Anthropology of art

the anthropology of art is a Social science which historically stuck to study the plastic and pictorial productions human society known as “traditional”, “without writing” or “primitives”. Following the example other disciplines concerned with the Anthropology, one witnesses these last decades a widening of his field of study, and it corresponds rather today to a analyzes Culturelle and symbolic system of the artistic production in all its forms.

The anthropology of art is distinguished from the Sociologie of the art in the sense that it not privileges economic dimension, policy or media of the artistic productions, but which it studies rather the significance that those can take in their Culture of origin; they are not studied either for their intrinsic value, as it would be the case in an Critic art .

The question of the object

The anthropology of art is as of its bases confronted with an epistemological question simple: Is What what the Art?
After many attempts to solve this question, it is Erwin Panofsky which finally proposed an acceptable definition in anthropology. It suggests returning to the direction first of this concept, using the Latin term ars-artis which kept two distinct significances a long time:

the whole of rules and Technique S, that the thought must implement to reach the Connaissance and to represent reality.
capacity conscious and intentional of the man “in the same way of producing objects that nature produces phenomena”.

This double articulation makes it possible to affirm that “the study of the report/ratio that each Culture maintains between these two aspects the concept of art - between certain forms of training and unquestionable technical of design and production of images - constitutes the object of the anthropology of art”.

History

It is possible historically to recall this particular curiosity of the Européens for the objects produced by companies of the other end of the world. One notices in addition rather quickly, progressively of the times, that the statute of the objects in their eyes evolves/moves, passing from the statute of simple curiosity to that of work art, then of that of work of art to that of tool, ornament, or decoration of the daily newspaper.

Origins: the colonial period

It was to the navigators and tradesmen brought back evidence of the existence of unknown worlds: Marco Polo returns from Asia, Christophe Colomb discovers Americas, the forwarding of Fernand of Magellan buckles the first turn of the sphere. These first strange witnesses , were everywhere exposed in Europe in the private collections of the royal sovereigns, such as for example those of the Kings de France, or of the family of Médicis to Florence. The intellectuals of the Renaissance had the leisure to wonder about this “genius of the inhabitants of these remote countries”; they were not indeed already more perceived like “works marvelously completed unknown artists, but as imperfect testimonys of the first stages of the evolution which leads to Western civilization”. To, the period colonialist leads to a generalized accumulation. Indeed, to be able to study these works of art it was necessary to be able to collect them, the more so as it was allowed that these people did not have any idea of the value of their productions. Thus, of the scientific exhibitions were financed by the colonial States, and often led to practices of Pillage and “requisition”. Colonial explorers, tradesmen, missionaries and administrators also took part in it, giving a character generalized to this appropriation of the Cultural heritage of nonthe Westerners by Europeans. The Mission Dakar-Djibouti, carried out in 1935 by Marcel Griaule, illustrates this scientific motivation still remaining at the 20th century to collect objects in order to study the Culture S, the Croyance S, the social organization and the richness of African art. Such practices were in addition denounced by Michel Leiris, member of the aforesaid forwarding.

Ultimately, some of these objects were exposed to the World Fair of London in 1851, but were finally forgotten for the great majority of them.

Evolutionism and primitiveness

Work pioneers of Gottfried Semper on the origin of art gives rise to this under discipline of anthropology, when well even its prospect is evolutionary. The Art first is approached there by the means of a compared history of the styles, without to be reduced to a research origins of the artistic representation. According to him, each style is not the witness of an evolution Culturelle (“one does not find childhood in the styles”), but rather synthesizes Technique S subjected to the evolution and the mental capacities of organization of the space which any representation supposes.

Franz Boas advances for its part that there is art when there is perfect control of a Technique. From where the idea that an artistic object does not have only one utility function, but can also become the model of a style. This one would depend at the same time on the surrounding Culture and a type of representation of space, this last being fundamental with the eyes of the author. He says to us indeed that there exist two types of representation of an object: that which seeks to imitate accurately what the eye perceives, and that which represents it as the spirit would do it. Thus, F. Boas notes that within the same production, the traditional companies manage to combine various prospects, and from multiple points of view. “The primitive art is thus neither naive, nor rudimentary; by choosing a specific alternative of the organization of space, it builds complexity where our glance is accustomed to simplify”.

The evolutionary character of these analyzes is especially incarnated by the idea that to produce Art, a company must have acquired in its Culture certain competences. It is what evokes this concept of design of space present in these two authors. One can however notice that when Franz Boas gives to this concept a function of analysis, and either the role of selection criteria, it tries to be detached from this paradigm. Indeed in this manner, he manages to show us how a thorough knowledge of the styles and Technique S in the study of the arts first can learn some to us on the remote companies.

Contemporary research

The anthropology of art explores several research orientations today, one can quote:

the study of the significance of the objets d'art in the context which is theirs. See for example on this subject work of A. Forge and D. Biebuyck.
the study of the artistic style like an independent system of Communication and significance. See for example on this subject work of G. Bateson, A. Forge, E. Carpenter. It is noticed in addition that in this type of anthropological research on art, it appears new objects of study: the orality, the dance, music…

Esthetics and museography

Following the enormous accumulation of objects which the policies caused colonial S, of gigantic collections slept of long years in the warehouses of the Musée S of Europe. The ethnological discipline was built besides in a parallel rather narrow with the development museologic: indeed these institutions were the only possible places of formation for the candidates with the trade of ethnologist, at that time where this discipline did not have an academic existence. The, faithful ones to the evolutionary thought , were those where the artistic productions of the ethnographic collections were attached to the museums of antiquities and natural history.

At present, it is regularly question of arising many these collections forgotten in order to expose them to the public, to make him discover the exotic esthetism or by duty to remember towards these forgotten Culture S. However these initiatives encounter several major ideological problems, which one can quote for example:

which relevant criterion is necessary it to retain at the time of the choice of some parts to be left the shade, among the thousands of others?
which direction that does it have, if one regards as Carpenter that “a sculpture, before being an object is a act ”, and that thus consequently “it is strictly speaking foolish to believe that a visit puts to us in the presence of a primitive art”?
which position to adopt with respect to these objects which one always does not have in a legitimate way?

One can note as example, that these are the same questions which rythment currently debates around the creation of the Musée of the quay Branly, known as also museum of Arts First .

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