideous products of the East Indies was seen as being matched only by the rapacity and frivolity with which they spent their husbands’ money. Despite the ease with which Chinese goods found customers, and despite the existence on continental Europe of intellectuals willing to speak with warmth of the supposed virtues of a Confucian empire of the rational, no British intellectual of the period had a good word to say for China, in particular for the aesthetic manifestations of its culture.7 China was at this time becoming firmly fixed as the ‘‘other,’’ the irrationality of its intellectual productions becoming set as the essential counter-

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weight to the enduring canons of quality represented by the art of Greece and Rome. As such it was associated by men at some level with the equally problematic ‘‘other’’ of the female. There is the real possibility that this double marginalization, and the gendering of Asian artifacts in everyday life, was used by at least some women in the period to create a measure of cultural space for themselves that was beyond criticism. What else could the male social critic expect of women than that they would like Chinese things? Significantly, they could act freely as consumers, but were not allowed to go the further stage of creating a publicly visible discourse about ‘‘Chinese art.’’ Like many women, Lady Dorothea Banks built up a large collection of Chinese ceramics, but it was her husband, not she herself, who categorized and ordered it in a handwritten catalog of 1807.8 By the time of major museum formation in the middle nineteenth century, a masculinist gendered understanding of collecting separated the ‘‘scientific’’ activities of taxonomy and categorization from the realm of mere accumulation. Such notice as was given in Britain to the concept of Chinese art was universally derogatory. To be more precise, the notion of Chinese art was an oxymoron, since the Western hierarchy of media put painting at the top, with representations of the human form at the highest point therein. The ‘‘fine arts’’ of painting and sculpture, as opposed to the ‘‘mechanical arts,’’ were universally believed to be extinct among the Chinese. Almost no Chinese painting for the domestic, as opposed to export, market left for Europe or America before the end of the nineteenth century. John Barrow, writing in 1804, can be taken as indicative of widely held views: With regard to painting, they can be considered in no other light than as miserable daubers, being unable to pencil out a correct outline of many objects, to give body to the same by the application of proper lights and shadows, and to lay on the nice shades of colour, so as to resemble the tints of nature.9

In general the creation of goods for the export market was taken, by the nineteenth century, not as a sign of entrepreneurial flexibility but as a sign of a culture hopelessly decayed and static, one with a vaunted (though unsubstan-

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tiated) aura of past greatness, but with no present and no future. This ‘‘inability to represent’’ on the part of Chinese artists swelled as a theme in the decades leading up to the first British imperial assault on the Chinese state in 1840.

The Institutional Framing of ‘‘Chinese Art’’ in Britain This preamble may seem of doubtful relevance. However, it is impossible to discuss the creation of the broader category of Chinese art in Europe and America over the past hundred years without first accepting the existence of a discourse (and a gendered discourse) of China that has its primary locus in the context of domestic consumption, since it is against, or by contrast with, what is done in the home that so much of what happens in the institutional context of museums and of the academy is defined. This is particularly striking in the case of objects of luxury consumption for the Chinese domestic market redirected by the museum and put under the category ‘‘decorative arts’’: chairs, items of clothing, ceramic wine jars, and personal religious images, to take a few random examples. Chinese elite categorizations of art, as expressed in texts, as well as in the practices of the art and craft markets, excluded much of the Chinese material subsequently displayed in the museum context in Britain. (This is not to say that fissures on gender, class, and ethnic lines within the Qing polity did not exist over this issue of definition.) Indeed ‘‘art’’ is not a category in the sense of a preexistent container filled with different contents as history progresses. Rather, it is a way of categorizing, a manner of making knowledge, that has been applied to a wider and wider set of manifestations of material culture, paralleling the constant expansion of an ‘‘art market’’ that is applied to a wider and wider range of commodities. It remains a site of conflicting interpretations, fissured on class and gender lines, among others, and the right to define something as ‘‘art’’ is typically seen as an important attribute of those dominant in society at a given moment. Crucial to this way of categorizing in European museum and academic practice is the strategy whereby notions of function must

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largely be removed from the objects of the exercise. In order to be an object of ‘‘decorative art’’ a cup must no longer be drunk from, and questions of how it would be drunk from have to be occluded. Thrones must no longer be bowed down to. Michael Podro has shown how what he calls ‘‘the disregard of function’’ was consciously conceived by nineteenth-century German theorists such as Karl Schnaase as a programmatic part of the creation of ‘‘art history.’’ Schnaase saw any concern with function as making for a lack of the disengagement necessary to appreciate true artistic import, an import which is inextricably formed from the work of art’s ‘‘modifying its antecedents and as carrying intimations of its successors’’ (or what we would more insidiously call just ‘‘stylistic change’’).10 This privileges the diachronic over the synchronic, and leads naturally to the situation in which talk of ‘‘influences’’ and ‘‘trends’’ supplants a notion of links from given objects horizontally toward the total assemblage of objects present in a specific social and historical context. Objects transferred from the domain of ‘‘ethnography’’ to that of ‘‘art’’ typically find diachronic links privileged at the expense of connections with others that have failed to make the transition.11 But narrative art history, which from its origins in the German-speaking world was translated into the Anglo-Saxon one in the later nineteenth century, is only one interpretive framework into which the things made in China have been construed in Europe and America. Despite its role as the dominant paradigm in the United States today, it is arguable whether narrative art history has ever actually taken root in Britain at all. Another framework of representation has historically flourished here, one with an equal power of generating discourse, though this time originating in the study of the natural world – the framework of taxonomy. In the later nineteenth century, most particularly in Britain, taxonomy exercised a powerful hegemony over the ordering of manmade products as well as over those of nature.12 It is the program of a universal taxonomy of the ‘‘industrial arts’’ that formed the explicit project of the South Kensington Museum, known after 1897 as the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 1863 (immediately after the Second Opium War against China) the Lords of the Commit-

tee of the Council on Education had stated ‘‘that the aim of the Museum is to make the historical and geographical series of all decorative art complete, and fully to illustrate human taste and ingenuity.’’13 The aim of completeness was qualified by the exclusion from the South Kensington collections of the material culture of those peoples, dubbed ‘‘primitive,’’ who had neither art nor history. They were consigned to the historic present of ethnography collections, represented in 1863 primarily by the British Museum but later in the century by collections such as those of the Horniman Museum in London and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.14 As the dominant institutions in defining not simply Chinese culture in Britain, but in defining to an extent what could be thought of as ‘‘culture’’ at all, it is necessary to talk in some more detail about the evolution of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, and of the Chinese collections within them.15 One problem immediately presents itself: What is the Victoria and Albert Museum a museum of? Its various historic titles singularly fail to announce its contents, though it has in my brief curatorial career been variously subtitled for marketing purposes as ‘‘the nation’s attic,’’ ‘‘Britain’s national museum of art and design,’’ and ‘‘the world’s greatest museum of decorative arts.’’16 The refusal to announce itself is surely indicative of the institution’s totalizing claims for a taxonomic universality over which the monarch, symbol of the British imperial state, holds sway. What, then, is the British Museum a museum of? Again the title significantly gives us no clue, while transparently (even naively) telling us that it is a Museum of Britain, where Britain is displayed to itself and the world. Both institutions have since their inception (and in the case of the British Museum, that is well back in the eighteenth century) included Chinese objects in their collections, and the administrative arrangements they have made for them, as well as the contexts and combinations in which they have presented them to the public, have done much to form a current discourse of ‘‘Chinese art.’’ It is very hard to research the history of a museum. The point of a museum is that it has no history, but represents the objects it contains transparently, in an unmediated form. In

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James Clifford’s paraphrase of the idea of Susan Stewart, ‘‘the making of meaning in museum classification and display is mystified as adequate representation. The time and order of the collection erase the concrete social labour of its making.’’17 It is even harder to create a history of the display of Chinese material in British museums, since very little descriptive or pictorial information exists as to what was shown where or when, what juxtapositions (almost the most powerful creators of meaning in display) were made, which objects were privileged by particularly prominent positioning, and what was said about them on labels.18 This is more than an accident, or a piece of forgetfulness on the part of my predecessors. The museum cannot allow itself to document its own frequently changing display arrangements, since then it will have a history, and if it becomes a historical object in its own right, then it can be investigated, challenged, opposed, or contradicted.19 Much of what we have (and that often only patchily and in no coherent form) in place of a history of representations through display is a history of representations through essentially administrative arrangements, which make extremely dry reading, but which at least give us some way of coming to grips with the rhetoric of stable, unchanging truth and getting a glimpse of the contingency and historical concreteness of the arrangements into which objects have been placed.20 For there have in fact been many changes in the contexts and categories into which Chinese artifacts have been inserted in Britain. Only some of these contexts have involved a deployment of the notion of Chinese art, but all have operated with the notion of an integral Chinese culture, for which certain types of luxury artifact, mediated through the international art market and categorized by British individual and institutional collectors, were a satisfactory synecdoche. Chinese objects came to the British Museum in the founding bequest of Sir Hans Sloane in 1753, and appear at first to have been included under the rubric of ethnography. That this was felt to be in some sense inadequate by the midnineteenth century is shown by the complaint in David Masson’s The British Museum, Historical and Descriptive (1850) that works of China and Japan were crammed into ‘‘five paltry cases’’ among a ‘‘collection of articles illus-

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trative of the manners and customs of nations lying at a distance from our own, as well as of rude ancient races.’’21 Masson argued that there should be distinct rooms for the antiquities of China, India, and Japan, which should be separated from those of more primitive peoples. In constructing the Chinese holdings of the British Museum as ‘‘antiquities,’’ Masson is drawing on a venerable European tradition of the study of material objects as essentially historical evidence, supplementary to the written record, which had developed since the fourteenth century with regard to ancient Greek and Roman civilization. Since 1807 the British Museum had included a Department of Antiquities, restricted in scope to the products of the West. It could encompass objects deemed to be of high aesthetic value (like Roman portrait sculpture), as well as more humble objects, as, for example, simple pottery oil lamps, which might aid an understanding of an obscure joke in the writing of a Roman comedian. Aesthetics as such did not play the decisive role in the decision as to whether to include an item in the collections. It was rather as evidence of ‘‘culture’’ that objects were collected.22 In 1860 there were formed out of the Department of Antiquities three new departments:23 Oriental Antiquities (including the prehistoric British, Western Medieval, and ethnographic/Asian collections), Coins and Medals, and Greek and Roman Antiquities. The year marked a new degree of advance for British imperialism in East Asia, being the one in which Britain invaded north China and sacked the Summer Palace, an action that was to have a major effect on the flow of highquality artifacts to British private and public collections. In 1866 Oriental Antiquities became a department devoted to Egypt and Assyria, while the Chinese material (together with the bulk of the ethnographic collections) remained part of the new Department of British and Medieval Antiquities, headed by Sir Augustus Franks (1826–1897).24 In 1921 the ceramic and ethnographic collections (in which China by now bulked very large) were formed into a Department of Ceramics and Ethnography for Robert Lockhart Hobson (1872–1941).25 In 1933 Hobson, ‘‘the world’s leading authority on Chinese

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ceramics,’’ who had joined the British Museum as far back as 1897, became head of a newly created Department of Oriental Antiquities and Ethnography, with ‘‘the Orient’’ now having moved decisively further east to include only the Islamic world, India, and East Asia. Hobson remained in post until 1938, and his department also included for the first time all Asian pictorial collections, transferred from the Subdepartment of Oriental Prints and Drawings, which had been founded in 1913 to support the personal interests of Laurence Binyon (1869–1943).26 This ended the separate and privileged status of Chinese painting in the British Museum (discussed below), as Binyon’s most famous acquisition in the field of Chinese painting, the Gu Kaizhi Admonitions of the Court Instructress scroll found itself recategorized as an ‘‘antiquity.’’ Finally in 1946 ethnography was trimmed off to create the Department of Oriental Antiquities, which exists today (though Japan was hived off in 1986 into a separate Department of Japanese Antiquities).27 There was clear privileging of Chinese and Japanese pictorial works throughout the nineteenth century, though this owed more to Western notions of the hierarchy of the arts than it did to any recognition of their equal prominence in any scheme of things to be found in China. The fact that they were a ‘‘higher’’ art form is shown by their inclusion in the collections of the Department of Prints and Drawings (formed out of the Department of Antiquities as far back as 1836), where they were collected and curated on a par with European material. This is a significant point. At a time when Chinese ceramics were still, at least administratively, the same thing as canoes and weapons, a Hiroshige print was the same as a Rembrandt print. A picture could not, by definition, be simply an antiquity, a piece of historical evidence, but it was of necessity part of the realm of (fine) art. A Chinese picture could be bad art, failed art, but it could not cease to be art at this point. Note however that there was no question of including Chinese painting with Western painting in the National Gallery, and it remained alongside items (prints) that occupied a subsidiary, if still honored, ranking in the Western canon. However, the relative privileging of pictures is also shown by the

fact that the Japanese and Chinese paintings were the first part of the British Museum collection other than books to have a published catalog.28 This appeared in 1886, and was written not by a member of the museum’s staff but by the Scottish surgeon William Anderson (1842–1900), who had sold to the museum the large collection of Japanese paintings he had amassed in Japan between 1873 and 1880.29 The collection had been augmented by many gifts of Chinese painting from Augustus Franks, who though an official of the museum also functioned as a wealthy private collector, often buying objects for the collections with his own money (he was a major donor of the British Museum’s Chinese ceramics). Thus we see a situation in which private initiative, as much as institutional policy, dictated what should be collected, and even (in the case of Anderson) how it should be cataloged and described. This private ethos remains a strand in the history of the creation of Chinese art in Britain, and it remained standard practice from before World War I to entrust museum publications to noninstitutional authors. London’s other major institutional collection, the South Kensington Museum, has also included Chinese material since its inception in the museum attached to the central design school of the Department of Practical Art in the decades immediately prior to the Great Exhibition of 1851.30 The initial aim of the collection was stringently didactic, aimed at improving the quality of British manufactured goods in a situation of intense commercial rivalry, above all with the French. Consequently, the South Kensington Museum aimed to concentrate on ‘‘ornamental art,’’ which meant excluding pictures and sculpture, though this program was modified shortly after its inception, and a considerable quantity of Chinese pictures were acquired. The institution was very closely linked to the British Museum through the person of Franks, who loaned it a large collection of Chinese and Japanese ceramics from his extensive private collection, and also acted officially as an art referee, responsible for the selection of acquisitions.31 In the historicist climate of the time, China was a perfectly acceptable source of design solutions, though one held in lower esteem by many. In 1856, in The Grammar of Ornament,

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the designer and theorist Owen Jones, who was closely associated with the whole South Kensington project, could write that Chinese art was totally familiar, through the medium of imported goods, and could condemn it thus: ‘‘The Chinese are totally unimaginative, and all their works are accordingly wanting in the highest grace of art – the ideal.’’32 The complaint is really one about the ‘‘Chinese mind,’’ to which an assemblage of designed objects will provide an infallible key. Nevertheless, large quantities of objects in a variety of media were accumulated at South Kensington, in an institution that became increasingly confused as the nineteenth century wore on as to whether it was there to educate British craftsmen by exposing them to a broad range of often contemporary practice, or to assemble a great historical corpus of material in which connoisseurly criteria of quality would be the deciding factor. The struggles over this issue are no necessary part of this article; suffice it to say that in 1897 a new director, Caspar Purdon Clarke, moved to improve the scholarly standing of the Victoria and Albert Museum by dividing the Department of Art (which had endured since 1857) into Departments of Furniture, Textiles, Sculpture and Ivories, Ceramics, and Metalwork, as well as a Department of Prints and Drawings, and the Library. This division was spoken of at the time and later as being one ‘‘by materials,’’ and was presented as this museum’s distinctive and original contribution to museum organization. However, there were occasions when other criteria overrode this classificatory scheme. Most significantly, a well-orchestrated outcry by a cadre of colonial administrators, led by two former viceroys including Lord Curzon himself, prevented Purdon Clarke’s proposal that the Indian collections be divided in this way.33 Clearly it was felt necessary to retain the integrity of the holdings of objects from the greatest of imperial possessions, a symbolic model on British soil of the breadth and variety of the empire on the subcontinent, and a separate Indian Museum was maintained. China was a lesser concern within the imperial scheme. The Chinese collections were accordingly divided between these until 1970, when a Far Eastern Department was created.34 Throughout those six and a half decades, the fragmentation of

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the Chinese collections meant that ‘‘Chinese art’’ (as opposed to ‘‘Chinese woven textiles’’ or ‘‘Chinese porcelain’’) was rarely raised as an issue at a formal level within the museum and that the degree of interest shown in various aspects of it tended to fluctuate within the departments, depending on the interest of individual curators, hardly any of whom were specialists in material of East Asian origin. This had the effect of creating a hierarchy based not so much on explicit notions of ‘‘fine art’’ versus ‘‘decorative art,’’ or of the relative positions of different art forms, as on the degree of interest and activity generated in different parts of the museum.35

Ceramics as the Flowering of Chinese Art In the interwar years and after, the Department of Ceramics was broadly responsible for the sustenance and construction of Chinese art within the Victoria and Albert Museum. With what were, both numerically and in terms of prominence in display, the most important Chinese collections, and with internationally renowned scholars such as William Bowyer Honey (1891–1956) and Bernard Rackham (1877–1964) on its staff, the department exercised an unofficial hegemony, as guardian of the master narrative in which Chinese ceramics and Chinese art were collapsed into each other.36 In one of several volumes published to coincide with the Royal Academy of Art exhibition of Chinese Art of 1935, the sections on Sculpture and Lacquer and Textiles were both provided by Leigh Ashton (1897–1983), then an assistant keeper in the Department of Ceramics.37 In this interwar period, however, there was a significant turn in all the departments to an engagement with the idea of ‘‘national heritage,’’ and a redirection of publishing and acquisitory activity toward British (in fact largely English) things. Perceptions of national and imperial decline, particularly in competition with America, lent this a greater urgency. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s Chinese collections, physically and administratively divided by their materials, remained, ‘‘scattered in various odd corners and obscure passages,’’ until 1939, when for the first time ‘‘these priceless objects [were] permanently

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assembled in chronological sequence in the spacious and brightly lit North Court (incidentally one of the Museum’s largest galleries). The arrangement is most effective, following the method so effectively adopted at the Chinese Exhibition at Burlington House a few years ago.’’38 The display was to prove even less ‘‘permanent’’ than any other such presentation, being necessarily dismantled when the Museum’s entire collections were shipped out of London at the beginning of World War II. Ceramics also played a dominant role in the British Museum, within the Department of Ceramics and Ethnography and its successor, Oriental Antiquities and Ethnography. During this interwar period, the British Museum’s Subdepartment of Oriental Prints and Drawings (established in 1913) employed the young Arthur Waley (1889–1968), nowadays better remembered as a translator of Chinese and Japanese literature.39 Waley had been employed by Laurence Binyon (1899–1943), author in 1908 of The Painting of the Far East.40 Both Waley and Binyon enjoyed wide literary reputations that gave them an authority not essentially derived from their museum offices. Although his championing of painting might make him seem a more faithful transmitter of ‘‘traditional’’ Chinese connoisseurly criteria, Binyon’s views are those of the classic orientalist position as defined by Edward Said, where ‘‘the East’’ cannot represent itself but must be revealed to itself by the Western expert, who has penetrated its essential and unchanging characteristics.41 They are summed up in a series of lectures delivered at Harvard in 1933–1934, dedicated to his great American contemporary, Langdon Warner, director of the Freer Gallery.42 These construct Chinese art as a reflection of essential and largely historically invariant characteristics of the ‘‘Chinese race,’’ and are full of typically reductive aphorisms – ‘‘The Chinese have kept their eyes fresh’’; ‘‘This race has always had a turn to the fabulous’’; ‘‘It [Chinese art] has its roots deep in the earth.’’ Binyon certainly shared the view described here that the touchstone of quality lay in the early achievements of Chinese culture and that these were in some sense unknown to the Chinese themselves; ‘‘for it is only in the present century that the real achievements of Chinese art have been revealed.’’43 He also

provided a theoretical underpinning for the prominent role given to ceramics in museum collections, in his typically florid panegyric in Bergsonian vein to a Tang dynasty ceramic jar: No less than a great picture or statue, this vase typifies what art is and art does: how it has its being in the world of the senses yet communicates through the senses so much more than we can express in words. You cannot tell the body from the spirit, the thing expressed from its expression. The complete work is filled with a mysterious life like a human personality.44

The anonymity of potters saved the connoisseur from even having to consider any named, individuated Chinese maker as a conscious social or political actor. No actual person had made the pot, it had been made by ‘‘the race.’’

Writing Chinese Art History at South Kensington Prior to 1939, only one attempt had been made at South Kensington to address the entire field of Chinese Art and to improve the scholarly treatment of the Chinese collections in line with the European holdings, but this had been done right at the beginning of the century by recourse to knowledge held by a private collector, in this case Stephen Wooton Bushell (d. 1908).45 The South Kensington Museum commissioned his Chinese Art (originally of 1904, but with numerous reprints), using the museum’s pieces as illustrations almost exclusively. The use of private expertise was a standard practice at this time, but the book is still the first one in Europe to equate the holdings of a single institution with the total field of knowledge. Predecessors such as M. Paleologue’s L’art Chinois (Paris, 1887) had drawn on the holdings of a large number of private collectors for its examples and illustrations. However, in Britain the move to bring definitions of the subject within the parameters of the ‘‘national collections’’ can be read as an affirmation of public, official powers of definition in the field of culture, the very purpose for which a museum like that at South Kensington was created. The book never states, but assumes as selfevident, that the collection of the South Kensington Museum can stand practically for the totality of Chinese art. Only in the case of

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painting is significant recourse had to another collection, and not to any private holdings but to the British Museum. By visiting these two imperial institutions, ‘‘Chinese art’’ can be seen in its totality. The work is structured in a series of chapters that reveal something of how Bushell saw this essential category as breaking down, and which is idiosyncratic by both contemporary elite Chinese criteria of categorization of the arts and by the terms of the ‘‘rational’’ departmental organization recently erected at the South Kensington Museum. The chapters are (after an historical introduction) Sculpture, Architecture, Bronze, Carving in Wood, Ivory, Horn etc., Lacquer, Carving in Jade and Other Hard Stones, Pottery and Porcelain, Glass, Enamels (subdivided into Cloisonne´, Champleve, and Painted), Jewellery, Textiles (Woven Silks, Embroidery, Carpets), and finally, Pictorial Art. To begin with sculpture and end with painting may look like both an inversion of traditional Chinese canons of high and low, as well as sundering the unity of the fine arts in the Western tradition; however, the author does refer to pictorial art as ‘‘the most important branch of our subject.’’46 This was despite the fact that the collection included almost no Chinese painting, by this date the major focus of acquisition of American collections such as those of railroad-car magnate Charles Lang Freer and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. A distinctively British official definition of Chinese art was being born.

Chinese Art and Imperial Decline The years after World War I saw a major shift in the valuation of Chinese art in Britain, with a collapse in the status of the types of Qing (1644–1911) porcelain that had been the focus of interest for an early generation of collectors (including Bushell and those advised by him), and a new engagement with the art of early China.47 It has been traditional to view this in rather mechanistic terms, as the simple reaction to the increased opportunity to see early Chinese things concomitant on the progress of excavation, legal and illegal, in China. Clearly there was a connection between railway building and the flood of tomb ceramics onto the market. But it is also the case that changed attitudes made for a greater receptivity to

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early Chinese artifacts. (After all, plenty of bronzes were available aboveground in the Qing period, but there is no evidence that they moved Whistler or Oscar Wilde in the same way as did Kangxi blue-and-white ceramics.) Rachel Gotlieb has shown how the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and to a lesser extent that of Jung, was explicitly cited in advanced aesthetic circles promoting the shift of taste, and how in particular early Chinese art was seen as embodying a spontaneity and vitality that was invigoratingly different from (and superior to) the more highly finished porcelain that had attracted an earlier generation.48 This notion of a tired Europe refreshing itself from the vital springs of more primitive cultures is clearly part of the larger picture of appropriation of the other seen in the art of the cubists and surrealists.49 In the particular case of China, the otherness is seen as distance in time, not space. Chinese culture has a glorious past, a decayed and exhausted present and no future. As the French aesthete Georges Soulie´ de Morant put it in 1928, ‘‘Aucun signe n’apparait encore d’une renaissance des arts.’’50 His views were echoed by many and created a simple device for structuring canons of quality and importance in Chinese art – older was better. Running parallel to this development, expressed above all in critical writing like that of Roger Fry, was a deepening fetishization by the Victoria and Albert Museum of objects manufactured at what was deemed to be both the apogee and the end of ‘‘traditional China,’’ the eighteenth century. The reign of the Qianlong emperor (1736–1795) was held to mark the last era of artistic excellence before the catastrophic nineteenth-century ‘‘decline’’ (the causes of which, if they are discussed at all in artistic literature, are usually put down to something like ‘‘exhaustion’’ on the part of the ‘‘tradition’’). The role of imperialism in China’s decline is not commented on. The Qing empire disappeared in 1911, closely followed by the emperors of Russia, Germany, and Austria. By 1920 only the emperors of Abyssinia and Japan and the King-Emperor George V kept their thrones. The latter ruled over territories that were expanded after World War I, reaching a physical extent from which they were so swiftly to shrink. It is in the light of this that we must examine the

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fascination with the Chinese imperial court that was to permeate writing about, collecting, and displaying Chinese artifacts in an institution like the Victoria and Albert Museum. The signs of rulership (crowns, thrones, and other regalia) had been prominent in the Indian courts of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the event from which the Victoria and Albert Museum rhetorically derived (and continues to derive) legitimacy.51 The fascination with the imperial provenance of the loot from the 1862 sack of the Summer Palace was reflected in the museum’s collecting in the decades after the event, but the supply of objects of high enough status and sufficient aesthetic quality was seen as necessarily limited before the ending of Qing rule. In 1922 the museum was given what has remained one of its most famous and most reproduced treasures (figure 11.2). It is a lateeighteenth-century throne-chair, looted from an imperial hunting park to the south of Peking in the 1901 multinational invasion of China and sold on the London art market by Mikail Girs, a White Russian e´migre´ who had been Tsarist ambassador there at that time. It cost £2,250 and earned the donor of those funds the thanks of Queen Mary, who was known to have ‘‘expressed a hope that, by some means, it might find a place’’ in the museum that bore her husband’s grandparents’ names.52 The throne has remained on display ever since, labeled until recently ‘‘The [note the definite article] throne of the Emperor Ch’ien-lung.’’ The screen with which it once formed a pair remains unpublished in the Museum of Ethnography in Vienna, but then possession of the screen of China is not the same thing as possession of the throne of China. It would of course be recognized that Qing political discourse made no room for a throne of China, no ruler’s seat symbolically equated with right of rule. The object’s meaning is entirely a product of its context of display. In Stewart’s terms, the throne is more of a souvenir than an item in a collection: We need and desire souvenirs of events that are reportable, events whose materiality has escaped us, events that thereby exist only through the invention of narrative. Through narrative the souvenir substitutes a context of perpetual consumption for its context of origin. It represents not the lived experience of its maker but the ‘‘secondhand’’ experience of its

possessor/owner. Like the collection it always displays the romance of contraband, for its scandal is its removal from its ‘‘natural’’ location. Yet it is only by means of its material relation to that location that it acquires its value.53

As the British Empire became more and more remote, souvenirs of the emperor such as the throne of China played an ever-increasing role in the national imaginary, as nostalgia for one empire slid across into nostalgia for all, and souvenirs of empire became fetishes of consolation. British colonial power in China was less effective in 1922 than it had been two decades earlier, at the point of the looting of the throne, and it was to decline significantly over the next two decades, leading to a final collapse under Japanese assault. The throne thus comes to signify not the empire from which it was taken but the equally vanished empire that took it.

Private Collections/Public Institutions In the interwar period immediately after the throne’s acquisition, the pace in the study of Chinese art in London was being made to an equal, if not actually greater, extent by private individuals, of whom the most significant are perhaps George Eumorfopoulos (1863–1939) (figure 11.3) and Sir Percival David (1892– 1964).54 The former, a business magnate of Greek descent, was intimately involved in the founding of the Oriental Ceramic Society in 1921, of which he was the first president. This private organization, its membership initially limited to fifteen, had as its object ‘‘to widen appreciation and to acquire knowledge of Eastern Ceramic Art by periodic meetings for the purpose of discussion.’’55 (Originally objects from the Middle East were also collected, but this strand of interest soon faded.) Validation of ‘‘Eastern Ceramic Art’’ as a coherent and discrete field drew both on the Bergsonian interest in ceramics as an ‘‘immediate’’ and ‘‘vital’’ form of artistic creation and on the growing body of dealers in the London art market prepared to specialize in this type of goods. These included businesses such as Spinks, Sparks, Bluett and Sons, and Marchants, all of which survived until very recent years.56 Dealers were initially excluded from

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Figure 11.2 The throne as it appeared in the Illustrated London News, 8 July 1922, prior to its purchase for the Victoria and Albert Museum. Reproduced by kind permission of the Illustrated London News Picture Library

membership of the Oriental Ceramic Society (ocs), but they were essential to its functioning, since most of the members’ purchasing was done in London rather than in Asia. Questions of a Chinese provenance were by and

large not of concern, in contrast to the nineteenth century when ‘‘from the Summer Palace’’ was extremely important in market terms. From its inception the ocs was involved in setting the agenda for public institutional

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Figure 11.3 Bronze bust of George Eumorfopoulos, by Dora Gordine, frbs. A.12-1944, Scaramanga Gift. Photo courtesy of the Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum

display of Chinese art, with a program of exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum of ceramic pieces drawn from the holdings of members (often, particularly with regard to early pieces, as fine as anything the museums had themselves). However, the fact that museum staff too (Hobson from the British Museum, and Honey from the Victoria and Albert Museum) were among its founding members reflects the social class from which such scholars were drawn in the interwar years, as well as the intimate relations they enjoyed with private collectors. Eumorfopoulos and David were both prominently involved in organizing the famous

1935 Exhibition of Chinese Art held at Burlington House. David was described in 1985 by Basil Gray, the last survivor of the British organizing committee, as the person thanks to whom ‘‘above all . . . this concept was brought to fruition.’’57 The show was a massive one, with 3,080 exhibits (750 of them loans from the Chinese government), and was seen by 422,123 visitors. Judging by the volume of press coverage, it was certainly a popular success.58 In reflecting on it fifty years after the event, however, Gray commented that, ‘‘I hold from the point of view of scholarship, the occasion was largely missed.’’59 His point is that it did relatively little to reorder priorities of

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study in Britain, which were to remain dominated by the study of ceramics into the postwar period, supported by the same constellation of interests among private collectors, dealers, and museum curators.

Chinese Art in the Academy David, while also building up a major collection of Chinese ceramics, provided in 1930 the funds for an experimental lectureship in Chinese Art and Archaeology, to be tenable at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University.60 This lectureship, the first formal teaching to be made available in Britain in the field, was given to Walter Perceval Yetts (1878–1957).61 In 1932 the post was made into a chair attached to the Courtauld Institute of Art and funded by the Universities China Committee in London, a grant-giving body supported by the monies extorted from the Chinese government by Britain as part of the ‘‘Boxer indemnity’’ after 1901. Although Yetts wrote about a wide variety of subjects, from architecture to Ming ceramics, he was principally renowned in his own day as a scholar of, first, archaic bronzes and, second, Buddhist sculpture. His major scholarly monuments are the catalogs not of any of the public collections of the day but of the bronzes and sculpture in the Eumorfopoulos collection, which was sold to the British government in 1935 and divided between the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. He came at both subjects squarely from an ‘‘antiquities’’ point of view – that is, with an interest as much in the epigraphy of the material as anything else. Yetts has therefore disappeared totally from the lineage of the study of the subject laid out by Wen Fong in his essay accompanying the catalog of the Great Bronze Age of China, and indeed in the sense of the rigorous formalism of a figure like Max Loehr (1903–1991) was not an art historian at all.62 Yetts valued bronzes as historical evidence, and in doing so he was probably (like his Swedish contemporary Bernhard Karlgren) closer to the mainstream of Ming and Qing thinking and writing about this material than were those who sought (ultimately with success) to assimilate bronze vessels into the Western category ‘‘art.’’ His anonymous obituarist in the Times was slightly apologetic about this

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and felt constrained to point out that ‘‘approaching the subject of Chinese art from the archaeological and ethnographical sides, Yetts was by no means indifferent to aesthetic qualities.’’63 His recreation, it is pointed out in defense of his aesthetic side, was watercolor painting. Yetts was succeeded as a teacher of Chinese art and archaeology at London University by S. Howard Hansford (1899–1973), who initially also had no formal background in art history or academic sinology, having worked rather until his mid-thirties with the family firm of Wright and Hansford, China and Japan Merchants. He was a Universities China Committee (again the Boxer indemnity) scholar in China from 1938 to 1939, served as an intelligence officer from 1940 to 1945, then studied in China again (this time under Chinese government auspices) from 1945 to 1947. In that year he returned to London to teach, but significantly by this point the post remained attached to the Courtauld Institute, London University’s specialist postgraduate art history unit, rather than to the School of Oriental and African Studies. In 1950 David began negotiations with the University of London that culminated in the presentation of his collection of Chinese ceramics to the university, and its opening to the public in June 1952 as the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art. The pdf, as it quickly became known, was administratively part of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and Hansford left the Courtauld to become its first head. What would have happened if the teaching of Chinese art in London had remained within the Courtauld Institute is a moot point, and exactly why the switch was made remains murky, even if the effect is clear. The effect was to consolidate the coherence of an orientalist discursive field.64 Hansford’s lectureship at the School of Oriental and African Studies was made a chair in 1956, and he held the post through 1966, when he was succeeded by William Watson. In his inaugural lecture, Hansford took the opportunity to review the study of the subject in Britain, but he primarily stressed the long history of ‘‘archaeoloatry – the worship of antiquity’’ in China. In a further statement, very much in the manner of the orientalist concentration on ‘‘essences,’’ he

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argues that ‘‘all Chinese’’ are conscious of the antiquity and unity of their civilization, and adds: ‘‘The Chinese, like the British, are quite sure that they are the salt of the earth, and do not feel the need of proving it by tedious argument.’’65 His definition of the field is one that begins with bronzes, then Buddhist sculpture, then ‘‘glyptics,’’ or the jade carving that was his own special field. For the study of these subjects, London, with its three major museum collections, its private collections, and above all its thriving art market, ‘‘offers conditions as near ideal as possible’’ and in particular better than those of China. He then remarks, ‘‘I have said nothing yet about two subjects which properly fall within the scope of our studies, though some might hesitate to admit them to the category of Chinese antiquities, because the bulk of their material dates only from the last thousand years or so. I refer to painting and ceramics.’’66 Binyon and Waley are given the credit for ‘‘the pioneer work of interpreting Chinese painting to the West and enunciating canons of judgement’’ (the existence of traditional Chinese canons of judgment is implicitly denied in this sweeping phrase). However, Hansford accepts that the torch of scholarship in this field has passed to Americans and Germans, while the major collections are all in Japan or the United States. He never mentions China, and we are left with the clear impression that oriental art is too important a subject to be left to Orientals. By this post-World War II period, political hegemony in Asia had clearly passed from the British Empire to the United States. But Hansford’s inaugural lecture, and the practices of the national museums, both clearly embody a claim to a continuing hegemony in the sphere of cultural definition, expressed in opposition to the claims of the United States. Hansford explicitly describes London as the best place to learn about Chinese art, much better in all respects than China itself, and better than the United States with regard to the early materials he places at the head of a hierarchy of types of materials. The pdf that Hansford headed is a Foundation of Chinese Art that contains only ceramics and concentrates on those of the last thousand years. Contrast this with the contents of Ludwig Bachhofer’s Short History of Chinese Art, written in Chicago in 1944, where

the only ceramics discussed are those of the Neolithic Age and ‘‘Chinese art’’ is seen as consisting of archaic bronzes, sculpture, and painting. Bachhofer was in his own day a controversial figure (like his British counterparts, he knew no Chinese), a main conduit, at the University of Chicago, for the transfer of German scholarly Kunstgeschichte to the United States.67 However, the divergence between his project and that of the London museums is visible and dramatic. In Britain it was and has remained the norm to work on ceramics, metalwork, textiles, jade, furniture, and other manifestations that in the United States have received less attention than painting. There has been correspondingly little work done in Britain on Chinese painting and none at all on calligraphy. The language-based scholarship of Chinese art in America is clearly part of the broader ‘‘area studies’’ movement, answering demands from the American state for agents in Asia who could effectively operate a mode of hegemony different in its aims and agencies from the British imperialism it had superseded. The differences between British and American discourses of ‘‘Chinese art’’ show that there is no such thing out there, that those who present the essence of ‘‘China’’ present essentially themselves.

The End of Empire and the Art of Empire Hansford’s 1956 inaugural lecture was delivered in a context in which the study of Chinese art in Britain seemed to him to indeed be flourishing. A new generation of scholars at the national museums had become active. The Victoria and Albert Museum was now headed by a director who had worked extensively with the Chinese collections, Leigh Ashton (director in 1945–1955 and knighted in 1948). He undertook a major program of renovation of the museum’s displays, creating what were known as the Primary Galleries, ‘‘illustrating a single theme, such as the art of a particular civilisation, country or age, by grouping together the finest things available in a single gallery.’’68 The Primary Gallery of Far Eastern Art opened on 12 September 1952, dominated visually by a display of Qing dynasty robes and by Qing dynasty lacquered furniture (figures 11.4 and 11.5), the most prominent single

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Figure 11.4 The Victoria and Albert Museum’s new ‘‘Primary Gallery’’ of Far Eastern Art, featured in The Illustrated London News, 20 September 1952. Of four objects chosen for special attention, three – the throne, ice chest, and group of robes – are given specifically ‘‘imperial’’ connections. Reproduced by kind permission of the Illustrated London News Picture Library

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Figure 11.5 View of the Primary Gallery in 1952. The throne, robes, and ice chest are situated together at the far end of the gallery, to form a focus of imperial associations. Given the sources of the gallery’s architecture in a Christian basilica, it is hard not to read this positioning as making this group of imperial objects functionally equivalent to the altar. Reproduced by kind permission of the Illustrated London News Picture Library

item being the ‘‘throne’’ now standing in display terms not for the apogee of Chinese woodwork but as the very focus of ‘‘Far Eastern Art.’’ Nevertheless, for administrative purposes the gallery was a responsibility of the Department of Ceramics, which maintained its primacy within the museum as the center of Chinese studies.69 The British Museum’s galleries were also reinstalled after the war, the Department of Oriental Antiquities being headed there for over twenty of the postwar years (1946–1969) by Binyon’s son-in-law, Basil Gray (1904–1988).70 What was happening in London at this period was the emergence of a more distinctive profile for Chinese art. Distinguished now from ‘‘ethnography’’ at the British Museum

(in 1946) and recognized at the Victoria and Albert Museum as a distinct phenomenon by the creation of the Primary Gallery (1952), above all enshrined in the prestigious Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art (1952), as well as supported by a flourishing art market and the collectors grouped around an expanded Oriental Ceramic Society, the subject seemed to enjoy a new degree of discursive coherence, but one still centered on museums rather than on academic teaching. The Percival David Foundation remains at the time of writing the only teaching institution in Chinese art, and from 1966 to the present each head has been a scholar whose career began in a museum (William Watson, 1966–1983; Roderick Whitfield, 1983– ).

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This discursive coherence nevertheless operated in a political climate of massively reduced British colonial power in Asia. The decolonization of India, Pakistan, and Burma was swiftly followed by a collapse in the visibility of the art of those parts of the world, with the demolition in the mid-1950s of the Indian Museum (which Curzon’s efforts had preserved in 1909) and the removal into storage of most of its collections.71 The collapse of the market for Japanese art after Britain’s series of defeats in the Pacific meant that the amount of display space allotted to it was also severely restricted in proportion to the size of the collections acquired in the nineteenth century. Colonial power in Asia, particularly after the end of the Malaysian emergency (fought as Britain’s contribution to the global containment of communism in Asia) was now focused almost solely on China, through the retention of Hong Kong. Yet throughout this period, and down to the present, colonialism was displaced into culture. Hong Kong remained invisible to the public culture represented in museums like the Victoria and Albert and the British, and ‘‘China’’ remained, the two colliding only in the last decade with the reinstallation of the galleries at both the Victoria and Albert and the British Museums using funds donated by individuals from the Hong Kong business community.72 As government restrictions on museum budgets mirror national economic decline, and as the private sector of corporate and personal sponsorship becomes the major support for once-imperial institutions, the question of who gets to represent what to whom comes to the fore. To a sector of a museum’s visitors, the loot of empire is what they expect to see – a literal ‘‘empire of things.’’ In this world of insecure meanings and private fetishisms, major displays of Chinese art in the national museums, paid for with money from Hong Kong, come to seem in their entirety like souvenirs of that empire that is fast vanishing into the imaginary consolations of costume drama.

NOTES 1 Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).

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2 Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (rpt., Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993); James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: TwentiethCentury Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988). 3 Breckenridge, ‘‘The Aesthetics and Politics of Colonial Collecting: India at World Fairs,’’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989): 196. 4 Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 5 Craig Clunas, ed., Chinese Export Art and Design (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1987). 6 Aubrey Toppin, ‘‘The China Trade and Some London Chinamen,’’ Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle 3 (1934): 45. 7 This point is well made in Ch’ien Chungshu, ‘‘China in the English Literature of the Eighteenth Century: Part 1,’’ Quarterly Bulletin of Chinese Bibliography, n.s., 2 (1941): 7–48; ‘‘Part 2,’’ ibid., 2 (1941): 113–152, a work of great erudition that, like its companion piece on the seventeenth century, deserves to be much better known. The interest in Chinese architectural forms, particularly in landscape architecture, by William Chambers is perhaps best seen as a way of positioning his own practice in the marketplace, and is accompanied by statements such as the following: ‘‘Though I am publishing a work of Chinese Architecture, let it not be suspected that my intention is to promote a taste so much inferiour to the antique, and so very unfit for our climate’’ (Chambers, ‘‘Preface,’’ Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines and Utensils . . . [London: 1757]). 8 Rose Kerr, ‘‘The Chinese Porcelain at Spring Grove Dairy,’’ Apollo 129 (1989): 30–34. 9 Barrow, Travels in China (London: 1804), 327, quoted in Clunas, Chinese Export Watercolours, Victoria and Albert Museum Far Eastern Series (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1984), 96. 10 Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), 40.

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Clifford, Predicament of Culture, 224– 225. For a study of natural history collecting that parallels the activity of antiquities museums see Robert A. Stafford, ‘‘Annexing the Landscapes of the Past: British Imperial Geology in the Nineteenth Century,’’ in Imperialism and the Natural World, ed. John M. Mackenzie, Studies in Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 67–89. Cited in Joe Earle, ‘‘The Taxonomic Obsession: British Collectors and Japanese Objects, 1852–1986,’’ Burlington Magazine 128 (1986): 866. Annie E. Coombes, ‘‘Museums and the Formation of National and Cultural Identity,’’ Oxford Art Journal 11 (1988): 57–68. What happened in America, without a single metropolitan center exercising hegemony over the whole cultural sphere, is not only more complex, and outside the competence of the present author, but has been broadly mapped out in Warren I. Cohen, East Asian Art and American Culture: A Study in International Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), which contains much valuable material in a convenient form but would be even more valuable with a less narrow focus on the United States and a greater awareness of at least some of the controversy surrounding the notion of ‘‘orientalism’’ in recent decades. I joined the museum in 1979, after training in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge University, at Peking Languages Institute and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. The presumption of China’s unshakable alterity underwrote every stage of that training and was unchallenged by me until very recently. Clifford, Predicament of Culture, 220. In the course of the last year, the staff of the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum have for the first time pulled together in one sequence all of the guide-books to the collections published since the mid-nineteenth century, making it possible for such research to begin. A pathbreaking endeavor in this vein is Rupert Faulkner and Anna Jackson, ‘‘The

Meiji Period in South Kensington: The Representation of Japan in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1852–1912,’’ in Japanese Art in the Khalili Collection, ed. O. R. Impey (forthcoming). However, my point holds: each guidebook presents itself as a transcendent present, with no sense of a history to the display arrangements. Certainly since the 1980s it has been forced to be more self-aware, by a broadly based critique of its positivist framework. This critique is represented in Britain by works such as Robert Lumley, ed., The Museum Time Machine: Putting Cultures on Display (London: Comedia/Routledge, 1988), and Peter Vergo, ed., The New Museology (London: Reaktion Books, 1989). The other thing we have is oral history. The orality of most museums’ institutional cultures has struck me often throughout my career. Cited in Edward Miller, That Noble Cabinet: A History of the British Museum (London: Deutsch, 1973), 222. This lack of interest in aesthetic quality as grounds for classification is associated by Breckenridge with the ‘‘cabinet of curiosities’’ tradition that ‘‘represented an eclectic aesthetic of mercantilism soon to be displaced by one of imperialism in which collecting served as a sign of connoisseurship, and hence of control. Value in wonder cabinets was derived less from an object’s aesthetic associations, and more from its uniqueness that was the product of its decontextualized presentation’’ (Breckenridge, ‘‘Aesthetics and Politics,’’ 199). What follows depends on Miller, ‘‘Appendix C: The Keepers of the Departments,’’ in That Noble Cabinet, which is not always easy to interpret. See Franks’s entry in Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 22: Supplement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1901), 665–668; see also Miller, That Noble Cabinet, 313–316. Both stress how Franks used his considerable personal wealth and his activities as a private collector to benefit the British Museum. Hobson’s Times obituary of 7 June 1941 is reprinted in Transactions of the Orien-

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tal Ceramic Society 18 (1940–41): 9–10, and is followed by Bernard Rackham, ‘‘Mr R. L. Hobson’s Contribution to the Study of Chinese and Chinese Ceramics,’’ ibid., 11–13. ‘‘The Apollo Portrait: Basil Grey,’’ Apollo 129 (1989): 41. This decision was driven to an extent by the need for a separate identity as a means of raising private-sector funding in Japan for the museum’s activities. William Anderson, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of a Collection of Japanese and Chinese Paintings in the British Museum (London: Longmans and Co./B. Quaritch/Trubner and Co., 1886). Lawrence Smith, ‘‘Collection of the Japanese Arts in the British Museum,’’ in Daiei hakubutsukan hitsuzo˜ Edo bijutsu ten (Tokyo: Tokyo Municipal Museum of Art, 1990). What follows depends largely on Anthony Burton, ‘‘The Image of the Curator,’’ Victoria and Albert Museum Album 4 (London: 1985), 373–387. Rubert Faulkner and Anna Jackson, ‘‘The Meiji Period in South Kensington: The Representation of Japan in the Victoria and Albert Museum,’’ in Oliver R. Impey and Malcoln Fairley, eds., Meiji mo Takara: Treasures of Imperial Japan (London: Kibo Foundation, 1995), pp. 152–195. Quoted in Ernst Gombrich, The Sense of Order (London: Phaidon, 1979), 56. Owen Jones somewhat modified his views in his Examples of Chinese Ornament, Selected from Objects in the South Kensington Museum and Other Collections (London: S. & T. Gilbert, 1867). Robert Skelton, ‘‘The Indian Collections: 1798 to 1978,’’ Burlington Magazine 120 (1978): 302. Purdon Clarke, prior to his appointment as director, had been the architect of the Indian Court at the 1878 Paris international exhibition, and keeper of the Indian section from 1883. During 1881–1882 he traveled extensively in India, acquiring 3,400 artifacts, specifically designed to be an exhaustive and encyclopedic taxonomy of Indian manufacturing, with particular attention paid to place of origin within the empire.

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34 I can find no documentation of the reasons behind this major move; they remained entirely within the oral culture of the museum and are now (by the retirement of everyone involved) outside even that. Thus a contingent step comes to seem like a ‘‘natural’’ development. 35 Thus the Department of Sculpture (later Architecture and Sculpture) produced almost no scholarship on any aspect of the extensive Chinese collections it held, and the level even of internal cataloging was exiguous for much of the period. The Department of Metalwork was more conscientious in its internal practice but still produced little work on China. The same would be true of Furniture and Woodwork, with the exception of Lt. Col. E. F. Strange (1862–1929), who published a pioneering Catalogue of Chinese Lacquer in 1925. On Strange’s career see Craig Clunas, ‘‘Whose Throne Is It Anyway? The Qianlong Throne in the T. T. Tsui Gallery,’’ Orientations 22 (1991): 44–50. 36 See William Bowyer Honey’s obituary (by Bernard Rackham) in Transactions of the Oriental Ceramics Society (hereafter cited as tocs) 29 (1954–55): 9–10, and Bernard Rackham’s obituary (by John Ayers) in tocs 35 (1963–64): xxiii–xxiv. 37 Laurence Binyon et al., Chinese Art (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1935). 38 H. Granville Fell, ‘‘Chinese Art at South Kensington,’’ Connoisseur 103 (1939): 223, 225. The photograph accompanying this display is of the Tang-Song section of the gallery, dominated visually by sculpture, (though including one of the early painted textile banners from Dunhuang) and with separate cases for metalwork and ceramics, in the manner of departmental apartheid that determined display policies in the Victoria and Albert Museum well into the 1970s. 39 Waley worked for the British Museum from 1913 to 1930 and produced a catalog of the Dunhuang paintings in 1931, which is still reckoned of some value today. Waley represented the exceptional figure of the self-taught genius and remarked quite correctly in 1923 that it was simply impossible to learn in London the kind of Chinese needed to equip one for a study of Chinese

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painting (though the idea of going to China to learn it was equally rejected) (T. H. Barrett, Singular Listlessness: A Short History of Chinese Books and British Scholars [London: Wellsweep Press, 1989], 47). Described by his entry in Dictionary of National Biography as ‘‘poet, art-historian and critic,’’ Laurence Binyon remained very much the fin-de-sie`cle aesthete in his views, a man for whom his work on The Painting of the Far East (1908) was but one strand in a career equally devoted to Western art, to his practice as a poet, and even as a playwright, who enjoyed critical success with his historical dramas Attila (1907) and Arthur: A Tragedy (1923, with music by no less a figure than Edward Elgar!) (L. G. Wickham Legg and E. T. Williams, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography, 1941–1950 [Oxford: 1959], 79– 81). Binyon was a much more famous figure in his day than his present reputation allows and certainly merits a fulllength biographical treatment. One difference between the orientalist scholars described by Edward Said and the practice of an orientalist art history by Binyon and his contemporaries is that no emphasis was put on command of the relevant literary sources or linguistic resources. Neither Binyon, Hobson, nor Honey knew Chinese. (Waley of course did, but famously ‘‘never went to China,’’ preferring to retain the Tang dynasty as a country of the mind.) Nowhere in any source of the period is this implied to be a lack. The key to understanding ‘‘Chinese art’’ in this schema lies not with the ‘‘Chinese’’ part of the equation but with a universalist ideal of the aesthetically sensitive individual. This contrasts markedly with the situation in the United States, where beginning in the nineteenth century, Asian (albeit usually Japanese) scholars with a command of the traditional connoisseurship literature had been employed in major museums or accepted as mentors by major collectors like Freer, and where promising young scholars like Archibald Wenley and Laurence Sickman were sent to China to acquire language skills. This cannot but

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have influenced the development of collections in Britain away from the study of painting (where linguistic resources have been seen as relatively more important) toward those areas in which it was felt (wrongly) that lack of a knowledge of the Chinese language was no impediment. Binyon, c.h., d.litt., l.l.d., The Spirit of Man in Asian Art (rpt., Cambridge, Mass.: Dover, 1936), 16. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 21. Bushell had been medical officer with the British legation in Peking, where he had acquired an impressive familiarity with traditional Chinese connoisseurship, including the written sources in Chinese, in the major area of interest to him, namely Chinese ceramics. Although never paid by the South Kensington Museum, he acted as its agent in Peking in the early 1880s, choosing objects for its collections and spending the sum of £250 on his own authority. The fact that Bushell could deploy Chinese texts in his study of art – at a time when the only employee of a national museum to have any knowledge of the language was the librarian Lionel Giles (1875–1958) – gave his work a particular orientalist authority, which has led to its continued citation into the present day. Bushell’s expertise was valued in the United States also, where he cataloged the collection of the Baltimore magnate W. T. Walters (Cohen, East Asian Art, 18; see also Rose Kerr, ‘‘The William T. Walters Collection of Qing Dynasty Porcelain,’’ Orientations 22 [April 1991]: 57–63). Although documentation survives concerning Bushell’s purchases for the museum, all correspondence with him regarding the commissioning of Chinese Art was destroyed in the early 1960s, as part of continuous and systematic ‘‘weeding’’ of museum records. Giles was the son of Herbert Giles, who succeeded Sir Thomas Wade as second professor of Chinese at Cambridge in 1897. ‘‘Young Giles’’ worked largely on the Chinese manuscript material from Dunhuang, shipped to the British Museum Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books, by Sir Aurel Stein in 1907.

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46 S. W. Bushell, c.m.g., b.sc., m.d., Chinese Art, 2 vols. (London: 1904), 2: 104. 47 The shift had begun before the war, with the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition of Early Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, 1910. Hobson was responsible for the catalog introduction, and George Eumorfopoulos was the leading lender. 48 Gotlieb, ‘‘ ‘Vitality’ in British Art Pottery and Studio Pottery,’’ Apollo 127 (1988): 163–167. 49 This has been the subject of considerable research in recent years. See, among others, James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture. 50 No trace appears as yet of a rebirth of the arts. Georges Soulie´ de Morant, Histoire de l’art Chinois de l’Antiquite´ jusqu’a` nos jours (Paris: Payot, 1928), 261. 51 Breckenridge, ‘‘Aesthetics and Politics,’’ 203–204. 52 Nominal File: J. P. Swift, Victoria and Albert Museum Registry. From its acquisition to the removal of the collections at the coming of World War ii, the throne was the main focus in a gallery (room 42) devoted to Chinese and Japanese lacquer and woodwork. It is singled out as the most significant item in the room in The Victoria and Albert Museum: Brief Guide (London: 1924) and The Victoria and Albert Museum: A Short Illustrated Guide (London: 1937). For a fuller discussion of the circumstances of the acquisition see Clunas, ‘‘Whose Throne Is It Anyway?’’ 53 Stewart, On Longing, 135. 54 On Eumorfopoulos see L. G. Wickham Legg, ed., Dictionary of National Biography, 1931–40 (Oxford: 1949), 260– 262 (the entry is by Basil Gray). His obituary (by Hobson) is in tocs 17 (1939–40): 9–10. On David (by Harry Garner), see tocs 35 (1963–64): xxi–xxii. There is valuable material on David’s career as a collector in Lady David, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Rosemary E. Scott (London: 1989), 9–26. See also Anthony Lin Hua-Tien, ‘‘An Interview with Lady David,’’ Orientations 23 (1992): 56–63.

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55 ‘‘Rules,’’ tocs 1 (1921–22): 5. The Transactions remain almost the only source for the history of the society. 56 The history of the trade in Chinese art in London remains to be written and would necessarily depend on access to the records of current or defunct businesses, records that are not publicly accessible. Relations between dealers and museums have certainly undergone considerable changes in the period under study. Bluett and Sons was established in 1884, remained a family business until 1988, and went out of business in January 1993 (Caren Myers, ‘‘Saint Bluett’s,’’ The Antique Collector [June 1993]: 80–81). 57 Gray, ‘‘The Royal Academy Exhibition of Chinese Art, 1935–36, in Retrospect,’’ tocs 50 (1985): 11. 58 Cohen calls it an ‘‘extraordinary stimulus to the study of Chinese art. . . . For China, it was an almost unimaginable public relations success’’ (East Asian Art, 122–123). He shows too how the failure of H. E. Winlock, director of the Metropolitan Museum, to bring the show to New York reflected a ‘‘tilt’’ in American foreign policy against China and toward Japan at that precise moment. 59 Gray, ‘‘Royal Academy Exhibition,’’ 33. 60 S. H. Hansford, The Study of Chinese Antiquities, An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on 15 May, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (London: 1956), 3. 61 Yetts had no academic background in Chinese art history. He was fifty-two when he took the post, and had previously enjoyed a distinguished medical career in the Royal Naval Medical Service, as medical officer of the British Legation, Peking (coincidentally Bushell’s old post) and as Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health. He never studied the Chinese language in any British institution, and his knowledge of written classical Chinese is presumably owing to the efforts of private tutors in Peking. While still an employee of the ministry he began to write on Chinese art subjects, chiefly the bronzes that were now much more readily available and more widely appreciated on the London art mar-

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ket. His earliest pieces are all basically puffs for bronzes in the collections of the major dealers – Bluett’s, Yamanaka, C. T. Loo – but in 1925 he contributed a piece on bronzes to a special Chinese art issue of The Burlington Magazine, edited by Roger Fry. Yetts may well have been collecting and dealing in Chinese art in his own right, since he became a member of the Oriental Ceramic Society in 1925, when wealthy individuals still made up almost all of its seventeen-strong membership (‘‘Dr Walter Perceval Yetts, c.b.e.,’’ Times, 15 May 1957 [obituary]. This obituary is almost certainly by Howard Hansford. Harrie A. Vanderstappen, ed., The T. L. Yuan Bibliography of Western Writings on Chinese Art and Archaeology (London: Mansell Information/Publishing Ltd., 1975) has a full listing of Yetts’s prolific output. Wen Fong, ‘‘The Study of Chinese Bronze Age Arts: Methods and Approaches,’’ in The Great Bronze Age of China, ed. Wen Fong (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 20–34. Loehr was a pupil of Ludwig Bachhofer (1894–1976), who in turn had been trained by Heinrich Wolfflin (1864– 1945). Loehr taught at the University of Michigan from 1951 to 1960 and at Harvard from 1960 to 1974. Times, 15 May 1957. It has been suggested to me that it was the language requirements necessary for the advanced study of China that made a connection with the School of Oriental and African Studies seem desirable, but it is hard not to speculate that the objects of study that Yetts and Hansford chose for themselves seemed uncomfortably ‘‘low’’ and ‘‘antiquarian’’ to the rigorously

65 66 67

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‘‘high’’ European tradition of the Courtauld. Hansford, Study of Chinese Antiquities, 4. Ibid., 11. See Cohen, East Asian Art, 160–168, on Bachhofer and the ‘‘sinology’’ versus ‘‘art history’’ debate in American academia. ‘‘Art of the Far East – In the V&A’s New Primary Collection,’’ Illustrated London News, 20 September 1952, 469. When the Far Eastern Department was created in 1970, it was a Deputy Keeper of Ceramics, John Ayers (b. 1922, joined the museum in 1950), who was its first head. Gray’s obituary (by William Watson) in tocs 53 (1988–89): 9–10 is not without inaccuracies. Basil Gray was Laurence Binyon’s son-in-law and the last great ‘‘orientalist’’ of the British tradition, writing with equal fluency on Chinese and Persian art. His obituarist in the Independent newspaper, the Islamicist Michael Rogers (formerly in the British Museum, now David Khalili Professor of Islamic Art in the School of Oriental and African Studies), proclaimed it one of Gray’s great strengths that his aesthetic sense was not clouded by a knowledge of any Asian language. Gray worked with curators such as R. Soame Jenyns (1904–1976; obituary in tocs 41 [1975– 77]: xxiv) and William Watson (b. 1917, British Museum 1947–1966, Head of the pdf 1966–1983). Skelton, ‘‘Indian Collections,’’ 303. The T. T. Tsui Gallery of Chinese Art opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1991, and the Joseph Hotung Gallery of Oriental Antiquities opened at the British Museum in 1992.

12 Introduction to Art /Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections Susan Vogel

This is not an exhibition about African art or Africa. It is not even entirely about art. Art/ Artifact is an exhibition about the ways Western outsiders have regarded African art and material culture over the past century. A central issue is our classification of certain objects of African material culture as art and others as artifacts. Our categories do not reflect African ones, and have changed during this century. An examination of how we view African objects (both literally and metaphorically) is important because unless we realize the extent to which our vision is conditioned by our own culture – unless we realize that the image of African art we have made a place for in our world has been shaped by us as much as by Africans – we may be misled into believing that we see African art for what it is. In their original African setting most works of art (I use our phrase for the moment, but more on that later) were literally viewed differently from the way we see them. Masks were seen as parts of costumed figures moving in performance, or seen not at all. Figures often stood in dark shrines visible to only a few persons, and then under conditions of heightened sensibility. Other objects were

seen only swathed in cloth, surrounded by music, covered with offerings or obscured by attachments. Most sculpture could be seen only on rare occasions. As Arthur Danto (1988) says, the primacy of the visual sense over all others is particular to our culture: African objects were made to belong to a broader realm of experience. If we take them out of the dark, still their movement, quiet the music, and strip them of additions, we make them accessible to our visual culture, but we render them unrecognizable or meaningless to the cultures they came from. To understand these objects better we must consider the intersection between the ways we see them literally, and the metaphorical vision our culture has of them. Most visitors are unaware of the degree to which their experience of any art in a museum is conditioned by the way it is installed. As the enshrinement of African sculptures in the Michael Rockefeller wing at the Metropolitan Museum in the early part of this decade subliminally communicated the aesthetic and monetary worth of African art, so do anthropological, art historical or other kinds of installations color the viewer’s estimation of

From Susan Vogel, ART/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections (New York: Museum for African Art, 1988), pp. 11–17. Reprinted by permission of the Museum for African Art.

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what he sees. The conditioning begins with the selection of what is to be displayed. Because today the forms and materials of art are frequently the same as those of non art objects, the setting or context in which art is displayed may be its most evident defining characteristic. A pile of tires in front of a museum is to be viewed as art where the same pile in a gas station clearly is not (figure 12.1). The very presence of an African stool in an art exhibition makes assertions about African material culture. The museum exhibition is not a transparent lens through which to view art, however neutral the presentation may seem. Museum installations have naturally reflected the philosophies and attitudes of their organizers from the time they first began. One of the first Western settings for African objects was the ‘‘curiosity room.’’ French, German, and English scientists and amateurs had formed collections of exotic, natural and manmade wonders since the Renaissance. Most curiosity rooms made no allu-

sion to the original cultural context of objects, and implied little aesthetic intent or competence on the part of their makers. Art/Artifact exhibits such a room recreated from The Hampton Institute’s first presentation of its ethnographic collection in the 1870s (Vogel 1988). Such ‘‘curiosity’’ collections rarely separated botanical, zoological, and geological specimens from cultural artifacts, and often mixed together objects from different places. ‘‘Curiosity rooms’’ were often private, but during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, museums of natural history opened to the public in many American and European cities. With a strongly educational mission from the outset, these museums presented didactic exhibitions using their specimens to illustrate prevailing theories, as they do today. It was the midtwentieth century – relatively late in the history of Western collecting – before African sculptures made much of an appearance in art museums. Once they did, it became necessary to determine which objects were properly

Figure 12.1 Installation view of Alan Kaprow’s Yard (1961) reconstructed in 1984 for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s exhibiton Blam! The Explosion of Pop, Minimalism and Performance 1958–1964

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art and should be displayed in art museums, and which were artifacts that belonged in natural history museums. The category of African objects defined as art has steadily expanded throughout the twentieth century. Virtually all of the African art works we now know were once classified as artifacts. The problem of distinguishing between the two categories has proven remarkably resistant to clear-cut solutions, and continues to bedevil those who collect and exhibit African and the other ‘‘Primitive’’ arts. The question arose from several historical circumstances. It originated in the fact that during the 1880s and 1890s, when the first African museum collections were being formed in Europe and America, the almost universally held definition of art excluded non-naturalistic traditions. Early African collections were generally made in the field and included large numbers of utilitarian objects, biological and geological specimens, and other things of a purely scientific interest. Separating the small number of sculptures from this mass, was made more problematic by the fact that the continuum of objects runs unbroken from freestanding figures, for example, to figures that are incorporated in staffs or musical instruments to staffs or instruments with fine nonrepresentational decorations, to rudely formed, purely functional staffs and instruments. The material – usually wood – provided no obvious demarcation between fine and applied arts. No help came from the African peoples who produced the objects. They did not distinguish between art and other manufactured objects, and rarely had a word that could be translated as ‘‘art.’’ Early writers made much of this fact which was still being regularly mentioned at the time of the ‘‘Primitivism’’ exhibition in 1984. Because the creators of these objects were not making a claim for their status as artists or for their works as art, and since their products generally failed to correspond to the art made in Europe at the time, most objects were classified as ethnographic specimens and sent to anthropology museums. In natural history museums African artifacts were used to illustrate different aspects of culture (figure 12.2). At the end of the last century, many thinkers considered African and other ‘‘Primitive’’ cultures to be living fossils,

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contemporary ancestors that had preserved early stages in the evolution of culture. African artifacts were seen as providing a precious glimpse into the past of human development, the dawn of consciousness, and the roots of art – as the word ‘‘primitive’’ implies. Cultural evolution was believed to have reached its zenith in late nineteenth century Europe. Though the theory of an evolution of culture has been a minority point of view in the twentieth century, most natural history museums still deal mainly with ‘‘low cultures’’ and exotic cultures and exclude ‘‘high cultures’’ and familiar ones such as those of the United States and Western Europe. (I do not wish to imply that the museums today regard their subjects as primitive, but simply to point out that their focus on the study of certain culture areas was established at a time when those were prevailing attitudes, and that they still study essentially the same areas.) In all cases, anthropology museums have continued to use their collections as sources of information about culture. Art museums have tended to view their collections from the opposite perspective using information about the cultural setting to understand the work of art. The different orientations of the two kinds of museums is immediately visible in the ways they have acquired and displayed their collections. Anthropology museums have prized large field collections which combine extensive documentation with duplication. Because they sought what was typical of the culture rather than what was unique, they often exhibited (more in the past than today) vast series of closely similar objects, often arranged typologically (i.e. weapons, masks, cups). In contrast, art museums have not traditionally been concerned with documentation, but have preferred the unique object, valuing originality and invention – the qualities that separate art from craftsmanship in Western definitions. Art museums have accordingly purchased works one by one (or acquired collections that were formed that way) and have avoided redundancy. During the four or five decades that art museums have been dealing with ethnographic art, however, the separation between the anthropological and the art historical approaches has narrowed. Anthropologists are increasingly

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Figure 12.2 The 1910 African Hall of the American Museum of Natural History combined ethnography and zoology, and was organized geographically. Note the novel use of the color transparencies placed in window boxes, to give the viewer a sense of context. Neg. no. 32926. Courtesy Department Library Services. American Museum of Natural History

sensitive to the aesthetic dimension of the objects in their care, as art historians have become alive to the vast amount of anthropological information that they can use to understand art. This has tended to make their respective museums’ installations resemble each other more than ever before. The crowded presentation of the old fashioned natural history museum grew out of a desire to show many typical examples, but it also reflected the generally cluttered aesthetic of the period. It is interesting, however, to note that one of the earliest exhibitions of African sculpture in an art gallery presented it much as art museums do today – isolated for aesthetic contemplation, completely removed from its cultural context or any suggestion of use. A photograph of Alfred Steiglitz’ 291 Gallery exhibition of African art in 1914 already shows an African art purified of its functional

look (figure 12.3). The Fang sculpture seen standing on a pedestal is a reliquary guardian originally attached to a box of ancestral bones for the purpose of warding off intruders. Here it appears cleansed of bark and bones, and the dowdy aura of the ethnographic specimen. The impulse to strip African art of its visible cultural context has roots in the desire to make it resemble art of the West and conform to our definition of what art is. An essential quality of Western art is that it exists for its own sake, that it has a higher ambition than to be useful in any pedestrian sense. That African art is functional – even when its function is spiritual as in the case of the Fang guardian figure – can appear to compromise its status as art. The corpus of nearly a thousand bronzes seized in the Kingdom of Benin and brought to Europe in 1891 was the first African material that Westerners generally recognized as art

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Figure 12.3 Installation view of Stieglitz’ 291 Gallery, New York City, 1914–1915

(Vogel 1988: 55). No other African work then known so closely fit the European category of art: the bronzes were produced by a technically complex process; they were representational and moderately naturalistic; some plaques and altar groups seemed to depict scenes. Hundreds of Benin bronzes were auctioned for high prices soon after they arrived in Europe. Nevertheless, most were acquired by museums of ethnography. The introduction of African art around 1907 into the circle of avant garde artists in Paris, and the subsequent transformation of their art led to the creation of a European art that resembled some African works. This in turn led people in advanced circles to accept many kinds of African sculpture as art. In an extremely gradual process, artists, then scholars, museums, and the general public have progressively redefined certain kinds of African artifacts as art. The process seems to be led by artists whose nonrepresentational, then abstract, and finally pseudo-artifactual works, have been followed at each stage by the acceptance of more and more African objects as art

(figure 12.4). This process may now have come as far as it legitimately can. Western artists have been making pseudo-artifacts for some time – nonfigurative objects apparently useful in some unknown ritual, or private culture. Many resemble ‘‘Primitive’’ architecture, ritual sites, altars, weapons, traps, tools and so forth, mainly of an extremely unadorned kind. Repeating the process that has continued through much of this century, we can look again at the African artifacts that they resemble and regard the artifacts as art. But should we? And if not, then have the earlier shifts in definition between art and artifact been equally inappropriate? Opinions differ: they even differ on whether an art-craft definition is worth discussing. And there are still those who say we do not yet know the first thing about how to look at African art or artifacts. The originating cultures, however, tell us certain things about problematic objects that cannot be ignored. In Africa the experience of any given work of art varied from person to person, and was

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Figure 12.4 Untitled, 1977. Ana Mendieta. From Fetish Series. Earth-body work of sand, sticks and water, executed at Old Man’s Creek, Iowa City, Iowa. Photograph courtesy of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York City

closely tied to the circumstances in which it appeared. When an African artist created a sculpture, he almost always made it for a particular purpose, a specific audience, and often for a single location. The object’s profound meaning was known in greater or lesser degree to that original audience who understood it with varying nuances of emphasis. For example, a men’s society mask might be regarded as entertaining and possibly intimidating by uninitiated youths; initiated men would identify with it as an expression of their power and would understand its deeper spiritual and social meaning gradually as they rose through levels of initiation; women and members of different clans, courtiers or commoners might view it respectively as ugly and menacing, a glorious manifestation of their group, or as awesomely sublime. An artist could fix mainly on the details of manufacture

and the skill of the artist. Those who did not belong to the original audience, such as Africans from a neighboring area, might see the sculpture as unknown and alien, or might mistakenly interpret it in terms of their own differing traditions. Only the original audience could experience the work of art in its fullness, and their experience was multifarious. Further, that experience changed over time. The villagers who today watch a masquerade performance may perceive in it things the originators never foresaw, and may only dimly understand certain symbols that have become remote since the masquerade was created. This was probably always true as generation succeeded generation. (In some measure, of course, the same can be said of all art made in a time or place different from the viewer’s.) How, then, are we to see African art? The only context available to most Westerners is the museum. If the original African experience was variable and can be only imperfectly simulated outside its culture, then a museum presentation can only be arbitrary and incomplete. When at the end of the nineteenth century African art came to the attention of the West, it was mounted – both in the art world and in ethnological circles – the way Greek, Roman, Chinese, and other antiquities were displayed at the time: that is, figures set off by square or rectangular pedestals; masks and heads on necklike blocks; some masks hung on the wall like relief sculptures. (Masks, of course, are not relief sculptures; they are the front of a composition that included the wearer’s whole head – a realization that complicates rather than elucidates the display problem for a museum.) Recognizing that the methods we adopt to display African sculptures are arbitrary and remote from the ways in which they were meant to be seen forces us to reexamine our displays. How would African art be shown if it had reached us for the first time in the 1980s? Museums are conservative institutions and have changed their displays very little in the past half century or more – aside from reducing the density of exhibits and increasing the labels. The presentation of the art of our own time, however, has changed considerably. Partly under the influence of African and other ‘‘Primitive’’ arts, twentieth century sculptors have tended to create works that

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Figure 12.5 The Arches, 1959. Alexander Calder. Painted steel. Collection of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. Gift of Howard and Jean Lipman 82.44. Photograph by Jerry L. Thompson

Figure 12.6 The Freedman, 1863. John Quincy Adams Ward. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Charles Anthony Lamb and Barea Seeley Lamb in memory of their grandfather Charles Rollinson Lamb, 1979 (1979.394). Photograph by Jerry L. Thompson

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stand in the viewer’s space; earlier works usually carried their own space with them, in their own scale. A small bronze horseman stood on a small bronze patch of earth, for example; a monumental marble figure stood by a huge marble tree trunk. In contrast, African and Modern sculptures were generally not meant to be isolated from the viewer by a frame or base, but to invade, to share his environment. African figures do not create their own scale or space, but intrude into ours and establish their size in relation to the human body. They are large or small, they dwarf us or make us giants by cohabiting our space. If our reference were the art of our own time, and not that of a century ago, we might want to show African sculpture without barriers or mounts. In the exhibition is a repousse brass head made in the royal court of Abomey (Vogel 1988: 53). It is either an unfinished work, or all that remains of a complete figure; in its present state it could not have been a significant or useful object in Abomey, and would almost certainly not have been displayed. How must we display it? The curatorial impulse is to mount it upright on a block, but since it has become meaningless in terms of its original culture, and has now become an artifact of our culture, could we validly show it simply lying on its side? That would give it a certain resonance with works of Western art (notably Brancusi’s ‘‘Sleeping Muse’’: figure 12.7) and would be a statement about the place this African head occupies in our inventory of cultural objects. There is no single right way for us to exhibit the head from Abomey or any African object – only ways that are more or less illuminating, beautiful, instructive, arbitrary; faithful to this or that school of thought. We exhibit them for our own purposes in institutions that are deeply embedded in our own culture. There is nothing strange or wrong about that. It is simply a given. In the exhibition is a large, interesting-looking, honey colored bundle of rope with regular knots visible beneath the binding, and some thick black encrustation on one side (Vogel 1988: 175 and figure 13.2). Placed under the spotlights of an art museum it looks like a work of modern art, though it is smaller than most. It is in fact a hunting net made by the Zande people of Zaire and collected for the American Museum

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Figure 12.7 Sleeping Muse. Constantin Brancusi. Bronze. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949 (49.70.225)

of Natural History by Herbert Lang in 1910. For the Zande its purpose and meaning were straightforward – to catch animals in communal hunts that brought meat to the village. However symbolically or metaphorically the Zande conceptualized hunting, no expressive intent is apparent in this artifact. (In Danto’s (1988) formulation its meaning was its purpose.) Furthermore, its present configuration is not its intended one; to be useful or even to be examined by the Zande it would have to be unfurled. The intriguing black encrustation is accidental, perhaps tar from the ship that brought it here. In evaluating the hunting net, its Zande makers and users would probably have been concerned with workmanship, the toughness and uniform thickness of the rope, the regularity of the knots, and the evenness of the openings – all qualities necessary to its functioning. Most African languages have a single word that means good, useful, well made,

beautiful, suitable. This net would probably have merited that word. But it would probably not have been considered interesting to look at. Though it bears a spurious resemblance to works of Modern art, the net cannot itself be considered a work of art. Also in the exhibition is a needle case made by the Lozi people of Zambia which consists of a series of finely wrought iron needles with twisted ends and polyhedron terminals pushed randomly into a tightly wrapped fiber case (Vogel 1988: 185). We can admire the efficiency of the case which protects the points of the evidently precious needles, the variety of their forms and decoration, and we can also see an expressive dimension in the irregular way they have been thrust into the case. But that would be a false reading of this object because, like the rope net, it is not in its intended configuration. The needles were meant to be used singly; their present position and grouping is as temporary and accidental as

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that of any pincushion or pile of tomatoes in the kitchen. The Lozi might have been interested in the various kinds of ornamentation on the needle’s tips, and of course in how sharp they were. I doubt they would have wasted time on other visual aspects of this object. A great wooden bowl from Wum in the Cameroon Grasslands is also a functional object – probably intended to hold elements of chiefly regalia during displays – but it is also a masterful sculpture (Vogel 1988: 58). The body of a male figure wraps ingeniously around the bowl and cradles it on his knees; his arms merge progressively into the bowl itself until his hands lose all volume and become only lines incised into the bowl’s surface. The breadth of his shoulders and knees, out of all proportion to his slender torso, suggest energy, protection, stability. The artist who carved this bowl made a functional object whose expressive form takes it beyond the net, or the needle case into a realm our culture calls art. But the people of Wum almost certainly classified it in quite a different way. They saw in this sculpture a useful object, a symbol of their kingdom, an heirloom; an expression of the continuity and security of their state. Ordinary people probably differed about the artistic quality of the work, for its forms are unusual and exaggerated. Kingdoms had more than one such bowl, all equivalent in function and expressive of the same values. Some surely recognized this one for the superior expression that it is, though our information on such questions is woefully thin. Whether the Wum bowl is art, whether the hunting net, or the Lozi needles are art or artifact is strictly our problem. The makers of humble African nets, needles, stools and mats that we term artifacts have not somehow aspired to sophistication and the status of art and failed. They never for a minute lost sight of the fact that these were simply useful, wellmade objects. The question and the categories are ours. African cultures do not isolate the category of objects we call art, but they do associate an aesthetic experience with objects having certain qualities. The aesthetic experience is universal – with or without a word that describes it. Africa is only one of a great number of world cultures that created and recognized art while lacking a word like our ‘‘art’’. As

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Blier points out, before the sixteenth century the English word ‘‘art’’ referred primarily to the idea of practical skill.1 The Latin root ars has its source in the word artus meaning to join or fit together. Both the Italian term arte and the German word kunst were linked to the idea of practical activity, trade, and knowhow. Arthur Danto’s definition (Danto 1988: 38) is well suited to the art of our own time, but does not entirely answer the African situation. ‘‘To be a work of art,’’ he argues, ‘‘is to embody a thought, to have a content, to express a meaning. . . . ’’ In African cultures numerous natural and manmade objects embody complex meanings including, for example, certain leaves, animals, shells, and metals. Motifs woven into textiles and mats, incised on the human body, or painted on walls are named and significant. The shapes formed by sacrificial blood or wine poured on the earth carry meanings. The basket of bones, the pan of sacrificial materials, the lump of clay at the center of a shrine may be the most highly significant element there, even when flanked by sculpted figures. Like the baldaquin, the monstrance and the altar itself in a Catholic church, African sculptures often embellish shrines whose most complex meanings are embodied in nonaesthetic objects like the Catholic host. Danto’s definition holds true of African works of art, but fails to separate them from much else in the culture. It leaves out the aesthetic dimension. Though African languages do not have a word for art, they have many words that indicate artistry; words for embellished, decorated, beautified, out of the ordinary. Sometimes there are two words for the same type of object: one for the natural or plain example, another for the embellished or manmade one. (A naturally occurring separation between the front teeth has one name, and is beautiful, but less so than the cosmetic separation produced by filing, which has another name.) Many Africans make a distinction between the product of artistry, and the routine object on the basis of the beauty of the object, and the care and skill that went into making it beautiful. I do not know how they would classify the deliberately rough, ferocious or ugly sculptures made by artists (that we would consider art) that do not fit into the definition I have concocted here.

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Where their definition corresponds to a dictionary definition of art is in the sense of skill and the requirement that there be something deliberate, and manmade about the beauty of the object. In traditional African thinking, art is a sign of culture and man’s ability to fashion the merely useful to his desire.

NOTE 1

Suzanne Blier (1988), ‘‘Art Systems and Semantics: The Question of Stylistic Taxonomy in West Africa,’’ American Journal of Semiotics 6(1): 7–18.

REFERENCES Blier, Suzanne. 1988. ‘‘Art Systems and Semiotics: The Question of Art, Craft, and Colonial Taxonomies in Africa.’’ American Journal of Semiotics 6(1): 7–18. Danto, Arthur. 1988. ‘‘Artifact and Art’’. In Susan Vogel, ed., ART/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections. New York: Centre for African Art and Prestel Verlag. Vogel, Susan, ed. 1988. ART/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections. New York: Centre for African Art and Prestel Verlag.

13 Vogel’s Net Traps as Artworks and Artworks as Traps Alfred Gell

A good deal of discussion in the philosophy of art, visual art particularly, at the present time, has to do with the problem of defining the idea of an ‘artwork’. When is a fabricated object a ‘work of art’ and when is it something less dignified, a mere ‘artefact’? There are (at least) three possible answers to this question. It may be said that a work of art can be defined as any object that is aesthetically superior, having certain qualities of visual appealingness or beauty. These qualities must have been put there intentionally by an artist, because artists are skilled in activating a capacity present in all human beings, i.e. the capacity to respond aesthetically to something. This theory is not one I propose to discuss here, although it is still widely held, especially by the general public, who tend to think that visual attractiveness, or beauty, is something they can recognize automatically. The second theory holds that artworks are not, as the ‘aesthetic’ theory holds, distinguished by any external quality. A work of art may not be at all ‘beautiful’ or even interesting to look at, but it will be a work of art if it is interpreted in the light of a system of ideas that is founded within an art-historical tradition. Call this the ‘interpretive’ theory. The great

critical merit of the interpretive theory over the ‘aesthetic’ theory is that it is much more attuned to the realities of the present-day art world, which has long abandoned the making of ‘beautiful’-looking pictures and sculptures in favour of ‘concept’ art, e.g. of the exhibition of gallery assemblages like Damien Hirst’s dead shark in a tank of formaldehyde (figure 13.1, to be discussed later) – not an object that could be called appealing, nor a work of any excellence in terms of craftsmanship. But Hirst’s shark is a highly intelligible gesture in terms of contemporary art-making, not a stunt or a symptom of insanity. It is a work thoroughly grounded in the post-Duchampian tradition of ‘concept’ art and, as such, is capable of being evaluated as good art, bad art, middling art, but definitely art of some kind. Proponents of the ‘aesthetic’ theory have difficulties with this kind of work, to say the least, and may be inclined to deny that it is art at all, but in that case they may be accused by critics and artists, rightly to my way of thinking, of reactionary tendencies. Finally, there is a more radical version of the ‘interpretation’ theory, which, provides the third possible answer to the question ‘what is an artwork?’. This theory, known as

From Journal of Material Culture 1 (1) (1996), pp. 15–38. Sage Publications, 1996. ß Sage Publications 1996. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd.

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Figure 13.1 Damien Hirst’s shark: The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1992

the ‘institutional’ theory, claims, like the ‘interpretive’ theory, that there is no quality in the art-object, as material vehicle, that definitively qualifies it to be, or not be, an artwork. Whether it is or not is dependent on whether or not it is taken to be one by an art world, i.e. a collectivity interested in making, sharing and debating critical judgements of this type. The difference between the interpretive theory and the institutional theory is that the institutional theory does not presuppose the historical coherence of interpretations. A work may be in origin unconnected with the mainstream of art history, but if the art world co-opts the work, and circulates it as art, then it is art, because it is the living representatives of this art world, i.e. artists, critics, dealers and collectors, who have the power to decide these matters, not ‘history’. This view is the one put forward by a noted American philosopher of aesthetics, George Dickie (1974, 1984). It is a theory that does not seem to have the support of anything like a majority of Dickie’s philosophical colleagues, but that is perhaps because it is a sociological theory rather than a truly philosophical one – a theory about what is (really) considered art, rather than what ought (rationally) to be considered art. But the objectionableness of Dickie’s theory from the standpoint of traditional aesthetics is precisely what constitutes its appeal to the anthropologist, since it bypasses aesthetics entirely in favour of a sociological analysis much of the kind this discipline would provide anyway (Bourdieu, 1984). None the less, the merits of the ‘institutional’ theory of art as a contribution to philosophical aesthetics must be as-

sessed independently of its usefulness as a starting point for sociological study of the art world. The points at issue between these various theories were brought very much into focus at an exhibition, ‘ART/ARTIFACT’, mounted at the Center for African Art, New York, in 1988, under the direction of the anthropologist Susan Vogel. (I never saw this exhibition, but it received a detailed review in Current Anthropology outlining its contents and layout; see Faris (1988), who makes certain critical comments that I take up later.) The first exhibition space was entitled ‘The Contemporary Art Gallery’ (whitewashed walls, spotlights) and the star item on display was a striking object (figure 13.2) – a Zande hunting net, tightly rolled and bound for transport. Susan Vogel presumably displayed this item in this way because New York gallery-visitors would be spontaneously able to associate this ‘artefact’ with the type of artwork that they would have looked at in other galleries, or at least seen illustrated in newspapers and magazines. (The closest immediate analogy is with the stringbound sculptures of Jackie Windsor, see figure 13.3). Faris (1988: 776) mentions Nancy Graves and Eva Hesse as further parallels.) Vogel’s choice of this particular item was a curatorial masterstroke, for which she deserves much praise, and the ‘net’ provoked an equally masterly catalogue essay by the American critic and philosopher of art, Arthur Danto (1988), which was published in the exhibition catalogue. What Vogel wanted to do was to break the link between African art and modern art ‘Primitivism’ (the Picasso of Les Demois-

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Figure 13.2 Zande hunting net, bound up for transport, Central Africa. Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History. Neg. no. 3444(2). Photograph by J. L. Thompson

Figure 13.3 Bound Square by Jackie Windsor, 1972

elles d’Avignon, pseudo-African masks by Modigliani, Brancusi, etc.) and suggest instead that African objects were worthy of study in a more expanded perspective, including the dominant art-style in New York in the 1980s, i.e. concept art, represented by the likes of Jackie Windsor et al. Vogel’s catalogue essay-

ist, Danto, had reasons for wishing to resist this move, inasmuch as he was not persuaded that the hunting net was, or could ever become, art. ‘Institutionally’ speaking, the net had indeed become art in the sense that it had been exhibited as such by Vogel, and we may be sure it was received as such by a significant, and

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very gallery-educated, segment of the visiting public. I would hazard that had Dickie, rather than Danto, written the catalogue essay, the ‘net’ would have been celebrated precisely as an instance of the way in which an art world creates its artworks by labelling them as such. But Danto, on the other hand, devoted his essay to proving that the ‘net’s’ affinities with contemporary concept art were only superficial. In this essay I want to do two things: first, to consider Danto’s proposed distinction between ‘artefacts’ and true works of art; and, second, to mount a little exhibition of my own (unfortunately consisting only of text and illustrations) of objects that Danto would consider artefacts but which I consider candidates for circulation as works of art, even if they were not intended to be ‘works of art’ by their originators, who indeed probably lacked this concept altogether. If I persuade my public, and if the institutional theory is true, i.e. art is what I and enough likeminded people say it is, then a new category of art objects is about to be born. Or not, as the case may be. . . . And especially not according to Danto, to whose arguments I must now turn. Danto is responsible for both the interpretive and institutional theories of art, in that it was he, originally, who introduced the expression ‘art-world’ into philosophical aesthetics (Danto, 1964). But whereas Dickie (1974) developed Danto’s ideas in the sociological direction outlined above, so that being a ‘work of art’ becomes a matter of social consensus among the art public, Danto tends towards a more idealist view of art, with many explicit references to Hegel in his later work. Danto’s position is that art objects are such by virtue of their interpretation, and that interpretation is historically grounded. He has written two very important and well-received studies on the philosophy of modern art along these lines (1981, 1986). I agree with Danto’s output in many, probably most, respects; but I am forced to say that the weaker points in Danto’s version of interpretive theory emerge rather visibly in the anthropological, cross-cultural context of his ‘Art/Artifact’ essay. According to Danto, there are no characteristics that an object can have which make that object a work of art; the ‘objective’ difference between a real Brillo box and a mock Brillo box by Warhol is not what is responsible for the fact that only the latter is a work of art.

Indistinguishably similar objects could be differentiated such that one would be an artwork and the other not. (This is exhaustively discussed in Danto, 1981.) But there is a big difference between the kind of interpretation, context, symbolic significance, etc. that an object must have if it is to be an artwork, compared to that attached to a non-artwork or ‘mere’ artefact. The interpretation must relate to a tradition of art-making that has internalized, reflects on and develops from its own history, as western art has done since Vasari, and maybe before. According to Danto (and I am entirely persuaded by this) modern ‘concept’ art corresponds to the total take-over of the ‘image-making’ side of art by the ‘reflecting on history’ side of art: concept art is the final convergence of art-making, art history, art philosophy and art criticism in a single package. However, the key concept here is the notion of a progressive, cumulative tradition (Geist, spirit, etc.). What is Danto to do when New York gallery-goers seem to want to enthuse over a hunting net as if it was the latest production of Geist in the person of Jackie Windsor or her ilk? Can contemporary art swallow extraneous objects in this way? Is the absence of an identifiable maker, and any recognizable ‘artistic’ intention on his or her part, an obstacle? Danto cannot but assume a critical position because intention, meaning and groundedness in a discrete, self-reflexive tradition is essential to his understanding of contemporary art, and indeed all western post-Renaissance art. The Zande hunter who made or commissioned the net did not participate in the historic frame of reference to which Windsor’s similar-looking work refers, so the analogy between them is misleading. Nor could it be alternatively argued (Danto does not even consider this possibility) that the ‘artist’ here is Vogel, who is presenting the ‘net’ as a ‘ready-made’ in the tradition of such Duchamp prototypes as the shovel, coat rack, urinal, etc. – because Vogel is not presenting herself as a second Duchamp, but as a museum curator, offering us something to admire made in Africa, by an anonymous ‘artist’ who is certainly not Vogel herself. Danto’s dilemma is, essentially, that his interpretive theory of art is constructed within the implicit historical frame of western art, as was its Hegelian prototype. If he says that

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nothing that comes from without the historical stream of western art (which is certainly a broad stream) is ‘art’ in his sense, then he is certainly open to an unwelcome charge of Eurocentricity; but if he admits that exotic objects that do not participate in the Geist of western art are nonetheless art, how is he to exclude the ‘net’? And if he allows the ‘net’ to be included, what is left of the explanatory value of the historically grounded interpretation, and the art/artefact distinction that is founded on it? The philosopher is truly ensnared in Vogel’s net, fulfilling, at long last, its function, if not in the originally intended way. There is only one way out for the idealist under these circumstances; he must assume that there are underlying interpretive or symbolic affinities between all true works of art in all traditions. The Zande net is to be excluded in Zande terms, because in Zande culture, as in all possible cultures, art objects have to have a particular type of symbolic significance, which a mere hunting net could safely be assumed to be lacking. Having been excluded (presumptively) by the Zande, it cannot be included by the New Yorkers, because to do so is to contradict their own principle of ‘no interpretation – no art’; having agreed that not just any Brillo box but only a Warhol Brillo box is ‘art’, they have to accept that this net, in Zande terms, is no Warhol, but just any old net. But how to specify the basis of the affinity between (qualifying) African artworks and western artworks, and the non-affinity between the Zande net and either of these? Danto argues that ‘great’ African sculpture was recognized as on a par with Donatello, Thorwaldsen, etc. by a process of ‘discovery’ that he likens to scientific discovery, carried out by Picasso, Brancusi, Roger Fry and their contemporaries; this greatness was always there but had been obscured by prejudicial canons of taste associated with colonialism. But this kind of African art was produced, it is implied, by individual, highly talented and discriminating sculptors, who had specific artistic (aesthetic) intentions that they carried through in their work, which ultimately became accessible to the non-African public via the efforts of sympathetic westerners. However, this approach to the incorporation of African art into the Danto scheme of things

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carries with it a certain risk of aestheticism – and is not Danto the one responsible for telling us that what makes art art, is not any external (aesthetic) characteristic it may possess? So Danto is obliged to change tack, and consider an instance in which there might be African ‘art’ that would not be obviously different, in any external or visible respect, from African non-art, a stipulation not applicable to famous examples of African sculptural art, whose artobject status is never in doubt, for Danto at least. Danto is a philosopher, so he does not take the obvious course of turning to the tomes upon tomes that have been written on material culture in Africa – instead he obeys his disciplinary imperative and indulges in a Gedankexperiment, in which he happens to be a particularly skilled practitioner. He imagines that there are two related, contiguous, but historically divergent African tribes, whom he names the Pot People and the Basket Folk, respectively. To outward observation the material productions of these two tribes, which include both pots and baskets, are pretty much identical. But the Pot People revere Pot makers, who are their priests and wise men, and the making of pots is a sacred activity that recapitulates cosmogeny, since God was a potter who formed the earth out of mud. The Pot People also make baskets, for utilitarian purposes, but they do not regard basket-making as a particularly noble activity. On the other side of the hill, among the Basket Folk, things are otherwise; here God was a basket-maker who wove the world from grass, and it is pots that are considered merely utilitarian. So here the basket makers are the wise men of the tribe and the potters are mere technical specialists, artisans. Danto maintains that even if only the most minute examination enables the museum experts to distinguish the pots and baskets of the Pot People from the pots and baskets of the Basket Folk, the difference in the spirit in which potting is engaged in among the Pot People is sufficient to ensure that their pots are works of art, as opposed to the Basket Folk’s pots, which are not (and vice versa for their respective baskets). The pots of the Pot People and the baskets of the Basket Folk belong in the prestigious Kunsthistorisches Museum; the baskets of the Pot People and

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the pots of the Basket Folk in a quite different collection, the Naturhistorisches Museum. The works in the Art History Museum emanate from Absolute Spirit, they are vehicles of complete ideas, stemming from, and illuminating, the human condition in its full historic density and fatefulness, whereas the objects in the Natural History Museum are means towards ends, implements that help human beings to live out their material lives – they are, in another Hegelian expression, only part of ‘the Prose of the World’. Danto, by implication, excludes the hunter’s net on the grounds that it is ‘prose’ in objectform, and it will be seen that he draws a particularly sharp distinction, on the basis of his thought-experiment, between art objects and artefacts. But, as with all such experiments, one is entitled to ask whether it is realistic. Anthropology ought to be able to pronounce on these matters, since Danto’s experiment is clearly meant to evoke real ethnography as the prototype for useful expository fictions. According to Faris, in his review of the exhibition, anthropology is only too willing to oblige with copious corroborating instances of wise men uttering Dantoesque things – and that is the problem. He roundly denounces Danto’s piece for promoting tainted orthodoxy, both art-historical and anthropological. Modernists like Danto are paralysed by the acceptance of all cultural tyrannies and the consequent blindness to specific tyrannies [so that] they frequently fall into the most banal of humanist sentiment and idle gush about expressive and emotive power. . . . [T]hey do so largely in acceptance of the anthropological enterprise – the notion that, for example, African objects cannot be fully understood without indigenous Africans in the specific cultural setting that produced them. . . . Danto might agree, and while it is trivially true that context is relevant to meaning, it cannot be accorded axiomatic value, particularly as such context and such meaning have been structured by anthropology. (Faris, 1988: 778)

Faris argues that this kind of liberalism ostensibly receives the productions of the ethnographic Other on the Other’s terms, but in fact only does so if the Other comes up with something acceptable – consistent with an existing concept of Absolute Spirit, perhaps. Danto’s

imaginary ethnographies of Pot- and Basketcosmogeny reveal exactly what kind of anthropological story-telling he would find congenial, but in reality anthropologists and indeed their informants have never been slow in providing just this sort of thing. Faris’s Foucauldian point is that the whole anthropological enterprise is slanted towards finding the sort of wise men Danto endows with the power to distinguish between art and non-art, because we want to pin these objects down and attribute to them fixed, controllable meanings. I agree with Faris that Danto’s (fictional) wise men are palpably projections of authority, and that they deserve to be unmasked. But unfortunately Faris does not really grapple with the ‘art object’ vs. ‘artefact’ distinction, except to indicate that it is subject to continuous redefinition (cf. Clifford, 1988: 224) and can be hardly disentangled from issues of ideology and power. Danto himself has more to say on the subject than simply that wise men can provide the interpretations that make true artworks fragments of Absolute Spirit. In the second half of his essay he dwells on the idea that artefacts are ‘incomplete’ whereas artworks embody complete, self-sufficient ideas. Citing Heidegger, he remarks that an artefact is always part of a Zeugganzes – a system of tools, a technical system forming a whole. There cannot be a hammer by itself; a hammer implies nails to be hammered, wood to hammer them into, saws to shape the wood, and so forth. The net (implicitly) is only a component of the Zande hunting Zeugganzes, and has no meaning in itself. However finely crafted, an object like a net, a hammer, or even a very decorative door-hasp or other example of applied art, is incapable of conveying the kind of idea that distinguishes the art object, which always addresses the universal: It would be baffling were someone to say such things [pertaining to universal truths] about knives or nets or hairpins, objects whose meaning is exhausted in their utility. Universality belongs after all to thoughts or propositions, and no one would have supposed that knives or nets or hairpins express universal content. They are what they are used for, but artworks have some higher role, putting us in touch with higher realities: they are defined through the possession of meaning. They are

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to be explained through what they express. Before the work of art we are in the presence of something we can grasp only through it, much as only through the medium of bodily actions we have access to the mind of another person. (Danto, 1988: 31)

But even Danto is forced to qualify this, since it is obviously the case that the bulk of the art comprising the western art tradition was not produced to be appreciated by an art public, but to fulfil instrumental purposes. Religious pictures serve liturgical functions (as altarpieces, aids to piety), portraits convey likenesses, statues dignify public spaces and glorify rulers, and so forth. The same is even more glaringly true of African products of the kind Danto is prepared to concede artwork status to; not one of them was made to be admired as an independent artwork rather than as an adjunct to public ceremony – ceremonies that cannot be exported when the artworks are exported. In short, not just nets but things like African masks are part of Zeugganzes, too. Danto deals with this problem by admitting that until very recent times [and even now, presumably, in Africa] artworks enjoyed double identities, both as objects of use and praxis, and as vessels of spirit and meaning. African art, once exported, loses its former functions, but retains its latter ones. One does not want to make placelessness one of the defining attributes of art, because that would disenfranchise as art the artworks of Primitive cultures. In their own societies these works have a place, but it would not be the kind of place they have in the Zeugganzes in their dimensions as tools in system of tools. The important point is that the whole practical life of those societies could go forward if the society had in fact no works of art . . . granted that works of art play roles in ritual that are believed to have practical efficacy. (Danto, 1988: 29)

This is surely a puzzling statement, even for a philosopher. Danto wishes to say that artworks have meaning apart from their use, and insofar as they are art they are not useful but meaningful. The self-same objects do have uses, though, in rituals of presumed efficacy. Now we could subtract the artworks and ‘practical life’ would still be able to continue, minus artworks, because the self-same objects,

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in their guise as tools or artefacts, would still be there to fulfil their previous extra-artistic functions. This is surely casuistry. How could African masks be deployed in a ritual context as instruments of efficacy and not simultaneously have whatever cultural-interpretative significance they would have to have, according to Danto’s own theory, to qualify as artworks? The proposed separation between instrumentality and spirituality is not feasible. And if artworks are implements of a kind (which would not I think be disputed by African carvers) then is it not also conceivable that implements might not also be artworks of a kind? When you come down to it, the reason that Danto excludes the ‘net’ as art is that he cannot imagine a wise man who might be able to tell him a tale sufficiently compelling to induce him to think otherwise; he assumes that because it is a net, and nets are used for hunting, and hunting is a means of obtaining food, ergo, the net is a mere tool, like a cheese-grater. In this he reveals lack of familiarity with African ethnography where most of the hunting is described as taking place either as part of specific rituals (initiations, annual festivals, etc.) or at the very least in a highly ritualized manner, certainly not as a routine means of obtaining the staff of life. So had the ‘net’ been properly documented at the time of its collection (c. 1910) it is most likely that it would have figured ritually as an attribute of the ‘hunter’ role in the collective drama of the ritual hunt – or at least one cannot exclude this possibility – in which case it would be functioning in a way not too different from any other item of ritual paraphernalia, such as a mask. Meanwhile, one is able to know that wise men in Africa are prepared to tell stories to anthropologists that reveal not only that hunting is ritually important (as a source of augury, an ordeal for the youth, and so on) but that the means of hunting, i.e. nets, or in this case, traps, are metaphysically significant. The source I use here is Boyer’s (1988) account of wise men, chanters of magical epics, mvet, among the Fang of West Africa. Boyer is explicitly trying to understand the nature of ‘traditional’ wisdom, and in the course of his enquiries he comes to know a certain expert chanter, Ze, with whom he holds long discussions on the nature of wisdom:

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Like wild animals, and like evur (wisdom/ magical power) mvet (epic) is a thing of the forest, in that it is evanescent; you think you can get hold of it, but it escapes, and it is you who gets caught. It was with Ze that I pointed out that at a certain point the complexities of mvet were often being compared to traps. In response, he told me the following story: ‘In my youth I got to know the Pygmies well. The Pygmies belong to the forest, they are not village people like us. . . . I often went hunting with the Pygmies, they have special traps for every kind of animal, that is why they obtain so much game. They have a special trap for chimpanzees, because chimpanzees are like human beings: when they have a problem, they stop and think about what to do, instead of just running off and crying out. You cannot catch a chimpanzee with a snare because he does not run away [and thus does not pull on the running-knot]. So the Pygmies have devised a special trap with a thread, which catches on the arm of the chimpanzee. The thread is very thin and the chimpanzee thinks it can get away. Instead of breaking the thread, it pulls on it very gently to see what will happen then. At that moment the bundle with the poisoned arrow falls down on it, because it has not run away like a stupid animal, like an antelope would.’ (Boyer, 1988: 55–6, my translation)

This is not a dumb hunting anecdote, but Ze’s way of communicating to Boyer (among other things) the basic Faustian problem about knowledge, a problem that is no less salient for the Fang of the Cameroonian rain forest than it is for the professors at MIT. It seems unquestionable, on the basis of this testimony that for this Fang wise man, the idea of a ‘trap’ is a master metaphor of very deep significance, a refraction of Absolute Spirit if ever there was one. But let us bear in mind Faris’s strictures against wise men, who may be considered not to be talking about utilitarian traps, traps in prose, but about imaginary, spiritual traps, traps as tropes, not common or garden traps. The Fang wise man does not produce any traps for Boyer’s inspection. Can we move one step on from Boyer’s text, to the point at which we could mount an exhibition, in a gallery, of animal traps, and present this to the public as an exhibition of artworks? Let us leave wise men out of it for the present and ask ourselves what animal traps reveal about the human spirit, even in the

absence of native exegesis. Do animal traps, in their bare, decontextualized presence, tell us no more than that human beings like to consume animal flesh? In order to allow you to arrive at a judgement, I offer the accompanying illustrations, drawn from the ethnological literature on traps. Take the arrow trap (figure 13.4). Remember that Danto says that looking at a work of art is like encountering a person; one encounters a person as a thinking, co-present being by responding to his or her outward form and behaviour – similarly one responds to an artwork as a co-present being, an embodied thought. Now imagine encountering the arrow trap, not (one hopes) as the victim is going to encounter it, but as a gallery-goer encounters an ‘installation’ by the latest contemporary artist. In those circumstances, and without additional context, what might the sensitive gallery-goer intuit as the thought, or intention, in this artwork? There would be nothing amiss, I think, should the imaginary visitor to our exhibition see here, in the arrow trap, a representation of human being-in-the-world. It is a representation that the narrow-minded might prefer to censor and repress, were they only aware that the trap could be a representation. For it shows being-in-the-world as unthinking, poised violence, which is not perhaps a pretty thought, but not for that reason an untrue or inartistic one. Initially, a trap such as this communicates a deadly absence – the absence of the man who devised and set it, and the absence of the animal who will become the victim (the artist has indicated this victim in the background of the illustration). Because of these marked absences, the trap, like all traps, functions as a powerful sign. Not designed to communicate or to function as a sign (in fact, designed to be hidden and escape notice), the trap nonetheless signifies far more intensely than most signs intended as such. The static violence of the tensed bow, the congealed malevolence of the arrangement of sticks and cords, are revelatory in themselves, without recourse to conventionalization. Since this is a sign that is not, officially, a sign at all, it escapes all censorship. We read in it the mind of its author and the fate of its victim. This trap is a model as well as an implement. In fact, all implements are models, because

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Figure 13.4 Arrow trap, Central Africa; sketch by Weule

they have to be adapted to their users’ characteristics, and so bear their imprint. An artificial leg is a model of a missing real leg, a representation that functions as a prosthesis. The arrow trap is particularly clearly a model of its creator, because it has to substitute for him; a surrogate hunter, it does its owner’s hunting for him. It is, in fact, an automaton or robot, whose design epitomizes the design of its maker. It is equipped with a rudimentary sensory transducer (the cord, sensitive to the animal’s touch). This afferent nervous system brings information to the automaton’s central processor (the trigger mechanism, a switch, the basis of all information-processing devices) which activates the efferent system, releasing the energy stored in the bow, which propels the arrows, which produce action-at-a-distance (the victim’s death). This is not just a model of a person, like any doll, but a ‘working’ model of a person. What carving, it is surely reasonable to ask, which only shows us our outward lineaments, actually reveals as much about human being as this mechanical device? Much more of what there actually is to a human being is present here than in any carving, but because it is not an obvious instance of an ‘art’ object, it is never to be looked at in this light. Moreover, if we look at other traps, we are able to see that each is not only a model of its creator, a subsidiary self in the form of an automaton, but each is also a model of its

victim. This model may actually reflect the outward form of the victim, as in the comical giraffe trap shown in figure 13.5, which delineates, in negative contour, the outlines of the lower half of a giraffe. Or the trap may, more subtly and abstractly, represent parameters of the animal’s natural behaviour, which are subverted in order to entrap it. Traps are lethal parodies of the animal’s Umwelt (figures 13.6, 13.7). Thus the rat that likes to poke around in narrow spaces has just such an attractive

Figure 13.5 Giraffe trap drawn by Wood

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Figure 13.6 Rat trap, Vanuatu; sketch by Bell

Figure 13.7 Trap from Guyana; sketch by Roth

cavity prepared for its last, fateful foray into the dark (figure 13.6). Of course, it is not really the case that the trap is clever or deceitful; it is the hunter who knows the victim’s habitual responses and is able to subvert them. But once the trap is in being, the hunter’s skill and knowledge are truly located in the trap, in objectified form, otherwise the trap would not work. This objective knowledge would survive even the death of the hunter himself. It would also be (partially) ‘readable’ to others who had only the trap, and not the animal lore that was reflected in its design. From the form of the trap, the dispositions of

the intended victim could be deduced. In this sense, traps can be regarded as texts on animal behaviour. The trap is therefore both a model of its creator, the hunter, and a model of its victim, the prey animal. But more than this, the trap embodies a scenario, which is the dramatic nexus that binds these two protagonists together, and which aligns them in time and space. Our illustrations cannot show this because they either show traps awaiting their victims, or victims who have been already entrapped; they cannot show the ‘time structure’ of the trap. This time structure opposes suspended time, the empty time of ‘waiting’, to the sudden catastrophe that ensues as the trap closes. This temporal structure varies with the kind of trap employed, but it is not hard to see in the drama of entrapment a mechanical analogue to the tragic sequence of hubris–nemesis–catastrophe. Consider the doomed hippopotamus (figure 13.8) lulled into a sense of false security by sheer bulk and majesty. How many tragic heroes have suffered from the same hubristic illusions and have invited the same fate? If the chimpanzee who falls for Boyer’s trap is Faust, perhaps this hippopotamus is Othello. The fact that animals who fall victim to traps have always brought about their downfall by their own actions, their own complacent self-confidence, ensures that trapping is a far more poetic and tragic form of hunting than the simple chase. The latter kind of hunting equalizes hunters and victims, united in spontaneous action and reaction, whereas trapping decisively hierarchizes hunter and victim. The trapper is God, or the fates, the trapped animal is man in his tragic incarnation. It therefore seems to me that, even without ethnographic context, without exegesis from any wise men, animal traps such as these might be presented to an art public as artworks. These devices embody ideas, convey meanings, because a trap, by its very nature, is a transformed representation of its maker, the hunter, and the prey animal, its victim, and of their mutual relationship, which, among hunting people, is a complex, quintessentially social one. That is to say, these traps communicate the idea of a nexus of intentionalities between hunters and prey animals, via material forms and mechanisms. I would argue that

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walls project virtual images of the equally aseptic surrounding gallery into the shark’s biological domain. A distant echo of the upper (biological) and lower (mechanical) halves of Duchamp’s Large Glass? – no doubt – but also a reflection on our power to immobilize elemental forces, which nonetheless always seem potentially liable to escape. Even Hirst’s shark, as dead as a dead thing can be, is still residually alive, watching and thinking, or seems to be, because it keeps its eyes open and stares at us. One day it is going to get out. It would be appropriate to place the shark alongside this bark-painting scene from Morphy’s Ancestral Connections (figure 13.9) showing the painting of a trapped shark, visually nearly identical to Hirst’s installation in the Tate. The Yolnngu produce this painting during funerary rituals, and it refers to the upriver journey of a mythical ancestral shark, which was temporarily trapped on the way, but which escaped. This painting refers to the deceased’s clan affiliations, and metaphorizes

Figure 13.8 Hippopotamus trap drawn by Boteler

this evocation of complex intentionalities is in fact what serves to define artworks, and that suitably framed, animal traps could be made to evoke complex intuitions of being, otherness, relatedness. The impact of these traps, now being presented as artworks, might however be increased if they were exhibited in conjunction with western artworks (of which it is easy to find numerous examples) that seem to occupy the same semiological territory. The work of Damien Hirst, the most mediaexposed of younger British artists in recent times, seems to be a case in point. In fact, it was Hirst’s notorious Turner Prize exhibit at the Tate Gallery in 1992 that first induced me to start thinking about traps as art objects. Consider Hirst’s shark in a tank of formaldehyde (figure 13.1). This work captivates because of the profound contrast between the gigantic, ultra-biological fish and its aseptic glass cage, or trap (recalling Eichmann at his trial, trapped in a glass box) whose reflective

Figure 13.9 Coffin lid being painted with the image of a trapped shark. Photograph by Howard Morphy

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the journey of the spirit towards the ancestral country, and the need to transfer power to it (via funerary ceremonies) so that it, like the ancestral shark, can burst out of the ‘traps’ that threaten to impede its progress. The episode of the shark being trapped, and escaping, is enacted by the participants. These eschatological ideas are, of course, specifically Yolnngu, but I would submit that the surface similarity between Hirst’s work and the Yolnngu work are not just superficial, and that a metaphor is being deployed here that is accessible cross-culturally in a highly transformed, but still readable, way. Meanwhile, to reinforce the point that Hirst’s work is in a rather deep way about traps, and the network of complex intentionalities that the notion of entrapment sets up, I should simply describe another of Hirst’s works in the same exhibition, which actually incorporated a working trap device. I refer to the installation consisting of a decaying sheep’s head in a glass box, which breeds maggots, which turn into flies, which then become victims of a butchers’-shop type fly trap, which attracts the flies by violet light on to highvoltage electrified wires, on which they die. A trap within a trap, victims within a victim: as anthropologists we should be the first to recognize redundancy within the mythological code as a means of underlining the dialectical message, which in this case is to induce the spectator to identify him- or herself with the victims in this assemblage (the dead animal, the maggots, the flies) and at the same time with the vicious God who has set this rigmarole of a world in motion, the maker of traps, Hirst, you, me . . . Hirst would not be the only western contemporary artist whose work would be on display at the exhibition of traps. Next to the arrow trap, for instance, I might install the work by the concept artist Judith Horn (figure 13.10), consisting of two shotguns suspended from the gallery ceiling, which periodically blast one another with red, blood-resembling liquid, drawn off from tanks above them. Evidently, at one level, this is a commentary on the senselessness of war, but the key to this work is not so much the theme of mutual violence as the marked absence of its perpetrators – precisely the theme I identified earlier in relation to the arrow trap. In fact, Horn’s installation directly

Figure 13.10 High Noon by Judith Horn

relates to the type of ‘class war’ man-traps (shotguns triggered by tripwires) that were set to deter poaching on shooting estates in times past. Additional examples of post-Duchampian artworks (even work by Duchamp himself, such as the Tre´buchet of 1917) that could figure in this exhibition could easily be selected, but Hirst and Horn will do for now. It is not that I would insist that a trap from Africa and the latest work of Damien Hirst are instances of the same kind of thing at all, but only that each is capable, in the context of an exhibition, of synergizing and drawing meaning out of the other. They are not the same, and are not entirely different or incommensurable either; they are, in Marylin Strathern’s (1991) phrase ‘partially connected’. Nor do I suppose that for an African trap, or a trap from any other exotic part of the world, to function as an artwork it is actually necessary or desirable for the ethnographic context to be stripped away. The artistic meaning of certain traps can often only be established ethnographically, and this makes essential a textual component to any satisfactory exhibition of ‘trap’ artworks – but there is no need to apologize for this; since Duchamp it has gone without saying that written notes and commentary in the form of interviews and suchlike are necessary for the comprehension of contemporary artworks – just as a knowledge of neoPlatonic philosophy is necessary for a true appreciation of Renaissance art, I would say

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(Wind, 1957). I simply happen to have no exegesis for the arrow trap, for instance, but this trap is so graphic it hardly needs any. With certain other traps it is essential. Take, for instance, the angling trap from Guyana, illustrated in Roth (1924), see figure 13.11. I would hardly have regarded it as a particularly artistic trap unless Stephen HughJones had informed me (pers. comm.) that the equivalent type of fishing trap among the Barasana (in neighbouring Colombia) is known as the trap ‘which turns fish into fruit’. Given this information one sees at once how wittily metaphysical and magical this trap is. One moment the fish is placidly swimming along belonging (so it thinks) to the animal kingdom and then, bang, before it knows what has happened it is a vegetable, dangling from the branches of a tree, to be plucked like any other fruit by a passing Indian. What a come-uppance, in more senses than one! This transubstantiation recalls the (dead) sheep’s head/maggot/fly/ (dead) fly transubstantiations in Hirst’s installation discussed above, but more radically, in that the fish moves between kingdoms, while the sheep’s head, rather more literally, only moves between orders. Certainly, this point would not occur to a non-Barasana art public without textual clues – but once the clue is provided one does not need a PhD in anthro-

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pology to enjoy the joke, nor, I think, to be led to reflect on its deeper implications. Another instance (which must be the last) of a trap that can function as an artwork only with the assistance of a certain degree of exegetical material is the Anga eel-trap described in a recent paper by Pierre Lemonnier (1992). This trap consists of a long cylinder of rolledup tree-bark, bound together with numerous coils of rattan, reinforced with wood and provided with an ingenious sprung trapdoor. Eels are trapped in elongated traps like this in many parts of New Guinea and, indeed, elsewhere. What is significant about the Anga trap is the context in which it is made, and the care which is lavished on it, which could not be apparent to the uninstructed. Lemonnier’s Anga trap eels in traps like these in the context of mortuary ritual, specifically, at the end of the period of mourning, when the mourners must be revived in preparation for their return to ordinary life. Feasting on eels is efficacious at this time, not just because eels are excellent, valued food; but also because eels are associated with the penis of the founding ancestor, detached because it was superfluously long. They are thus a source of spiritual vitality as well as superior nourishment, not that these categories can be completely dissociated in local terms. Were this all, the traps themselves might still

Figure 13.11 Spring-hook fishing trap, Guyana; sketch by Stedman

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be considered mere implements, because the fact that eels are sacred to the Anga does not necessarily also mean that the means of obtaining eels are sacred, or in any way extraordinary. Even the fact that the traps are constructed in the course of a ritual, with much magical attention being given to them, might not suffice to take them outside the ruck of common objects. But what Lemonnier can show – and this, very probably, would only be apparent to an anthropologist, poised between the Anga world and the western one, not a native – is that it is actually in the fabrication of the traps that the Anga construct their notion of the ‘power’ inherent in eels. The traps are made of strips of bark bound together with hoops of cane and provided with a trapdoor at the wider end. What Lemonnier notices is that the cane ‘binding’ hoops are far stronger, more numerous and more carefully made than would be needed to restrain a few eels, and, similarly, the trapdoor is much sturdier than strictly necessary. Thus it is the trap, rather than the real eel, that carries the message of eel-power. As a symbolic artefact that captures and contains eel-power, it functions, metonymically, to empower the eel, by virtue of its own sturdiness and strength. Indeed the trap, which is shaped to accommodate and attract eels, is a representation of an eel, both in the already-mentioned sense of being an objectification of eel behavioural lore, but also more directly, in that it is itself eel-like (eel-ongated), phallic, ingestive and reproductive. There could not be a clearer refutation of the thesis that would consign things like animal traps to the status of ‘mere’ artefacts, by comparison to ancestor-carvings and the like (which the Anga, incidentally, do not make) as candidates for artwork status. If the Anga embody their ancestors in fabricated form, it is surely in the form of traps such as these (as well as other artefacts, such as initiation temples). These traps are ‘images of the ancestors’ in the sense that they contain, embody and communicate ancestral power. Moreover, they make possible its realization of ancestral presence in the here and now as few conventional images may be said to, not ‘in spite of’ the fact that they are also useful implements for catching eels, but because of this fact. We in the West have longed for (and fantasized about) statues or images that would move, or bless, or make love, but,

for centuries, always in vain. The Anga, by contrast, have ‘images’ of ancestral power that actually accomplish work, actually nourish those who make them, and so achieve a goal that has always eluded our artists, waylaid as they have been by the need for realistic representation of (surface) forms.

Conclusion Suppose, then, that such a hybrid exhibition of animal traps from far and wide, interspersed with relevant western artworks, were to be presented to the gallery public. What might that imply for the problem with which I began this essay – the dispute concerning the criteria for artwork status? I hope that I might have said enough to convince at least some people that such a conjunction would not be wholly inopportune. The institutional theory of art would at this point immediately ‘enfranchise’ a large array of artefacts – hitherto consigned to the Naturhistorisches Museum – to a place in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, assuring them a quite different audience and reception, since by being successfully circulated as artworks, these works would become nothing less. Would that be a retrograde step? Speaking as an anthropologist concerned with art, rather than as an art critic or a mouthpiece for Absolute Spirit, I believe that this would be a welcome development. The worst thing about the ‘anthropology of art’ as at present constituted is precisely the way in which it has inherited a reactionary definition of art, so that it more or less has to concern itself with objects that would have been classified as ‘art’ or, more likely, ‘craft’ at the beginning of this century, but has little or nothing to do with the kinds of objects (installations, performances) that are characteristically circulated as ‘art’ in the late 20th century. In effect, ‘art’ for the anthropology of art consists of those types of artefacts one might find on display as ‘art’ only in a very sleepy provincial town which (as most of them do) boasts a ‘gallery’ where one finds folksy ceramics, carvings and tufted woollen tapestries, not to mention innumerable still-lives and Palmeresque rural idylls. The tradition of middlebrow art that produces and consumes these things is of course indestructible, but why should the ethnographic Other be deemed a

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producer of ‘art’ only if he or she produces work that is generically analogous to such reactionary dross, even if individual works of ‘primitive art’, so circumscribed, are actually of the highest quality. The reason for the persistence of this state of affairs – which may, however, be unravelling as I write (see Weiner, 1994) – lies in the continuing hold of the ‘aesthetic’ notion of artworks over the anthropological mind (Maquet, 1986), since it is this definition of artworks that ensures that only ‘aesthetically pleasing’ carvings, paintings, pots, cloths, etc. are to count as ‘art’. The move I advocate is the abandonment of the aesthetic notion of artworks by the anthropology of art (Gell, 1992), which alone would permit the kind of direct confrontation described above, between the artefacts of nonwestern peoples and the productions of postDuchampian artmaking, i.e. the central tradition of contemporary art, properly speaking, not the ersatz to be seen in provincial arts-andcrafts galleries. One should accept the essentially liberating premise of the institutional theory of art, which has arisen precisely to accommodate the historic fact that western artworks no longer have an aesthetic ‘signature’ and can consist of entirely arbitrary objects, like dead sharks in tanks of formaldehyde, and so on. Do I mean that any object of human manufacture whatsoever can be circulated as an artwork? Is this what is implied by the ‘institutional’ theory of art? Potentially, perhaps, yes; but this has been trivial, in terms of contemporary art theory, since 1917, when Duchamp exhibited his notorious urinal (or Fountain). That was in the time of my grandfather, and the time of the great-grandfathers of today’s artists, such as Damien Hirst. So if selecting and exhibiting arbitrary objects as ‘art’ were all that defined the post-Duchampian tradition, there would be little left to expect from it by this late stage. Actually, things are otherwise; Duchamp’s ready-mades were carefully selected and thematically tightly integrated to his two major projects (the Large Glass (1915–23) and the Waterfall (1944–66)). What is interesting about Duchamp’s readymade art objects was never the objects themselves, but Duchamp’s reasons for selecting them (divulged in the course of a life-long strip-tease performance) and the same is true for the art produced by his many followers.

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The apparently ‘arbitrary’ objects of concept art are only apparently arbitrary, and they all work, if they do work, because they have complex (Dantoesque) historic and iconographic resonances, of which the gallery public is, to a greater or lesser extent, made aware. They are objects that are scrutinized as vehicles of complicated ideas, intended to achieve or mean something interesting, difficult, allusive, hard to bring off, etc. I would define as a candidate artwork any object or performance that potentially rewards such scrutiny because it embodies intentionalities that are complex, demanding of attention and perhaps difficult to reconstruct fully (cf. Kant’s notion of the ‘free play of cognitive powers’). Thus it takes more to make a post-Duchampian artwork than merely exhibiting it in a gallery – an interpretive context also has to be developed and disseminated. In this respect the purely institutional theory of the artwork is less than satisfactory because it has nothing to say about the criteria that govern the creation of the kinds of contextual resonances to which the educated gallery public are sensitive. To this extent Danto is right to insist on the priority of interpretability in the constitution of the artwork. What is wrong with his theory, at least so far as the artwork vs artefact distinction is concerned, is its dependence on an over-idealized distinction between ‘functional’ artefacts and ‘meaningful’ artworks. This is a legacy of post-Enlightenment philosophers such as Hegel, but it obscures the view of any art world other than the one Hegel had specifically in mind. Perhaps contemporary gallery artworks do nothing but evoke meaning; but most artworks have political, religious and other functions which are ‘practical’ in terms of local conceptions of how the world is and how humans may intervene in its workings to their best advantage. Artworks can also trap eels, as we have seen, or grow yams (Gell, 1992: 60). The ‘interpretation’ of such ‘practically’ embedded artworks is intrinsically conjoined to their characteristics as instruments fulfilling purposes other than the embodiment of autonomous ‘meaning’. A half-way house between the ‘institutional’ and ‘interpretive’ theories therefore seems to me the best option. The institutional theory of art is amenable to the idea that artworks can be ‘arfefacts’ securing a range of human

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purposes, so long as they are simultaneously deemed interesting as art to an art public. But the institutional theory has a problem in that it is less clear about the kinds of criteria that dictate whether candidate objects will or will not be selected as artistically ‘interesting’. The Danto–Hegelian conception of an autonomous art ‘Geist’ will not enfranchise any but a narrow and unrepresentative range of human productions, and fails to account for the rather successful artwork candidacy of Vogel’s ‘net’ except as the result of a category mistake on the part of the art public. A broader notion of interpretability, encompassing the objectification of ‘complex intentionalities’ in pragmatic and technical modes, as well as the project of communicating autonomous symbolic meaning, seems to me to overcome the problems contained in both the ‘interpretive’ and ‘institutional’ theories of art. What the ‘anthropology of art’ ought to be about, in my opinion, is the provision of a critical context that would enfranchise ‘artefacts’ and allow for their circulation as artworks, displaying them as embodiments or residues of complex intentionalities. Anthropology should be part of art-making itself, insofar as art-making, art history and art criticism are a single enterprise nowadays. Partly this would consist of the provision of relevant ethnography (such as provided by Boyer, Hugh-Jones, Lemmonnier, mentioned earlier) and partly the discovery of connections between complex intentionalities in western artworks and the kind of intentionalities embodied in artworks and artefacts (now recontextualized as artworks) from elsewhere. This would be a one-sided transaction in artmaking, in the sense that essentially metropolitan concepts of ‘art’ would be in play, not indigenous ones; but objects, as Thomas (1991) has shown are ‘promiscuous’ and can move freely between cultural/transactional domains without being essentially compromised. This they can do because they have indeed no essences, only an indefinite range of potentials. So was Vogel’s net an artwork? I believe that the New York gallery-goers who took it for one were not mistaken. Nor were they entirely swayed by the mere fact that they were institutionally invited to see it as one, by the gallery setting and the chance rhymes between the Zande net and the work of well-known west-

ern concept artists such as Jackie Windsor. They were also, I am sure, responding to the very notion of a ‘net’ and the paradoxical way in which this net had been itself caught, and tightly bound, within a second net. This recursive metaphor of capture and containment would have been itself enough to give them pause, halt them in their passage, and induce them to stand and stare, like Boyer’s fated chimpanzee. Every work of art that works is like this, a trap or a snare that impedes passage; and what is any art gallery but a place of capture, set with what Boyer calls ‘thoughttraps’, which hold their victims for a time, in suspension? Vogel’s net was set with care, and in it she captured, besides sundry philosophers and anthropologists – including this one – a large part of the question ‘what is art?’.

REFERENCES Bourdieu, Pierre (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of Judgements of Taste, trans. Richard Nice. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Boyer, Pascal (1988) Barricades myste´rieuses et Pie`ges a` Pense´e: Introduction a` l’analyse des e´pope´es Fang. Paris: Socie´te´ d’Ethnologie. Clifford, James (1988) The Predicament of Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Danto, Arthur (1964) ‘The Artworld Journal of Philosophy’, Journal of Philosophy 61: 571–84. Danto, Arthur (1981) The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Danto, Arthur (1986) The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art. New York: Prentice Hall. Danto, Arthur (1988) ‘Artifact and Art’, in ART/ARTIFACT: African Art in Anthropology Collections. Exhibition Catalogue. New York: Center for African Art and Prestel Verlag. Dickie, George (1974) Art and the Aesthetic. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Dickie, George (1984) The Art Circle: A Theory of Art. New York: Havens. Faris, James (1988) ‘ART/ARTIFACT: on the Museum and Anthropology’, Current Anthropology 29(5): 775–9.

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Gell, Alfred (1992) ‘The Technology of Enchantment’, in Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton (eds) Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lemonnier, Pierre (1992) ‘The Eel and the Ankave-Anga: Material and Symbolic Aspects of Trapping’, draft article, unpublished. Maquet, Jaques (1986) The Aesthetic Experience: An Anthropologist Looks at the Visual Arts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Morphy, Howard (1991) Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

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Roth, Walter (1924) 38th Annual Report of the American Bureau of Ethnology. Strathern, Marylin (1991) Partial Connections. Savage, MD: Rowman Littlefield. Thomas, Nicholas (1991) Entangled Objects. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weiner, J. (ed.) (1994) ‘Aesthetics is a Crosscultural Category’, Group for Debates on Anthropological Theory. Manchester University, Department of Anthropology. Wind, Edgar (1957) Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Part III Aesthetics across Cultures

Introduction

It is not easy to understand why aesthetics has been so neglected in anthropology, nor why the application of the concept of aesthetics to the anthropological study of art has been so controversial (see the protagonists in Ingold 1996, the arguments of Gell 1998, and the response by Layton 2003:449). While particular aesthetic judgments and ideas of beauty will vary between (and within) cultures that does not mean that the concept of aesthetics is irrelevant for cross-cultural research. Indeed we would argue that it is necessary. As with any cross-cultural category it is necessary to divorce it from any particular culture’s ideational system, and to define aesthetics in general terms and not associate it with a particular culture’s ideational system, without losing sight of its core meaning. Aesthetics is centered on the effect(s) that form (broadly defined to include shape, texture, light and shade, taste and smell and so on) has on the senses. Aesthetics involves the perception of qualities, and the evaluation, interpretation, and response to qualitative aspects of form. A study of aesthetics also requires an understanding of the way that aesthetic factors motivate the production of artworks and the purposes to which they are put. Aesthetics concerns the sensual aspects of objects but it is not confined to the beautiful. While it is possible as Morphy argues, that humans universally sense some aesthetic effects across place and time – shininess, symmetry, and asymmetry, for example – they are experienced and interpreted differently according to cultural context and the position of the responder. A particular aesthetic effect may inspire fear in the New Guinea Highlands and evoke feelings of spiritual joy and ecstasy in a Catholic mass. The shield that terrifies the opponent may give the bearer a sense of health, well-being and strength (see O’Hanlon’s chapter). The aesthetics of art has to be explored in the context of the particular society that produces it. While there may be overlaps in the evaluations of the same works by members of different cultures, such overlaps need to be demonstrated rather than presumed. Farris Thompson’s analysis of Yoruba aesthetics was the first detailed published analysis of the aesthetic judgments made by African artists and their indigenous audience. His analysis enables non-Yoruba to look at the works from a Yoruba

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perspective, and to see and evaluate them on that basis rather than in terms of the aesthetic system of their own society. Thompson has developed a hybrid vocabulary based in part on the terminology used by European art historians to describe the structure and formal composition of sculptures but modified to respond to Yoruba criteria. While aesthetics cannot be reduced to the idea of beauty Thompson develops his analysis as a precursor to understanding Yoruba concepts of beauty, and exploring the ways in which the concept articulates with religious and moral values (see Boone (1986) for a complementary analysis of the aesthetics of Mende masquerade). Thompson suggests that this opens the way for aesthetic discourse between Yoruba and non-Yoruba art historians. It is interesting to compare Farris Thompson’s analysis with Bateson’s analysis of a Balinese painting (ch. 4). While Bateson does not provide the kind of detailed exegesis about Balinese aesthetic criteria that Thompson does for the Yoruba, the conclusions that both draw about the relationships between aesthetics and a moral order show remarkable parallels. There is a sense in which the aesthetic dimension of objects is thought to provide a means of apprehending general structurings of value and the core metaphysics of particular societies – metaphysical and phenomenological aspects of the culture that cannot be easily communicated in everyday language. However because it so easy to read values into art objects on the basis of one’s own aesthetic experience it is vital to approach the topic from the basis of a rigorous analysis of the objects in the context of the cultures which produce them. Munn’s (1986) analysis of qualities (such as heaviness and lightness) in Gawan society from a semiotic and phenomenological perspective provides an exemplary analysis of value creation processes in the Massim. While Morphy and Farris Thompson focus on art objects, broadly defined, Coote makes the important point that aesthetics can intervene in virtually all aspects of the daily life of a society. Indeed in the case of the Nilotic peoples of southern Sudan he argues that there is an absence of what are conventionally understood to be art objects. Aesthetics and aesthetic valuations are however important in everyday life and in patterning people’s experience. While it is true that under a broader definition of art Nilotic society is rich in poetry, song, and ritual performance, the more general point that Coote is making is an important corrective to those who restrict their exploration of aesthetics to recognized art objects. While in some societies art may provide a central focus for aesthetic discourse, aesthetics is likely to be much more pervasive as a factor in people’s lives and it is important that anthropologists should approach aesthetics from this broader perspective. It is as important to analyze the aesthetics of furniture design and the motor car – and cattle – as it is to focus on the object set aside in the art gallery for reflective contemplation. Firth’s analysis of Tikopean headrests (ch. 5) complements Coote’s analysis well. Aesthetic factors are often important determinants of action and integral to the effectiveness of an event, as well as to the personal appeal of an object. Aesthetics can be integral to value creation processes and be important determinants of a cultural trajectory. Analyzing the aesthetics of material culture in archaeological or historical contexts can provide important avenues for interpretation. Lechtman’s chapter (15) on Andean ‘‘gold’’ objects demonstrates how analyzing objects from an aesthetic perspective can reveal important components of systems of value which in this case influence the technological trajectory of a society.

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REFERENCES Boone, Sylvia Ardyn, 1986 The Radiance from the Waters. New Haven: Yale University Publications in the History of Art. Gell, Alfred, 1998 Art and Agency: an Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ingold, Tim, ed. 1996 1993 Debate: Aesthetics is a Cross-Cultural Category. In Key Debates in Anthropology. London: Routledge. Layton, Robert, 2003 Art and Agency: A Reassessment. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 9: 447–464. Munn, Nancy, 1986 The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

14 Yoruba Artistic Criticism Robert Farris Thompson

There exists in Subsaharan Africa, locked in the minds of kings, priests, and commoners, a reservoir of artistic criticism. Wherever tapped, this source lends clarity to our understanding of the arts of tropical Africa. The Western scholar may assign value to a work which would elicit equal praise in the compound of a traditional king, assuming the work and critics were from the same African society, but he cannot assume that the reasons for his choice are present in the mind of the native critic. Africans may admire works of art, or categories of artistic expression, which a Westerner, in the ethnocentric conviction that he had mastered all the relevant issues, might pass over in ignorance. African criticism enriches, in these cases, our sense of definition. By definition I mean the identification and characterization of expressive media which, like African dancing, might pass largely unanalyzed through the filter of Western scholarship. Conversely, consideration of African judgment of African art protects the student from the dangers of reading into a work of art aesthetic principles which might not be present in the native imagination. More important is the fact that African aesthetics opens onto African sensibility. Aesthetic criticism suggests the relation of art to

emotional ideals. These ideals, in turn, reveal the hidden unities which impose meaningful design upon the face of a culture. The mosaic may, of course, be apprehended only in fragments by members of the society.

Contexts of Yoruba artistic criticism Yoruba art critics are experts of strong mind and articulate voice who measure in words the quality of works of art. Yoruba artistic criticism may occur at a dance feast where the excellence of sculpture and motion becomes a matter of intense concern. In Iperu-Remon, Nigeria, ‘‘loads’’ ˙ `˙ cult are judged com(headdresses) for the Oro petitively on the basis of sculptural and choreographic appeal. Similarly, in Ajilete, Nigeria, ‘‘battles of dance’’ decide which quarter at a given festival has triumphed and brought glory to the town. The elders of IgogoEkiti critically observe the dance movement of young men who aspire to the honor of carrying the senior headdresses of the local Epa cult. Young men of legitimate birth, ˙physical, moral, and artistic powers are chosen. In this way festivals provide a setting of criticism. In addition to the cult context, where critical acuity seems to increase under the stimulus of expressive sounds and sights, artistic criticism

From Warren D’Azevedo (ed.), The Traditional Artist in African Societies, 2 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), pp. 19–61, 435–454. Reprinted by permission of Indiana University Press Ltd.

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seems to flourish among the Yoruba in those situations where money provides auxiliary excitement or agitation. In the market, workshop, and other places, the quality of a work of art can become the essence of commercial transaction. Here aesthetic products again meet articulated conventional tests of quality. An apprentice, for example, who has attempted to sell an indifferent example of his work to a bona fide patron may find himself called into the workshop of the village master where the master criticizes him (Cordwell 1952: 292). The master indicates, either by carving a new piece or by improving the finish of the unsatisfactory work, proper control and care. He tells the carver what went wrong with the work and warns him to do better. The criteria of the master are frequently regarded as trade secrets, which explains why so few have been shared in the past with Westerners.1 Mutual criticisms among sculptors are an especially sensitive source of information about Yoruba aesthetics. When a master carver impugns the abilities of a lesser carver, his gestures and facial expression can be as eloquently derisive as his words. Alaga of OdoOwa, for example, dilated his nostrils with disgust when he met a carelessly rendered Epa headdress at Egbe: ‘‘A´! A`! the juju gourds ˙ unpleasingly lumpy. The face of the man is are ´ buru´ to´ be´ e` ge´ – it’s as bad as bad crooked. O ˙˙ ˙ can be.’’ Apart from important chiefs and mutual friends, Yoruba critics will not criticize with style and precision unless it is made financially worth their while. This does not mean that they are professional. It simply means that Yoruba live traditionally in a world of money, personal honor, and entourage. By acts of generosity a Yoruba leader proves to his entourage that he is worthy of their acclaim. By the same token, the Western student proves by remuneration that he merits the honor of shared qualitative data. The size of a Yoruba ruler’s entourage is a mark of his generosity and importance (Bascom 1951: 496); the quality of the data of the field worker may reflect the amount of money allocated to aesthetic research. This is in character with the importance that Yoruba give to spending money on oral skills. Drummers, for example, find livelihood in the praise of rich men, and one woman of Ikare has earned 75 pounds a year in rec-

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ompense for prayer of surpassing beauty and force.2 The oral art of criticism also moves within the sphere of money. It is certain, moreover, that few traditional Yoruba make gratuitous statements of opinion on any subject in the presence of foreigners. No informant ever discussed with me the notion of multiple souls, but this did not mean that such a belief was not indigenous, as the researches of P. Amaury Talbot (1926: 261–2) and William Bascom (1960) attest. We must therefore weigh the following report with special care: I have never heard a spontaneous discussion on the form, proportion or expression of a piece of sculpture – although I have lived twelve years in Yoruba country and have moved a great deal among priests and worshippers in shrines full of religious carvings. (Beier 1963: 6)

This does not imply an absolute lack of spontaneous discussion in aesthetic merits in Yorubaland. It may mean that outside the festival, the commercial transaction involving sculpture, the admonitions of master to apprentice, the mutual criticisms among sculptors, and so forth, it is rare. Entrance into a shrine full of carving clearly does not guarantee an audience with a traditional critic. After all, do Roman Catholics analyze the aesthetic merits of cathedral images when at worship? A Westerner may be lucky enough to overhear some fragment of spontaneous criticism. By chance I observed a mother of twins abuse an apprentice because he had brought her an image which she said did not resemble a human being. Again by chance I observed the head of the Meko Gelede cult motivate his ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ knitting his brows, hired carver, by ˙ worriedly to rectify certain proportional improprieties. Is it possible to distinguish criticism to paying outsiders from in-group criticism? In both instances critics name abstractions and cite common terminology in order to define the qualities which distinguish aliveness from, say, woodenness. However, it seems likely that critics who are also master carvers may rise to a higher level of nuance and precision in their conversations about quality. In point of fact, some sculptor-critics use a set of analytical verbs which are as sure in effect as the defining strokes of their adzes. These verbs grant them the power to measure the relative

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weight and shading of linear properties with an accuracy which might well provoke astonishment in the West. As in the professional jargon of the social scientist, the proliferation of conceptual vocabulary among the better Yoruba critics ‘‘corresponds to an intensely sustained attention toward the properties of reality.’’ This is an instance of Le´vi-Strauss’ important observation that in their appetite for objective knowledge we have one of the most neglected aspects of the thinking of those whom some still dare to call primitive (Le´vi-Strauss 1962:5).3

Cross-cultural identification of the critic Yoruba qualitative criteria are consensual. This means they are matters of opinion, widely shared, but perhaps only fully comprehended by the guardians of philosophic thought. The best example of the latter are the priests of the divination cult. Yoruba aesthetic criteria are perhaps best nuanced by sculptor-critics who lend to their words their special insights of process and form. But the roots of the criteria lie with the common people without whose supporting testimony the fabric of aesthetic thought loses conviction and certainty. Aesthetics among the populous Yoruba people is thus the sum of simple statements about artistic quality and the sum of the verbal characterizations which qualify these statements. When the qualifications are weighed it is found that the simplicity of the vocabulary is only apparent. On the other hand, a Westerner might validly draw from random audiences the following conclusion: I have seen people dancing and singing for a new work of art – but its merits as art are not normally discussed. It is possible to hear comments on the craftsmanship. Slovenly surface treatment in a piece of sculpture, and any kind of quick careless work will be condemned. (Beier 1963:6)

What looks like art criticism is here interpreted as conversation on craftsmanship. Nevertheless, collective rationalizations reveal true consciousness of aesthetic bearing. Yoruba, for example, consider haste indelicate. Delicacy is almost universally recognized as an important quality in the aesthetic systems of the world.

Identification of the African critic The art critic in a traditional African society may be identified first on the basis of whether he has voiced elements which imply a theory of elegance or excellence in art. Secondly, one notes whether the critic successfully applies this theory to particular cases. In the process, it is possible to distinguish the critic from the appreciator (Ballard 1957:194). Appreciators identify with a work of art; in their vision the physical facts are in sharp focus, while aesthetic facets are blurred. An example: one evening while the harmattan blew chill into the air, a young man attempted to evaluate a twin statuette by the light of a native lamp. He dealt with the practical virtues of the cap depicted on the image’s head; its flaps, he said, protect one from the cold. He had identified with the subject matter. A critic emerged from the shadows around the lamp and criticized the appreciator’s lack of insight. He made comments about posture and vigor and qualified one of his standards. Appreciators only identify. Critics both identify (richly reflecting cultural preoccupations) and criticize (on the basis of relative formal elegance). The most important criterion of identification of African critics is that their standards of judgment be qualified. Estimation of quality on grounds of coiffure may, if no further reasons are given, reflect associative values. Coiffure characterized in terms of delicacy of line and spacing does indeed constitute aesthetic criticism. Judgments of better or worse imply an aesthetic when they are qualified and if the qualifications prove to be fairly systematic. Whatever else true criticism is, it is an applied aesthetic. Traditional African critics may qualify their remarks with subordinate clauses, as it were, in which the reasons behind each choice are spelled out and where, ideally, the reasons for the reasons are also given. At one end of the continuum of judgments one monitors the simple statement that such-and-such a work is ‘‘good’’; in the middle one finds characterizations of aesthetic flavor, for example, ‘‘the features are handsome’’; at the opposite end of the continuum one encounters aesthetic substance, as when a critic remarks on the delicacy of the modeling of lips. One meets surprises. One may discover a rationale which is wholly ‘‘cultural’’ in flavor.

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Thus an Oke-Iho critic found fault with the carved image of a devotee in a shrine because the face was not beautiful. Why? Because the mouth was carved open. Why this objection? Because a fly (one of the traditional messengers of evil) might enter the mouth or dirt collect within the oral cavity (Yoruba fear imprecations uttered when the mouth is dirty, especially early in the morning). Associative values, even of the most magicoreligious nature, and true aesthetic sensibilities are not mutually exclusive any more than possession of the skill of reading and writing prevents one from worshiping the traditional Yoruba gods.

Yoruba Art Critics: Their Character and Contribution The presence of sculpture in Yoruba country, together with a tradition of artistic criticism, provides a basis for the understanding of the relation of African sculptors to art itself. As Bohannan has commented, definition of artistic criticism depends upon study of critics, not artists (see Smith 1961:94): I was wrong in my field work because, Western fashion, I paid too much attention to artists, and when artists disappointed me I came away with nothing. When I return I shall search out the critics. There are as many reasoned art critics in Tiv society as there are reasoned theologians or political theorists, from whom we study Tiv ideas about their religion and politics.

Bohannan’s conclusions gave direction to my program of study. He taught me to expect little from artists as informants on quality. Early in my field work I asked a Yoruba sculptor which were his finest works and was not surprised to hear that all of his works were fine. At the end of my field work I returned to his compound. This time he spoke of form and quality in sculpture although he still evaded analysis of his own works. What had opened his lips about quality? Rapport, per se, had little to do with it. What had happened was this: thanks to conversations with critics I now possessed some of the vocabulary of the Yoruba aesthetic. The sculptor confronted with the critical language of his peers is the sculptor partially disarmed.

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The collapse of ‘‘primitive art’’ Criteria of primitivism in the main do not apply to the traditional Yoruba, which means that one must rethink the status of the arts and criticism of this important African people. For example, here are some of the characteristics of ‘‘primitive culture’’ (Hsu 1964: 1) non-literacy, 2) small-scale settlements, 3) isolation, 4) lack of historical records, 5) low level of technical achievement, 6) social relations based primarily on kinship, 7) nonindustrialization, 8) lack of literature, 9) relative homogeneity, 10) nonurban setting, 11) general lack of time reckoning, 12) moneyless economy, 13) lack of economic specialization, and 14) endowment with an overpowering sense of reality where everyday facts have religious and ritual meaning. Only four of these criteria really apply to the Yoruba. It is true that Yoruba were nonliterate before the coming of the Europeans to their shores. They based their social relations primarily on kinship (and they still do). They were not industrialized; they were endowed with an overpowering sense of reality (many still are). But their cities were not small in scale, nor were they isolated. Yoruba urbanism, Bascom (1959:29–44) indicates, predates the European penetration and probably was ancient. Court singing kept historical records alive (Biobaku 1955). The technical achievement of the Yoruba craftsmen is an historic fact.4 Equally complex were and are the many genres of the rich oral resources of traditional Yoruba literature – hunters’ ballads, ancestral songs, praise poems, divination verses, proverbs, and so forth.5 Yoruba traditionally had a sense of time reckoning and a cowrie-shell currency.6 Economic specialization, both in degree and incidence, was striking. If some traditional Yoruba are endowed with an overpowering sense of reality, it is difficult to see where their attitude differs from that of clergymen or philosophers in the West. The issue of nonliteracy and industrialization seems important only to those for whom it is important to preserve the concept of ‘‘primitive art.’’ Lack of factories and a high incidence of illiteracy have never prevented scholars from classifying the world of Gothic France as a civilization. It is possible to stress, as definitively ‘‘primitive,’’ the ‘‘absence of any concept of political

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organization, which is necessary before manpower can be trained and utilized for the construction of roads, aqueducts, or monumental architecture’’ (Wingert 1962:6). However, we know from the history of Yoruba architecture that a mighty rampart, the eredo, surrounded the inner kingdom of the Ijebu (Lloyd 1962:15– 22). The ancient holy city of Ile´-Ife` was superbly ˙ walled. Monumental royal architecture, necessitating politically organized units of communal labor, adorned the ancient cities of the Ekiti.7 It is interesting that a recent artistic geography of ‘‘primitive art’’ excludes the arts of the Andes. Is Great Benin or Ancient Ife` more ˙ primitive than Chan-Chan? The separation of the civilizations of the world into great, in contrast to primitive, categories of culture appears meaningless when applied to the complex Guinea Coast cultures, but also when applied to simpler societies. The collapse of ‘‘primitive art’’ as a workable concept is nigh. Once the mask of primitivism falls, what will we see? We may discover that the vision of African aesthetics as rudimentary or functional only projected our own weakly developed means of verbalizing the visual constituents of fine African sculpture. It is just possible, for example, that Yoruba critics surpass all but the most professional of Western students of Yoruba art in fluency of verbalization. To match the level of competence with which a Yoruba cultivator estimates artistic quality, one would have to deal with a specialist of Western art. Wherever and whenever Yoruba critics of Yoruba sculpture analyze sculpture, they do so with conviction and swiftness of verbalization.

Yoruba critics: selection and profession Artistic criticism was not requested in any village or town until data about carvers, dating of works, names of woods, and so forth had been collected. This art historical research served as a kind of lure. Potential critics moved in the curious crowds of bystanders which always formed around the writer, his wife, and assistant. The crowd was then asked, while pieces of sculpture brought out for study were still in the sunlight, was someone willing to rank the carvings for a nominal fee and explain why he liked one piece over another? Owners sometimes immediately made clear that they did not want to participate – ‘‘put it to another

person,’’ a twin image owner protested once. Almost without fail someone would step forward and immediately begin to criticize the sculpture. The rare delays did not stem from lack of verbal skill. Rather some informants were simply afraid that their efforts would not really be compensated. Others wished to study the works with care in the light, turning them around and testing their profile and mass. The volunteer-critics were, with two exceptions, male. Eighty-eight critics offered their services.8 None was a full-time professional, as far as could be determined, but as two entries in Bowen’s Grammar and Dictionary of the Yoruba Language of 1858 – amewa ‘‘to be a judge of beauty’’ and mewa ‘‘to be ˙a judge of beauty’’ – broadly suggest˙traditional Yoruba have long had a concept which substantially overlaps our own notion of the connoisseur.9 But if Yoruba critics are not professionals, many of them prove to be leaders of opinion in other areas. Sixteen informants were village chiefs, nine were heads of traditional cults, four presided over quarters of towns, fifteen were artists, eleven were in trade, and seven were in the employ of the Nigerian government. All drew upon their importance or self-esteem as the basis for their authority. In the maleoriented Yoruba world it was not surprising that only two women appeared as critics. But also many of the images under discussion were twin images, and women are the owners of these images. As such, they were understandably reluctant to rank their own possessions. Yoruba criticism is not the prerogative of kings or of politically important persons. Almost anyone is free to criticize art if he (or she) so desires. Thus 20 cultivators, some of them of very humble economic means, balanced the simplicity of their material possessions against the riches of their mind. Their powers of qualitative characterization compared favorably with the commentaries of kings. Neither king nor commoner, however, could improve upon the insights of the sculptor-critics of Northern Ekiti. If the excellence of criticism is intellectually ranked among the Yoruba, the ranking depends upon the critic’s individual talent and degree of familiarity with the forms of art. Name, approximate age, village, profession, and religion were tabulated insofar as possible. In this way it was discovered, for example, that practicing Christians and Muslims used the

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same criteria by which worshipers of traditional Yoruba gods judged art. But only 19 exclusively Christian and five exclusively Muslim responded. The remainder (64 critics) were practicing devotees of one or more of the traditional Yoruba gods. The variable of ownership seems pertinent. Of a total of 88 informants, only 32 actually owned the pieces of sculpture under discussion. They may have possessed sculpture in their own compounds but none of them offered to fetch and analyze their own possessions. This suggests that Yoruba more readily evaluate sculpture when it belongs to somebody else. Nevertheless, 32 critics saw no harm in ranking their own possessions provided they were paid for doing so. But no mother of twins was ever persuaded to judge her own twin statuettes. Years of ritual had made these images seem alive. In point of fact, twin mothers handle their statuettes lovingly. Some explain that they are alive. One cannot expect a mother in such circumstances to play favorites. To do so is positively dangerous: the spirit of a slighted twin may strike the mother with sterility or cause her to ‘‘swell up’’ and die. In the Aworri bush village of Ayobo, a middleaged critic had begun an interesting recital of the ‘‘proper’’ physiognomy of the ibe´jı` face when suddenly he cut himself short and became silent. When asked to resume the thread of his argument, he refused and stated firmly: ‘‘We cannot so abuse these ibe´jı`. We are afraid of what they might do to us.’’

The artist as self-critic An American photographer was once asked to rank and edit his works for an exhibition catalogue. He replied bitterly that he would rather edit his own children. There is little reason to believe that less emotion attaches to the works which Yoruba sculptors create or that they might rank in public their own works with pleasure. Compare Bohannan’s experience among the Tiv: he asked a calabash carver which was his favorite design, and the artist reasonably replied that he normally liked the one he was working on, so he liked them all. Yoruba carvers had a stock reply for Justine Mayer Cordwell when she asked them to evaluate their preference of one form over another: ‘‘I do whatever the customer orders.’’ In the light of

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this and similar admissions heard in Yoruba country from carvers, it seems likely that when sculptors rank their works equally, they do so with an eye to commercial advantage and that, in any event, inability to criticize their own works is shammed. I did not embarrass the Alaga of Odo-Owa (formerly known as Bamgboye) with direct questions about the qualities of his recent work, but I could not fail to note the enthusiasm with which he led me around the Epa headdresses which he carved before 1955 ˙ which were of good quality and the sadness and which came into his face when he stood before his last Epa headdress, at Obo Ayegunle, carved in 1959 ˙when his physical strength had declined. It is significant that the carvers and blacksmiths who served as critics judged the work of rivals and not their own handiwork. Their gusto and precision might well have evaporated had they been asked to analyze their own creations. Nevertheless, one Yoruba sculptor, Bandele Areogun, has proved willing to criticize (at least retrospectively) his own works.10

Identification of basic criteria Conversation with the critics was straightforward. When an Egbado critic observed that the lineage marks on the face of an image pleased him, a simple pointing question, nı´torı´ kı´ni (Why?), sufficed to elicit an aesthetic response. All responses were translated into English in the following manner: 1) the field interpreter wrote out a verbatim text of the critic’s comments on the spot and checked it with him, 2) the field interpreter and the author wrote out together a rough translation of the comments on the spot and checked it with the critic, 3) the translations were evened out and polished at the author’s base at Lagos or Ile´-Ife`, 4) finished typescripts of vernacular text ˙ and English translation were rechecked for accuracy and searched for nuances of idiom and vocabulary by Mr. Samuel Adetunji of Ilesha in New Haven, Connecticut. When I analyzed the comments of the 88 critics, common denominators of taste emerged, representing the rationale behind the individual choices. This rationale is the ‘‘Yoruba aesthetic.’’

Yoruba Aesthetic Criteria Eighteen indigenous criteria of sculptural excellence are presented in this section. Each criter-

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ion, a named abstraction, defines the categories of elegance by which Yoruba recognize the presence of art. No single Yoruba provided all these ideas. Canonical notions developed by the investigator were discussed with individual Yoruba sculptors who sometimes added important insights or refinements of their own. Before examining the criteria in detail the general Yoruba notion of the aesthetic will be discussed.

The Yoruba notion of the aesthetic To speak of a native aesthetic presupposes basic questions. First, have the Yoruba a notion of the aesthetic? The answer, as might be plain by now, is ‘‘yes.’’ Artistic sensibility, mixed with a hint of the hierarchy of the beautiful, is a clear power of the following verse from the oral literature of divination: Anybody who meets beauty and does not look at it will soon be poor. The red feathers are the pride of the parrot. The young leaves are the pride of the palm tree. The white flowers are the pride of the leaves. The well-swept verandah is the pride of the landlord. The straight tree is the pride of the forest. The fast deer is the pride of the bush. The rainbow is the pride of heaven. The beautiful woman is the pride of her husband. The children are the pride of the mother. The moon and the stars are the pride of the sun. Ifa says: beauty and all sorts of good fortune arrive. (Beier and Gbadamosi 1959:30)

Discrete visual phenomena intersect: beautiful possessions (verandah, wife, children) whose quality the owner maintains or protects; ephemeral beauty (leaves, flowers, rainbows) at its prime; the beauty of more permanent things, earthly and celestial, which a sensitive man does not take for granted. Prize these things, the god of divination warns, for mental richness creates material wealth. Aesthetic impulse alone brought together these felicities; their unifying aspect was beauty. The poem has the effect of an aideme´moire: it safeguards, as it were, the natural resources of Yoruba aesthetic experience. It is clear that a classification of visual powers, systematically developed, does not

constitute mere function or utility. On the contrary, the moral is clear: aesthetic sensibility brilliantly embarks a man upon his career. This poem, as well as other passages which might be cited from the oral literature of the Yoruba, refutes the old assumption that Africans lack experienced appreciation of natural beauty for its own sake. Yoruba, for instance, greatly admire the quality of verdancy which is implicit in one line of the poem and explicit in ` yo ` , ‘‘this the common phrase, ile` yı`´ı tu´tu` yo ˙ 1958: 658). ˙ ˙11 land is verdant’’ (Abraham If it is accepted that Yoruba truly appreciate physical beauty, the next question is: have the Yoruba a notion of aesthetic quality in sculpture; have they precise criteria by which to analyze the constituents of the beautiful in plastic expression? The answer again is yes. The plastic order of Yoruba sculpture is so striking as to stimulate an immediate awareness of its concrete manifestations in the minds of native critics. They speak fluently of the delicacy of a line, of the roundness of a mass. This eliminates the general question of whether or not Yoruba identify the aesthetic components of form.

Art as use: the pidgin English of African aesthetics Few old-fashioned ethnologists dreamed that the peoples they investigated experienced aesthetic responses. And they never dreamed that ‘‘primitive man,’’ himself conversant with art and noting few men of like experience among the emissaries from Europe he met in the nineteenth century, might be addressing to Westerners the same reproach. Some traditional Yoruba seem to assume a white man’s ability to perceive aesthetic import in art is weak or underdeveloped. One illustration must suffice: asked why he was most proud of a certain carved divination dish, a diviner at Ilobi replied: ‘‘It is a container of good divination things.’’ Outwardly, he was ‘‘incapable of aesthetic analysis.’’ But inwardly, he had assumed that utility was the only trait a foreigner might comprehend. When assured of the true direction of the inquiry, he spoke at once of quality. The alleged lack of aesthetics among ethnographic peoples may well have derived from a kind of conceptual pidgin which arose when ‘‘civilized’’ and ‘‘primitive’’ man met and spoke of art, neither believing the other capable

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of aesthetic analysis. Thus, as Bohannan observed, the Tiv weaver keeps his best piece for his mother-in-law and sells his worst piece to foreigners who, presumably, would not know the difference (See Smith 1961: 92). The Fon brass caster sells the coarsest of his creations to foreigners and excellent pieces in traditional styles to indigenous patrons (Herskovits 1938: 358).12 An Anago Yoruba wood sculptor, although locally noted for an especially sensitive handling of earth colors, permits enamel paint to be splashed in garish patterns over commissions for Westerners, obliterating the fine cuts of his knife, because ‘‘that is what those Europeans like.’’ In the process, Western and African prejudices are mutually reinforced.

Yoruba qualitative criteria Midpoint Mimesis A value of Eastern art is exemplified by the story of the dragon which was painted with such aliveness that the creature flew out of the ink and into the air. The Western parallel tells of the birds who pecked at painted fruit. ‘‘What is the similar African story?’’ Mr. Kenneth Murray (1961: 100) has asked. The following African version, a precious fragment of the oral literature of the Yoruba, documents equal attention to shape, detail, and vitality, but these Western-sounding preoccupations dissolve in a solvent of native irony. Motinu and the Monkeys is a fable about a beautiful girl, Motinu, who meets a magnificently handsome man near the Yoruba city of Owo. The man is actually a monkey in disguise ˙ ˙ tricks Motinu into marrying him and movwho ing to his forest eyrie where he transforms himself back into his true state and the hapless girl is forced to drum dance music and fetch wild corn for her captor and his chattering friends. By chance Motinu meets a hunter, when alone in the woods one day, and he promises to rescue her. The hunter’s stratagem is a capsule rendering of the traditional Yoruba notion of mimesis: On his return to Owo, the hunter called on a woodcarver in the town. He described to the carver Motinu’s hairstyle, and tribal markings and asked him to make eight little images of her. When these had been carved and painted, the hunter carried them to the bush when he knew he would find Motinu alone, and then together,

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they set out quickly for Owo. Every few miles, the hunter dropped one of the carvings in a conspicuous place along the track. (The hunter) knew that these images would delay the monkeys when they tried to follow them. . . . When the monkeys reached the first image they were very curious indeed and sat down to chatter and argue. ‘‘What is this,’’ they said, ‘‘that bears such a strong resemblance to Motinu?’’ . . . growing tired of it, they threw it away into the bush and went on in pursuit of their lost Motinu . . . Each image they came to exasperated the monkeys more and more, and when they came upon one they would pounce on the image in anger and smash it up, chewing the pieces afterwards till nothing remained. By this means Motinu and (the hunter) were able to escape. (Fuja 1962:47–49)

This fable, to begin with, qualifies the degree of realism Yoruba critics desire: the village connoisseurs are pleased by conventionalized human faces sharpened with touches of individuality (lineage marks and coiffure). The monkeys, unlike the birds of the West, were not deceived. There was no reason that they would be, for one of the aims of the Yoruba sculptor is to strike through the individual personality of men and women to arrive at general principles of humanity.13 The monkeys puzzled over the images and, in a sense, appreciated their mimetic qualities – ‘‘What is this, that bears such a strong resemblance to Motinu’’ – but never did they confuse art with reality. Thus the fable summarizes Yoruba mimesis: the formulation of general principles of humanity, not exact likeness. Light touches of portraiture (hair, scars, dress) redress the balance in favor of individuality, yet not to the degree where even the vilest monkey cannot distinguish likeness from equivalence. Mimesis to modern traditional Yoruba means the cultivated expression of resemblances (jı´jo ra), not likenesses. It is ‘‘midpoint mimesis’’˙ between absolute abstraction and absolute likeness. This is brought out by the vocabulary of the 20 critics who applied this criterion to their ´ jo e`nı`o ` n (It arguments. A single sentence, O ˙ resembles a person), was the modal ˙expression ´ `n although an alternate phrasing, O da`bı´ e`nı`o ˙ (It looks like a person), was also heard. A healthy recognition of the limitations of

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illusion is implied in the verb jo. Witness the ˙ common phrase, o´ jo be´ e` (It seems to be the ˙ ˙ case). It is therefore significant that Yoruba critics qualify mimesis with a phrase which makes clear a desire for generalization. They did not say that carvings resembled specific personalities.

Hypermimesis Some of the reasons why Yoruba art comprehends mimesis as a process sited somewhere between abstraction and exact likeness can be found in the critic’s rationale for disapproving of a work. Amos Tutuola plants one clue in his Yoruba folk novel, the Palm-Wine Drinkard, which is based upon traditional mythic themes. At one point the hero of the novel encounters his own portrait in wood and is frankly terrified (Tutuola 1952:68):14 ‘‘Our own images that we saw there resembled us too much.’’ There can be something sinister about absolute mimesis. Why? One reason seems magical. A master carver of Efon-Alaiye, Owoeye Oluwuro, told me ˙ ˙ ` n sculptor, before he initithat a traditional E` fo ˙ ˙ commission involving the ated any important carving of human eyes, mouth, and nose, had to make a sacrifice of sugarcane, dried maize with red palm oil, and pigeon to prevent the entrance of ugliness into his carving. What kinds of ugliness? A wrinkled man’s wrinkles, a warty man’s warts. If his adze slipped, as it were, and he began to carve the unpalatable truth in some of the faces which he saw around him, the danger existed that these very features might be transmitted to the face of his next-born child. To one Yoruba critic a slight hint of individual expression sufficed to incur censure: ‘‘[One carving’s mouth] comes out to form a laugh. That is bad.’’ The lips of an ideal statue ought to be pursed. Such lips reflect impersonal calm. Perhaps the most decisive factors behind the limitations placed upon mimesis in Yoruba art are aesthetic ones: the assumptions of the native critic (that sculpture be smooth, youthful, erect, and so forth) would be violated by direct rendering of the rough skin, gaunt appearance, and ruined posture of an elderly man.

Excessive abstraction Related to the notion of mimesis, on a negative grid of disapproval, is the notion of excessive abstraction. Fine sculpture, to the Yoruba, is not too real, but neither does it absolutely

depart from natural form. For example, a North Oyo critic stated that ‘‘if a person’s ears were all round like that they would talk about him’’ and condemned a work of art while he went on to laud another piece with relatively realistic ears. Carvers are amused by apprentices who fail to imprint human quality upon the principal masses of their work. Bandele Areogun once studied a carved house column by Ayantola of Odo-Ehin and commented derisively:15 ‘‘It looks like an a`po´tı´,’’ and then laughed. In making this comparison with a`po´tı´, a common Yoruba term for box, Bandele had impugned the ability of his rival to enliven brute timber with human presence.

Visibility Twenty-nine critics stressed this quality. A master sculptor, the Alaga of Odo-Owa, heartily concurred with their emphasis: ‘‘One knows from the visibility of the face and other parts of the image whether the work is beautiful.’’ The artist used, as did some of the critics, the precise Yoruba word for visibility, ` n. ı`faraho ˙ critics phrase the idea without refineSome ment and simply assign importance to sculpture of full, well-finished, organic details. Thus a critic of Tede: ‘‘the tribal marks are well cut . . . I like the eyelashes, they help make the face attractive . . . the hairdress is exact . . . all five fingers are complete . . . all five toes are complete. The other carvers did not show the toes so visibly.’’ But sculptors lend to their criticism a vocabulary of astonishing accuracy and range. Their works describe, to begin with, the stages of the process of carving. Bandele Areogun of Osi-Ilorin distinguishes four divisions in the making of sculpture:16 1) the first blocking out, 2) the breaking of the initial masses into smaller forms and masses, 3) the smoothing and shining of the forms, 4) the cutting of details and fine points of embellishment into the polished surfaces of the prepared masses. Alaga of Odo-Owa views the process slightly differently: 1) the measuring of the wood, 2) the blocking out of the head, occiput, chest, torso, buttocks, thighs, legs, and feet in that order, 3) the smoothing and polishing of all masses, 4) the incising of details into the polished masses. Alaga insists that ‘‘above the

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shoulders the head must be readily visible.’’ Visibility as criterion therefore is an assignment of the initial stages of adzework (are the major masses visible?) and the terminal stages of knifework (are the smaller embellishments and linear designs visible?). The privilege of visibility must not be abused; as the Alaga told me, a sculptor must not only block out a schematic eye (yo oju´) ˙ he which provides a gross visibility and relief, must also ‘‘open’’ the eye (la` oju´) with sensitive lining. Visibility refers, therefore, to clarity of form and to clarity of line. Let us consider the last quality first. Linear precision is largely a matter of knifework, whereas plastic clarity is summoned from the brute mass of the chunk of the log by means of adzework. Although knifework falls under Bandele’s fourth category of fı´fı´n in Osi-Ilorin, this final stage cannot be described solely by means of the root verb fı´n, which means to carve or incise. Bandele uses an extended set of special verbs, each with its own nuance:17 1) la`, which refers to the ‘‘lining’’ of eyes, mouth, fingers, ears, and toes, 2) lo, which refers to the ˙ ‘‘grooving’’ of brass bracelets, 3) ge´, which refers to the cutting of waistbeads and other forms of beads, 4) fı´n, which refers to the ‘‘incising’’ of coiffure, sash fringes, and special patterns and designs. Bandele criticizes, for example, the lack of visibility of a certain cult container by means of these special verbs: ‘‘The mouth remains; they have not lined it. They have not incised the sash. They have grooved the sash.’’ The fact that a lexicon of linear qualities exists suggests the depth of the Yoruba aesthetic. Bandele uses verbs of line to estimate swiftly those carvers who have (or have not) liberated fine points of human appearance from the larger masses of the wood. Alaga of Odo-Owa and Mashudi Latunji, who works in the faraway town of Meko in ˙ the province of the Ketu, use much the˙ same sort of verbs Bandele employs in their criticisms. Like their colleague, the latter artists criticize the finishing of small detail, the rendering of its visibility, in terms of lining and incising and grooving but they criticize the cutting of coiffure and interlace patterns with the verb dı`, which means, literally, to tie. Alaga insists one may judge the excellence of the rendering of cloth in sculpture by means of

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´ sa´n ba`n`te´ da´da´ – ‘‘He the verb sa´n. Thus: O ˙ refers, literrendered the loincloth well.’’ This ally, to the tying on of the garment. The apparent lack of specialized vocabulary in the criticisms by non-carvers might suggest that Yoruba criticism is intellectually stratified. Bandele, the sculptor, said: ‘‘They have not lined the eyes.’’ But a carpenter (with no artistic pretensions) said: ‘‘The beautiful face has eyes which have lids and the ugly faces have lidless eyes.’’ Yet all critics of Yorubaland hold the artist responsible for as complete a grid as possible of human anatomic coordinates. Carvers seek to express generalized principles of humanity. They must carve them, nonetheless, with ultimate sharpness of clarity and focus. Thus the notion of linear connoisseurship is highly developed among traditional Yoruba. Symptomatically, the art of cicatrization in traditional times was of paramount importance, both as mark of lineage membership and aesthetic concern. Verbs of linear analysis in sculpture find a parallel in the language of the cicatrix specialist. This professional, like sculptors, has a verb for different visual effects. He cuts (bu) a`ba`ja` marks, slashes (sa´) ke´ ke´ ˙ ˙ `m ´ ˙ marks, marks, digs or claws (wa) go ` bo ˙ ˙ ` n marks (Abraham and splits open (la`) E` fo ˙ ˙ 1958:301). Relation of verb to sculptural effect seems meaningful. Ke´ ke´ marks are bold; when they ˙ allegedly called go `m ´, a are faint, they˙ are ` bo ˙ fact which might be conveyed by the˙ concept of slashing the former and clawing the latter. ` n marks indeed seem to split open the flesh E` fo ˙ ˙the cheek. of Since antiquity, Yoruba have adorned their cheeks with lines. They associate line with civilization. ‘‘This country has become civilized’’ literally means in Yoruba ‘‘This earth has lines upon its face’’ (Abraham 1958:399). ‘‘Civilization’’ in Yoruba is ila`ju´ – face with lined marks. The same verb which civilizes the face with the marks of membership in urban and town lin´ sa´ ke´ ke´ ; O ´ sa´ko (He eages civilizes the earth: O ˙ clears ˙ ˙ the bush). slashes the ke´ ke´ marks; he ˙ ˙ which opens Yoruba marks The same verb upon a face, opens roads and boundaries in ´ la`no ´ la` a`a`la`; o´ lapa (he cut ` n; O the forest: O ˙ a new road; he marked out a new boundary; he cut a new path). In fact, the basic verb to cicatrize (la`) has multiple associations of the imposing of human pattern upon the disorder

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of nature: chunks of wood, the human face, and the forest are all ‘‘opened,’’ like the human eye, allowing the inner quality of the substance to shine forth (Abraham 1958:399, 400, see also 602 as to sa´). This history˙ of associations with the tradition of cicatrization sharpens the eye of the Yoruba critic and gives the sensitive noncarver the knack of talking about clarity of line with conviction. For example, an Aworri critic insisted that the coiffure on what he considered inferior sculpture was ‘‘too faint’’ and that the lines of good sculptural versions of hair must be seen. An Ijesha critic with a single `n comment – ‘‘the eyes really show on E` f o ˙ pieces’’ – went to the heart of his taste˙ for linear visibility. Another sample criticism: Ojelabi of Oluponon admired an image because the face was ‘‘visible’’ and there was ‘‘a boundary line for the hair.’’ These comments and many others which could be cited prove that noncarvers, ` n (becomes visible), with the simple verb ho are able to defend their˙ tastes when judging sculpture which does or does not satisfy local feelings about linear visibility. Visibility, as has already been pointed out, also refers to clarity of form. An Ijebu cultivator judged one twin image excellent on the ground that its forehead was ‘‘more visible ` n ju` than the other [piece]’’ – (Otowa´ o´ ho ele´yi lo). At Sepeteri a critic admired the˙ nose ˙ on an ˙image because it was readily visible. The taste for crispness of form affects the criticism of abstract shapes and ornament as well: a young citizen of Ajasse-Ipo viewed four carved door panels in the palace of the local chief and found the criterion of visibility the decisive means of distinguishing the best patterns. As in the discussion of line, plastic clarity is ex` n or grammatical units pressed by the verb ho constructed from this ˙verb. Artistic integrity is also a factor which must be taken into account. This point might not have been documented but for the comment of a critic from the west of Igbomina country who singled out the sharp visibility of an image and added that ‘‘If you want to marry a person you have to see the body completely.’’ Plastic and linear clarity become a matter of candor: all parts of the body are presented to the court of the eye. Visibility in this sense means that the honest carver has nothing to

hide; he nakedly exposes his imagination. He does not conceal an inability to portray a complicated hairdress under a cap or headtie. To Bandele of Osi-Ilorin the head and the hands of images are the essential aspects of plastic clarity. ‘‘Don’t we,’’ he asked Kevin Carroll didactically, ‘‘look at the face at the top of the Epa headdress first and then we look at the ˙hand? Those two places we first take notice of. The body is not so difficult.’’ If the face and the hand of the igi (superstructure) are carved with proper conscientiousness the carving will become readily visible and therefore good and therefore beautiful.

Shining smoothness Yoruba who invoke the quality of visibility simultaneously invoke the quality of luminosity. Alaga of Odo-Owa told me that when he finishes a work of art he stands back to examine the ‘‘shine’’ of the work, the polished surfaces and the shadows in between the lines of incisions. This taste for luminosity appears to have considerable historical depth. We may infer that the Yoruba-influenced city of Great Benin reflected, as early as 1668, the Yoruba quest for luminosity in art (in this case architecture) as visual stimulus, for early explorers duly documented the extraordinary polish of the earthen red walls of Benin (Roth 1903:160–1). Eleven modern Yoruba critics shed light on the nature of this canon. Onamosun of Iperu recalled: ‘‘When my father (Taiwo Olejiyagbe) objected to low quality in my early work he sometimes lashed me with a flywhisk. I did not make any serious slips of quality after I got the hang of carving from observing my father’s work day after day. But if he told me to carve an image very smoothly and I failed to comply, I would be punished. The smoothing (ise´ ˙ ´ n) was done with a knife, with the side dı´do ˙ knife’’ (figure 14.1) An Aworri lineage of the head asserted that smoothness was a matter of skill: he praised the straightness of the hand of a sculptor and then commented upon his luminous touches of polish. Headmen at Ilogbo-Aworri and Ipole-Ijesha made clear that they demanded smoothness and shining qualities in sculpture. Speaking of cheeks, a priest of Erinle at Oke-Iho said: ‘‘The cheek (of this image) is beautiful; it is not swollen but rather shining’’ (Ee`ke´e o´ da´ra, ko` ´ n o´ do ´ n). wu´, su`gbo ˙ ˙ ˙

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Figure 14.1 The Alaga of Odo-Owa polishing a woodcarving with the side of his knife blade

Creative enjoyment of art by Yoruba critics relates to the notion of luminosity in remarkable ways. Thus a cultivator at Odo-Nopa in ˙ the kingdom of the Ijebu: One image is ugly and can quickly spoil. Its maker did not smooth the wood. Another image was carved so smoothly that one hundred years from now it will still be shining, if they take proper care of it, while the ugly image will rot regardless.

One might compare this fragment of criticism (which seems to raise luminosity to talismanic powers of preservation) with a more idealized

Yoruba notion of beauty as ‘‘guard’’ or ‘‘amulet,’’ which is present in the pages of the novels of Amos Tutuola. Here is a passage from his Palm-Wine Drinkard: If bombers saw him in a town which was to be bombed, they would not throw bombs on his presence, and if they did throw it it would not explode until this gentleman would leave that town, because of his beauty. (Tutuola 1952:25)

When Yoruba critics discuss luminosity, ´ n. The they almost unfailingly use the verb do ˙

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qualities conjured by the verb intermesh with aesthetic implications associated with the initial stages of carving. Thus Bandele.18 ‘‘We know a carver’s work is good if he has blocked it out well and by the shining smoothness of the wood’’ (t’o ba ti bu ona, ti o ba ti lena ona lile da . . nipa igi didon). Onamosun of Iperu ˙ ´ n technically and Bandele explain that ise´ dı´do mean the smoothing of the˙ forms˙ of sculpture, respectively with a knife of Remon and with a ˙ ˙ Kevin Carknife and chisel in Northern Ekiti. roll has informed me that the old smoothingtool in Ekiti dialect was called unkan and consisted of a handle and cutting edge formed from one iron bar. Bandele’s phrasing refers to the Yoruba sculptor’s intent to smooth down the surface of his wood so that it reflects light and seems to shine, as if from an inner source. The smoothness-shining duality emerges as both cause and effect. Surfaces are so smoothed that they give back the lights of intelligence which went into their making. We are now prepared to suggest the background of one of the most striking of the habits of the Yoruba artist – his penchant for carving facial traits in (to academic Western tastes) excessive relief. The issue cannot be treated, of course, apart from other notions of quality. Linear and plastic clarity combine with shining smoothness to illumine the artistic intent behind this habit of carving. The rounded shapes of the face of a Yoruba image have been smoothed so as to reflect light whether in sunlight or in shade. Eyes in protrusion cast meaningful shadows against the glowing surfaces of the face. The ink of shadow is calculatingly spilt below or above the eyes (according to the source of light), the better to mark off their form against the shine of the face, the better to make them ‘‘readily visible’’ (figure 14.2). The short durational values of Yoruba music propel sculpture in the dance with staccato movements that blur the vision. Shadow against shining surfaces acts as a countereffect to this blurring. Moreover, Yoruba appreciate distinct intensities of shadow. I have observed Alaga turning a carved comb around in sunlight, testing the beat, as it were, of its rhythmic shadowed incisions. I have also observed a critic at Tede turning a twin statuette around in the sunlight, turning the image around several times, observing the flow of shadows.

Figure 14.2 A carving by Owoeye of EfonAlaiye, 1960

Yoruba recognize that deliberate excrescences and edges in sculpture cast darkened silhouettes which may be ‘‘read,’’ as an abstract image, at considerable distance by an observer. Moreover, in the blur of the dance or under the shadows of a verandah, refinements of form must be made readily visible. Alaga tells us that the shadows between or within incisions and the shadows beneath or above relief are beautiful against the polished surfaces of the whole of a sculpture. The eye primed to appreciate the canon of shining smoothness, as the foil of shadow, distinguishes master from apprentice in works of art. The adzemarks of the master, where the edges show, shine, while the adzemarks of the apprentice lack formal separation and do not shine. We must be careful to point out that Yoruba seem to prefer the relative or moderate enunciation of any given criterion. An absolute polish, mirror-like and glittering, is as foreign to their art as is sculpture in which no attempt

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whatsoever has been made to polish surfaces. Moreover, as Kevin Carroll has usefully reminded me, the woods which Yoruba sculptors use are generally smooth in texture. And even the moderate or generalized shining of Yoruba sculpture is broken in some areas with crosshatching, and other designs, sometimes extensively. One of the most interesting extensions of the Yoruba taste for luminosity is the depiction of clothing. Because Yoruba artists devoutly desire to create well polished surfaces that reflect large amounts of light, they do not treat substances, which in reality are soft, with realistically softened textures. When a Yoruba carves a headtie, turban, cap, or gown, he exaggerates its bulk and polishes it to a high sheen. Drapery conventionally has a consistency which resembles sheet-metal far more than it does cloth. The soft twists of the turban of the Muslim cleric – a favored theme in recent Gelede carving of the Yoruba southwest – harden˙ ˙in ˙the hands of a sculptor. Loose, or folded twists of female headties (ge`le`) stiffen into architectonic forms. E`su`, ˙ the trickster, in one instance wears a cloth cap which in sculpture becomes as unyielding as an iron helmet. Thus the Yoruba aesthetic hardens and polishes the representation of the soft substances of life so that they will shine in harmony with the luminous whole of the image, so that the edges of a turban or a gown will cast the same strong shadows cast by eyes in expressive relief or by multifaceted foreheads and torso areas. Just as the sound of hard, metallic percussion dominates much Yoruba music – Yoruba iron bells and gongs are distinctive because of their high pitch (King 1961:11)19 – so the creation of hard, almost metallic polished surfaces dominates Yoruba sculpture. With respect to representations of clothing, and even hair, Yoruba sculptors discover luminosity by thickening widths and polishing surfaces and sides. A verandah post by Alaga which he carved for the house of a chief at Ekan-Meje ca. 1931 demonstrates most tangibly to what extent he successfully acquired the aesthetic of luminosity.20 The distinction between the smooth radiance of the head and coiffure of the central figure and the duller lustre of the unfinished structural support above the head of the figure is decisive (figure 14.3): Hair, cloth, and flesh glow with equal intensity.

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Figure 14.3 Verandah post carved by the Alaga of Odo-Owa, 1931

The Yoruba sense of luminosity is especially refined. Hunters in Yorubaland are sensitive to this quality and have, for example, a word (rekina-rekina) to describe the glittering effect of sunlight shining on wind-ruffled water.21 And in their ballads and salutes hunters generally admire the gleaming surfaces of the pelt of a wild beast as they might have admired, when in town, the luminous refinements of a carved image.

Emotional Proportion Yoruba notions of proportion form a dialogue between the permissive and the prescribed. Critics countenance certain dimensional liber-

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ties when they are charged with traditional sanction of aesthetic expression. Critics approve sculptural compositions set in ‘‘social perspective’’ where the sculptor indicates seniority by gradations of scale. At all times, however, critics rank sculpture upon a theory of relative proportion. The members of a king’s entourage must be carved in proportion to one another, regardless of their scale in relation to the monarch. A Ketu paradigm: the late Duga of Meko ˙ ˙ finished, probably before 1955, a striking headdress for the local cult of Gelede. The headdress is surmounted by an A`˙lu`˙ fa´˙a` (the Muslim cleric), carved standing in a canoe with a helper (figure 14.4). Two teakettles flank the canoe. The cleric counts his beads. The size of his rosary is overpowering; the beads fill his hands as a chunky width of Manila hemp rope might fill them. This is a splendid example of fusion of proportion and empathy. The usage of ‘‘emotional proportion’’ contrives to communicate the psychological importance of a thing, as opposed to strict measurement. Duga enlarged the beads of the cleric for at least two purposes: 1) so that they would ‘‘read’’ easily in the motion of the dance, 2) in conformance with their role in the important Islamic ritual of dhikr – ‘‘telling beads’’ – in solitary communion with Allah and the Prophet (Trimingham 1961:93). The size of the rosary translates its fascination in the eyes of non-Muslim Yoruba who recognize the power dhikr acquires from use in initiation and cult practice. Duga framed the canoe bearing the cleric and helper between two teakettles. These are strikingly out of proportion to the cleric and the canoe, but they are convincingly related to the dimensions of the head of the mask which serves as infrastructure. All Yorubaland has observed Muslim cattle-drivers from the north of Nigeria halt by the sides of roads and streets to pour ablutions from teapots. Recognition of the teakettle as a mark of modern Islam in West Africa would be immediate. Their symbolic dimensions are no more startling than the diminutive or heightened renderings of the Christian cross which are not taken as literal measurements of the True Cross but are tokens of faith. Yoruba share a notion with Heraklitus: a man’s character is his fate. Yoruba sculptors

Figure 14.4 Wooden headdress of the Gelede ˙ ˙ by˙ cult, representing the Muslim cleric. Carved Duga prior to 1955

enlarge the human head to mark its importance as the seat of character, the part conversant with destiny. Heads, as wisdom symbols, mark the visual climax. But exaggeration of the head must not be ludicrous. In the clear-cut instances of standing figures, the components of judicious proportion are swiftly identified by critics. Alaperu of Iperu minced no words: ‘‘The thighs are too thick for the body.’’ Of a certain carver’s work he said: ‘‘Bako carves figures with eyes too open. The lower part of the lid is too stretched out’’ (figure 14.5). A minor lapse of conception by the hand of the local master, Onamosun, did not pass unremarked: ‘‘Actually the height of the figure shows some grace. So far as I look at the cheeks and the nose I like what I see. Only the eye is a bit out of proportion’’ (figure 14.6). Significantly, the proportion of the head (which was slightly exaggerated) was not mentioned. The criticism of Abinileko of Otta provided another source of Yoruba thinking about proportion in carving. Abinileko, who in 1964 presided over the Oruba quarter of the capital of the Aworri subtribe, had been a tailor in his

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Figure 14.6 Image by Onamosun of Iperu, 1940 Figure 14.5 Twin by Bako from Iperu, 1940

youth and kept a cloth measuring tape in a wooden chest as a memento. He applied this measuring instrument to a judgment of the relative merits of the works of Labintan and Salawu, two sculptors of Otta. The basis of his judgment were two Gelede headdresses which ˙ ˙ ˙ on the walls of his he took down from nails parlor. ‘‘Labintan is the better carver,’’ Abinileko began, tapping the best headdress with a stick. Breadth (ı`bu´) was to his mind an import-

ant variable. Labintan had conceived a human nose, for example, with pleasingly moderate measurements while Salawu had not. The critic reached for his measuring tape and marked off two and a half inches for the breadth of the ugly nose, one and a half for the finer nose. He then compared mouths. Labintan’s was two inches long, Salawu’s three. He commented: ‘‘Labintan’s mouth looks like the mouth of a person but Salawu’s does not’’ (Enun tı´ La´bı´nta´n ˙ ko` jo e`nı`o ` n, su`gbo´n tı´ Salawu ` n). rı´ bi tı´ enu e`nı`o ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙

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He dissected further deficiencies: ‘‘Salawu’s forehead is too close to the edge of the headgear. The distance from cap to the top of the nose is too short.’’ He buttressed this point with a measurement: two and a half inches described the distance between nose and hat in the image by Labintan, one and a half for Salawu. Precise measurements are by themselves merely descriptive. But the critic analytically used measurement as a means of arriving at a concrete notion of proportion. Moderation in small things, not too broad the lips, not too short the forehead, might be suggested as the sum of these notions. The use of a Western instrument here does not vitiate the traditional grounding of this exercise, for the measuring tape was simply a replacement of African prototypes. Thus Ketu sculptors use the length of the blade of their knives as a rough module to secure the proportion and symmetry. Finally, Kevin Carroll has observed Bandele of Osi-Ilorin ‘‘often use a measure of hand length, finger length, and knuckle length.’’ As he wove his way through a complex argument about the aesthetic merits of Eyinle` cult figures, an Oke-Iho critic made several˙ observations which help us to understand how Yoruba view the proportion of facial traits. The critic liked one chin because it was not short (ko` ku´ru´). He condemned the dimensions of another sculptor’s version of the human chin with metaphor: ‘‘It is not beautiful. The chin rushes into its house’’ (Ko` da´; ` n ko´ sı´le´). The lower lip of the mouth on a`gbo this˙ piece was neglected; the lower margin of facial outline and the lower lip had been made to coincide, as in a mode prevalent among the Western Ijo. The fine piece, on the other hand, displayed a˙ suitably fleshy chin. The metaphor was apt: the chin of the inferior face did indeed seem to rush into the mouth and disappear. The same critic found the lips of one figure ´ wa mogi-mogi) ‘‘decently proportioned’’ (O and ‘‘terrible’’ on another figure. The ‘‘terrible’’ mouth was too big. In conclusion, man is the module. As Alaga told me: ‘‘if the image represents a big man, the eyes must be big, if the image is small the eyes must be small.’’ But inspiration and imagination are part of the process: ‘‘These measurements we use,’’ Mashudi told me, ‘‘God gives them to us. No one is using the white man’s

instruments when they carve at Meko. We take ˙ ˙ our measurements from our heart.’’

Positioning This concept overlaps the notion of proportion. Alaperu, for instance, analyzed the proper placement of parts of the body: ‘‘The ears are good, well-fixed, not too far down, not too far up.’’ Eleven critics made similar commentaries. Jogomi of Ajilete laid equal stress upon the correct placing of the navel. Otusoga of OdoNopa was disgruntled by a nose ˙which he felt had been placed too high upon a face. Yoruba hunters attach importance to elision in recitals of their traditional ballads. Thus a Yoruba was once documenting the ballad of the monkey when another Yoruba interrupted: ‘‘No. Do not write it so, it does not sound sweet like that’’ (Collier 1953). The latter informant then proceeded to elide eight words to satisfy his tastes. On the other hand, there were many words which he did not run together, for as the distinguished late authority on Yoruba linguistics, Professor R. C. Abraham, was forced to admit, there is no underlying principle about elisions (Abraham 1958:xxxi). By the same token, Ogidi of Igogo-Ekiti imitates the natural position of the shoulders and navel in his sculpture, but he connects the upper lip to the edge of the nose. One elides things for the sake of visual concord but there does not seem to be a fixed principle. Other North Ekiti carvers take pains to separate the nose from the lips.

Composition The aesthetic spacing of things in relation to one another is a complication of the art of siting. Positioning of traits by means both mimetic and emotional becomes a more elaborate task of relating individuals (sometimes individuals, things, and animals) within a single composition. On a minor level Yoruba composition means the pleasing articulation of limbs in spatial terms. Alado of Ado-Awaiye characterized his pleasure in the graceful placement of the hands of a figure which embellished his own divination container. The curve of the wrist and the arm, the naturalness of the gesture, were stated as pleasing qualities. Onamosun of Iperu reported that ‘‘one of the things that people are talking about when

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they see my work is my carving of the hands without detaching them from the body, with the outer side of the hand flat.’’ The design element to which the carver refers is one of the striking qualities of his mode of figural composition (figure 14.6). Olodoye of Ijero-Ekiti briefly adumbrated a few compositional qualities. He liked the suppleness of the placement of a child within a mother’s hand and he also expressed pleasure in the placement of a twin on the mother’s back. Unfortunately, he did not qualify these remarks. It is possible that a cultural factor, namely the Yoruba intense appreciation of motherhood and children, guided his remarks more than aesthetic discernments. As to free siting, critics did not discuss the matter but it seems probable that blendings of permissive and prescribed actions again apply. For instance, the members of a senior person’s entourage are carefully positioned, normally, so that when seen full-front they do not obscure the view of their master.

Delicacy Sixteen critics spoke of this quality, one of the few aesthetic notions for which we have scraps of nineteenth-century literary evidence. Thus the explorer Richard Lander in 1830: ‘‘The natives of that part of Africa appear to have a genius for the art of sculpture. Some of their productions rival in point of delicacy any of a similar kind I have seen in Europe’’ (Quoted in Allison 1956:18). Lander was an ethnocentric outsider but his disadvantages did not preclude a striking observation at an early date of one of the informing qualities of Yoruba sculpture. Samuel Johnson, himself a Yoruba, understood the relevance of delicacy to the appreciation of other Yoruba arts. Here is a comment on coiffure written in the 1890’s: Hair is the glory of the woman. Unmarried ones are distinguished by their hair being plaited into smaller strips, the smaller and more numerous the plaited strips the more admired. (Johnson 1921:101)

Traditional connoisseurs of the arts of hairdressing today still nod in agreement with the notion of delicacy and closeness of spacing. The more closely spaced the braids, the more braids can be made to embellish the head. This taste informs the commentaries of modern

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traditional critics of Yoruba sculpture. Thus an Egbado diviner at Ilobi characterized the aesthetic appeal of a certain divination dish in terms of its numerous faces and their diminutive eyes. ‘‘Small eyes’’ (oju´ ke´kere´), he added, make an image resemble a person. Delicacy of eye cut and lining was a concern of an Egbado and an Ijesha critic. The former liked the eyes of a twin image at Ajilete because the lids were thin (ipe´n¯pe´ju´ tı´n´rı´n); the latter remarked the pleasing smallness of eyes and used the identical phrase employed by the Ilobi diviner, oju´ ke´kere´. An Ijebu critic isolated the element of delicacy in the aesthetic character of a carved version of hairstyle. He stressed the sensitive rendering of the plaits, saying literally that the ‘‘cuts’’ or ‘‘lines’’ were thin. Smallness suited the tastes of the Ijebu critic when applied to the field of linear ornament. Smallness of anatomic mass provoked a different reaction. The critic denounced the slimness of an ibe´jı`’s arm with the same adjective with which he had praised fineness of line: E`yı`ı´ tı´n´rı´n ju` lo (This one is thinner than the ˙ other). A thin line is beautiful, a very thin mass is not. Thus one must take pains to plot the usage of verbs which predict quality in Yoruba criticism according to context and subject matter. Linear delicacy is a matter of admiration. But excessive delicacy or thinness in the portrayal of human mass is condemned. It may be that the latter quality is associated with the sinister, as suggested by a phrase in the pages of the Yoruba novel Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle (Tutuola 1955:73): ‘‘Their bodies were withered for fear.’’ Ideally, the human frame in Yoruba sculpture is carved with attributes full, vigorous, and fleshy. It is the shape of confidence. To return to linear finesse: a carpenter of Sepeteri used an interesting verb in relation to ˙ this quality when he admired an especially sensitively carved ibe´jı` and remarked that the coiffure was ‘‘just like a crown,’’ an appropriate simile for its well-finished elegance of form. He refined his remark with a verb which seems to conjoin the notions of delicacy in coiffure which Samuel Johnson had documented some 74 years before. ‘‘I like the lines of the hairstyle,’’ he said, ‘‘[Each] is small and ´ we´ da´da). The verb we´ , tightly spaced’’ (O ˙ ˙ according to Mr. Samuel Adetunji, describes both delicacy of line and spacing.

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Yoruba critics require delicacy in portrayals of human morphology. An Ajilete critic liked the ears on an image because they were small; an Oke-Iho critic voiced the same thought ´ ke´re´). This speaker with the same phrase (O condemned versions of ears which were ´ ho ` n gbagadagbagada) ‘‘conspicuously’’ (O ˙ because it not only visible. This is interesting qualifies the notion of grossness as the opposite of delicacy, but it also refines the notion of visibility. Elements which are conspicuous – too visible – are indecorous. The aesthetic import of ke´re´, like tı´n´rı´n, depends upon context. There is a difference between a delicate nose and a nose which is simply too small. The vanishing nose is censured with the phrase ´ ke´re´. O Thus four words, at least, form the Yoruba vocabulary of delicacy: 1) ke´kere´, ‘‘small,’’ referring to delicacy of mass; 2) ke´re´, ‘‘is small,’’ referring to delicacy of mass in the context of approval; excessive diminution of proportion in the context of disapproval; 3) tı´n´rı´n, ‘‘narrow,’’ referring to delicacy of line, both as to fineness of outline and as to sensitivity of grooving or incision patterns (Tı´n´rı´n when applied to mass may acquire a negative denotation); and 4) we´ , literally ‘‘is slender,’’ referring to linear ˙ delicacy in a special sense – tiny lines spaced closely together in neat parallel incisions. Clear-cut definitions of the verbs’ meanings emerge in contexts in which subtle sculpture stands beside brutal works. Taiwo of Ajilete said of sensitively incised lineage marks: ‘‘That cicatrization pattern pleases me. It is tiny and spaced tightly together and not con´ we´ da´da. Ko` spicuously big’’ (Ila` na˜ wu`n mi. O ˙ to´bi gbagadagbagada). Yoruba oppose in their diction the synonyms and antonyms of the delicate as skillfully as, in their traditional songs, the manifestations of romantic and practical love are opposed, as in the stanza ‘‘love is of many kinds, one love says ‘if you die let me die with you,’ another love says ‘if you buy the soup I will buy the yam!’ ’’ The antonyms of the delicate in the parlance of Yoruba critics are ‘‘big’’ and ‘‘blunt,’’ as illustrated by the peculiarly expressive phrase to´bi gbagadagbagada (conspicuously big). The dull or blunted edge is not aesthetic. The fine edge is aesthetic. This notion overlaps to a great extent Western notions. Thus a common dictionary definition:

Fine. 1. Exquisitely fashioned; delicate ME. 2. Not coarse; delicate in structure, a texture . . . very thin or slender.

Roundness Fourteen critics defined roundness as an aesthetic handling of carved outlines and full spherical mass. As regards curved outlines the comment of an Igbomina critic is a useful introduction: ‘‘I prefer the chin of one image – the other is flat and sharp – for the best chin is moderate.’’ Examination of the images he held in his hands as he judged them revealed that what he meant by ‘‘moderate’’ was pleasingly rounded, not angular. The idea of full spherical mass was explored by Alaga of Odo-Owa. Alaga explains that the ideal form of the ‘‘pot mask,’’ which serves as the helmet of the Epa feast dancer, is rounded. ˙ He made signs of disgust when he stood before an Epa headdress in Yagba territory which he felt ˙ failed to measure up to this standard. Alaga elaborated: ‘‘The pot-mask is not beautiful; it is not finished, it is not rounded’’ (Ko`ko` ko` da´; Ko` se pe´; ko` se ro´bo´to´). He referred to ˙ as model. ˙ Failure to round major his own work and minor masses not only destroys art, in Alaga’s opinion, it can impair the prime mimetic function of art. Thus he found that small calabashes on the same headdress were lumpily rendered and therefore not realistic and not beautiful. Calabashes must be specially rounded. Mashudi Latunji spoke of the rounding of the forms of good Gelede masks. He alleged ˙ that carvers ‘‘invent’’˙ ˙roundness after close observation of reality: ‘‘We use our eyes to observe how things are round.’’ There is art historical truth to what he says. The basic roundness of Yoruba art is especially evident in the art of Ketu, the ancient Yoruba town under whose cultural influence Mashudi’s own town of Meko lies. Mashudi has indeed used ˙ his eyes to ˙absorb the penchant for rounded mass which characterizes the style range of Ketu. The unified rounding of small masses in relation to larger masses is a hallmark of fine style. In Egba sculpture the eye often flattens to follow the curve of the temple. Ogundeji of Iseyin, in contrast to the Egba solution, rounds the sphere of the exaggerated eyes he carves so that when viewed in profile they are congruent

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with the rounded mass of the forehead. Ogidi of Igogo-Ekiti vividly rounds off all elements of his images; his works stand on rounded limbs; concave lines articulate arms from rounded torso; convex lines articulate fusions of loin and legs. Each marked division of mass is achieved with fluent curvilinearity. Criticism of human buttocks where represented in sculpture brings the Yoruba love of rounded shapes into focus. Jogomi of Ajilete likes his buttocks rounded and ‘‘human.’’ By inhuman he means sharp protrusion. The head of the Shango cult in Ila-Orangun made the same distinctions. Departure from the idea of the rounded rump met with amusing ribaldry in an Ijebu village: ‘‘If a man wants to copulate, or if a man wants to have an affair, he would quickly and easily be able to do what he wants to do [with this image] as its buttocks resemble those of a real person. But the second [image], its rump is raised up, its rump [stands ´ se do´ fu´n oku`nrin, ti o´ up] high at the back’’ (O ` , o´˙ le` te`te` rı´ se ba´ je´ wı´pe´ oku`nrin ba fe` ba´ lo` po ˙ ˙ ˙ ng kan ti o` fe nı´torı´wı´pe´ ı`dı´ re`˙ da`bı´ ti e`nı`o`˙n. ˙ rete di gı´ga ´ n e`kejı` ˙ı`dı´ re` wa` lo´ke`, kole Su`gbo ˙ `ıdı´ re` wa`.) ˙ ˙e`yı`n ni ˙ ˙

Protrusions A pleasing bulge, as opposed to displeasing or incompetent bulges, may be denoted by the verb of action, yo, ‘‘sprouted,’’ qualified ˙ by an appropriate adverb. Thus a critic of Sepeteri extolled the tactile structure of a ˙ ´ yo gbun¯gbu). nose quite simply: ‘‘It bulges’’ (O ‘‘You can hold the beautiful nose˙ with your fingers,’’ he added, ‘‘you cannot do this with the unattractive nose.’’ This criterion seems to distinguish the sculptural from the schematic. Moderate bulges are thus an accepted part of roundness.

Nonpleasing protrusions A definite vocabulary defines this negative taste. The modal response of the critics was o´ yo sı´ ı`ta, ‘‘it protrudes,’’ and it was used, for ˙ example, by critics at Oke-Iho and Ilobi to portray, respectively, a jutting forehead and a jutting chin. The verb is rooted in the currency of abuse, as in the Yoruba phrase ‘‘he is ´ yonun), meaning literally, troublesome’’ (O ˙ ‘‘he is mouth-protruding.’’ The verb yo by itself, of course, is neutral; adverbs shade˙ the quality of the protrusion.

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` do ` describes a pendulous Thus e`te`e¯re`e´ yo do ˙ ` do ˙` a˙drooping ˙ lip, o´ le´ nun˙ do mouth (Abraham ˙ 22 ˙ ˙ ` do ` denotes a 1958:141). Here the adverb do ˙ ˙ critic used sagging curve of flesh. An Aworri this word to characterize what he felt was wrong with the pectorals of a male ibe´jı` image. A deliberate usage of this effect in Yoruba art occurs in satiric sculpture for the Egungun cult. One mask, now in the collection of the Nigerian Museum, lampoons a nineteenthcentury enemy of the Yoruba, the Dahomean, with a striking depiction of sagging jowls.

Sinister bulges In general, rounded masses define Yoruba sculpture. Excessively curved swellings are not, however, looked upon with favor. One critic declared that swollen cheeks were bad art and puffed out his own cheeks in demonstration. The verb this critic employed to denote swelling (wu´) has sinister connotations. Orı´ ı`mı´ wu´, literally ‘‘my head is swollen,’’ means ‘‘I remember something which makes me apprehensive’’ (Abraham 1958:673).23 Orı´ı´ wı´wu´, ‘‘the remembrance of a terrifying event,’’ is another example.24 Then there is the singularly ´ wu´ ko´ to´ be´ , ‘‘Things will cheerless phrase, A ˙ 25 be worse before they are better.’’ Amos Tutuola draws upon this folk fear of unusual swelling in his Palm Wine Drinkard: I noticed that the left hand thumb of my wife was swelling out as if it was a buoy, but it did not pain her. [A] child came out from the thumb. He began to talk to us as if he was ten years of age. I was greatly terrified. I was thinking in my mind how we could leave the child in the farm and run to the town, because everybody had seen that the left hand of my wife had only swelled out, but she did not conceive in the right part of her body as other women do. (Tutuola 1952:31; see also p. 32)

An excrescence which is sited ‘‘in the right part of the body,’’ forming the ‘‘obstetric line’’ which defines the belly of a pregnant woman, does not of course generate fear, although it is infrequently seen in Yoruba sculpture. At least one obviously pregnant woman appears as a theme, carved, with humorous intent, for the Epa feasts of the town of Ipoti-Ekiti. Outside ˙ the context of rational expectation a swellof ing shape recalls pathology and is to be feared.

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An Egbado mother warned Kenneth Murray once that if he kicked an ibe´jı` image about, as he was kicking about an abandoned celluloid European doll, he would swell up and die. A strange bulge of earth in the court of the priest of Oro` at Iseyin is held dangerous: ‘‘if someone steps on Ota Oro` they will swell up and die immediately.’’ Fear of swelling, in fact, may well be diffused throughout West Africa. Under the pressure of similar beliefs, an Ijebu cultivator immediately related the swollen upper arms of an ibe´jı` figure to pathology: ´ tu´n wu´ bı´ enı´ pe´ o´ du`n ‘‘It is swollen doubly O like a person˙ in pain.’’ An oral literary reflection of this visual prejudice is the ballad of the Scarlet River Hog or Tu´u`ku´: ‘‘River-Hog, a swelling has ruined your beauty’’ (Tu´u`ku´, ko´ko´ ba oju´ je´ , literally, ‘‘river-hog protuber˙ (Abraham 1958:656).26 ance spoils face’’)

ized representations of mounted warchiefs and kings in the Ilesha area. The elements and counter elements of the Yoruba notion of roundness briefly reviewed include canonic roundness described as ro´bo´to´; pleasing bulges are greeted with the phrase o´ yo gbun¯gbu; negative bulges described by a˙ language apparently borrowed from abuse; sinister bulges fall under the verb wu´; and, finally, one aspect of a pleasing angularity, at least, is characterized by the word so´n´so´. Yoruba in general admire roundness but ˙will˙ accept sharp, angular, or bulbous shapes if these present aesthetic credentials which are clearly legible. Eso of Ipole, for example, not only detected the˙ expression which went into ` n chin, the making of an abstract mode of E` fo ˙ ˙ a verb but he measured its visual impact with nuanced with boldness.

Pleasing angularity

Straightness

Roundness is not an immutable law. One of the strengths of the Yoruba aesthetic is its flexibility. Yoruba critics may waive their tastes provided that novel departures are phrased with richness of human expression. Mr. William Fagg (1962) of the British Museum once told me: ‘‘The Yoruba roundness is not to be found in the works of Agunna of Oke Igbira. Agunna is more ascetic, concentrating the chin and the mouth into one point.’’ Within the style range of Efon-Alaiye, for ˙ ˙ favored by example, there is a mode (much chiefly patrons in Ilesha) whereby the chin is crisply pointed. Samuel Adetunji, a native of Ilesha, has described the effect: ‘‘You really ` n carvings. They carve notice the chin on E` fo chins which look like˙ a˙ blade.’’ To Eso of Ipole` n chins were ‘‘pointed’’ (s˙o´n´so´). Ijesha E` fo ˙ ˙concen˙ So´n´so´ ˙thus describes the sculptural ˙ ˙ tration of human attributes into points. It is a usage slightly elevated from common speech where the verb acquires an occasionally whimsical tinge, as in the phrase ‘‘he has a pointed nose.’’ But so´n´so´ implies something more than ˙ ˙ according to Samuel Adetunji. a physical state, In its most refined nuance, the verb connotes boldness; it reflects character. Eso of Ipole in˙ voked this special power of the word. This was entirely in keeping with the heroic stance and pose of fine Efon-Alaiye sculpture. The bold ˙ ˙ E` fo ` n chin seems to be a presharpness of the ˙ ˙ enough, of the generalrogative, interestingly

This quality ranks with roundness as a geometric trait of essential character in fine sculpture. Yoruba define straightness as upright posture and, by extension, balanced alignments and symmetry. When Bandele of Osi-Ilorin was asked by Kevin Carroll why he used to stand back from his work at Oye-Ekiti and look at it from a distance the sculptor replied: ‘‘We were looking at the straightness of the work’’ (Gı´gu´n ise´ l’a nwo`), ‘‘So that it would not be ´ ) (Father Kevin Carroll, crooked’’˙ (Kı´ o` ma´a` wo ˙ personal communication). Sculpture must stand erect. This is one of the first demands made upon an apprentice striving to master the art of sculpture. At a later point in his career he can assume that the problem of straightness has been mastered, and he can concentrate his energies upon more challenging aspects of form. But in the beginning (and perhaps forever for third-rate carvers) the matter of alignment is a matter of paramount concern. Bandele confessed his own fledgling uncertainties: ‘‘I did not look to the quality of shining smoothness but to the straightness. If you will remember I wasn’t as good then as I am now. At that time I did not know the art of blocking the main shapes out of the wood as I do now’’ (Father Kevin Carroll, personal communication). If Bandele’s enunciation of the problem is enlivened with memories of the mastery of process and form, the noncarving critics’

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detections of this quality are equally to the point. The head man of Ilogbo told me that he found the stooped posture of an ibe´jı` not beautiful (ko` da´). In Central Ekiti a critic liked the back of an ibe´jı` because it was straight, while the back of a rival piece was not straight (o` gu´n) and, therefore, inappropriate. I observed Ajanaku, a fine blacksmith of Efon-Alaiye, at work in his workshop on an ˙ ˙ staff. The staff was surmounted by an iron iron bird with an iron plume sprouting from the back of its head. The blacksmith in the last stages of the work attended to the straightening of the neck of the bird and to the straightening of the staff supporting the bird. He took the staff in his tongs and placed it in the sand upright and studied it critically before he was satisfied with the gı´gu´n (straightness) of the total effect. That the testing of the staff for straightness was a mental process which did not operate at a subconscious or subliminal level, in a manner suggested by Ralph Linton (1958:11–12), was clearly demonstrated the next time Ajanaku was visited. On this occasion one of the sons of the blacksmith took over the anvil. The straightening of the bird’s neck was not to the taste of the father. Ajanaku softly told his son to reheat the neck of the bird in the furnace and to straighten it out, so that it ´ ). The son would not be crooked (Kı´ o` ma` wo ˙ of palm complied. In the glowing ‘‘charcoal’’ kernels he turned the neck of the bird around several times, holding the object with his tongs. With pincers freshly moistened in water he bent the neck of the bird, now cherry-red, just behind the crest behind the bird’s neck. At last the neck was suitably erect. Ajanaku smiled. He then told his son to bend the wings of the bird slightly down; this formed a pleasing visual contrast to the rigid axis of the neck and spike. Here a blacksmith is communicating with verbal commands a canon of straightness tempered with contrast. Pointing commands are the means of the qualification of canons. Mere physical example does not suffice. At some point the master must put into words what has gone wrong.

Symmetry The calming virtues of symmetry are a constant in Yoruba art. The serene lips of a twin

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image find reflection in the balanced disposition of the image’s hands. When a woman kneels and presents her offering in a container, her hands fold symmetrically around the bottom of the object; when a warrior sallies forth on his mount his hands, if free, touch the reins at precisely mirrored points. Even the theme of a bird pecking a snake, potentially a scene of random coils and agitated posture, becomes, in the hands of Duga of Meko, a concrete mani˙ ˙ festation of pure form in even-sided resolution. Alaga spoke of the nature of symmetry from a sculptor’s point of view. Quite characteristically, he inextricably merged the concept with notions of straightness and siting. ‘‘One always positions the ears equal to each other,’’ he asserted, ‘‘and one always keeps the ears and the eyes on the same line.’’ He continued: ‘‘But there are some carvers [laughter] who are like small children and these put the ear on the jaw and do not think of the place of the eyes at the time they block out the ears and the mouth.’’ A sculptor in Ketu declared that a good carver never works without careful measurements either by adze-nicks or knifed incisions on the log, so that he can balance one effect against another as forms emerge from the raw chunk of the wood. One works quickly, he explained, but one does not work so hastily that one blocks out shapes which are not ‘‘straight.’’ As a model of his ideal, he pointed to his own work, a headdress representing a market woman with wares on a tray atop her head. The wares were symmetrically disposed in a criss-cross of minor and major masses. The critics made comments about straightness in the sense of symmetry, though not with the sophistication of carvers’ commentaries. They spoke, for example, of the symmetry of lips, and one critic traced with his finger imaginary lines as he discussed the symmetrical disposition of facial traits and headtie on a Thundergod dance wand. Straightness is extremely important in what might be phrased the Epa cult aesthetic. Here ˙ it is canonic among the dancers who carry headdresses during feasts. The canon not only reflects the practical necessity of avoiding the dangerous tilting of the heavy superstructures during the ceremony but also links the pronounced straightness of the architectonic forms of the sculpture to the postures of the dance.

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Allusions to the importance of straightness may be found in classical Yoruba poetry. One example is the sixth line of the divination verse quoted near the beginning of this paper. Another exists in the class of Yoruba poems known as `, ` (literally jokes, as in the term ala´a`ro`fo a`ro`fo ˙ witty˙ person) which are verses aimed at abstract subjects. As their title implies, they probe the assumptions of daily life with irreverence: Why do we grumble because a tree is bent When, in our streets, there are even men who are bent? Why must we complain that the new moon is slanting Can any one reach the skies to straighten it? (Hodgkin 1960:326)27

Sculptors, however, are more committed than the makers of the oral arts. But they may approach the canonical with equal levity in the prescribed areas of moral inquisition, satire, and psychological warfare.

Skill Yoruba esteem skill. There are suitable means of phrasing the rare knowledgeability of the artist. A frequent source is the orı´kı`, or praise name. Orı´kı` are attributive names. They express a man’s most noble qualities, real or imagined. For males they often bear heroic connotations. Thus the orı´kı` of a sculptor may allude not only to his skill but magnify the quality on an heroic scale. Consider the orı´kı` of Taiwo of Ilaro, an excellent sculptor who died around 1920 and whose early twentieth century work is found in the study collections of the Royal Ontario Museum at Toronto. In the province of the Egbado, Taiwo was widely known under his ´ no ` be which attributive name of Onı´pa`so ˙ ˙ 28 It is means possessed of a knife like ˙a whip. a miniature poem in praise of artistic cunning. Such was the skill of the late Taiwo that he summoned shapes, as with a whip, out of brute wood with his knife and made the shapes do as he bid them.

Ephebism This is perhaps the most important criterion. It is, in a sense, the resolution of all the canons in combination. Ephebism means, broadly, the

depiction of people in their prime. In accordance with this canon, critics pose this question: Does the image make its subject look young? Yoruba sculpture is a mirror in which human appearances never age. In Ipokia, for example, an old priest pointed to a robust image and said with pride: ‘‘That stands for me.’’ Yoruba art idealizes seniority. Divination poetry tells us wisdom is the finest beauty of a person.29 Ergo, what could be more appropriate than to flatter the moral beauty of the elders with the physical beauty of the young? Moreover, the actual physiognomy of the senior devotee often resists the flawless seal of Yoruba sculptural form. To imitate the masters of Yoruba life and religion as they really are would deny the Yoruba idea of sculpture from self-realization. Critics led me to these conclusions. Thus the wife of the village blacksmith at Ilishan: ‘‘I like that carving – it makes the Oba look so ˙ young.’’ Study of the carving she criticized validates her judgment. Cheeks are firm, stance is sure, chinline is strong. The waist is slim and youthful, and the chest is muscular, if slightly androgynous. At Shaki an Egungun worshipper pursed his lips and parried a request for artistic criticism of twin images with a question: ‘‘Between a beautiful young woman and an old woman which would you prefer for a wife?’’ The expected reply was given. The informant was amused for he had led his interrogator into corroborating his argument. ‘‘I like one image best,’’ he then stated, ‘‘because it is carved as a young girl while the other three are like old women.’’ This ranking was one of the very few which did not coincide with the opinion of the present writer. Three twins which seemed slender and youthful to the writer and his wife were the very pieces which seemed old to the informant. What caused the divergence of views? The informant pointed to the breasts. The breasts of the ‘‘old’’ women were high, as if shrunken and withered, while the breasts of the ‘‘young’’ girl hung down and gave the impression of fullness. A more important reason, however, was probably the erosion of features through ritual washing. The facial traits of the ‘‘old’’ pieces had been somewhat worn away by time and use. It is of interest that the informant was not swayed by the sumptuous money garments,

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made of cowries, which adorned two of the nonfavored ibe´jı`. A critic of Ilogbo-Aworri immediately censured the hunched shoulders and fleshy pectorals of an ibe´jı` image. Good images, he said, were carved as youths, not old men. A critic at Ifaki-Ekiti made substantially the same point and added ‘‘The chest of a young man should look like this,’’ pointing to a hard, polished surface. ‘‘It is beautiful because it makes the image look young.’’ Critics characterized the alleged age of an ibe´jı` (female) at Sepeteri on the basis of breasts. A favored image˙had breasts of equal length. ‘‘It ´ da`bı´ o monge). A resembles a young girl’’ (O ˙ ˙ rejected image had breasts which sagged, with the right breast longer than the left, a not infrequent phenomenon among Yoruba mothers whose children have favored one nipple over the other while nursing. Asiru of Sepeteri made this point concrete: the most ˙elegant ibe´jı` possessed breasts of the same length and consequently resembled a young woman. Abinileko of Otta established that ephebism can control the judgment of Gelede masks: ˙ ‘‘Labintan’s chin looks like the˙ ˙ chin of a young man, but that of Salawu resembles ` gbo ` n ti someone who is middle-aged’’ (A ˙ Sal` do ´ moku`nrin, su`gbo ´ n ti La´bı´nta´n da`bı´ ti o ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ awu da`bı´ ti a`gba`la´gba`). The main source of satisfaction with Labintan’s image was that it had the look of a young boy. The vocabulary of ephebism is simplified. It consists essentially of the key verb jo (resem˙ denotbles) in combination with substantives ing the quality of being young. Ephebism, as criterion, is a logical interpretation of certain of the visual constituents of Yoruba sculpture. For example, roundness connotes the vigorous period of existence, for human faces tend to become angular in old age. Coiffure also points in the direction of youth. Irun a`go`go, a bridal mode of the nineteenth-century Oyo, is frequently used in sculpture.30 The high-keeled structure of the hair to a Yoruba immediately recalls the fresh beauty of the bride. Mashudi of Meko reveals that one motive for ˙ ˙ is commercial advantage: the use of ephebism If I am carving the face of a senior devotee I must carve him at the time he was in his prime. Why? If I make the image resemble an

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old man the people will not like it. I will not be able to sell the image. One carves images as if they were young men or women to attract people.

The Yoruba aesthetic qualifies the notion that Africans never seem to carve their subjects as of any particular age. The intent of the Yoruba sculptor is to carve a man at the optimum of his physical beauty between the extremes of infancy and old age. Even where a beard indicates maturity the brow of a Yoruba sculpture may glow with the freshness of early manhood (figure 14.7). Seen as a whole, the Yoruba aesthetic is not only a constellation of refinements. It is also an exciting mean, vividness cast into equilibrium. ‘‘The parts of this image are beautiful,’’ an Oyo elder once said, ‘‘because they are equal to one another.’’ Each indigenous criterion is a paradigm of this fundamental predilection. Thus mimesis, as traditional Yoruba understand it, is a mean between absolute abstraction and absolute likeness; the ideal representational age is the strong middle point between infancy and old age; the notion of visibility is a mean between faint and conspicuous sculpture; light is balanced by shade. That beauty is a kind of mean is explicitly stated by Tutuola in Feather Woman of the Jungle: ‘‘She was indeed a beautiful woman. She was not too tall and not too short; she was not too black and not yellow.’’ Yoruba color preferences extend these beliefs. One schoolboy once stated on a questionnaire given by Justine Cordwell that his favorite color was blue because ‘‘it usually gives some attraction to the eyes. It is midway between red and black. It is not too conspicuous as red and it is not so dark as black. It is cool and bright to see.’’ He spoke with the full authority of his ancestors. Most significant was the notion of blue, a highly favored traditional Yoruba color, as a mean between red and black. Yoruba sculptors impose a truce upon the elements of their works, the elements themselves expressed in moderation. Even in the field of Egungun sculpture, where in order to suggest visitations from the world of the dead much license is allowed, one finds bestial and human attributes coexisting in a dignified manner because they have been balanced. Then, in turn, the sculpture will be balanced

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Figure 14.7 Yoruba Gelede headdress ˙ ˙ ˙

Figure 14.8 Headdress of the Egungun cult, from Anko

on the top of a dancer’s head, and he himself will probably make symmetrical gestures with a pair of flywhisks as a countereffect to his occasional impassioned twirlings.

Increase and fertility are important preoccupations. But of themselves they constitute no more than the instincts of a beast. Yoruba artistic criticism seems to be saying that force

YORUBA ARTISTIC CRITICISM

or animal vitality must be balanced by ethics, the moral wisdom of the elders. Ethics in this special sense would be the peculiarly human gift of finding the tolerable mean between the good and the bad, the hot and the cold, the living and the dead, to safeguard man’s existence. 8 NOTES 1 Thus Cordwell (1952:292): ‘‘none of the master carver informants would become more explicit about what it was that they would say to another carver in pointing out why and how the carving was not good.’’ 2 Ikare informants told me very simply that beauty of voice is also considered by those who judge the quality of oral skills. 3 Thus: ‘‘Comme dans les langues de me´tier, la prolife´ration conceptuelle correspond a` une attention plus soutenue envers les proprie´te´s du re´el.’’ 4 See Murray (1938?). As to one of the monuments of Yoruba metallurgy see Williams (1964:152). ‘‘[The ‘anvil’ of Ladin], a drop-shaped block of iron 30 inches high with a girth of 41 1/2 inches, still stands in the compound of the Oni of Ife. It was believed by Frobenius to be of cast iron, a claim which would suggest furnaces capable of generating temperatures in the region of 1,5508C. The block on close inspection, however, appears to have been built up from lumps of wrought iron which in any case represents a high degree of metallurgical skill.’’ 5 An excellent survey of Yoruba literary types is Yoruba Poetry by Beier and Gbadamosi (1959). 6 As documented by D’Avezac (1845:78): ‘‘markets . . . operate on a money basis – based on the cowrie shell, called owwo.’’ On pp. 81–83 D’Avezac discusses the Ijebu Yoruba concept of the week, month, and year. 7 See, for example, Roth (1903:157–191). See also Weir (1933: par. 101). ‘‘The official residence of the Ologotun is maintained by the townsfolk and the share of the work is allocated as follows: (1) By all the town (a) the entrance gate to the forecourt known as enu geru (b) the forecourt

14 15

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known as ode gbaragada (c) the second court known as ode useroye (2) By the Uba quarter (a) the court for council meeting known as ode ayigi.’’ Weir documents similar information in his Intelligence Report on the Ikerre District of the Ekiti Division of the Ondo Province (Lagos: 31 December 1933). I have since this time interviewed many more critics. Eventually I hope to plot differences of taste by ethnic sub-group, though the task may prove difficult. Bowen (1858). Ame`wa seems formed of a mo` n e˙wa` ‘‘Knower˙ (of beauty,’’ just as ˙ ‘‘lawyer’’ (amo`fin) is literally a ‘‘knower (of the) law’’ (A mo`n o`fin). Quoted in a personal communication to the author from Father Kevin Carroll of the Roman Catholic Mission, Ijebu-Igbo. The details of spelling are taken from Abraham (1958). Thus, for example, I spell ‘‘enia’’ as he does, phonetically enion. Abraham’s Dictionary is likely to stand for years as a standard reference and to facilitate thus the easy use of his intricately organized materials, I have used frequently his own system of orthography. Thus: ‘‘Most of these commercial pieces exhibit a lack of feeling so marked that they can easily be distinguished from the figures made for Dahomeans, on which time and effort are lavished in the best traditional manner.’’ Compare Kenneth Murray’s experience with Suli Onigelede, a woodcarver of Lagos, circa 1946: ‘‘Suli . . . had some ibeji (twin statuettes) . . . unfortunately he smothered them in bright green enamel as he thought that Europeans would like them so, in spite of my instructions to use native colours’’ (Murray, unpublished manuscript). Cf. a brief summary of the problem of portraiture in African sculpture may be found in Bohannan (1964:152–3). These are described as real portraits ‘‘for remembrance.’’ For these and other remarks by Bandele I am indebted to the kindness of Father Kevin Carroll who shared the insights of this famous son of Areogun of Osi-Ilorin in a letter dated February 29, 1964. Father Carroll has published the Ekiti Yoruba terms for these stages in his

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22 23 24 25 26

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‘‘Three Generations of Yoruba Carvers,’’ Ibadan no. 12 (June 1961), p. 23. These are points from tape-recorded conversations with Bandele which Father Carroll has shared with me. Quoted in a personal communication from Father Kevin Carroll. King (1961:11). Bells and gongs are made ‘‘visible’’ to the ear, as it were, because of their high pitch. Nigerian Museum, Lagos (KCM 381). The housepost once stood in a courtyard in the house of the Elegbe. Collier (‘‘Yoruba Hunter’s Salutes,’’ p. 54): ‘‘Some hunters say rekina-rekina which I understand to mean ‘‘glistening’’ or ‘‘glittering’’ – like the sun shining on wind-ruffled water, I was told . . . ’’ ` do ` (Abraham p. 141). See do ˙ ˙ Wu´ (Abraham p. 673). Ibid. Ibid., p. 672. Abraham’s translation has greater focus than an earlier version of the ijala of the Red River Hog by F. S. Collier, who rendered the Yoruba ‘‘animal . . . with swelling on his face.’’ From E. L. Lasebikan, ‘‘The Tonal Structure of Yoruba Poetry,’’ Pre´sence Africaine no. 8–10 (1956), p. 49. Mr. Kenneth Murray collected this information at or near Ilaro. Cf. Beier and Gbadamosi (1959:30): ‘‘Wisdom is the finest beauty of a person. /Money does not prevent you from becoming blind/ Money does not prevent you from becoming mad.’’ Agogo coiffure also, of course, denotes subservience to a deity.

REFERENCES Abraham, R. C. 1958 Dictionary of Modern Yoruba. London: University of London. Allison, Philip 1956 The Last Days of Old Oyo. Odu` 4:18. Ballard, Edward G. 1957 Art and Analysis. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Bascom, William 1951 Social Status, Wealth and Individual Differences Among the Yoruba. American Anthropologist 53(4):490– 505.

—— 1959 Urbanism as a Traditional African Pattern. Sociological Review 7(1):29–43. —— 1960 Yoruba Concepts of the Soul. In A. F. C. Wallace (ed.), Men and Cultures. (Selected Papers of the Fifth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvana Press. Pp. 401–10. Beier, Ulli 1963 African Mud Sculpture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beier, Ulli and Bakare Gbadamosi 1959 Yoruba Poetry. Lagos: Black Orpheus. Biobaku, Saburi O. 1955 The Use and Interpretation of Myths. Odu` 1:12–17. Bohannan, Paul 1964 Africa and Africans. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press. Bowen, T. J. 1858 Grammar and Dictionary of the Yoruba Language. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. Collier, F. S. 1953 Yoruba Hunters’ Salutes. Nigerian Field 18(2): 1. Cordwell, Justine Mayer 1952 Some Aesthetic Aspects of Yoruba and Benin Cultures. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. D’Avezac, M. 1845 Notice sur le pays et le peuple des Yebous en Afrique. Me´moires de la Socie´te´ Ethnologique, II. Paris. Fagg, William 1963 Nigerian Images. London: Lund Humphries. Fuja, Abayomi 1962 Fourteen Hundred Cowries: Traditional Stories of the Yoruba. London: Oxford University Press. Herskovits, Melville J. 1938 Dahomey, Vols. I and II. New York: J. J. Augustin. Hodgkin, Thomas 1960 Nigerian Perspectives: An Historical Anthropology. London: Oxford University Press. Hsu, Francis L. K. 1964 Rethinking the Concept ‘Primitive.’ Current Anthropology 5(3): 169–78. Johnson, Samuel 1921 The History of the Yorubas. Lagos: Church Missionary Society Bookshop. King, A. V. 1961 Yoruba Sacred Music from Ekiti. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press. Lasebikan, E. L. 1956 The Tonal Structure of Yoruba Poetry. Pre´sence Africaine 8–10. Le´vi-Strauss, Claude 1962 La Pense´e sauvage. Paris: Librairie Plon. Linton, Ralph 1958 Primitive Art. In William Fagg and Eliot Elisofson (eds.), The Sculpture of Africa. New York: Praeger. Pp. 9–17.

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Lloyd, Peter C. 1962 Sungbo’s Ersko. Odu` 7:15–22. Murray, Kenneth 1938? Native Minor Industries in Abeokuta and Oyo Provinces. Unpublished manuscript. Lagos. —— 1961 The artist in Nigerian tribal society: A comment. In Marian W. Smith (ed.), The Artist in Tribal Society. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Roth, Ling 1903 Great Benin. Halifax: F. King and Sons Smith, M. W. (ed.) 1961 The Artist in Tribal Society. Proceedings of a symposium held at the Royal Anthropological Institute. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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Talbot, Amaury 1926 The Peoples of Southern Nigeria. Vol. II. London: Oxford University Press. Trimingham, J. Spencer 1961 Islam in West Africa. London: Oxford University Press. Tutuola, Amos 1952 The Palm-Wine Drinkard. London: Faber and Faber. Weir, N. A. C. 1933 An Intelligence Report on Ogotun District, Ekiti Division, Ondon Province. Lagos. Wingert, Paul S. 1962 Primitive Art: Its Traditions and Styles. New York: Oxford University Press.

15 Style in Technology: Some Early Thoughts Heather Lechtman

In 1973, Arthur Steinberg and I suggested that it would be fruitful, particularly for archaeologists who deal almost exclusively with material culture, to investigate technological style as a phenomenon as well as the manner in which individual styles of technology relate to other aspects of the cultures in which they occur. In asking what is the cultural component of technology, we are also asking what can technology tell us about culture? We must be concerned not only with the bodies of skill and knowledge of which Merrill (1968) speaks, not only with the materials, processes, and products of technology, but also with what technologies express. If we claim that technologies are totally integrated systems that manifest cultural choices and values, what is the nature of that manifestation and how can we ‘‘read’’ it? . . . We would argue that technologies also [like visual art, music, dance, costume, gesture] are particular sorts of cultural phenomena that reflect cultural preoccupations and that express them in the very style of the technology itself. Our responsibility is to find means by which the form of that expression can be recognized, then to describe and interpret technological style. (Lechtman and Steinberg 1973)

I organized the symposium ‘‘Style in Technology’’ to stimulate interest in the concept of technological style, to see how useful it might be in interpreting cultural data, whether ethnographically or archaeologically assembled, and to elicit some concrete examples of the stylistic component of technology as it functions in specific cultural contexts. . . . By style I refer to the formal, extrinsic manifestation of intrinsic pattern. The oft-cited distinction used by linguists between langue and parole is precisely that distinction between pattern and style. The ordered, redundant phenomena that constitute the patterned structure of all culture are expressed as style in verbal, visual, kinesic and technological behavior. Style is the manifest expression, on the behavioral level, of cultural patterning that is usually neither cognitively known nor even knowable by members of a cultural community except by scientists who may have analysed successfully their own cultural patterns or those of other cultures. One of the most useful expressions of the relationship between pattern and style is given by Cyril Stanley Smith (1978:16) who considers style as a phenomenon which is dependent upon structure and is hierarchical in nature.

From Heather Lechtman and Robert S. Merrill (eds.), Material Culture: Styles, Organization and Dynamics of Technology. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society for 1975 (St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1977), pp. 3–20.

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Style is the recognition of a quality shared among many things; the quality, however, lies in structure on a smaller scale than that of the things possessing the quality. . . The part/whole relationships that produce the externally-visible quality called style seem to be closely analogous to the relationship between internal structure and externallymeasurable property that distinguishes one chemical phase from another. . . . Bulk properties of matter such as density, color, conductivity, crystal structure or vapor pressure by which a chemical phase is identified are not a property of any of the parts, (though they would not exist without them) but rather are external characteristics depending on the pattern of interaction between the atomic nuclei, electrons and energy quanta and the extension of this pattern by repetition throughout the entire volume of the phase concerned. (italics mine) . . . Style is hierarchical; it resides at all levels, or rather between any inter-relatable levels.

Two features of style emerge from Smith’s model of the structural nature of all systems, whether physical, biological, or social: 1) within any system ‘‘it is the relationships of communication, not the parts themselves, that lock in to reinforce and stabilize a larger pattern . . . ’’ and it is our perception of the formal arrangement of those interrelationships that we recognize as style; 2) the particular patterns of relationships among interacting parts are different at different levels within the system, thus style is hierarchical and its manifestation depends upon where we locate to observe the interactions. For example, a crystal exists at one level of structural hierarchy higher than that of the ordered arrays of atoms which comprise it. Crystallinity, as an identifiable property, represents a physical style of matter. It is a style dependent upon the repetition of the local symmetries of the unit cell throughout the crystal. Though the essence of crystallinity lies in the unit cell, the crystal is the extension of this. The physicist who studies the internal structure of the atom does not see the unit cell, and the crystallographer who studies the symmetries of the unit cell does not necessarily see the crystal as defined by their extension and the limits of their extension. Different styles become observable at different levels of

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the hierarchy of aggregation. (Smith 1978). The properties identifying crystal grains in the aggregates studied by the metallurgist or the polyhedral crystals studied externally by the traditional mineralogist represent a new state of things, a style emerging at a higher level from the patterns of atomic interaction at lower levels. Scholars rarely experience any difficulty in talking about style or in describing its formal elements when we are considering objects, that is, the physical products of certain types of behavior. The large majority of studies in art history are predicated upon the scholar’s ability to group works of art by their formal, stylistic properties. Archaeology is similarly dependent upon the use of stylistic categories of artifacts which are derived from study of their formal characteristics. What we haven’t seemed to recognize or at least paid much attention to is that the activities themselves which produce the artifacts are stylistic. ‘‘Material culture is the name given to the manmade physical products of human behavior patterns . . . ’’ (R. Spier 1970:14); and it is precisely those behavior patterns that constitute the style of technology. Technological behavior is characterized by the many elements that make up technological activities – for example, by technical modes of operation, attitudes towards materials, some specific organization of labor, ritual observances – elements which are unified nonrandomly in a complex of formal relationships. It is the format or ‘‘package’’ defined by these relationships that is stylistic in nature, and it is the style of such behavior, not only the rules by which any of its constituent activities is governed, that is learned and transmitted through time. Leone’s analysis (1973) of Mormon town plans and fences as well as his discussion of Mormon ‘‘sacred technology’’ in his symposium paper here (1977:87–107) are excellent illustrations of technological style. He sets out the characteristic web of interactions of certain ‘‘pieces’’ of Mormon technology with the culture’s ideology, religion, and social structure and provides the principle he believes underlies those interactions. That principle is ‘‘mutually exclusive compartmentalization: the use of categories whose closest members have no contact with each other’’ (see p. 102). The building of

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fences – fences that separated house from house and therefore family from family, sheep and goats from horses and cattle, natural predators from everything domesticated, and wind-borne sands from the farmyard and garden (1973:143–4) – was an ecological necessity in the semi-arid Utah plains, in that fences ‘‘ . . . separate[d] competitive niches from each other and protect[ed] all artificially created niches from the universally destructive wind’’ (1973:144). But the building of fences was important also because behind his fence a Mormon could raise a garden, could make the desert bloom, could demonstrate his worth before his God. ‘‘The state of a man’s yard is the state of his religion’’ is the way one Mormon expressed the relationship (Leone 1973:147). Fences were crucial for subsistence but also were fundamental to religious and social life. Leone argues further that the physical compartmentation of the Mormons’ world, the parceling out of that world through the technology of fence building, created the kind of cultural environment in which the individual grew up and that that environment must have had a cognitive effect upon him. ‘‘This environment is a result of the way Mormons have had to think about their world and of what the Mormon idea-system was and has become. If fences are a piece of enabling . . . technology, then it is reasonable to suppose that the technology enables them to think in certain ways, as well as to grow crops in certain ways. As a result, this system of technology should have cognitive consequences’’ (1973:147). Leone goes on to describe what some of those consequences are and concludes that ‘‘ . . . fences enable them [Mormons] to redeem the earth and manipulate and act out the categories used to deal with the world’’ (1973:148), categories that are essentially exclusive and incompatible. The technological style observed in Mormon fencing and town planning is an expression, on the level of technological behavior, of an underlying cultural pattern of ‘‘mutually exclusive compartmentalization.’’ The technology incorporates and transmits the principle itself. Style can be thought of, then, as the sensible manifestation of pattern; and technological style is expressed ‘‘emic’’ behavior based upon primarily ‘‘etic’’ phenomena of nature: copper melts at 10838C and, after cold working, re-

crystallizes at about 3008C, but why a culture technically capable both of casting and of forging copper elects one of these manufacturing techniques to the exclusion of the other is not explained by these properties of the metal. If, through appropriate study, we can describe the elements of any given technological style and can determine the relationships among them, in other words if we can successfully define the style, what can we then say about the intrinsic cultural pattern or patterns of which it is an expression? This issue is vital to archaeological research, for the single subsystem of a onceliving culture that archaeologists can reconstruct and understand almost in its entirety is the technological subsystem. Binford (1962: 218) has observed, ‘‘It has often been suggested that we cannot dig up a social system or ideology. Granted we cannot excavate a kinship terminology or a philosophy, but we can and do excavate the material items which functioned together with these more behavioral elements within the appropriate subsystems.’’ But what we can and do excavate are technologies. Furthermore, it is wholly within our capability to determine accurately the technical events that went into the manufacture of the kinds of items to which Binford refers, from the gathering of the natural resources through the various stages of processing, alteration, and final rendering of the artifact. These events are all behavioral, and they proceed in a formal way. I am calling technological style that which arises from the formal integration of these behavioral events. It is recognizable by virtue of its repetition which allows us to see the underlying similarities in the formal arrangement of the patterns of events. An example to illustrate the argument I have been developing might be helpful. It comes from my work in the field of pre-Columbian metallurgy. Although I have presented the data and the issues surrounding them before (Lechtman 1971, 1973, 1979), the problems raised remain to be solved, and the case seems an instructive one for the present discussion. When one considers the development of metallurgy in the Andean area prior to the Spanish invasion, one is struck by the nature of the alloy systems that dominated the course of Andean metallurgy for at least two millennia. They are remarkable when compared with the alloys used by other ancient culture areas that

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practiced sophisticated metallurgy, for example, the Near East, Europe, China, both because they are so different from those others and because they appeared on and were a primary stimulus to the Andean metallurgical scene long before alloys of bronze were produced by Andean metalworkers. Whereas the other great prehistoric traditions of metallurgy were founded upon the utilization of copper and, very early, of copper-arsenic and/or copper-tin bronze, the production of bronze was a relatively late development in Andean metallurgy. It was preceded by two thousand years of experience, at a high level of technical sophistication, with a variety of copper-based alloys that were developed for the colors they would impart to the artifacts made from them. These deliberate alloys (as distinct from naturally occurring ones), of copper-silver, coppergold (usually referred to as tumbaga), and copper-silver-gold, were not exclusive to Andean metalworkers. They were utilized by other peoples prehistorically, but only occasionally, and nowhere else did they form the backbone of the indigenous metallurgy, influencing markedly the course of its own internal development. The colors the early Andean metalworkers wanted to achieve were the colors of silver and gold. When objects were made directly from either of these precious metals, the color was attained automatically. But objects made from other metals – copper, for example – could be given the desired appearance by providing them with a surface layer of metallic silver or gold. The usual way of gilding or silvering metal objects, as such surface coating is called, the method utilized by the ancient metallurgies of the Old World, is to apply a thin layer of the metal directly to the object’s surface. For example, gold in the form of thin foil or leaf, in the form of a fine powder, in molten form, or as an amalgam with mercury, was applied to metal objects to provide them with surfaces of gold. The Andean process for achieving the same end is almost the reverse of that just described. Rather than placing the precious metal upon the surface of the object, as an added element, nonintegral with the object itself, they placed the precious metal within the bulk of the object by incorporating it as one of the constituents of the original alloy from which the object was

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later fabricated. For example, an alloy of 80 percent copper and 20 percent gold contains the gold in solid solution, distributed homogeneously throughout the alloy. The alloy does not look golden; rather it is a distinctly coppery color, and an object made of such an alloy would appear as copper. But the gold is present internally and can be made manifest at the object’s surface by treating the surface so that the copper there is removed selectively, leaving the gold in place. The gold is ‘‘developed’’ at the surface by eliminating the other components of the alloy – copper or minor constituents such as silver or lead – at the surface and leaving only the gold coating layer. The Andean peoples devised various alloy systems and associated techniques for chemically treating the surfaces of those alloys in order to obtain gold- and silver-looking objects. The first such alloy seems to have been a simple copper-silver binary system which gave a silver surface to objects made from it. Tumbaga then appeared (copper-gold) and eventually the ternary copper-silver-gold alloy that is so characteristic of north Andean metallurgy as practiced by the Kingdom of Chimor whose master goldsmiths were brought to Cuzco by the conquering Inca to work for the royal lineage. The principle of incorporating within a metal object the constituent which was later to become its most important external quality was the governing idea that stimulated the invention of a whole group of alloy systems in ancient Peru. The idea spread from Peru to the peoples of Colombia where it was adopted and adapted to a technical tradition of handling metal that was almost diametrically opposed to the Peruvian tradition (casting in Colombia vs. forging in Peru). It was an idea to which Andean metallurgy was committed for the major part of its history and through which some of its most inventive developments took place. These considerations suggest that the principle itself was a powerfully motivating one. Its application resulted in a metallurgical style unique to the Andes. This metallurgical style, based upon processes of surface enrichment and depletion, has been identified through laboratory studies on large numbers of metal objects from the Andean culture area. The majority of these were used for ceremonial or political purposes – as funerary masks applied to

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mummy bundles, large expanses of metal sheet that lined the interiors of palace and temple walls, small plaques sewn to garments for status display, figurines, decorative vessels, and so forth. That gold and silver should have been the colors desired is consistent with the obviously fundamental role those metals played in Andean cosmology and statecraft. Our best evidence is from the Late Horizon (ca. 1470– 1532 a.d.) when gold and silver were the exclusive property of the Inca, that is, of the state. The royal lineage was believed to have issued directly from the sun, the first Inca being the son of the sun. Gold was considered the ‘‘sweat of the sun,’’ silver the ‘‘tears of the moon.’’ Ritual performed for the sun cult was one of the most important of the priestly functions. But neither the weaving of these materials throughout the religious and cosmological orders nor their political manipulation accounts for the particular metallurgical style that was the Andean response to a desire for gold- or silver-looking objects. Nor, for that matter, do any of the other explanations that have been offered, particularly for the widespread use of the copper-gold alloy tumbaga, account for the evolution of the technological style. William Root (1951) argued that although tumbaga may have been used because it was easier to cast such an alloy than it was to cast copper; it made objects harder because copper-gold alloys are harder than either copper or gold alone; it economized on gold because a small amount of gold within the alloy was sufficient to create a gold surface and, therefore, a ‘‘gold’’ object; the most likely reason for its use was simply that those who made and used the alloy preferred the color of gold to that of copper. Even though the constellation of tumbaga may have been composed of some or all of these factors, they seem to me to fall short of explaining what appears to have been an overwhelmingly central tendency, a pattern of Andean metallurgical development. We can recognize the technological style. But what does it express? What gave it the tenacity it most certainly had such that Andean metalworkers seem to have been locked into a style of operating, though with evident opportunity, within that convention, to be inventive. I have suggested (Lechtman 1979) that what lay behind the technological style were attitudes of artisans towards the materials they

used, attitudes of cultural communities towards the nature of the technological events themselves, and the objects resulting from them. The basis of Andean surface enrichment systems lies in the incorporation of the essential ingredient into the very body of the object. The essence had to be present though invisible. The style is a playing out of the notion that: the essence of the object, that which appears superficially to be true of it, must also be inside it. The object is not that object unless it contains within it the essential quality, even if the essence is only minimally present. For without the incorporation of the essence, its visual manifestation is impossible. . . . Although ideological considerations may have had little to do with the initial working out of [the technical] procedures, I feel sure that the way in which the Andean peoples perceived such processes or at least the objects that resulted from their use had a great deal to do with the way in which the technology emerged and matured. Belief systems and attitudes toward materials supported the technology and gave rise to further developments along similar lines. (Lechtman 1979:32)

The technological performance was supported by a set of underlying values. I have suggested what I think one of those values or standards may have been, as I interpret it from that portion of the performance which is purely technical, the events of production that remain part of the physical structure of the object. Examples such as this one indicate that it is possible to determine the technological styles that underlay particular sets of artifacts of archaeological study. The much more difficult step is to argue from a confident understanding of the style of technological behavior to more fundamental, deeper cultural patterns which informed that behavior. Yet, if we could do that, archaeology would have a powerful tool for getting closer to those aspects of past cultures that cannot be determined directly – for example, the realm of ideology, values, philosophy – yet whose imprint should be accessible through the study of behavior as it is observed in the material record. ‘‘The objects man has learned to make are traditionally termed material culture. Culture is intellectual, rational, and abstract; it cannot be material, but material can be cultural and ‘‘material

STYLE IN TECHNOLOGY: SOME EARLY THOUGHTS

culture’’ embraces those segments of human learning which provide a person with plans, methods, and reasons for producing things which can be seen and touched’’ (Glassie 1968:2). What are our chances for success in determining the ‘‘plans’’ and ‘‘reasons’’ behind technological behavior as those are revealed in the artifacts themselves? In the example of Andean metallurgy just cited, how do I know that my interpretation is correct, as plausible as it may seem from my frame of reference? Does my ethnocentrism come between me and the data? And even if we can get at the standards for technological behavior by looking at patterns of technological behavior (see Keesing 1969:208), what is there to suggest that those same standards inform any of the other interacting subsystems of culture? The view of culture as cognitive code which is separate and distinct from material artifacts and behavior has been most forcefully represented by Goodenough. In fact, Keesing (1969:207) considers the ‘‘ . . . effective theoretical separation between cultural codes – cognitively based normative systems – and their enactment in behavior. . . ’’ one of the major breakthroughs in social anthropology of recent years. In essence, Goodenough (1964) argues that there are two domains in culture, the ideational and the phenomenal, the latter being an artifact of the former. He states that the phenomenal order of events, of behavior, of artifacts within a human community: exhibits the statistical patterns characteristic of internally stable systems, as with homeostasis in the living organism. Similar, but never identical, events occur over and over again and are therefore isolable as types of event and patterned arrangement. Certain types of arrangement tend to persist and others to appear and reappear in fixed sequences. An observer can perceive this kind of statistical patterning in a community without any knowledge whatever of the ideas, beliefs, values, and principles of action of the community’s members, the ideational order. . . . The ideational order, unlike the statistical order, is nonmaterial, being composed of ideal forms as they exist in people’s minds, propositions about their interrelationships, preference ratings regarding them, and recipes for their mutual ordering as means to desired ends. (Goodenough 1964:12)

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Whether or not one subscribes to this view, I would argue, on the basis of Smith’s model, that the patterns of behavior we see depend upon the level at which we isolate them for study and at which they exhibit style. To the extent that style is hierarchical, the scale of resolution at which we can study behavior may not be the same as the scale at which ideation operates, but one is a manifestation of the other and there must be a structural connection between the two. While it may be extremely difficult to arrive at the underlying structure in culture below the level at which we perceive technological style, for example, the persistent attributes of the style relate to a formal arrangement of operations and that arrangement, in itself, carries a heavy load of meaning. Communication among the parts of a system are the backbone of style, but the style as a whole, once perceived, is itself a form of communication. Despite the primacy of language as the human means of communication and the sine qua non of culture, no one would argue that it is the sole device for the sharing of socially acquired knowledge nor that verbal communication functions best in transmitting all varieties of messages. As Frake has pointed out, what we want to do is both to describe socially meaningful behavior and to discover the rules behind such behavior. The entire domain of socially interpretable acts and artifacts, that is, the total domain of ‘‘messages’’ is the concern of ethnography which ‘‘seeks to describe an infinite set of variable messages as manifestations of a finite shared code, the code being a set of rules for the socially appropriate construction and interpretation of messages’’ (Frake 1964:132). Implicit in the equation of ‘‘socially interpretable acts and artifacts’’ with ‘‘messages’’ is the understanding that a shared cultural code is expressed along a variety of communication channels, among which are reckoned acts of behavior and artifacts. In that case, archaeology can address itself to at least some of the behavioral and all of the material elements which make up the total domain of messages within a community. Artifacts are the products of appropriate cultural performance, and technological activities constitute one mode of such performance. What I have called the style of technological behavior is the rendering of appropriate

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technological performance. The style itself is the rendition, and the measure of its appropriateness, as determined archaeologically at least, lies in its reiteration. Furthermore, it is the synthesizing action of the style, the rendering of the performance, that constitutes the cultural message. Technologies are performances; they are communicative systems, and their styles are the symbols through which communication occurs. The relationships among the formal elements of the technology establish its style, which in turn becomes the basis of a message on a larger scale. I would argue further that what is communicated through the expression of technological style is not communicable verbally, despite Frake’s skepticism that ‘‘ . . . it [is] difficult to conceive of any act, object, or event which can be described as a cultural artifact, a manifestation of a code, without some reference to the way people talk about it’’ (1964: 133). Bateson (1972:137) credits Anthony Forge for the remark by Isadora Duncan: ‘‘If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.’’ Recent studies of indigenous art are providing increasing evidence for the use of nonverbal systems of expression to communicate fundamental ideas about the natural and social order. In his studies of Abelam flat painting, Forge (1973) has indicated that some of the messages the art carries do not seem to operate at a conscious level, but rather that there is a ‘‘grammar’’ of painting which is as unconscious as is the grammar of spoken language. The styles of the painting, he argues, are systems of meaning, systems of communication which ‘‘ . . . unlike those to which we are used, exist(s) and operate(s) because [they are] not verbalized and probably not verbalizable, [they] communicate(s) only to those socialized to receive [them]’’ (1973:191). Similarly, Nancy Munn has documented, in a series of provocative articles (1964, 1966, 1973), the method by which Walbiri communicate principles of cosmic order through their spatial arrangements, in media of two and three dimensions, of the traditional elements of their visual vocabulary. She points out, however (1973:216, note 1), that such iconographic systems may be given somatic form in dance or the enactment of ritual. I do not think it far fetched to suggest that part of the communicative aspect of technologies lies in the somatic

nature of their performance which involves not only the articulation of body and tool or body and material but the exemplification of skill. The case is stated elegantly by Hallowell (1968:235). Systems of extrinsic symbolization necessitate the use of material media which can function as vehicles for the communication of meanings. Abstraction and conceptualization are required since objects or events are introduced into the perceptual field as symbols, not in their concrete reality. Thus systems of extrinsic symbolization involve the operation of the representative principle on a more complex level than do processes of intrinsic symbolization. In case of Homo sapiens, extrinsic symbolic systems, functioning through vocal, graphic, plastic, gestural, or other media, make it possible for groups of human beings to share a common world of meanings and values. A cultural mode of adaptation is unthinkable without systems of extrinsic symbolization.

Technologies are such symbolic systems. A good example in support of this argument is given by M. J. Adams’ work (1971, 1973) on the island of East Sumba, Indonesia. Dyed textiles are not only the major ‘‘visual art’’ of the island but are also exceptionally important as ceremonial costume, as wealth in ritualized gift exchange, and as sacred objects (1971: 322). Adams describes the technical procedures and work schedules that are associated with the production of textiles, from the planting of the cotton seeds to the final weaving of the ikat designs into the cloth. At each stage of production she shows the close relationships between the activities undertaken in the work routine and phases in the Sumbanese life cycle, especially those which relate to the physical and social maturation of women. ‘‘In myth, ritual and social rules on Sumba, the stages of textile work are consistently linked to the progressive development of individual human life. These stages provide an overarching metaphor for the phases of the Sumbanese life cycle’’ (1971:322). It is not only that, as Adams argues, the procedures and schedules of work provide metaphoric schema for other symbolic systems, but that the technological acts themselves constitute a symbolic system. There is no question, then, that we can excavate artifacts and reconstruct the technolo-

STYLE IN TECHNOLOGY: SOME EARLY THOUGHTS

gies behind them. In doing so, we may discover specific technological styles which are renderings of appropriate technological behavior communicated through performance. The culturally accepted rules of the performance are embodied in the events that led to the production of the artifact. We should be able to ‘‘read’’ those events, if not all of them at least those of a technical nature, by laboratory study of the materials that make up the artifacts in question. The history of the manipulation of those materials is locked into their physical and chemical structure; the methods of materials science can interpret that technical history. Having come thus far, what remains is the task of describing the relational order between the symbolic, technological events, and that which they symbolize – of coming to grips with decoding the technological system of communication. The interpretation of symbolic content in archaeological data is extremely difficult. We can rely upon the fact that the formal relationships that exist in any iconographic scheme or that constitute a technological style are rarely if ever dictated solely by the environment. They largely reflect cultural choices. That a particular community tills in a certain way or pots in another or builds in yet another is certainly affected by the nature of the soil and micro-climate, the clay, or the building materials available. But those are immutable conditions in and around which people elaborate technological behavior along lines that are meaningful socially, economically, and ideologically. The rules behind their choices are what we are after. Although I have been talking about ‘‘technological style’’ as a phenomenon, that should not imply that any given cultural community is characterized by only one such style. In fact, several styles may operate synchronically, each having developed as it did as a result of a multitude of factors including the nature of the technological ‘‘task’’ itself (the building of irrigation ditches as opposed to the construction of a ceremonial dance mask), the social group performing the technological activity or for whom it is performed (e.g. commoner/elite, peasant/landlord, men/women), the cultural subsystem in which the technological events primarily operate (social, technological, ideological), the properties of the environment

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being manipulated by the technology, and so on. As Binford has argued, the artifacts one studies or the class of items they represent ‘‘ . . . are articulated differently within an integrated cultural system, hence the pertinent variables with which each is articulated, and exhibit concomitant variation are different’’ (1962:219). Technological behavior is manifest in all activities in which the natural or social environment is directly manipulated, but the style of that behavior may be different according to the particular integration of the technological complex within any given subsystem of the total cultural scene. Styles for the production of mundane goods may be different from styles for the manufacture of sacred objects; elite styles may be different from folk styles. In attempting to decode the message carried by technological style we must be cognizant that the message may not be the same for each style encountered within a given cultural community. The intriguing questions are: when the styles are the same, when the message is reiterated, a) what is the message; and b) what are the socio-cultural circumstances that stimulate styles which bear similar messages? For example, will we tend to find that, despite the obvious differences in technique between women who weave sacred or ritual garments and men who cast ritual vessels for use in the same ceremonies as the cloth, the styles in which these otherwise disparate technologies operate are based on similar underlying patterns of technological behavior because what each expresses has to do with what the ritual expresses? Will technologies within the ideological subsystem tend to be stylistically alike because of the relationships they bear to the underlying ideology? Or are we more likely to find that we cannot always apply the same sorts of categories Binford (1962) uses for artifacts to technologies, that is, technomic, sociotechnic, ideotechnic categories based on the primary functional context of the artifact or, in this case, of the behavior? My guess is that technological styles will appear similar wherever the message they carry relates to idea systems, values, orientations that cross-cut the social, technological, and ideological realms of a society. In fact, archaeological identification of similar technological styles within these various subsystems should point to a message widely expressed

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throughout the culture and, perhaps, give us a better handle on what that message may have been, of how to reconstruct that portion of the cultural code which is manifest in the style. Perhaps both specific styles relating to specific cultural spheres and intracultural styles exhibiting a similar expression in many of those spheres will prove to be characteristic of styles in technology. Returning to my earlier question, if we allow ourselves to interpret the meaning of technological style once we have defined the style, how do we know that our interpretations are correct? If it is true that technological styles are both meaningful in themselves and are manifestations of cultural codes, then a style which seems indigenous (as opposed to introduced from the outside), persistent, and stimulative, may have served as the model for the expression of ‘‘message’’ in other media or in other subsystems of the culture than those in which it is first observed and for which it seems particularly characteristic (as, for example, the style of metallurgical technology). The problem for the archaeologist is where to look for the evidence. Does one begin with another technology, one which appears of similar importance and which one suspects was designed in part to bear ideational content (in the Andes this would unquestionably be the production of cloth) to see if the style of that system is organized around a similar model and is expressive of similar preoccupations? Will we find, as in the case of Andean metallurgy, that the model applies primarily to behavior the products of which, the artifacts, are primarily operative in the social or ideological subsystems of the total cultural system? Does cumpi cloth, the finest textiles woven for the Inca by the specially chosen and trained aclla female weavers or the male cumbicamayocs, display in its structure or the manipulation of its materials the same patterns of formal relationships that underlie the style of the royal metallurgy? Or does it make more sense to look not at another creative technological complex but rather at a different system of communication, one which relies upon technological input but whose focus is elsewhere, the realm of ‘‘art,’’ for example? If we were to seek the aesthetic locus of a culture, in the sense that Maquet (1971) uses that concept, and were to investigate the symbolic and expressive

content of that locus or elements within it through study of its remaining artifacts, would we find similar patterns indicative of ideas such as the incorporation of essences, reiterated in the locus structure? Testing hypotheses that have to do with the message content of sets of artifacts is exceedingly difficult, but I think we must make the attempt if we expect to make any headway in understanding the interplay between ideas and performance in the technological sphere of life. That we must proceed cautiously, avoiding the obvious pitfalls, has been amply stressed by others as well (e.g. in the work of Friedrich 1970 and White and Thomas 1972). I have dwelt at some length with the concept of style in technology as that concept applies to archaeological situations, because archaeology must constantly explore new strategies for mining its artifacts for all that they are worth. My feeling is that systems of technology, as reconstructed primarily from evidence provided by laboratory study of artifacts, are worth more than we have sought from them. I am suggesting that one tactic we might exploit is the study of technologies as systems that proceed in a stylistic manner, some of the elements of which we can determine with little error. Defining the parameters of a particular style may help in eliciting from the technology information about its own symbolic message, and about cultural code, values, standards, and rules that underlay the technological performance. It is obvious that the ideas I have set forth here must be tested through ethnographic fieldwork. That may not be easy, at least in the case of many of the traditional societies whose technologies have undergone more rapid change than other aspects of life as a result of Western economic imperialism. When the technology involved is a Western imposition or import, there is little reason to suspect that any of the traditional sets of values still inform modern technological behavior. But we might still find clues in those areas of life that were not central to Western development schemes, in the traditional arts, for example. If systems of beliefs are reflected in objects of art, they ought also to be reflected in the processes by which art objects are produced. Perhaps it is in the technology of art that we might look for evidence of the symbolic content and code-bearing nature of technology. On the other hand, we ought also

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to investigate the technologies of modern, industrial societies where, although the data may be more complex and difficult to assess because of our closeness to it, we may have a better chance of observing the kinds of relationships I have tried to define. I would encourage anthropologists – whether they practice ethnography or archaeology – to reconsider the richness of technological behavior and to explore that behavior not only as moderator between society and the natural world but as an important vehicle for creating and maintaining a symbolically meaningful environment. The maintaining of particular technological styles has probably always been one of the effective ways by which communities have enculturated values through nonverbal behavior.

REFERENCES Adams, Marie Jeanne 1973 Structural Aspects of a Village Art. American Anthropologist 75:265–279. —— 1971 Work Patterns and Symbolic Structures in a Village Culture, East Sumba, Indonesia. Southeast Asia 1:321–334. Bateson, Gregory 1972 Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind. G. Bateson, ed. Pp. 128–156. San Francisco: Chandler. Binford, Lewis R. 1962 Archaeology as Anthropology. American Antiquity 28:217–225. Friedrich, Margaret Hardin 1970 Design Structure and Social Interaction: Archaeological Implications of an Ethnographic Analysis. American Antiquity 35:332–343. Forge, Anthony 1973 Style and Meaning in Sepik Art. In Primitive Art and Society. A. Forge, ed. Pp. 169–192. New York: Oxford University Press. Frake, Charles O. 1964 Notes on Queries in Ethnography. In Transcultural Studies in Cognition. A. K. Romney and R. G. D’Andrade, eds. American Anthropologist 66, part 2, no. 3:132–145. Glassie, Henry 1968 Patterns in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Goodenough, Ward H. 1964 Introduction. In Explorations in Cultural Anthropology. W.

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H. Goodenough, ed. Pp. 1–24. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hallowell, A. Irving 1968 Self, Society, and Culture in Phylogenetic Perspective. In Culture – Man’s Adaptive Dimension. M. F. Ashley Montagu, ed. Pp. 197–261. New York: Oxford University Press. Keesing, Roger M. 1969 On Quibblings Over Squabblings of Siblings: New Perspectives on Kin Terms and Role Behavior. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 25:207–227. Lechtman, Heather 1979 Issues in Andean Metallurgy. In Pre-Columbian Metallurgy of South America. E. P. Benson, ed. Pp. 1–40. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks. —— 1973 The Gilding of Metals in PreColumbian Peru. In Application of Science in Examination of Works of Art. W. J. Young, ed. Pp. 38–52. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts. —— 1971 Ancient Methods of Gilding Silver – Examples from the Old and the New Worlds. In Science and Archaeology. R. H. Brill, ed. Pp. 2–30. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. Lechtman, Heather and Arthur Steinberg 1973 The History of Technology: An Anthropological Point of View. In The History and Philosophy of Technology. George Bugliarello and Dean B. Doner, eds. Pp. 135–160. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Leone, Mark P. 1973 Archeology as the Science of Technology: Mormon Town Plans and Fences. In Research and Theory in Current Archeology. Charles L. Redman, ed. Pp. 125–150. New York: John Wiley. Leone, Mark P. 1977 The Role of Primitive Technology in Nineteenth Century American Utopias. In Material Cultures: Styles, Organization and Dynamics of Technology. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society for 1975. St. Paul: West Publishing Co. Maquet, Jacques 1971 Introduction to Aesthetic Anthropology. Current Topics in Anthropology 1, module 4:1–38. Merrill, Robert S. 1968 The Study of Technology. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. David L. Sills, ed. Vol. 15:576–589. New York: Macmillan. Munn, Nancy D. 1973 The Spatial Presentation of Cosmic Order in Walbiri Iconography. In Primitive Art and Society. A.

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Forge, ed. Pp. 193–220. New York: Oxford University Press. —— 1966 Visual Categories: An Approach to the Study of Representational Systems. American Anthropologist 68:936–950. —— 1964 Totemic Designs and Group Continuity in Walbiri Cosmology. In Aborigines Now. M. Reay, ed. Pp. 83–100. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. Root, William C. 1951 Gold-Copper Alloys in Ancient America. J. of Chemical Ed. 28:76–78.

Smith, Cyril Stanley 1978 Structural Hierarchy in Science, Art, and History. In On Aesthetics in Science. Judith Wechsler, ed. Pp. 9–53 Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Spier, Robert F. G. 1970 From the Hand of Man. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. White, J. P. and D. H. Thomas 1972 What Mean These Stones? Ethno-taxonomic Models and Archaeological Interpretations in the New Guinea Highlands. In Models in Archaeology. D. L. Clarke, ed. Pp. 275–308. London: Methuen.

16 ‘‘Marvels of Everyday Vision’’ The Anthropology of Aesthetics and the Cattle-keeping Nilotes Jeremy Coote

The current idea that we look lazily into the world only as far as our practical needs demand it while the artist removes this veil of habits scarcely does justice to the marvels of everyday vision. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion

Introduction This essay is written out of a conviction that progress in the anthropological study of visual aesthetics has been hampered by an undue concentration on art and art objects. The cattle-keeping Nilotes of the Southern Sudan make no art objects and have no traditions of visual art, yet it would be absurd to claim that they have no visual aesthetic. In such a case as this, the analyst is forced to attend to areas of life to which everyday concepts of art do not apply, to attend, indeed, to ‘the marvels of everyday vision’ (Gombrich, 1977: 275) which we all, not just the artists and art critics amongst us, experience and delight in. It is my contention that such wide-ranging analyses will produce more satisfactory accounts of the aesthetics of different societies – even of those with art traditions and art objects. With this in mind, then, I present the cattle-keeping

Nilotes of the Southern Sudan as a sort of testcase for the anthropology of aesthetics.

The Anthropology of Aesthetics While it is generally recognized that aesthetics concerns more than art and that art is about more than aesthetics, anthropologists, along with philosophers and aestheticians in general, have tended to work on the assumption, made nicely explicit in the ‘Aesthetics’ entry in the New Encyclopaedia Britannica (Pepper, 1974: 150), that ‘it is the explanation that can be given for deeply prized works of art that stabilizes an aesthetic theory’. In their accounts of the aesthetics of other cultures, anthropologists have concentrated on materials that fit Western notions of ‘works of art’, at times compounding the problem by making the focus of their studies those objects which are ‘deeply prized’ by the Western anthropologist,

From Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton (eds.), Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, [1992] 1995), pp. 245–273. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.

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rather than those most valued by the people themselves. Moreover, what has passed for the anthropology of aesthetics has often been little more than talk about such ‘art’; for many years, anthropologists’ or art critics’ talk, more recently, indigenous talk as systematized by the anthropologist. While one doubts that works of art are ever deeply prized for their aesthetic qualities alone, it is probably true that in Western societies, and in others with highly developed art traditions, aesthetic notions are most perfectly manifested in works of art, and are given their most refined expression in that type of discourse known as the philosophy of art. But the aesthetic notions so manifested and refined are those of members of the art world, not necessarily those of the general population. For most of us – or, perhaps more accurately, all of us most of the time – our aesthetic notions have more to do with home decorating, gardening, sport, advertising, and other areas of so-called ‘popular’ culture. The presence of art having become almost a defining feature of Western notions of the civilized, anthropologists have been loath to say of any other society that it has no art. There is, it is true, probably no society that has no art-form at all, but there are certainly societies with no visual art traditions. A Western preoccupation with the visual has led both to the undervaluation of the poetic, choreological, and other arts, and to the widening of the definition of visual art so as to embrace all those objects or activities which have ‘artistic’ or ‘aesthetic’ qualities. So, for example, body decoration has been reclassified as art in recent years. While I have no fundamental objection to ‘art’ being defined in such broad terms, I find it more satisfactory to talk rather of the aesthetic aspect of a society’s activities and products. All human activity has an aesthetic aspect. We are always, though at varying levels of awareness, concerned with the aesthetic qualities of our aural, haptic, kinetic, and visual sensations. If art were to be defined so broadly as to encompass any human activity or product with an aesthetic aspect, then none could be denied the status of art. This seems to me unwarranted; the possible insight seemingly captured by such an argument is adequately caught by saying that all human activity has an aesthetic aspect.

I am encouraged in arguing for such a view by a trend that seems to characterize some recent anthropological and philosophical literature, a trend towards recognizing that aesthetics may be usefully defined independently of art. The anthropologist Jacques Maquet, for example, has argued repeatedly (e.g. 1979: 45; 1986: 33) that art and aesthetics are best treated as independent. Among philosophers, Nick Zangwill (1986: 261) has argued that ‘one could do aesthetics without mentioning works of art! Sometimes I think it would be safer to do so.’ And T. J. Diffey (1986: 6) has remarked how it is not just philosophers of art who require a notion of aesthetics; philosophers of religion require one too, and ‘a notion of it as that which has no especial connection with art, but which, rather, is closer to perception’. Diffey regards ‘aesthetic experience’ as an as yet ‘inadequately understood expression’, as a term ‘that extends thought, stretches the mind and leads us into new and uncharted territory’ (ibid. 11). The task of philosophy, as he sees it, is to clarify and explicate what ordinary language has already ‘inchoately discovered’. It is my view that rather than waiting for the clarifications and explications of philosophy, the anthropology of aesthetics should follow such ordinary language usage, disconnect itself from art, and get closer to perception. I hope that what is meant by this admittedly vague contention will become clearer through the course of this essay. It might be thought too easy to have recourse to ‘everyday usage’, for probably any definition at all can be supported by judicious selection from the flux of everyday language. I am able, however, to adduce here non-specialist usages of ‘aesthetic’ and its cognates by three of the authors whose writings on the peoples of the Southern Sudan are drawn on in this essay. These authors do not discuss aesthetics as such, but make passing references which I find significant. EvansPritchard (1940a: 22) refers to ‘those aesthetic qualities which please him [a Nuer] in an ox’. Elsewhere, Jean Buxton (1973: 7) tells us that ‘marking and patterning are very highly estimated in the Mandari visual aesthetic’, and John Burton (1981: 76) refers to a particular cattle-colour configuration as being ‘the most aesthetically pleasing for the Atuot’. In none of these cases does the author explain what he

‘‘MARVELS OF EVERYDAY VISION’’

or she means by the term. They can all be taken to be using the term in an everyday sense which they expect their readers to understand. I take them to mean by an ‘aesthetic’ something like ‘the set of valued formal qualities of objects’ or ‘valued formal qualities of perception’. The anthropology of aesthetics as I see it, then, consists in the comparative study of valued perceptual experience in different societies. While our common human physiology no doubt results in our having universal, generalized responses to certain stimuli, perception is an active and cognitive process in which cultural factors play a dominant role. Perceptions are cultural phenomena. Forge touched on this some twenty years ago when he wrote (1970: 282) concerning the visual art of the Abelam of New Guinea: What do the Abelam see? Quite obviously there can be no absolute answer to this question: it is impossible literally to see through the eyes of another man, let alone perceive with his brain. Yet if we are to consider the place of art in any society. . . we must beware of assuming that they see what we see and vice versa.

I should argue that, more than just being wary of making assumptions, we must in fact make the attempt to understand how they see. The study of a society’s visual aesthetic, for example, should be devoted to the identification of the particular qualities of form – shape, colour, sheen, pattern, proportion, and so on – recognized within that society, as evidenced in language, poetry, dance, body decoration, material culture, sculpture, painting, etc. A society’s visual aesthetic is, in its widest sense, the way in which people in that society see. Adapting from Michael Baxandall’s studies of Western art traditions (1972: 29 ff.; 1980: 143 ff.) the phrase ‘the period eye’, anthropologists might usefully employ the notion of ‘the cultural eye’. It is a society’s way of seeing, its repertoire of visual skills, which I take to be its visual aesthetic, and it is with this that I believe the anthropological study of visual aesthetics should be concerned. Such an anthropology of aesthetics will be a necessary complement to any anthropology of art, for it surely must be essential to any anthropological consideration of art, however conceived, that an attempt is

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made to see the art as its original makers and viewers see it. The study of aesthetics as it is taken here is to be distinguished from both art criticism and the philosophy of art. These disciplines are concerned with aesthetics, but not exclusively so. The evaluations of art criticism involve considerations of form, but also of content and meaning. The philosophy of art tends towards analysing the relations 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. According to the terminology adopted in this essay, however, they are not the aesthetics of a society, but its art criticism or its philosophy.

The Cattle-keeping Nilotes The cattle-keeping Nilotes need little introduction here. This essay focuses on the Nuer, Dinka, Atuot, and Mandari of the Southern Sudan, concerning each of whom there is a substantial and easily accessible literature, while making passing reference to the closely related Anuak of the Southern Sudan and the more distantly related Pokot and Maasai of East Africa. The Nuer and Dinka in particular are well known to all students of anthropology.1 What does perhaps require some explanation is their being taken together as ‘the cattle-keeping Nilotes’. The million or so people who are referred to by the names ‘Nuer’, ‘Dinka’, ‘Atuot’, and ‘Mandari’ do not compose a homogeneous society – but then, neither do any of the four ‘peoples’ themselves. There are, for example, variations in the ecological situation, economic life, degree of political centralization, and particularities of religious belief and practice both within and between these peoples. However, they also share many social and cultural features, not least of which is the importance of cattle in their lives.2 Cattle are not just a food source, but a central factor in all aspects of their social and cultural activities, being used to mediate social relationships through the institutions of bride-wealth and bloodwealth, as well as to mediate man’s

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relationship with God through their role as sacrificial victims. Moreover, the Nuer, Dinka, Atuot, and Mandari share a common history,3 live in geographical proximity, and have extensive interrelations across the ‘borders’ that might be supposed to exist between them. The picture of Nilotic visual aesthetics painted here is an analyst’s abstraction. It is founded on the current state of anthropological knowledge concerning the group of peoples which provide the ethnographic focus, peoples who are related linguistically, historically, geographically, and culturally. Further research may reveal significant differences between and amongst the aesthetics of these four peoples. It might, however, also reveal significant similarities between these four peoples and other Nilotic-speaking peoples. The analysis presented here is ahistorical. This is for the sake of convenience only. A full understanding of an aesthetic system must include the historical dimension. I hope to be able to deal with aesthetic change among the Nilotes elsewhere.

Nilotic Aesthetics Little attention has been paid by scholars to aesthetics amongst the Nilotic-speaking peoples of Southern Sudan and East Africa.4 In his thesis on Western Nilotic material culture, Alan Blackman (1956: 262–73) devotes a chapter to ‘Aesthetics’, but only to discuss representational art – or, more accurately, the lack of it. Ocholla-Ayayo’s discussion (1980: 10–12) of ‘Aesthetics of Material Culture Elements’, in his account of Western Nilotic Luo culture, is a purely theoretical account of the abstract notion of beauty and its relation to value, appearance, use, and society, drawing on thinkers such as Santayana, without entering into a discussion of the particularities of Luo aesthetics as such. Harold Schneider’s short but often quoted article on ‘The Interpretation of Pakot Visual Art’ (1956) is the best-known contribution to the study of Nilotic aesthetics, and is worth commenting on at some length. Schneider defines his terms rather differently from how they are defined here. He defines ‘art’ as ‘man-made beauty’, but recognizes that what the Pokot themselves find beautiful should not

be assumed by the analyst but has to be discovered. To do this, he analyses the meaning and use of the

The Anthropology of Art: A Reader (Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology) [1&nbsp;ed.] 1405105615, 9781405105613, 9781405155328 - EBIN.PUB (2024)

The Anthropology of Art: A Reader (Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology) [1 ed.] 1405105615, 9781405105613, 9781405155328 - EBIN.PUB (2024)