Cross-Cultural Issues in Art: Frames for Understanding

Cross-Cultural Issues in Art

Cross-Cultural Issues in Art provides an engaging introduction to aesthetic concepts, expanding the discussion beyond the usual Western theorists and Western examples. Steven Leuthold discusses both contemporary and historical issues and examples, incorporating a range of detailed case studies from African, Asian, European, Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Native American art. Individual chapters address broad intercultural issues in art, including art and culture, primitivism and Otherness, colonialism, nationalism, art and religion, symbolism and interpretation, style and ethnicity, a sense of place, art and social order, gender, and the self, considering these themes as constructs that frame our understanding of art. Cross-Cultural Issues in Art draws upon ideas and case studies from cultural and critical studies, art history, ethno-aesthetics and area studies, visual anthropology, and philosophy, and will be useful for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in these fields. Steven M. Leuthold is Associate Professor of Art History at Northern Michigan University, USA. His research and teaching interests include intercultural art theory and comparative aesthetics, modern art and design history, and Native American, Japanese, European, and other world art. He is the author of Indigenous Aesthetics: Native Art, Media and Identity (1998) and has contributed to numerous books and journals. He is also a practicing artist and musician.

“Stephen Leuthold has created a perspective on art that is intricate in its focus yet global in its embrace. It is wildly refreshing. With a painterly style of prose, colorful and textured, and a deep understanding of the theories and studies that precede him, Leuthold has dared, where others have not, to focus on art for the sake of world understanding, no less. This is a book that will inspire generations of students to journey the world with an eye on the visualities offered up by its cultural and individual geographies and another on the universal nature of its very palpitations.” Liza Bakewell, Assistant Professor of Research, Brown University, USA “Cross-Cultural Issues in Art presents a lucid consideration of the foremost works of art, themes and artists that affirm both the specificity and universality of the human experience. Through careful analysis and critical comparisons of objects, installations, sculptures and paintings of the past and present, Professor Leuthold places these culturecrossing issues within the framework of an increasingly interdependent and unequal world. His clear prose and respect of the works of art in and of themselves is refreshingly radical.” Alejandro Anreus, Associate Professor of Art History and Latin American/Latino Studies, William Paterson University, USA

Cross-Cultural Issues in Art Frames for understanding

Steven M. Leuthold

First published 2011 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2011 Steven M. Leuthold The right of Steven M. Leuthold to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Leuthold, Steven, 1957– Cross-cultural issues in art : frames for understanding / Steven M. Leuthold. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Art and society. 2. Art—Cross-cultural studies. I. Title. N72.S6L47 2011 701’.03—dc22 2010025140 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-203-83516-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN: 978-0-415-57799-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-57800-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-83516-6 (ebk)

CONTENTS

List of figures Preface and acknowledgments Permissions Introduction

vii xi xv 1

CHAPTER 1

Art, culture, and hybridity

10

CHAPTER 2

Primitivism and Otherness

27

CHAPTER 3

Colonialism

45

CHAPTER 4

Nationalism

64

CHAPTER 5

Art and religion in intercultural contexts

94

CHAPTER 6

Symbolism, meaning, and interpretation

123

CHAPTER 7

Style and ethnicity

148

CHAPTER 8

A sense of place

163

CHAPTER 9

Art and social order: a systems view

186

CHAPTER 10

Gender and Japonisme

205

CHAPTER 11

The phenomenology of “self” in art

241

Glossary Notes Biographical notes Bibliography Index

262 272 283 292 301

FIGURES

1 Art, culture, and hybridity 1.1 1.2

Chris Ofili, The Holy Virgin Mary, 1996 Wang Guangyi, “Kodak,” from the Great Criticism series, 1997

12 24

2 Primitivism and Otherness 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9

Paul Gauguin, Savage Poems, 1896 Henri J.F. Rousseau, Tropical Forest: Battling Tiger and Buffalo, 1908 Hermann Max Pechstein, Three Nudes, 1911 “Jap Trap,” propaganda poster (20th century) A poster depicting President Barack Obama as “The Joker” Prince Albert Tobacco advertisement poster depicting Chief Lean-Wolf Maori chief with tattooed face Modern tribal-style tattoo Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, c. 1771

30 31 33 35 36 37 40 40 41

3 Colonialism 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

Émile Gorlia, Prisoners working, Belgian Congo, c. 1912 Posters of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi and Uncle Sam Tugra (Imperial Monogram) of Sulayman the Magnificent, Turkey, c. 1550–65 Façade of Cathedral, Taxco, Mexico

46 48 49 50

VIII FIGURES 3.5 3.6

Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada, California, 1868 Argillite Casket (Charles Edenshaw), c. 1890

52 61

4 Nationalism 4.1 4.2

4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9

“War Is Over”: John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1969 Tribal Dancing: A group of Eastern Nigerian tribal dancers performing in traditional costume for the Queen during her Royal Tour, 1956 Flag of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Visitors walk by the site of the Bamiyan Buddha statues, which were destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban Saddam Hussein statue being toppled Crown from the excavations of the necropolis at Tillya Tepe, Afghanistan, c. 1st century BCE–1st century CE Che Guevara “Tu ejemplo vive, tus ideas perduran ,” 2007 Zhang Xiaogang, Bloodline: Big Family Series No. 2, 1995 Mustapha Boutadjine, Frantz Fanon, 2000

66

68 69 71 72 75 78 81 84

5 Art and religion in intercultural contexts 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8

Shiva Nataraja, South Indian, c. 1800 Mogollon Bowl (12th–15th century) Mask, Yup’ik (early 20th century) Joseph Beuys, I Like America and America Likes Me, 1974 A Tungusian shaman (18th century) Norval Morrisseau, Shaman with Many Fishes, 1990 Andy Goldsworthy, Spiral Leafwork, 1988 Overview of Serpent Mound and foliage, c. 1986

96 98 106 108 113 114 119 120

6 Symbolism, meaning, and interpretation 6.1 6.2 6.3

6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7

Relief from the Snake Garden Indian dancers perform at a function organized to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of poet Rabindranath Tagore, 2010 The Sanctum Sanctorum and the crowning tower, together constituting the “Sri Vimana” of Shiva temple at Thiruppalanam, Kumbakonam district Brian Houghton Hodgson, Outline of a Mandala Map showing location of the Khajuraho temple complex The Khajuraho temples: View of Devi Jagadambi and Chitragupta temples The Kandariyâ Mahâdeva temple

124 127

128 129 131 131 132

FIGURES IX 6.8 6.9 6.10 6.11 6.12

Figures on the exterior of the Kandariyâ Mahâdeva temple “Symbol of Love,” Khajuraho sculptural scene Khajuraho sculptural scene representing sexual practices traditionally regarded as taboo in the West Ancient Shiva Stone from the Elephanta Caves “Shiva and Parvati,” Khajuraho sculptural scene

133 135 136 140 143

7 Style and ethnicity 7.1 7.2

Aztec Codex Borbonicus, “Tonalamatl,” detail depicting Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca Diego Rivera, detail of History of Mexico showing the Aztec Eagle

156 158

8 A sense of place Kuo Hsi, Early Spring, 1072 Liang Kai (attr.), Homeward-bound Fisherman Covered in Snow (late 12th–early 13th century) 8.3 Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis in the Desert, c. 1485 8.4 Fan K’uan, Travellers amid Mountains and Streams, early 11th century Fuji in Clear Weather, from the “36 Views of Mt. Fuji” series 8.5 (“Fugaku sanjurokkei”), 1831 8.6 Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.803 Ship in a Storm, from the “Little Liber” (engraved by the artist), c. 1826 8.7(a) Ando or Utagawa Hiroshige, Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake (Ohashi Atake no Yudachi), plate 58 from “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” 8.7(b) Vincent Van Gogh, Bridge in the Rain: After Hiroshige, c. 1887 8.8 Ansel Adams, Mount Williamson, the Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California, 1945 8.1 8.2

167 169 173 174 176 177

180 180 184

9 Art and social order 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5

A Toguna building in Ende Village, Dogon Country, Mali Dogon dancers wearing masks Yoruba Gelede mask Yoruba crown Eliot Elisofon, Oba Ademuwagun Adesida II, the Deji of Akure, on throne in courtyard of Akure palace, 1959

189 195 199 202 203

X FIGURES 10 Gender and Japonisme Georgia O’Keeffe, Black Iris, 1926 Fujiwara Takayoshi, The Tale of Genji (12th century) Heian woman in court dress Utagawa Kunisada, Actor in Female Role, c. 1798 Hishikawa Moronobu, Beauty James Abbott McNeill Whistler, La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine (The Princess from the Land of Porcelain), 1863–65 10.7 Yasumasa Morimura, Portrait (Futago), 1988 10.8 Ishikawa Toyonobu, A Girl Coming from Her Bath (18th century) 10.9 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Sofa, c. 1894–96 10.10 Aubrey Beardsley, The Climax (illustration from “Salome” by Oscar Wilde), 1893 10.11 René Lalique, Dragonfly woman corsage ornament, 1897–98 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6

214 216 219 222 223 227 232 234 235 237 239

11 The phenomenology of “self ” in art 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6

Dante Charles Gabriel Rossetti, Beata Beatrix, c. 1864–70 Jan Vermeer, The Astronomer, 1668 Jan Vermeer, Girl at a Window Reading a Letter, c. 1659 Jan Vermeer, Woman with a Lute, c. 1664 Portrait of a Zen master (15th century) Nakahara Nantembo, Bodhidharma (Daruma), 1911

243 247 249 252 257 258

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The contact, conflict, negotiation, and conciliation between members of different cultures and races is a central global theme of the last fifty years. While it can be argued that the dynamics of intergroup relations have always been a central feature of human life, modern developments from the Civil Rights Era onward have demonstrated that intergroup understanding is a key to human enrichment and even survival. The rise of the mass media has enabled more immediate contact between groups. But the visual arts, well established before modern mass media, have conveyed core cultural values across the boundaries of temporal, linguistic, and geographical differences for centuries. Most of us are limited in our linguistic fluency. While we may have some acquaintance with languages other than our native tongue, few would claim mastery of more than a handful of the world’s languages. But, through art, we have before us an avenue for understanding and appreciating the extraordinary diversity of thoughts, feelings, and cultures in the world. Taken together, the visual arts and music of a culture, which are not tied as directly to narrative and, therefore, to language as literature and theater, comprise an integrated cultural style that is accessible to the outsider. There is a potential for crosscultural understanding and appreciation inherent in each culture’s artistic expression. While the key elements of a culture can be understood intuitively through its arts, a more structured understanding of the major themes of artistic expression can help add depth and order to this understanding. The need for cross-cultural understanding and appreciation remains clear. Within the last decades, major clashes have occurred between the adherents of differing political and religious ideologies. Would these clashes have been different in nature, or even avoidable, if members and leaders of competing cultures possessed a profound understanding of the values that are expressed within the

XII PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS art of the cultural Other? Would these conflicts have been mitigated if members of different cultures understood that others, through their art, are expressing ideas related to universal human themes—the desire for spiritual growth, for a sense of place and belonging, and for an authentic cultural identity—that have been, at the same time, developed within one’s own cultural tradition? The impulse to understand the world’s art is one that is based upon the recognition that difference—a sense of the Other—functions reflexively as a mirror: The more that we understand and appreciate others, the deeper our understanding and acceptance of our own fullest humanity. Travel serves a similar purpose, but travel without the desire to authentically engage the other is packaged tourism, a modern form of entertainment. As such, its participants risk superficiality and passivity in their interactions with other cultures. Travel in the classical sense of the term reflects the desire to deeply engage the expressions of others firsthand. It involves curiosity, effort, risk, and a willingness to experience discomfort, all of which are involved in the desire to encounter difference directly. Whether one travels to the art and cultures of the world in person or engages them in reproductions and collections closer to home, this book will help deepen that encounter. While many other disciplines have spawned subdisciplines dedicated to comparative and intercultural issues—comparative politics, ethics, religion, and literature are all notable examples—comparative and intercultural theory in art and aesthetics is less developed. This book represents an effort at bringing together several cross-cultural and comparative themes in art under one cover. It is my hope that the book will, in its own humble way, contribute to increased appreciation, communication, and understanding among the brilliantly differing peoples of the world. That process of communication has already begun. Several colleagues and former students have kindly contributed time and energy to this book’s fruition. Four individuals have read and commented upon the entire manuscript. I extend my gratitude to Melissa Matuscak, director of the DeVos Museum at Northern Michigan University, Linda Ferguson, an independent artist and adjunct professor at Northern, Christine Flavin, professor of photography and photographic history, and, especially, to Kasie Veen, a former student who is now pursuing advanced study in art history, for all of the time and energy that they invested in reading and commenting on the entire manuscript. Their comments, both verbal and written, have been very valuable in honing the ideas and examples in this book. I extend thanks to my colleague, Dr. Mitsutoshi Oba, with whom I have discussed cross-cultural analysis in art on several occasions. I also wish to acknowledge Northern Michigan University for its support; some of the ideas for this book were further refined during a sabbatical spent visiting many museums and archaeological sites in Mexico and working on the manuscript. Many of the examples found here relate to research that I have conducted for the variety of courses that I teach at Northern and the discussions that have

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XIII occurred in them; I extend thanks to my students for their participation in those classes. In addition, Syracuse University supported me in teaching a graduate course on comparative aesthetics, where many of the concepts in this book found their germination. The support from the staff at Routledge has been stellar. Natalie Foster has been helpful from the beginning; her patience, encouragement, and advice have been invaluable. She has always found a way to keep the process moving forward, moving gracefully past possible blockages along the way. A special acknowledgment is deserved by Emily Laughton. Emily’s expertise in gaining permissions and organizing images has been indispensable in bringing the visual element of the book to fruition. I also appreciate the efforts of the extended organization at Routledge, from the Editorial Board to the designers, associate editors, marketing team, and so on. Their efforts may sometimes be hidden from sight, but are essential and appreciated. I extend a special thanks to the independent reviewers who looked at the manuscript and whose role is so essential to academic publishing. I extend my appreciation to all who have participated with me on this adventure, but any mistaken steps or wrong turns that appear in the book reflect my progress along the path and are in no way a reflection of their support and guidance.

PERMISSIONS

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

Figure 2.1

Figure 2.2

Figure 2.3

Figure 2.4

Figure 2.5

Chris Ofili, The Holy Virgin Mary, 1996. Acrylic, oil, polyester resin, paper collage, glitter, map pins and elephant dung on linen, 243.8 3 182.8 cm. © Chris Ofili. Courtesy of the Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Photo taken by Stephen White. A Sotheby’s art dealer presents “Kodak,” a 1997 painting by Wang Guangyi from his Great Criticism Series (lot 1685) at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, China, on Thursday, September 28, 2006. © Photo by Paul Hilton/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Savage Poems, 1896 (oil on canvas), Paul Gauguin (1848– 1903). © Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, USA/Bequest from the Collection of Maurice Wertheim, Class 1906/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Tropical Forest: Battling Tiger and Buffalo, 1908 (oil on canvas), Rousseau, Henri J.F. (Le Douanier) (1844–1910)/ Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Three Nudes, 1911 (oil on canvas), Pechstein, Hermann Max (1881–1955)/Private Collection/© DACS/The Bridgeman Art Library International. © Pechstein Hamburg/Toekendorf/DACS, 2010. “Jap Trap”, propaganda poster (litho), American School (20th century)/© Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Courtesy National Archives (photo number 44-PA2156). A poster depicting President Barack Obama as Heath Ledger’s “Joker” character from The Dark Knight has sparked

XVI PERMISSIONS

Figure 2.6 Figure 2.7 Figure 2.8 Figure 2.9

Figure 3.1

Figure 3.2 Figure 3.3

Figure 3.4 Figure 3.5 Figure 3.6 Figure 4.1 Figure 4.2

Figure 4.3 Figure 4.4

Figure 4.5 Figure 4.6

Figure 4.7

controversy after it appeared on the streets of Los Angeles. Source: Anonymous. Prince Albert Tobacco advertisement poster depicting Chief Lean-Wolf © Swim Ink 2, LLC/CORBIS. Maori chief with tattooed face © Bettmann/CORBIS. Modern tribal-style tattoo © 2008 Von R. Glitschka, www. vonglitschka.com. The Death of General Wolfe (1727–59), c. 1771 (oil on panel) (see also 105409, 119752 & 124902), West, Benjamin (1738– 1820)/© Private Collection/Phillips, Fine Art Auctioneers, New York, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library. Prisoners working, Belgian Congo. Photograph by Émile Gorlia, c. 1912, silver gelatin print. © Émile Gorlia Collection, EEPA 1977-010018, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Posters of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi and Uncle Sam © Shepard Sherbell/CORBIS SABA. Tugra (Imperial Monogram) of Sulayman the Magnificent, Turkey, c. 1550–65 © Los Angeles County Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence. Façade of Cathedral, Taxco, Mexico © Steven Leuthold. Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada, California, 1868 © National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Argillite Casket (Charles Edenshaw), c. 1890, at The Museum of Vancouver, Canada © Photo courtesy of Sam Carter. John Lennon and Yoko Ono, “War Is Over” © Photo by Frank Barratt/Getty Images. Tribal Dancing: A group of Eastern Nigerian tribal dancers performing in traditional costume for the Queen during her Royal Tour (8th February 1956) © Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images. Flag of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Visitors walk by the site of the Bamiyan Buddha statues, which were destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, 18 May 2002 © INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images. Saddam Hussein statue being toppled © Press Association Images. Photograph by Jerome Delay. Crown from the excavations of the necropolis at Tillya Tepe, Afghanistan, c. 1st century BCE–1st century CE (gold)/© Kabul Museum, Afghanistan/The Bridgeman Art Library. Che Guevara “Tu ejemplo vive, tus ideas perduran ,” panel, 2007 (colour photo)/Havana, Cuba/© Clement Guillaume/The Bridgeman Art Library International.

PERMISSIONS XVII Figure 4.8

Figure 4.9 Figure 5.1

Figure 5.2

Figure 5.3 Figure 5.4

Figure 5.5

Figure 5.6

Figure 5.7

Figure 5.8

Figure 6.1 Figure 6.2

Figure 6.3

Figure 6.4

Two models from auction house Christie’s in Hong Kong standing in front of a painting by Zhang Xiaogang — Bloodline: Big Families Series No. 2 — from the collection of Oliver Stone © ANNE CECILE GUTHMANN/AFP/Getty Images. Frantz Fanon par Mustapha Boutadjine © Paris 2000. Extrait de “Black is toujours beautiful.” Shiva Nataraja, South Indian, c. 1800 (bronze), Indian School (19th century)/St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow, UK/© Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums)/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Mogollon Bowl, 12th–15th century (terracotta), American/© Detroit Institute of Arts, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library International. AB 1132, Mask, Yup’ik, early 20th century, wood, metal, Collection of Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada. Joseph Beuys. I Like America and America Likes Me, 1974. René Block Gallery, New York. Photo: Caroline Tisdall © 1997 Estate of Joseph Beuys/ARS, NY. © DACS 2010 © Tate, London, 2010. A Tungusian shaman (coloured engraving), Russian School (18th century)/© Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France/ Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library International/ Archives Charmet. Norval Morrisseau, Shaman with Many Fishes, 1990 (38” 3 58”, acrylic on canvas) © Gabe Vadas 2010. All rights reserved. Used with permission. Spiral Leafwork, 1988 (leaves), Goldsworthy, Andy (b. 1956)/ © Leeds Museums and Galleries (City Art Gallery) U.K./The Bridgeman Art Library International. Overview of Serpent Mound and Foliage, c. 1986. (1348 feet long, 20 feet wide and 2 feet 6 inches high) © Richard A. Cooke/ CORBIS. Relief from the Snake Garden (photo)/Madras, India/Dinodia/ © The Bridgeman Art Library International. Indian dancers perform at a function organized to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of poet Rabindranath Tagore, pictured in the background, in Bangalore on May 9, 2010 © DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP/Getty Images. The Sanctum Sanctorum and the crowning tower, together constituting the “Sri Vimana” of Shiva temple at Thiruppalanam, Kumbakonam district. © S. Seetharaman/ www.varalaaru.com Outline of a Mandala (pen and ink on paper), Hodgson, Brian

XVIII PERMISSIONS

Figure 6.5 Figure 6.6 Figure 6.7 Figure 6.8

Figure 6.9 Figure 6.10 Figure 6.11 Figure 6.12 Figure 7.1

Figure 7.2

Figure 8.1 Figure 8.2

Figure 8.3 Figure 8.4

Figure 8.5

Figure 8.6

Houghton (1800–94)/© Royal Asiatic Society, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library. Map showing location of the Khajuraho temple complex © 2010 Benjamin Piggott. The Khajuraho Temples: View of Devi Jagadambi and Chitragupta temples © Frédéric Soltan/Sygma/Corbis. © 2010 Manish Ayachit, The Kandariyâ Mahâdeva Temple. Figures on the Exterior of a Temple. (Three bands containing a profusion of sculptures of exquisite composition and ornamentation.) © Lindsay Hebberd/CORBIS. © 2010 Manish Ayachit, Symbol of Love. Khajuraho sculptural scene representing sexual practices traditionally regarded as taboo in West © 2010 K. Pasupathi. Ancient Shiva Stone from the Elephanta Caves © 2010 Anthony Maw. “Shiva and Parvati” © 2010 K. Pasupathi. Aztec Codex Borbonicus, “Tonalamatl,” detail depicting Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca (vellum), Pre-Columbian/ Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée Nationale, Paris, France/Giraudon/ The Bridgeman Art Library International. © 2010 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./ DACS. Detail of History of Mexico showing the Aztec Eagle. © 2010 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./DACS. Photo taken by Steven Leuthold. Kuo Hsi, Early Spring, 1072 © National Palace Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China. Homeward-bound Fisherman Covered in Snow, late 12th–early 13th century (ink on silk), Chinese School, Southern Song Dynasty (11th–12th century)/© Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis in the Desert, c. 1485. Copyright The Frick Collection. Fan K’uan, Travellers amid Mountains and Streams, early 11th century. © National Palace Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China. Fuji in Clear Weather, from the series “36 Views of Mt. Fuji” (“Fugaku sanjurokkei”), pub. by Nishimura Eijudo, 1831 (handcoloured woodblock print), Hokusai, Katsushika (1760–1849)/ © British Museum, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library International. R.803 Ship in a Storm, from the “Little Liber,” engraved by the artist, c. 1826 (mezzotint), Turner, Joseph Mallord William

PERMISSIONS XIX (1775–1851)/© Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library. Figure 8.7(a) Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake (Ohashi Atake no Yudachi), plate 58 from “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” (woodblock colour print), Hiroshige, Ando or Utagawa (1797–1858)/© Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library. Figure 8.7(b) Gogh, Vincent Willem van (Schilder) Bridge in the Rain: After Hiroshige (Paris, October 1887). Oil on canvas – 73 cm 3 54 cm. Inventory number: s 0114 V/1962 © Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation). Mount Williamson, the Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, Figure 8.8 California, 1945. Photograph by Ansel Adams © 2010 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Figure 9.1 A Toguna building in Ende Village, Dogon Country, Mali © Travel Ink/Gallo Images/Getty Images. Figure 9.2 Dogon dancers wearing masks © 2010 John Fleckles. Figure 9.3 Yoruba Gelede mask © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Figure 9.4 Yoruba crown © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Oba Ademuwagun Adesida II, the Deji of Akure, on throne Figure 9.5 in courtyard of Akure palace. Yoruba peoples, Nigeria © Photograph by Eliot Elisofon, 1959. EEPA EECL 2071, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Figure 10.1 O’Keeffe, Georgia (1887–1986): Black Iris, 1926. New York, Digitale (1) (A) Metropolitan Museum of Art. Oil on canvas, H. 36, W. 29–7/8 inches (91.4 3 75.9 cm). Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1969. Acc.n.: 69.278.1. Photo: Malcom Varon © 2010. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence. Figure 10.2 The Tale of Genji, c. 12th century (drawing), Takayoshi, Fujiwara (c. 1127–1179)/Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundation, Tokyo, Japan/Photo © AISA/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Figure 10.3 Heian woman in court dress. Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. H. Yoshikawa. Image obtained from A Celebration of Women Writers, edited by Mary Mark Ockerbloom, and hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries http://digital.library. upenn.edu/women/. Figure 10.4 Utagawa Kunisada, Actor in Female Role © Brooklyn Museum/Corbis. Figure 10.5 Hishikawa Moronobu, Beauty © Burstein Collection/CORBIS.

XX PERMISSIONS

La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine (The Princess from the Land of Porcelain) 1863–65 (oil on canvas), Whistler, James Abbott McNeill (1834–1903)/© Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, USA/Gift of Charles Lang Freer/The Bridgeman Art Library. Figure 10.7 Portrait (Futago), 1988, photograph/chromogenic print with acrylic paint and gel medium, 82 3/4 in. 3 118 in. (210.19 cm 3 299.72 cm). Acquired 1997. Gift of Vicki and Kent Logan. © Yasumasa Morimura, 97.788. Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Figure 10.8 Toyonobu, A Girl Coming from Her Bath © Burstein Collection/ CORBIS. Figure 10.9 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Sofa © AFP/Getty Images. Figure 10.10 The Climax, illustration from “Salome” by Oscar Wilde, 1893 (line block print), Beardsley, Aubrey (1872–98)/© Private Collection/The Stapleton Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Figure 10.11 René Lalique, French, 1860–1945. Dragonfly woman corsage ornament, 1897–1898, gold, enamel, chrysoprase, moonstones, and diamonds, 23 3 26.5 (9 3 10 3/8) © Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2010. Figure 11.1 Beata Beatrix (oil on canvas), Rossetti, Dante Charles Gabriel (1828–82)/© Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Figure 11.2 The Astronomer, 1668 (oil on canvas), Vermeer, Jan (1632–75)/ © Louvre, Paris, France/Lauros/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Figure 11.3 Girl at a Window Reading a Letter, c. 1659 (oil on canvas) (detail of 218032), Vermeer, Jan (1632–75)/Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany/© Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Figure 11.4 Woman with a Lute, c. 1664 (oil on canvas), Vermeer, Jan (1632–75)/© Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library. Figure 11.5 Portrait of a Zen master, 15th century. New York, Digitale (1) Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lacquer on wood with inlaid crystal eyes, 1499. Purchase, John D. Rockefeller 3rd Gift, 1963. Inv.63.65 © 2010. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence. Figure 11.6 Nakahara Nantembo, Bodhidharma (Daruma), 1911. By Nakahara Nantembo (Toju Zenchu) (Japanese, 1839–1925). Japan. Hanging scroll; ink on paper. Museum purchase, 1994.29 © Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. Used by permission. Figure 10.6

INTRODUCTION

T

HIS BOOK IS AN invitation to an increased dialog about the world’s art by members of diverse cultures. It develops the idea that key cross-cultural issues are fundamental for understanding art and aesthetics. In organizing ideas about art, it is common to focus on national or other defined boundaries as a point of departure. But, art has frequently developed across boundaries of place and time. Because of its focus on issues of cross-cultural import and intercultural processes, the book expands the discussion of aesthetic concepts beyond the Western theorists and examples common to introductory and advanced courses in aesthetics. My objective is three-fold: (1) to discuss issues that impact art in various cultures; these issues serve as frameworks for understanding the art of cultures other than one’s own, (2) to gain an introductory knowledge of and appreciation for non-Western artistic expressions, and (3) to show that ideas about art are social in their origin and in their effects, which establishes that they have broad import for groups. Taken together, these goals reflect my conviction that art is central to the cross-cultural creation of meaning. The goal of the book is to create an awareness and appreciation of intercultural processes and cross-cultural issues that shape comparative study, but not to provide the last word on any particular theme. The book draws upon several disciplines: art history, ethno-aesthetics and area studies, aesthetic and visual anthropology, philosophy, and postcolonial studies. In these disciplines that engage art cross culturally, art is viewed as integrated into total systems of beliefs and actions. Therefore, general relationships between art and culture are my focus rather than the analysis of isolated objects (which is the essence of the legitimate but different tradition of connoisseurship). By emphasizing the relationship between art and culture at the outset, I begin with the recognition that art is not sealed from non-art. Aesthetic experience is embedded in our physical and emotional relationship to the world. This

2 INTRODUCTION relationship—art in the world—serves as the foundation for considering crosscultural issues in art. Because of its emphasis on the relationship between art and culture, aesthetic anthropology has much to offer cross-cultural studies of art. Concepts and examples from this field inform my work. Some very useful methodological questions regarding style, ethnicity, and so on have been raised there. Another discipline that yields a suitable framework for cross-cultural studies is philosophy. Traditional philosophical approaches have been critiqued as tending toward overly universal statements about art, form, and beauty. But, recent trends in the discipline (Mall, 2000 and McEvilley, 2008) point toward heightened awareness of cultural processes, including intercultural interaction, in philosophy. Postcolonial studies is a recently formed interdisciplinary field that analyzes the legacy of colonialism. It draws from disciplines as diverse as film, political science, literary theory, and geography; this book applies many of the concepts of postcolonialism to the cross-cultural analysis of art. In this postcolonial environment, the field of art history has been involved in developing frameworks for understanding world art in an integrated way. New surveys of art history are frequently global rather than Western in their subject matter and an understanding of cross-cultural issues and processes supports this expansion of the discipline. My focus on cross-cultural issues in art addresses a difficult methodological issue: How might one organize and integrate Western and non-Western art and aesthetics into a common area of study without privileging any particular culture’s theories and traditions? One attempt at a comparative framework is the approach of “inclusivity,” in which instructors and theorists swing back and forth between examples from many cultures. This approach has the benefit of broader coverage than found in a strictly “Western” or “non-Western” framework, but it does not necessarily involve analytical consistency or integration. The limitation of such an approach is obvious: While the student of art and design gains breadth of knowledge, an understanding of organizing frameworks and general processes may be less developed. Another possibility is the “isolated culture” approach, in which the art of each distinct culture is studied in depth. This approach has the benefit of yielding rich knowledge of particular cultures, but it downplays intercultural processes as central to the historical development of art and cross-cultural issues in understanding art. Postcolonial criticism is a third method; it addresses the relationship between power and aesthetic expression in particular circumstances of cultural contact and change. But this critical framework is often temporally limited to problems of relatively modern art—art created during and since the colonial era—and it emphasizes art’s political context and rhetorical goals, perhaps excluding other important aspects of art and design. None of these approaches offers an integrated comparative method for understanding cross-cultural art and aesthetics, though each provides ideas useful for developing these comparative frameworks. A thematic approach may be the most powerful model for comparative, cross-cultural study. This approach does not

INTRODUCTION 3 privilege any particular methodological or disciplinary orientation, but it does identify ways of framing cross-cultural issues in art. The following thematic issues provide the frameworks for cross-cultural analysis in this book: Art, Culture, and Hybridity; Primitivism and Otherness; Colonialism; Nationalism; Art and Religion; Symbolism, Meaning, and Interpretation; Style and Ethnicity; A Sense of Place; Art and Social Order; Gender; and the Self. In the following chapters I discuss each of these themes, and make use of examples from world art during the discussions. These examples are drawn from the research of experts in their respective disciplines; they function as case studies useful for developing a particular theme and are not presented here as my primary research. Each chapter of this book involves the development of a theme applicable to the cross-cultural understanding of art. Some of these themes may be more applicable to recent art; others relate to the art of all time periods. The chapters can be read in order, but it is not necessary to do so in order to understand each theme. However, establishing connections between culture and art can be considered a first step in the discussion of cross-cultural issues in art because the concept of culture is embedded within the term itself. Chapter 1 discusses the relationship of culture to art, beginning with the differences between the analytical and valuative uses of the concept “culture.” The relationship between these two meanings is then considered; for instance, cultural relativism holds that the values that guide aesthetic judgment are context dependent. The question of context and the role that it has played in art historical analysis leads to a discussion of the poles of relativism and absolutism in cross-cultural analysis. The first part of Chapter 1, then, establishes that understanding art in relationship to culture helps make aesthetic appreciation possible. The second half of the chapter addresses hybridity (the combination of more than one culture’s expressions into a unique synthesis). Several theoretical concepts emerge from this discussion, including cultural diffusion, that help link the concept of culture to intercultural processes. The chapter builds to the conclusion that, because culture now occurs in a global economic context, intercultural processes constitute the most important cultural development of our time. Chapters 2 through 4 consider the social dynamics of the last two centuries that have had a powerful effect upon intercultural processes in art; these chapters explore the social context of interculturality. One way that members of modern industrial cultures have sought to understand their own social systems is through referencing the experiences of “first” peoples: modern peoples have often done this through primitivism. Primitivism, therefore, is, in part, an outgrowth of the dislocation and alienation that occurs within modern societies. A renewal of a sense of meaning can be attempted by referencing the cosmologies of historical groups. Chapter 2 defines and explains primitivism as a major intercultural impulse in modernity, not as an isolated movement or trend within art. The primitive is tied to that which is spontaneous, intuitive, simple, untrained, and natural. In the modern mind, the primitive is unreflective, even specifically preliterate. The “primitive” relates to conceptions of the origins of the human mind and of the human condition itself.

4 INTRODUCTION Thus, the primitive is basic in origin: of mind, social relations, and of ties to nature. Primitivism is one example of “otherness”: how people represent and understand those who are different. The second part of Chapter 2 presents two competing theories of Otherness. The first of these acknowledges that the experience of the Other depends upon specific historical conditions of the relationship between cultures, conditions that are rooted in economic, religious, ethnic, or political competition and conflict. Out of these conditions of social conflict emerge stereotypes, which are highly reductionistic representations of the Other. Thus, the first theory of the Other is highly critical of the negative effects of “Othering.” A second, contrasting, theory views the Other as a universal, innate knowledge structure. In this view, people will always seek out difference as a way to understand themselves. Oppositions actually reveal connections—in fact, these are paired terms—and oppositions therefore provide a structure that leads to new knowledge. Otherness as a cognitive structure creates the possibility of new knowledge. As a result, each civilization invents the primitive it needs, both as a compensation for itself and as a way to explore new possibilities. In this second theory, Otherness refers to very basic psychological as well as social processes. The final section of Chapter 2 considers the relationship between these two contrasting theories of the Other. Chapter 3 explores a powerful, shaping process, colonialism, and considers its impact upon cross-cultural processes in art. The chapter offers a definition of colonialism, and distinguishes between internal and external colonialism, in part, to provide a basis for understanding how colonialism continues to shape people’s lives today. This chapter emphasizes that imperialism has been a part of the European and American mindset, even if this seems somehow “distant” or “unimaginable” to contemporary Europeans and Americans. But, it establishes that imperialism has been a feature of many cultures historically and is certainly not unique to Europe and America. A critique of nineteenth-century theories such as Social Darwinism and the Frontier Theory, which served to “naturalize” the process of colonization, is dovetailed with a discussion of the art of the period. Colonialism was and continues to be justified by both a verbal and visual rhetoric of God, Gold, and Glory. Over time, the glory that colonists served was increasingly that of the nation rather than that of the king. Chapter 4 considers the legitimacy of “claims of nation” in relation to art. Nationalism is a complex issue because it has motivated not only colonists, but their former “subjects” who have striven to shake off colonialism and form their own nations. Nationalism implies social change, possibly revolution involving violent conflict, and art is often asked to play a positive role in this social change. Thus, in some cases nationalism and the art that it engenders is a genuine expression of a desire for independence, for liberation from oppression. It reflects real changes in the economic and political lives of former colonies and grows out of the destabilization of colonial empires. It would seem, then, that the experience of “nation” would serve as a legitimate basis of art making. However, there are some deep concerns that many artists express about “nation” as an experiential basis of

INTRODUCTION 5 art. Their concern is that what is most important in art transcends national boundaries, and that the experience of “nation,” therefore, involves an unnecessary, artificial limitation of artistic creativity. This concern, and the tension between positive and negative views of the relationship between nation and art, are explored fully in Chapter 4. Chapters 5 through 11 present seven additional issues related to cross-cultural understanding in art. These issues are not particular to art of the last two centuries, but they do apply to art today as well as to art of the past. Several of these chapters include detailed case studies in order to provide an example of the analytical application of the issue under consideration. Chapter 5 investigates the origin of the collective function of art: religion. The study of comparative aesthetics establishes that religious or spiritual explanations of art’s significance are found in many nonWestern cultures and in the traditional aesthetic theories of the West. Despite the secularization of art’s function and meaning during the previous two hundred years, religious and spiritual theories of art continue to direct us toward its cross-cultural significance. Ties between art and ritual, between art and myth, and between the artist’s and shaman’s roles have each served as a basis for cross-cultural understanding in art. The idea of beauty is often tied to spirituality: the proportional ordering of the world is a primary value in many traditional aesthetic systems, both in nonWestern art (Navajo, Yoruba) and in classical Western aesthetics (Plato, Plotinus). In addition to beauty, expressions of transcendence and immanence, religious ecstasy and enlightenment, and human joy and suffering have cross-cultural import. Twentieth-century theories of the universality of spiritual experience such as those focusing on the archetype and collective unconscious (Jung, Campbell) often rely upon the comparative analysis of art. However, even though spirituality, if not religion, remains an important intercultural issue in art today, art has grown increasingly secular in recent history. The final part of Chapter 5 discusses several issues related to art’s secularization and the intercultural importance of this process. Chapter 6 addresses one of the means by which art and design are able to have cross-cultural import; meaning is conveyed interculturally, in part, through symbolism. But, symbols can be difficult to interpret if one wishes to understand their meaning in the context of their production. Chapter 6, “Symbolism, meaning, and interpretation,” presents the richness and challenge of interpreting symbolism cross culturally by engaging the history of interpreting symbolism in the art of India. The contextual embeddedness of art is a key for understanding symbolism, but there are several tensions that may arise. For instance, more recent popular interpretations of symbols within a culture may be much different than the meaning of the symbolic expression at the time of its production. External frames of scholarship may incorporate implicit assumptions that lead us to inaccurate conclusions. For example, the impact of the Aryan invasion upon Indian civilization—long held to be formative— has recently been called into question. The complexity of symbolism in its original context, the ways in which it is layered and dependent for its meaning on its relationship to other forms of cultural expression (in areas such as religious ritual,

6 INTRODUCTION literature, or theater) and social structures (relationships of power) all challenge the would-be interpreter. Strong differences in embedded value structures, such as the contrasting understanding of the erotic in Indian and Western spiritual culture, call out for examination. Thus, the famous temples at Khajuraho present an excellent case study for the complexities that await the cross-cultural interpreter of artistic symbolism. The geometry and textural density of the temples—aspects of their formal structures—must be considered in relationship to the famous sculptures that grace their exterior. Aspects of the indigenous aesthetic theory of the time, such as the development of the theory of rasa by the aesthetician and sage, Abhinavagupta, are another key to the fullest interpretation of symbolism. With its emphasis upon emotion and sensuality in relationship to devotion, we find in rasa a unique aesthetic conception, unparalleled in the West, that is an essential key for unlocking the secrets of the temples. A major aspect of the cross-cultural interpretation of symbolism, then, is close attentiveness to the myriad sources and connections within the culture at the time of the art’s production. The life’s work of the Indian scholar, Devangana Desai, stands as a positive example of the delicate balancing act involved in interpreting symbolism cross culturally. In art history, the theory and practice of style analysis was an early attempt at explaining how artistic meaning can cross cultures. Though stylistic analysis may have become somewhat less prevalent as a method in art history, its use as an analytical tool in archeology remains strong. Chapter 7 presents the value of stylistic analysis for promoting cross-cultural understanding in art. The first half of the chapter relates styles of artistic expression to ethnicity; styles are clearly related to identity construction, an important issue in intra- and intercultural processes. Like style, ethnic identity is dynamic and rests upon a balance between consistency and change. The chapter discusses the components of ethnic identification: (1) a shared racial background, (2) shared communication systems, (3) shared cultural traits, and (4) a personal affirmation of identity or “sense of belonging.” The analysis of ethnic style helps us understand the interaction of these several aspects of group identification. A discussion of Diego Rivera’s work demonstrates the connections between style, ethnicity and intercultural communication. A sense of identity is reinforced through the representation of one’s relationship to the physical environment; this act of representation integrates psychological, spiritual, and social processes. Chapter 8 establishes the need for understanding the role of “a sense of place” in the cross-cultural analysis of art. Ways of representing land and place are metaphors for states of mind, and they also provide a basis for a sense of community. Expressing place is another way that art reveals its collective meaning. A sense of place is developed through the interrelation of several elements: language, art, religion, social life, and views of nature. However, a sense of place is not generated as much by institutional religious or political systems (an ideological formation of place) as through a group’s profound and experiential understanding of place. Because place involves specific ties to the land, this chapter considers the relationship between the environment and art, with specific examples drawn from

INTRODUCTION 7 nature-based arts. In the West, nature did not move to the center of artistic subject matter until the nineteenth century, the golden age of landscape. Before that time, most of the art in the West had been oriented toward human beings; nature served as a backdrop for historical, religious, or mythological work, but was not the subject of art in its own right. By contrast, in Chinese art, people and the products of civilization are secondary by comparison to the scale and importance of nature. Art frequently involves a restoration of the relationship between humans and nature. The comparative study of art and aesthetics establishes the possibility of a general aesthetics of place in art. Understanding place attachment in non-Western aesthetic experience is important for today’s nations of immigrants, whose most profound experience of place may actually be a sense of displacement. If the essence of a culture can be found in its relation to place, then specific ties to the land unite communities. But displacement, which occurs through social, economic, cultural, and geographical dislocation, undermines communities and, as a result, has major consequences for intra- and intercultural relations. The discussion of the intercultural significance of art and religion in Chapter 5 and of style in Chapter 7 demonstrates that art can and has served an ethical function in many cultures. There is often a sense of “oughtness” conveyed in art that has a religious or spiritual basis. Though this function has become less prevalent in secular societies, art traditionally has been an expression of “right action.” Thus, art and design are tied to the maintenance of social order. This is even the case when artists are fulfilling a socially critical function, as in much contemporary political art, in which case artists are implicitly offering an alternative social arrangement to the existing order. Chapter 9 establishes theoretical linkages between artistic expression and social processes; it advocates the need for a systems view of art in creating crosscultural understanding. Artistic roles themselves are socially defined. Variables such as patronage, class, and education, and distinctions between folk, popular, and elite art affect cross-cultural interpretations of art’s meaning. The social relations of artists, patrons, and audiences are all elements investigated within a systems view of art. Just as importantly, artistic symbolism itself is the product of systemic relations. In this chapter the complex symbolic activity of Dogon (Malian) maskmaking is interpreted within a systems framework. The relationship between symbolic systems and social structures is analyzed, and the chapter establishes that these relations are always dynamic. The constant change within both symbolic and social systems challenges us in our efforts at cross-cultural understanding, but also guards us from assuming that other cultures are static or easily captured by simple interpretations. A systems view incorporates an understanding of art as a social process in contrast to a view of art as a collection of distinct, separate objects. An aesthetic system, however, is not a disinterested framework, imposed from without by interested scholars. It is a complex, processual web of relations that has great weight or meaning for the members of a given culture: for those who produce and participate in a given system. This importance is further explained in the chapter by linking aesthetics with ethics. Both of these dimensions of culture are valuative and emotional

8 INTRODUCTION in content and experiential at their base. The most fundamental questions of life and death, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness are physically and emotionally expressed in the dynamic world of aesthetic systems. The valuative and experiential nature of aesthetic systems is investigated in the context of Yoruban (Nigerian) art, ethics, and religion. Ultimately, aesthetic systems are shown to be related to our sense of how the world itself is ordered. Chapter 10 considers gender as a framework for the cross-cultural analysis of art. The chapter begins with a summary of the contribution of feminist theory to the analysis of art. In this section we focus on the second wave of feminism during the sixties and seventies, when its impact on artistic creation and scholarship about art was strongly evident for the first time. We consider the impact of feminism on the analysis of specific artworks, its critique of the art historical canon, its challenge to social structures that contribute to prejudice and exclusion, its discussion of style, and the influence that it had on individual feminist artists. With this general discussion as a background, the chapter then turns to cross-cultural issues. In the middle section of the chapter we investigate gender-related issues in historical Japanese art of the Heian and Edo periods. Issues of stylistic specialization, the relation of gender to the analysis of specific works, and the general social status of women are addressed. In the last section of Chapter 10, gender is applied to intercultural analysis. How might we understand the representation of women by those Western male artists who were strongly influenced by Japanese art in the late nineteenth century? Chapter 11 explores the comparative issues that help guide research into the cultural formation of “self.” How does an understanding of “self” tie in to those “macro” processes that have been discussed throughout the book? How might social changes affect and reflect shifts in self concepts? Other issues are methodological: How might one gather information and ideas related to the formation of the concept of “self” within a culture? What impact might phenomenology, which is a modern philosophical system concerned with methodological issues pertinent to understanding the self, have on our analysis of art? We will consider two case studies in this chapter: Vermeer’s representation of the self as “soul,” as evidenced by the structure and techniques of his paintings, and the tradition of Japanese ink painting found in Zen. This tradition emphasizes the action of the making of the painting, along with several aesthetic values not commonly seen in the West, that point to a unique way of understanding the “self” as expressed in art. While I will offer many frames for understanding in the following pages, I do not intend the discussion of cross-cultural issues and social processes in this book to be complete. Any of the individual issues discussed here could be applied in a variety of ways that I have not anticipated. There are other framing issues, not discussed here, that you, the reader, will feel are important in understanding art cross culturally. In addition, I am a product of my own Western cultural upbringing, which brings its own benefits and limitations. In any case, it is not really possible for any one person to provide a comprehensive framework for the cross-cultural

INTRODUCTION 9 understanding of art. Rather, frameworks for understanding will be the result of dialog between members of many cultures. It is my hope that this book will contribute to an increased dialog by members of the diverse cultures of the world and demonstrate the role that art plays in this lively conversation.

Chapter 1

ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY

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RT HAS THE CAPACITY to be both a record of its time and an expression of universal human values. These values can be related to many sources: individual and group identities; ethical, religious, and political systems; and the experiences of sexuality and gender in addition to aesthetic values. An orientation toward art as a record of its time means taking a cultural approach to art. But we can also respond to art as expressive of universal human values not tied to any particular place. This contrast between the particular and the universal may be felt as a tension, perhaps even as a conflict. Does the local, cultural importance of art cancel out the universality of aesthetic expression and judgment? Conversely, when we respond in a general, intuitive way to the art of distant periods and cultures, do we downplay the importance of specific cultural contexts? An alternative to thinking of these views as conflicting is to view them as complementary. Perhaps art has the unique capacity to express the universal through the particular. Why is this the case? How are general aesthetic values revealed through specific cultural expressions? We need to explore this relationship between art and culture before considering how art can have an intercultural function. Establishing connections between culture and art is a necessary first step in a discussion of intercultural issues in art. Culture has at least two distinct meanings. One is the anthropological meaning of the term that refers to the unifying characteristics of a group of people; these may include geographical proximity; shared language, intellectual, and artistic traditions; kinship, religious, economic, or political systems; and so on. Culture refers to those circumstances, worldviews, and habits of life that distinguish a group of people from other groups. In this sense, art is one of a number of processes that make up a culture’s distinctiveness. Art and design can be understood more fully when viewed in relationship to these other processes.1 In this anthropological framework, culture is a concept that can be approached from many levels. We may associate cultures with broad geographical regions: East

ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY 11 Asian, Southeast Asian, West African, South African, Western European, and so on. These are recognized as culture areas because of the geographical proximity of cultures in these areas, their shared linguistic patterns, similarities in worldviews, common trade networks, and so forth. Or one can consider culture at a micro-level: Students who like metalcore music, certain styles of dress, and similar movies in a high school may form a definable subculture within that setting. Even though culture can be understood from many levels, the concept of levels does not imply valuation or ranking; and no individual culture is seen as inherently better than another. The anthropological understanding of culture is analytical, because it isolates the components of culture and considers their relationships to each other. But, it is not evaluative, because it does not “rank” cultures according to a general notion of progress. In recent years art history as a discipline has adopted this analytical understanding of culture. In research methodology, anthropology and art history often focus on statements by the members within a society, compile many descriptive observations, and then use this evidence to answer theoretical questions. Artistic expressions by varied groups are a way to understand cultural differences without making value judgments as to whether one culture’s expression is better than another’s. When analyzing a broad range of cultures and considering individual cultures from an insider’s or “emic” perspective, the artistic products of varied cultures are seen as equal in importance or value. However, this has not always been the case. In the past, art historians have bestowed privilege on particular artists, cultures, and periods. One could argue that, in their choices about what to analyze (and what to ignore), historians have made value judgments about the importance of particular artists, cultures, or periods. This ranking of the importance of art within particular contexts points to a second meaning of culture. In this second meaning, culture refers to the practices, tastes, and values associated with particular social classes. To “have” or “get” culture implies that some activities are valued more than others by a group of people and, therefore, these activities should be pursued. Sometimes there seems to be an intrinsic value attached to high culture in the West. High culture refers to those artistic products that have traditionally been held to be of high artistic merit and importance. In the West, an orchestral performance of a symphony by Beethoven or a painting by Leonardo da Vinci is an example of high culture. Similarly, in some contemporary Native American groups, culture refers to specific traditional practices, such as drum groups, storytelling or totem carving, that are being consciously preserved and renewed for specific social purposes. In this second sense of the term, then, culture refers to the values that we place on some artistic expressions as worthy of public recognition and support. Because this is a value-based definition, not everybody will agree on the relative value of kinds of expression. For instance, someone might feel that movies are more valuable than performances by symphony orchestras. But, even in this case, a value judgment about a cultural expression is being made, even though the commonly assumed relationship between high and low culture has been inverted.

12 ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY It is not a problem that value-based judgments exist along with analytical understandings of culture, as long as these two understandings are acknowledged and discussed in relationship to one another. In the past, some researchers have acted as if their actions were value free. But choices related to subject matter and methods of study are usually based upon personal and culturally based values. Similarly, artists often investigate the art of other cultures because of the evaluative dimension that this research has for their own creative process. A good example of how values are a significant aspect of cross-cultural investigation by artists is found in the controversial work, Holy Virgin Mary (1996) by the Afro-British artist, Chris Ofili. His Virgin famously included a piece of dung attached to the surface of the Virgin’s breast, and this, along with the image’s overt sexual references, drew the ire of

Figure 1.1 Chris Ofili, The Holy Virgin Mary, 1996. © Chris Ofili. Courtesy of the Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Photo taken by Stephen White. Reproduced with permission.

ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY 13 religious groups. But, the sensuality of traditional images of the Virgin was the value that motivated Ofili: I was going to the National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing and looking at Van Eyck’s paintings of mother and child. I just wanted the image of the breast really. The exposed breast is hinting at motherhood but those images are very sexually charged. She’s painted as this beautiful, passive, angelic woman, pure and very attractive looking. I think the Virgin Mary was an excuse for pornography in the homes of these holy priests and God fearers. So I think in the ’90s a version of it would allow the pornographic images to come more to the surface . . . I think it’s a very beautiful painting to look at, full of contradictions, which is perhaps why it’s been misunderstood.2 Ofili explores the overtly sensual values that mark contemporary society (which he calls pornographic) by finding an unexpected source for them in earlier artistic traditions. His work uses cultural differences—contemporary/historical, European/ African—as a way to investigate the values that he feels are communicated through an artistic tradition. One of the cultural differences at play is that in some African societies, elephant dung has sacred meanings, whereas in most Western cultures, dung—or shit—is seen as dirty and associated with desecration. Both the analytical and evaluative dimensions of culture are at play in his work. What, then, is the relationship between these two ways of understanding culture? The anthropological understanding of culture leads to a position known as cultural relativism, the belief that every society, regardless of its size, is an integrated whole in which values make sense within the context of that culture. In this sense, the concept “primitive” (which is often taken to be problematic in recent times) simply refers to a low degree of economic specialization, the use of simple rather than complex technologies, a relatively small, sparse population, and so on. There is no value judgment tied to the term; it merely describes a related set of social characteristics. Cultural relativism downplays the notion that there are common cross-cultural properties of art. Rather, art and design are created and experienced within a specific context. Relativism carries a sense of responsibility that to understand the expressions of other cultures in their context, one must not impose one’s own views and values on these expressions. Contextualism is a useful way of thinking because it helps explain cross-cultural differences in aesthetic experience and judgment. However, if one takes the idea of context to the extreme, the logical outcome is total relativism. This position would state that only members of a particular culture are able to truly understand or make judgments about the products and experiences of that culture. But is this really the way that we experience the world, or do we, in fact, often have assumptions and make judgments that have cross-cultural value? Ofili’s analysis and re-creation of the Virgin is an example of one instance of cross-cultural interpretation and judgment. But those who objected to his vision were also offering a strongly

14 ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY stated opinion as to the value of a tradition that has origins in a culture much different than the present (even though aspects of that cultural tradition remain alive today). Though there were many, the most well-known critic of the painting, and of the museum for showing it, was the mayor of New York: Ten days prior to its opening, Giuliani pronounced the exhibit “sick” and promised to withhold the museum’s $7.2 million in city funding— about a third of the Brooklyn Museum’s budget—unless the show was canceled. Giuliani didn’t object to the exhibit’s being seen, just to the fact that it was being paid for with tax money. “You don’t have a right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else’s religion,” he said. Other Republicans only talk about fighting the culture war; Giuliani is actually in the trenches. Later, he said he would disband the museum’s board of directors, and the city filed a lawsuit contending that the museum had violated its lease.3 The words, sick, desecration, and culture war in the previous story demonstrate just how value-laden responses to cross-cultural artistic expressions can be. However, what happens when one steps back from a specific context, such as Brooklyn in the late nineties, and looks for cross-cultural patterns? Let us return to that troublesome term “primitive.” There seem to be pairs of contrasting categories embedded within the idea, such as simplicity/complexity or tradition/progress, that are applicable cross culturally. We may understand the “primitive” as simple— technologically, economically, socially, etc.—in comparison to complex or developed cultures. In the comparative process, categories embedded in our analytical framework come to the fore, and we assume that these categories are more general than their application to any one context. Is it going too far to say that the contrasting terms, simplicity and complexity, do have universal implications for our understanding of culture (and of art)? In contrast to the relativism inherent in a contextual approach, an attempt to discover underlying assumptions that frame intercultural study leads to “universals” of aesthetic thought and experience. These cross-cultural terms, such as simplicity and complexity, are sometimes referred to as absolutes of aesthetic experience because they are applicable to all expressions within all cultures. In addition, subjects such as those pertaining to male/female themes or the relations of young and old are found in all cultures. These can be contrasted with culture-specific themes; for instance, the concept of democratic participation in the arts is specific to certain cultures. In most cultures, art has been created for very specific and powerful patrons. Aesthetics is the discipline that is traditionally concerned with fundamentals— absolutes—concerning the nature and value of art. But the attempt at defining art and other dimensions of aesthetic experience cross culturally seems to go against the very idea of cultural relativism. How can there be so-called universals if we have already established that aesthetic experience is highly contextual? How can one solve

ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY 15 this difficult problem? One could solve it by doing away with any attempt at a common understanding of art, but the problem does not go away that easily because we have to somehow define that which in other cultures can be called “art.” In other words, even in choosing a starting point one seems to instinctively apply an aesthetic universal, art. A first problem of aesthetics, then, is defining art itself. What definition of art does one assume and use for comparative or intercultural purposes? Is there a universal definition of art applicable across cultures? In an ideal scenario, it would be better not to start out with one’s own everyday conceptual biases in viewing the art of other cultures. But there are frameworks for viewing, embedded in the Western understanding of the term art, which will color the very selection of that which is recognizable as art in other cultures. Presently, in Western cultures art often (a) is something valued for properties beyond the practical function of the thing, (b) has sensuous or intellectual appeals that make it stand out, (c) reflects the skill and/or creativity of the maker (which are more developed than the skill or creativity of others), (d) is exhibited or performed in spaces designated for the purpose of displaying art, and so on. Are any of these common to the experience of art in other cultures? Or are there very different arts, so different, in fact, that “art” itself may be a term that has little value? Some of the social dimensions of art just mentioned, such as where, when, and how art is displayed or performed, will vary widely between cultures. But symbolic expression, which is at the heart of artistic creativity, is common to all cultures. In the past, some theorists hypothesized that humans are unique as symbol-producing animals. This view follows from the symbolic theories of the German philosopher, Ernst Cassirer, who wrote that symbolization forms the core of all activity that is uniquely human. More recently, scientists have discovered that other primates have symbol-making capacities. But the fact that symbolizing is shared with other animals need not devalue these processes. Symbolic expression goes to the very heart of our reason for living. Why do we live: perhaps because of the symbolic values that we attach to life? Since art is one major aspect of symbolic expression, art is part of what makes life worthwhile for all people. Though it is dangerous to apply a single, closed definition of art cross culturally, there seems to be ample evidence for considering the universality of symbolic expression as a defining feature of art. Another basis for claiming that there are universal, cross-cultural dimensions of aesthetic appreciation is biological. All humans share certain cognitive and perceptual capacities because of their shared biological structure, specifically the biology of the brain and nervous system. “Scientific findings about the laterality of the brain proved that perception and cognition are, indeed, functions of the brain.”4 The theorist, Paul, has even argued that beauty, a maligned concept for much of the past century, may have a basis for existence in both philosophical aesthetics and recent scientific research into the brain. One of the traits of human perception is selection, and good artists are highly skilled in appealing to the selective nature of human perception. Those processes of perception, identified as early as the 1920s by the Gestalt psychologists, can be taken not only as a description of perception but also as a list of

16 ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY biases that humans universally favor: the tendency to see a figure in contrast against a ground, the bias toward distinct forms such as geometrical figures, the bias toward order in the arrangement of visual units. Again, these are general properties of human perception and, therefore, trans-cultural. Thus, an understanding of the relationship between art and culture involves a back-and-forth movement between two poles of thought, the contextual and universal. Comparative study could easily lead to too heavy an emphasis on either pole. Limitation to either of these poles would lead to radical relativism on the one hand, or philosophical absolutism on the other. Neither of these positions would accurately reflect the way in which lives are actually led. Most often people live and think between the poles of the relative and the absolute. In many instances, the experience of one pole is used to test the validity of the experiences of the other. Rather than canceling each other out, each pole helps us qualify and understand the other. This, then, is the motion of this book, the constant testing of the general by the particular and the particular by the general. And that is also the nature of the comparative method, to search for universals such as “form,” “beauty,” and “truth” in the particularity of the everyday aesthetic experiences of more than one culture. Where all of this becomes problematic, though, is in the domain of aesthetic judgment. It is one thing to acknowledge the poles of the universal and relative for analytical purposes; it is another to acknowledge them for questions of value. We may understand the primitive as intrinsically “better” than more complex cultures because the primitive is more “pure” or close to the essence of human experience. Or we may understand the primitive as “inferior” to complex cultures because it is, by definition, backward, or lacking in technological progress. This contradiction in valuative terms points to the modern experience of primitivism. In contrast to the objective detachment associated with cultural relativism, the comparative process points out the valuative dimensions of judgment that cut across cultural boundaries. Sometimes, these dimensions are referred to as normative because they imply standards (norms) that artworks ought to meet in order to be valued as exhibiting high quality. Are there standards of quality by which artworks can be judged? Do these standards apply cross culturally in any way? This idea—that there are cross-cultural dimensions that we use to understand, and judge, artistic experience—can be seen in the process of defining and implementing standards of artistic quality. From the perspective of cultural relativism, the idea that quality can be defined and applied cross culturally is highly troubling. In culturally relative schemata, standards of quality are defined and experienced according to the internal dynamics of a culture. Thus, reformers have called for a decentralizing of judgments of artistic quality. However, every day curators, collectors, writers, teachers, and artists make judgments about the quality or importance of artworks produced in other cultures. Often, the judgments are made in the process of selection: what should or should not be included in this show, collection, anthology, lecture, etc.? A position of radical relativism seems to ignore the intercultural processes of aesthetic judgment that take place in practice every day. The standards

ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY 17 that members of diverse groups use to judge quality may vary, and even come into conflict with one another, but the judgment of quality in the contemporary world is often an intercultural process. The point that quality is an aspect of judgment, along with the appropriateness of subject matter, ethics, and so on, is illustrated once again by the responses to the Ofili painting. Many reviewers were offended not by the subject, but by so much time being wasted discussing a work that they considered to be of inferior quality: Quite simply, beyond an attempt to see how far boundaries can be pushed, I see little or no value in calling something like the painting mentioned “art.” My question is not whether they should continue to fund this with tax-payers’ money, or evict it, but more pointedly, who is responsible for deciding who is, and who is not, worthy of display? This isn’t social commentary, nor is it (in probability) a commentary on religious or moral issues. It is someone trying for a quick shock— and getting it—and in my mind this in no way qualifies it as significant enough for such exposure. I’m both disappointed in the government for considering censorship, and the museum and those who call themselves proponents of “the arts,” supporting this particular piece in the first place.5 Here, the commentator, an author, calls into question not only the quality of the particular painting, but an entire approach within art: “quick shock” art. His objection is based upon a qualitative distinction between genuine social commentary and the desire for notoriety based upon shock effect. While judgments of quality may be difficult in an environment that presupposes relativism, in practice they are frequently made. Sometimes these intercultural qualitative judgments are highly reflexive. Much of what a European may admire in an African sculpture presupposes and reflects European values. Much of what an African admires in a European painting or advertisement presupposes and reflects African values. But it can be a difficult process to sort out the European and African values in this process of judgment because what occurs over time is a blending of European and African values and, indeed, of the expressive forms as well. One of the ways that meaning crosses cultures is that one recognizes aspects of oneself in the cultural Other. Aspects of that expression, which was once considered exotic, are incorporated into one’s own expressions. Good examples of this are found in twentieth-century popular music, whether of jazz, rock and roll, soul, reggae, blues, or other genres. Each of these forms blends European harmonic and African rhythmic traditions into new hybrid musical traditions. Hybridity refers to the fusing of diverse traditions into a unified expression. Some people reject hybrid forms because they fear that something is lost in the blending of previously distinct traditions. They are probably right. Some of the distinctiveness—the particularity—of local cultural traditions is lost through

18 ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY hybridity (some of the distinctiveness, not all of it). This process of cultural loss is sometimes referred to as cultural homogenization. People in Asia often refer to the process as Westernization. Europeans may refer to this homogenizing process as Americanization. Ironically, Americans sometimes refer to it as globalization. The homogenization of cultures is often associated with the international impact of mass culture’s expressive forms: popular music, advertising, Hollywood film, and television. The industrial production of cultural products is primarily associated with the United States, especially with American corporate interests. Hence, another name for cultural homogenization: “McDonaldization.” However, the basis of the concern for a loss of distinctness is more deeply historical than the last half of the twentieth century. That concern has its origins in responses to colonialism, a centuries-long process in which European nations economically exploited and politically controlled non-European cultures. From a critical perspective, continued hybridity in the arts or in language (as in Creole languages) relates to neocolonial or postcolonial global processes. In the mind of the colonizer, though, hybridity is suspect for another reason. Implicit in the Creole—the mixed race, language, or artwork—is the primitive. So hybridity carries within it the risk of cultural regression to an earlier state (in the colonialist mentality, of course, the European cultural expression was the most progressive). Thus, in both cases, there is a suspicion of globalizing processes, which raises the question: is the development of hybrid forms (as a result of globalizing processes) good or bad? The answer to that question is a qualified one. If hybrid art forms relate to negative processes—unfair trade practices, the collapse of local markets, the exploitation of labor—then those aspects of art making in the current global market can be criticized and challenged. But history demonstrates that we will interact economically. The history of humankind is one of trade; the Silk Road, a trade network that spanned several cultures in Asia, is a good example of these earlier networks. Trade is part of the reality of the world. Globalization is a process that can be critiqued in the hopes of improving aspects of modern economic reality, but it is a process that is unlikely to stop. Criticism has focused on the impact of cultural homogenization, including the loss of local languages and traditions, the perceived attack on local values, and the disruption of local economies. Other research has pointed to local resistance to homogenization that continues in spite of the further global dissemination of industrial culture. Researchers in art tend to emphasize the latter of these two possibilities because, in the modern era, artists have often defined goals that oppose mass culture. By contrast, design research may focus on the development of “international” styles simply because designers often work for firms that develop products for an international marketplace. Artists (and occasionally designers) are sometimes in the curious position of using hybrid expressive forms to investigate and critique the kind of hybridity (homogenization) that occurs in industrial culture. What varies between hybrid artistic expressions and the industrial production of culture (which is also hybrid) is the character of the hybridity in specific instances. There is no single, overarching experience of hybridity in art and, therefore,

ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY 19 judgments as to the validity and importance of specific instances of hybridity will vary. It may help to recognize the basis for multiple kinds of hybrid forms in art and design, and the way that these forms can be positive, if this discussion is placed in a broader context. Hybridity is the result of a broader process known as cultural diffusion, which is simply the spreading of a culture’s characteristics to another culture through contact (both violent and nonviolent). Cultural diffusion has a long and varied history in the world; most often it has taken place in the context of war and trade. Religion (itself a frequent cause of war) has been a prime agent of cultural diffusion. Missionaries introduced institutional structures such as schools into native communities in many parts of the world. These schools and churches were often an agent of oppression as much as education; nonetheless, they were a channel for cultural diffusion. Intercultural contact also led to the need for negotiation and diplomacy, especially with regard to rights for land. Colonial governments demanded a structure of authority on the part of native peoples that would ensure “positive” results from land negotiations. Local political structures have often developed within the context of colonial government’s expectations, but they also reflect traditional pre-contact processes of governing. The current social institutions in much of the world reflect the diffusion of European religious, governmental, and educational systems, and their synthesis with local customs. Thus, hybrid political structures, languages, and artistic expressions reflect the mutual interaction of peoples, not solely the dominance of one group over the other. For commentators such as Homi Bhabha, characterizing modern culture as a complex process of mutual interaction that yields hybrid creations is a more accurate way to speak of cultural interaction than, say, a fascination for the exotic.6 Another theorist argues, “intercultural philosophy should not be equated with the exotic and amateurish interest in all that is non-European. In other words, interculturality is not a trendy expression.”7 Cultural tourism is a primary way in which exoticism is promoted and marketed, but strategies of reversal reveal the thinness of this form of interaction for the culture that is being marketed. The potential for inequality and exploitation is inherent in cultural tourism: In the summer of 1984 a group of Kenyans decided to test the worth of tourism as an intercultural meeting ground. Carrying cameras and tips with them, they approached a group of German tourists, persuaded them to take a group photo for their Kenyan family members at home, and even promised them tips. The German tourists were annoyed and found this behavior unpardonable. They asked for a tourist guide and even the police.8 In this instance, the Kenyans were employing a strategy of reversal: the German tourists were confronted with the humiliating effects of their unreflecting acts of touristic behavior. Such strategies of reversal are a common element of postmodern art that calls into question cross-cultural practices such as tourism and collecting.

20 ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY The process of cultural contact and change has varied in different contexts. Some native peoples followed a pattern of cultural incorporation in which they absorbed aspects of non-native technology and culture but conformed these aspects to the functional relations of the original cultural system. This is a form of hybridity that retains the character of the original culture. Little in the older culture was replaced by contact with the new cultural system, though some new aspects may have enhanced existing practices. Cultural assimilation is the polar opposite of incorporation, in which native cultural behaviors were replaced by aspects of the Euro-American cultural system, leading to the breakdown of the native cultural systems. This concept of replacement is at the core of the negative associations that many intellectuals have with global cultural homogenization. Members of Asian and European cultures fear that their values are in danger of being replaced by the values of the “West” or of “America.” There is a historical basis for this concern. For instance, members of most North American Indian tribes have experienced assimilation, though the speed and amount of assimilation that occurred often depended upon the proximity of a tribe’s native land to major Euro-American population and power centers. Similarly, members of all immigrant groups in North America have experienced pressure to assimilate. Historically, the goal of many governments and the people whom they govern has been assimilation: From 1882 until the 1950s, a whole series of legislation excluded immigrants from Asia from coming to our society. Also, of course, for most of this time most Americans thought of America as a white country with, at best, only a very segregated and subordinate role for blacks. In addition, from the earliest time American identity has been defined in terms of the Anglo-Protestant culture, values, and institutions of the founding settlers, including individualism, liberty, the work ethic, the rule of law, private property, and hostility to concentrated power.9 In the United States today, and in many European nations, there is a lively debate as to whether immigrants should be required to learn the national language and customs. Should Mexican immigrants’ children be taught only in English? [I]n the Southwest and particularly in Southern California . . . twothirds or more of the children in schools are likely to be Spanish speaking. As my former colleague, Abe Lowenthal, and Katrina Burgess, in their book, The California-Mexico Connection, said, “No school system in a major U.S. city has ever experienced such a large influx of students from a single foreign country. The schools of Los Angeles are becoming Mexican.”10 These debates show that the question of assimilation is still alive, and perhaps even more so in the present: it is the present wave of Mexican immigration that, for the

ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY 21 first time, represents the possibility of America becoming a bilingual society. That possibility—which some may see as a threat—raises the stakes in the modern debate about assimilation. My own perspective is that this phase of immigration raises the likelihood of increased hybridity, especially in the most affected areas. Terms such as “Tex-Mex” have already emerged to capture the flavor of those hybrid expressions. In art, hybridization helps explain the adoption of Western practices such as easel painting by people who did not have a tradition of painting, whether in Africa, India, the Far East, or the Americas. Assimilation is even more complete when the “vocabularies” of Western painting traditions are also adopted; traditional genres such as still life, figure painting, landscape, abstraction, and so on may be adopted wholesale by non-Western peoples. One could argue that the non-Western artists’ adoption of contemporary forms such as installations, video art, and computer graphics is further evidence of assimilation in art. However, we need to be careful in making negative judgments about the process of cultural diffusion based on the adoption of the form of an expression alone. Is it possible for a non-Western person to adopt a Western expressive form—let’s say, fine art photography—and to turn this into a distinct cultural expression? This possibility points to a third kind of cultural diffusion, cultural integration, which involves the fusion of two or more cultural systems. In cultural integration, the “native” cultural system is affected and the shape of the culture changes significantly, which distinguishes integration from cultural incorporation. The native cultural system is not wholly replaced, which distinguishes it from the process of assimilation. This fusion also differs from simple bi-culturalism in which a person’s way of acting shifts according to cultural context. Bi-culturalism involves participation in two cultural systems, not a merging of two systems. It is this merging of systems, the central characteristic of cultural integration, that is most often referred to as hybridity. Hybridity refers to a particular kind of cultural diffusion, cultural integration, that is distinct from cultural incorporation and assimilation. Cultures may progress through different sequences of these cultural diffusion processes. In general, though, there seems to have been a progression from incorporation, especially involving material and technological aspects of Western culture, to assimilation. Further integration was inhibited through the use of force or economic coercion by the dominant culture. However, despite assumptions about the gradual disappearance of native ways of life through absorption into great national melting pots, whether in Brazil, Indonesia, China, Mexico, or the United States, many local cultures have defied assumptions of their cultural disappearance through assimilation. Instead, international political and economic processes have challenged local peoples to develop new understandings of their collective identity. Often these understandings have involved a synthesis of local and Western expressive forms and social processes. The process of diffusion has not been a one-way street. Euro-American culture has been vastly affected by many non-European sources. In recent years some

22 ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY scholars have referred to the possibility of a broad East/West synthesis that reflects the impact of Asian philosophies and religions on contemporary Western thought. But, even with these significant influences, there is a sense that the degree and direction of influence between cultures has not been equal. The reason is that cultural diffusion depends upon an economics of scale. Those cultures that produce more goods, and here I refer in particular to “cultural products,” and distribute those products most widely have a greater influence than cultures that produce and distribute fewer products. One could say that the relationship between art and culture now occurs in a global economic context. And the balance of power signified by patterns of cultural exchange is increasingly dependent on global economic processes rather than the politics of nationalism. For example, consider the art book publishing industry. By far, the largest percentage of books and films made about art center on well-known artists and movements from the history of Western art. Books about van Gogh sell well in Europe, North America, Japan, and elsewhere. However, it would be unlikely to see books about individual Japanese or Indonesian artists doing well in North America. Part of this is due to the limited experience that the potential audiences for these books have of non-Western art, but this inequity is also due to the publisher’s need and desire to turn a profit on the book. There is little incentive to print a book that will not sell widely. (Indeed, in the politics and economics of scholarship, as well, there is little incentive to write about “unknown” artists.) Thus, the cultural bias toward well-known Western artists and movements is enhanced by global economic processes. While the spread of knowledge about non-Western art and design in the United States may be inhibited by America’s national insularity, the more fundamental problem seems to revolve around the relationship between economics and culture. It may be the case, however, that the cross-cultural knowledge readily available through the Internet will gradually erode this sense of insularity. The meaning of the term “culture” is itself shifting in this discussion of cultural diffusion and global economics. We began this chapter by considering culture in an anthropological sense, as those circumstances, worldviews, and habits of life that distinguish a group of people from other groups. At this point in the discussion, however, a new meaning of culture is emerging that is transnational. Whether intentionally or not, art and design are part of the creation of transnational culture and involved in the erasure of previous cultural boundaries. This new understanding of culture is global in two ways: (1) as reflecting the internationalization of economic and political processes and (2) as a form of resistance to these internationalizing tendencies. That is to say, even the art that resists the organization and processes of international capitalism has had to gain international recognition in order to be a part of that process of resistance. To be effective, modern art cannot be bound by the interests of particular, local cultures though art may still be rooted, to some degree, in local experiences. One example within contemporary art practice of a group that references specific, local examples in order to reference global issues is the Critical Art Ensemble. Their artistic output has included “tactical media,”

ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY 23 videos, installations, and books that address a broad range of social topics, from the use of incendiary weapons on civilian populations to contemporary mental health practices and societal definitions of criminality.11 In the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, culture is intercultural. We are at a turning point in the development of the relationship of art and culture. At the same time as there is a recognition and promotion of various local cultural expressions as an antidote to the ethnocentrism of the colonial era, there is also a recognition that culture has overgrown the bounds of the local. Thus, the emphasis on local traditions, as in cultural preservation, development, or regional tourism, often appears strangely nostalgic, even as this local emphasis seems to be the “missing ingredient” in the comparative study of art. How can one create from a base of local traditions, while still acknowledging the importance of intercultural, global processes? One of the ways is to create expressions outside of the context of the industrial production of culture that are not definable as a “product.” A strategy that contemporary artists and designers have used is to appropriate (borrow) existing cultural products and to re-contextualize them. These appropriated cultural products may be from Western art history, the mass media, or non-Western cultures, but the act of appropriation converts the product to concept. Appropriated products do not retain the same meaning that they had in their original context. By “bracketing” existing expressions, what are contemporary artists and designers expressing? It seems that one goal of the strategy of appropriation has been to call attention to the pervasiveness of production and consumption as controlling modes of intercultural relations. Thus, the kind of bracketing that is meant to take place in appropriation creates a kind of psychological distance from “cultural production” as an economic process. If a central mechanism in the product marketplace is the manufacturing of desire (the desire to consume, the desire to produce in order to consume), then appropriative strategies of contemporary artists seem to call our manufactured desires into question. Appropriation counters the logic of desire that underlies the global marketplace. However, because it involves a self-conscious strategy of distancing, appropriation produces another kind of relationship, voyeurism, in which the viewer’s desire has been replaced by a new mechanism: disengaged looking. While appropriation strategically places the artist and receiver psychologically outside the production of desire, the strategies fail to engage the viewer as transparently, directly, and fully as, say, film, advertising, popular music, or television. Appropriation replaces desires that make us partial with impartiality that makes us desire-less. Unfortunately, what users of the strategy may fail to acknowledge is people’s desire to desire. Though it is safe to say that appropriation will be around for a while (mostly because of the ways that new technologies facilitate the strategy), it is also possible to predict that it will be impossible to counter the globalization of commodity culture through appropriation, because the relationship that it produces to culture is too disengaged. The task that presents itself to cultural producers (artists

24 ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY A well-known example of the strategy “appropriation” is Wang Guangyi’s paintings, in which the proletariat heroes of the Cultural Revolution find themselves promoting Coca-Cola, Time Magazine, laptops, or Walt Disney. His style ironically combines the propagandist vocabulary of 1970s Cultural Revolution-era graphics with the readily identifiable logos and products of Western culture. Wang began his Great Criticism series of large-scale paintings in 1990. One irony of Wang’s appropriation of materialist Western imagery is that the success of his art has catapulted Wang himself from the poverty of his childhood growing up in Maoist China, to membership in the nouveau riche of modern capitalist China.

Figure 1.2 A Sotheby’s art dealer presents “Kodak,” a 1997 painting by Wang Guangyi from his Great Criticism series at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong during 2006. At the time of the sale, the painting was expected to bring between one and two million dollars. The artist’s best-known work is The Great Criticism series, begun in 1990. Each painting in this series is marked with a Western brand. One irony is that his painting style and commentary on the collision of capitalist and Marxist cultures is now a brand that fetches high prices at auctions. © Photo by Paul Hilton/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Reproduced with permission.

ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY 25 and designers), then, is to resituate desire/engagement in an intercultural context of globalization. We know that cultural production based solely upon economic needs often has the effect of hollowing existing cultural traditions of their meaning. Is this the inevitable consequence of intercultural processes in art? Or are there emerging bases for a realignment of the relationship between art and culture?

Conclusion In summary, there are several ways of framing the relationship between art and culture. An analytical view isolates the components of culture and explores the relationship between these components. Thus, the various elements of aesthetic systems interact to form a gestalt, and aesthetic systems interact with other cultural systems such as political, economic, and kinship systems to form a total integrated cultural whole. A second meaning of culture refers to values that should be pursued: culture as something positive to maintain or acquire. The distinction between these two views of culture needs to be kept in mind so that our discussions about art and culture improve in clarity, but there are relationships between the two meanings as well. Cultural relativism holds that values are context dependent. Relativism is best suited for explaining cross-cultural differences in aesthetic judgment. A universal approach holds that certain values that guide aesthetic judgment are part of all aesthetic experience. Universalism is best suited for explaining cross-cultural similarities in aesthetic judgment. Rather than canceling each other out, we live and think between the poles of the relative and the absolute. Each pole helps us qualify and understand the other. A reason for keeping our minds open to the possibility of aesthetic universals is that people routinely make aesthetic judgments about art from other cultures. Collectively, people may apply notions of quality and complexity cross culturally on a regular basis. A primary value of studying the art of other cultures is that it has reflexive value for an understanding of one’s own. Reflexivity is an important dynamic in cross-cultural studies and is probably more important than the development of comparative frameworks. Reflexivity refers to the concept that the action of investigating the cultural Other reflects back upon one’s understanding of one’s own culture. For instance, a reflexive approach has the capacity to help one broaden one’s perception of what may be considered an aesthetic expression. Because a broad range of practices can have aesthetic import in other cultures, this helps open one to a broader range of practices within one’s own culture. Hybridity is a term that refers to the changing nature of intercultural processes. Hybridity is the result of a broader set of processes known as cultural diffusion, which includes cultural incorporation, assimilation, and integration. The last of these involves the synthesis of more than one cultural tradition. Hybridity refers to the character of particular expressive forms that emerge from this cultural synthesis. However, hybridity also has valuative implications; it is not solely an analytical term. Sometimes hybridity is considered as evidence of cultural homogenization, which may

26 ART, CULTURE, AND HYBRIDITY include processes variably referred to as Westernization, Americanization, globalization, or “McDonaldization.” For many critics, cultural homogenization is a negative process. For others, hybridity is the product of mutual interaction, and a preferable way to view intercultural processes in contrast to models such as “the exotic Other.” Hybridity has emerged as a concern, because the relationship between art and culture now occurs in a global economic context. Culture has acquired a transnational meaning. Art is no longer bounded by local cultures, because virtually all art is exportable in one form or another. The intercultural is the culture of our time.

Chapter 2

PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS

P

admiration of the virtues of cultures at an earlier stage of development. It can also involve the representation or expression of these virtues through the arts. An important facet of primitivism in the twentieth century was its relationship to the emergence of modernism. Modernism involves formal, technological and cultural “progress” that may create a sense of distance from the past. Primitivism, by rooting expression in primal or original impulses, potentially counters the dislocation that occurs within modernism. More generally, primitivism can be a source of ideas that contribute to stylistic change in the arts within any period. Primitivism was a major intercultural impulse in modernism, but it is not limited to that period. The attraction to the primitive remains an important aspect of culture today and was also strong during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before the rise of modernism. The relationship of modern people to “the primitive” depends on “our” own conceptual frameworks as much as it depends upon the direct experience of “Others.” In primitivism, “we,” as a culture, envision and create the Other that we need. In this chapter I discuss two distinct concepts of the Other and some reasons behind the attraction to the primitive Other as a creative impulse. This chapter is not a criticism of primitivism as much as an exploration of the motivations that underlie it. Our behavior towards those we see as primitives depends on how we understand things, not necessarily the concepts and behaviors that are accepted within that other culture. As modern peoples, we determine the aesthetic context within which we interpret primitive art; this interpretation probably does not match the maker’s intentions. Primitivism, then, is another example of the idea that we study intercultural processes, in part, to inform our own vocabulary and ideas. We are engaged in a reflexive activity—translating and comparing “their” terms to “ours”—in order to understand and evaluate our own relationship to the world. RIMITIVISM INVOLVES THE

28 PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS The us/them distinction that I have drawn to help explain the reflexive value of primitivism may trouble some readers. Later in the chapter I will discuss reasons why this distinction may be troublesome by placing the concept of primitivism in the context of the idea of “Otherness.” Examples of primitivism as a pattern of cultural interaction can be specified historically and culturally. For instance, Europeans of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seemed particularly fascinated by the primitive. Paul Gauguin has emerged as the prime example, but other artists such as the German Expressionists were strongly drawn to the primitive. In addition to its specific historical formations, primitivism can be thought of as a general principle of cultural interaction that began early in the history of human experience and continues in the present. Even today, primitivism continues to infuse popular culture. Many films have focused on central figures who are primitives in inevitable conflict with modern civilization: for instance, Forrest Gump plays the primitive alter-ego to Lieutenant Dan who has been destroyed by the ambition, pride, and drugs of contemporary society; similarly Jodie Foster’s role in Nell and the character created by Billy Bob Thornton in Slingblade are expressions of the primitive in conflict with modern culture. Marianna Torgovnick writes that the roots of Westerners’ relationship to the primitive are in the Homerian Odyssey.1 Travel in all time periods serves as an education into the possibilities of social life, and, quite often, the cultures that travelers encounter may seem more primitive than their own in some way. Primitivism is not just a literary or philosophical idea. It affects behavior: The concepts associated with primitivism influence peoples’ actions toward each other.

Defining primitivism The primitive is tied to that which is spontaneous, intuitive, simple, untrained, and natural. These qualities can be paired with opposites that indicate “developed” or modern cultures: planned, rational, complex, trained, and artificial (because of the impact of technology). Historically, the primitive was linked to other polarities, such as Christian versus heathen, that have been used to describe cultural others. Thus, qualities that appear attractive in the modern age—spontaneity, intuitiveness, simplicity—may have appeared unattractive in earlier periods when paired with these other polarities such as heathen. In this more critical view, simplicity is viewed as merely simplistic, intuitive as irrational, spontaneous as disorganized, and so on. Interestingly, the attraction for the primitive is similar to the attraction of Taoism for Western artists as discussed in Chapter 8. In Taoism simplicity is equated with profundity. Similarly, the primitive is associated with that which is more original or essential and, therefore, more profound than the complex, but sometimes artificial or contrived, theories of contemporary culture. However, this tendency to admire the primitive as “simple” may not reflect the reality of primitive peoples. The pioneer German-born American anthropologist, Franz Boas, argued for the diversity and complexity of primitive cultures, claiming they are not “simple” at all. In an extreme

PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS 29 formulation of the idea of primitive simplicity, the primitive is unreflective, even specifically preliterate. For this reason, Taoists themselves would not be considered primitive but the philosophy is primitivist; it hearkens back to a “way of being” associated with uncorrupted, natural simplicity, but is a literate, reflexive philosophy in its own right. With its emphasis on that which is essential or basic to human existence, primitivism relates to attempts at understanding the origins of the human mind and the human condition itself. Primitive implies that which is basic in origin—origins of mind, of social relations, of ties to nature—in a way that is different than what we usually mean by “original” today. Here, original means having to do with the first or primal state, as opposed to originally innovative in an individual sense. The idea of primitive society as an ideal was encapsulated in the phrase “Noble Savage,” which first appeared in the poet Dryden’s heroic play, The Conquest of Granada (1672). The concept received a philosophical underpinning with the arguments of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, though he never used the term Noble Savage. Rousseau was a French philosopher and critic of Enlightenment philosophical optimism. He did not agree that progress in societal institutions and processes would improve human conduct. Rather, he felt that humans, who are good by nature, are more likely to be corrupted by society and its institutions than to be improved by them. His argument was laid out in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men (1755), in which he claims that humans in their state of origin were independent, content, self-sufficient, equal, and free. Property is the first institution that separates people from their state of origin. It is the basis of the founding of civil society, but the earth itself belongs to no one. Rousseau had a positive view of the original state of humans, but also felt that a more ideally organized civil society would preserve that which is good about humans in their state of origin. Western artists attracted to the primitive attempt to show the “mind”—the basic structures of thought and emotion—working in a purer form. In an essay from the catalog for the primitivism show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1984, Kirk Varnedoe wrote that Gauguin’s primitivist works demonstrate his interest in basic structures of thought.2 Similarly, for anthropologists the primitive mind has sometimes stood for the universal human mind.3 To have the term original, we must have the complementary idea of development from an original state. Embedded in the notion of the primitive, then, is the idea of progress. When viewing the art of other cultures, primitivism is an imposed term that presupposes the idea of evolution. Gauguin’s art attempted to invert the values of “technique” and “progress,” but does inversion really undermine the assumption of progress? Primitivism may be a way of valuing, even reifying, the origin of human experience, but this does not necessarily undermine the values attached to progress. Gauguin, for instance, never became and never could become primitive; he was a primitivist. In reifying that which is basic, primitive techniques downplay technical discipline and emphasize the rough and unpolished. This serves to counterbalance the over-polished, slick-surfaced character of modernity. This inversion of one aspect

30 PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS of modernity also has personal implications; directness or roughness of technique can be a sign of not disguising one’s thoughts and emotions. Through directness of technique, primitivism taps that which is primary in each of our own psyches. Just as primitivism is tied to an idea of progress, it is accompanied by a sense of loss. Often, primitive pictures such as Gauguin’s Savage Poems include a sense of the archaic, of old wisdom that has been lost and is impossible to regain. The implication is: That which has been lost is more valuable than that which has been retained. Primitivist art attempts to reveal the most valued parts of our selves by chipping away the crusted layers of “civilization.” In this sense, primitivism acts as a critique of one’s own culture. This self-critique has a long history. The idea of the Noble Savage, of people living in a utopian state of peaceful harmony with nature, is rooted in an aversion to civilization. Laws, competition, and property, are all social products that lead to envy and corruption, not satisfaction. In this view, the evolution of property, status, or technology is not natural. These result from historical processes that have distanced humans from their innately happy states of origin. Many false values follow from the social competition that occurs in groups of ever increasing size: the desire for fame, status, glamour, and luxury. In some sense, then, it is the scale of modern societies that distances us from our original satisfied states of mind.

Figure 2.1 Paul Gauguin, Savage Poems, 1896. © Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, USA/Bequest from the Collection of Maurice Wertheim, Class 1906/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS 31 Figure 2.2 Henri J.F. Rousseau, Tropical Forest: Battling Tiger and Buffalo, 1908. Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

Something always seems to be beyond one’s immediate grasp in the attraction to the primitive. This can be seen in the art of Henri Rousseau, who painted images of nature as an unattainable ideal. Unlike Gauguin, Rousseau himself was a “true primitive,” a civil worker who had never received formal training as an artist. Though he was called the douanier—customs officer—he really was not. He worked for the municipal toll service of Paris. Before he became a painter, he tragically lost his wife and seven of his nine children. He painted in poverty, sometimes begging by playing his violin in the streets in order to buy food. Originally scorned, he was later greatly admired by the modernists of the early twentieth century. Rousseau’s dream-like images of nature and humans in nature are more symbolic than real. The artist was both a primitive (an untrained artist) and a primitivist (attracted to natural, social, and psychological states of origin). He received most of his ideas from visits to botanical gardens and from postcards of faraway places. Rousseau liked to glorify nature and found within that glorification an enchanted world of his own. Nature appears as an unattainable ideal: as an apparition from a dream. But his dreamlike images of nature and humans in nature inspired the early modernists. Rousseau had developed his own pictorial language to express this magical world. And through his obsessively exact pictorial language, he made subjects appear archetypal and timeless. However, it was the way that his pictures compelled belief in imaginary worlds that most impressed the early modernists. Because of the power of his art, he became a cult figure with the new avantgarde. The French critic and poet, Guillaume Apollinaire, organized a banquet in his honor in 1908 that was attended by many of the key members of the avant-garde. It is said of Rousseau that when he painted a subject such as the jungle, he had such a strong sense of the reality of it that he sometimes took fright and, trembling all over, had to open the window to steady himself.

32 PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS More recently, the anti-technological, communal values of 1960s-style countercultures are an example of modern primitivist movements.4 Much of the impulse behind the original sixties countercultural movement was a distaste for the status quo. But once members of that generation became members of the professions that they had criticized, the new communal modes of living mostly evaporated. Like the Romantics in the century that preceded them, the countercultural members of the sixties displayed a “yearning” and energy that grew out of an aspiration toward an unattainable ideal. For the most part, sixties communalism turned out to be an unattainable utopian ideal; few communes from that decade survive today. The primitivist presence in art indicates that people will always seek out difference as a way to understand themselves. Oppositions—simple/complex, rational/ irrational, natural/artificial, and spontaneous/planned—actually reveal connections. These are paired terms that reveal the categories that order our sense of who we are. Each civilization invents the primitive it needs as a compensation for itself. In discussing Gauguin, Kirk Varnedoe used terms such as compensation and projection; he implied that primitivism derives from very basic psychological as well as social processes. According to Varnedoe, Gauguin went to the South Seas not to pillage— to exploit Tahitian art as a source of “colour”—but to find himself. Was Gauguin’s stay in Tahiti part of a process of self-realization? Or do primitive works reflect exploitation and misquoting of Tahitian life and beliefs? As Varnedoe noted, Gauguin’s artistic advances actually depended more on Western sources than those of the South Seas. For instance, the color harmonies in “Spirit of the Dead” draw upon Gauguin’s formal experimentation in France more than any motifs he found in Tahiti. Gauguin’s own primitivism actually started in Europe when he began painting the peasantry of the Brittany region of France. “Progressive” members of a culture may seek out the primitive in the folk elements of their own cultural milieu in addition to searching exotic locales. Even so, his experience in Tahiti was integral to his continued development as an artist. Because the primitive is so tied up with one’s sense of self, it almost never includes a “pure” or objective representation of the Other. (Of course, it can be argued that all representation is biased in some way.) For instance, Gauguin’s exposure to Oceanic art was slight and came about through photos, books, and museums, more than through formal ethnographic study. Does primitivism, then, depend upon a kind of subjective intuition, another kind of knowing distinct from objective science? This is not to say that the primitivist impulse is antithetical to science. Even scientific knowledge may begin in an intuitive sense of difference rooted in an attraction to the Other. Rather than acting in opposition to one another, the aesthetic and scientific approaches to the primitive are distinct, but they share mutual points of departure. Even so, because Western culture has relied heavily upon rationality—even to the point of scientism (a near-religious faith in science)—the idea that the primitive is founded on a different, alternative knowledge structure may be a way of understanding its powerful appeal for those who feel alienated by the pervasiveness of scientism.

PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS 33

Figure 2.3 Hermann Max Pechstein, Three Nudes, 1911. © Pechstein Hamburg/ Toekendorf/DACS, 2010. Reproduced with permission.

In viewing the art of Gauguin and others such as the German Expressionist, Max Pechstein, it becomes clear that primitivism in the early modernist period was tied to gender relations. The representation of uncensored sensuality is a major part of primitivism. In the modern imagination, the primitive exists in a sexualized field in which there is no fear of the body, a marked contrast to the strong division between body and mind that has been a part of Western culture since the days of early Christianity. Through this unfettered embrace of the body, the primitive may represent fearful associations with long repressed parts of ourselves. To the degree that rationality, or thought, has been associated with males in the Western tradition, the female often stands for the irrational and has been readily associated with or substituted for the primitive. The aloof, intellectual dignity of the white man is contrasted with the passions of the primitive—sensual, childlike, irrational, and dangerous—stereotypes extended toward women as well as to members of non-European cultures.

If primitivism is tied to basic structures of thought, and not just to the question of stylistic influences, this allows us to see how primitivism is tied to the general activity of “Othering.” Through modern primitivism, new attitudes are brought to bear upon encounters with the cultural Other. Primitivism, then, is one example of

34 PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS Othering: the ways that people represent and understand those who are different from themselves. What do we understand “Otherness” to mean? Does the term refer to any difference between people? Is a sense of Otherness something worth maintaining, or is it something we should do away with? In my view, one’s answer to the last two questions will depend upon the definition of Otherness that one adopts. The rest of this chapter outlines two competing theories of Otherness, each of which posits a different sense of the role and value of experiencing the other.

Otherness: a critical view The first of these views of Othering is critical. This view acknowledges that the experience of the other depends upon specific historical conditions of the relationship between cultures that are rooted in economic, religious, ethnic, or political competition and, therefore, conflict. In this view, discourses of the Other establish relationships of power. Arguments such as those of Edward Said (1979) and James Clifford (1988) clearly locate our sense of Otherness in a sense of conflict, disorder, and emergence. Clifford’s approach is realist; Otherness is experienced through very real historical events, often conflictual in nature. Stereotyping plays a central role in the critical, social view of Otherness. Out of conditions of social conflict emerge highly reductionistic representations of the Other, stereotypes. Stereotyping reduces the image of the Other to simple, often damaging identifying characteristics. It is the “fixing” of the image of the other into manageable, reductionist patterns that is the harmful part of stereotyping. Representations of cultural Others by outsiders tend to be iconic and reductionistic. Both of these characteristics lend themselves to stereotyping. By iconic, I mean the images that will be exploited in stereotyping are those laden with emotional and value connotations beyond their physical appearance. These images communicate beliefs and values related to the larger culture’s attitudes about the Other. By reductionistic, I refer to those images that represent the essential or core elements of the outsider’s perception of the cultural Other. These are images that tend to fix a certain meaning about the Other in the minds of the audience. It is in this sense that the image’s associations may be intertwined with a stereotypical understanding of the culture. For example toys, books, advertisements, and TV programs directed at children continue to reinforce existing stereotypes of American Indians. Within contexts of social conflict, this reduction of the Other to stereotypical formulations may be strategic and very damaging. We tend to denature or dehumanize collective symbols identified with the other. This process is familiar in war, where the enemy is either represented symbolically as an animal or simply as a strategic foe, who has mostly been dehumanized. In conditions of conflict, the problem of the Other is solved by objectifying it and thereby dehumanizing it. The Other, with its relation to our own inferior personality functions, is often simply too emotionally touchy to deal with directly. (Inferior functions are those that are not directly accessible to the conscious mind,

PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS 35 Figure 2.4 “Jap Trap,” propaganda poster (20th century). © Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Courtesy National Archives. Reproduced with permission.

but which are related to powerful unconscious processes that may unexpectedly “erupt” into conscious life.) Instead, the image of the Other is fixed so that it becomes more manageable. Through a process of projection, “fixing the image” of the Other allows us to negotiate difficult parts of our own selves; fixing the image of “them” entails, in addition to the conscious agenda, negotiating with parts of “us.” We see, then, that in contexts of antagonistic intergroup relations, outsiders (nongroup members) often stereotypically represent a group’s identifying characteristics. This ideological tendency to reduce outsider groups to particular, stylized images and roles forms the core of political identification. (I am using the term political in the sense of group persuasion processes.) Fixed representations of the Other are tied to group identity formation and ideologically based persuasion. The Other is a representation. Politically, in order to have a strong sense of what constitutes “us,” we must have an equally strong sense of “them.” This can be achieved as identifying “them” according to a few strong identity markers. Within contexts of social conflict, this reduction of the Other to stereotypical formulations based upon oppositional identity-pairs such as Aryan and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, white and black, or worker and capitalist, may be strategic and very damaging. The potential for damage is where the charge that a harmful dualism is inherent in Otherness arises. The whole point of the concept “savage,” which has run a course throughout American art,

36 PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS literature, and film, is that it acts as a dualistic counterpoint to the self-perception of oneself as civilized. Fixing the image of the Other as savage justifies violent action. In recent times, the concept of savagery applies equally well to American attitudes about Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, or Hamas. By extension, not only are Muslims viewed as ruthless—and outside of the “Christian” moral code—but also as heathens. Enemies fix the image of the Other as a particular object of hate so that the enemy becomes more manageable psychologically, and worthy of “removal.” More recently, members of the right wing have attempted to demonize Barack Obama by portraying him as a fundamentalist Muslim or as a dangerous socialist “Joker.” Another way of managing the Other is to appropriate it. When the artist Jimmie Durham talks about Americans “playing Indian” or claiming native ancestry, he is discussing the appropriation of the Other by mainstream, non-Indian Americans. In this scenario, the settlers “claim the discourse” on Indians by controlling the broad linguistic frame of reference. Classic texts such as Robert Berkhofer’s The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (1979) demonstrate that narratives about white and Native relationships have been woven throughout the entire history of North America. From the colonial Puritan’s tales of captivity by Natives to Wild West era dime-store accounts of the savage warrior to today’s “green” Indian, the stories told about Natives have reflected the needs and desires

Figure 2.5 A poster depicting President Barack Obama as “The Joker” from the film The Dark Knight. Source: Anonymous.

PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS 37 of non-Native society much more than they reflect Native realities. The problem of the Other is solved by fitting it into a controlling narrative, especially in persuasive forms such as ads and editorial cartoons, but also in the fine and popular arts. Even the museum exhibition can function as a controlling narrative about the cultural Other. This first approach to the Other, then, is highly critical of the potentially negative effects of “othering” in visual culture. But, how does this critique of Otherness tie more specifically to contemporary art? Sometimes artists will engage in a form of self-Othering in order to become more noted in the artworld or more desirable in the marketplace. Jimmie Durham notes that many Native artists today still “use” an individual identity that is dependent on stereotypes in the process of creating art.5 He points to the problem of Indian-flavored art, the strategic use of the past in order to generate a sense of “authenticity” or Indian-ness, in the eyes of viewers. For Durham, this use of identifying and economically beneficial markers amounts to an objectification of one’s own identity for cultural purposes. By contrast, in his own work Durham employs irony, humor, and subversion to invert commonly held views. For instance, in his sculpture Malinche, Durham represents the famous historical native woman in a modern bra; her form is eviscerated and her expression is hollow and withdrawn. Malinche had played an active role in the conquest of Mexico by serving as Cortes’ advisor and interpreter in addition to being his mistress. Portraying

Figure 2.6 Prince Albert Tobacco advertisement poster depicting Chief Lean-Wolf. Through Othering, Indians are converted into commodities; the market isolates (and controls) Indians as cultural Others through commercial processes. There is a long history of this strategy in North American culture, as in the long-term use of the images of Native Americans to market tobacco products. © Swim Ink 2, LLC/ CORBIS. Reproduced with permission.

38 PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS Malinche as at once traitor and mother of the new mixed-race Mexican people, Durham’s work captures this ambivalence between European and Indian identification. Durham attempts to position his art outside the discourse formed by the master narratives of tribal identity. Though Cherokee, he does not even claim tribal identity for himself in order to enforce this outsider status. Durham seems to be criticizing the process of “self-Othering” in art, in which artists use authenticity as a commodity to be negotiated in an intercultural marketplace. In addition to the use of the images of Indians for commercial purposes by outsiders, Native Americans themselves have sometimes converted their identity into a commercially valuable product. A good example of this kind of identitycareerism is found in the art of R. C. Gorman. In his work, Indianness seems to be valued as a product to be sold. From a Marxist perspective—the ultimate basis of this socially critical view of Othering—the conversion of identity into a commercial product is inherently dehumanizing. (Dehumanization was the central problem that Marx himself sought to address.) This critical orientation toward self-Othering implies that human creativity has been reduced to product and profit, processes that cut us off from fuller self-development. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, primitivism has yielded a crop of commodities, a cornucopia of “ethnic arts” exported for Western consumption. Primitivism as a form of Othering operates against a backdrop of social and economic facts. It is not just a carnival of celebration of difference and hybridity; rather, Othering entails real costs on a global level, and personal costs too. We have noted that the problem of the Other may be “solved” by reducing the representation of the Other in order to control it; by putting the Other into a broad frame of reference (e.g., dualisms such as savagery and civilization) or by converting the identity of the Other into a product to be marketed. Another way to “solve” the problem of the Other is through aestheticizing it, yet another form of appropriation. The presentation of the works of cultural Others as “art,” especially the art of tribal peoples, is a relatively recent phenomenon that gathered general acceptance in the West only during the twentieth century. Before that time, works by tribal peoples were most commonly viewed as ethnographic artifacts, not as “art.” The conversion of general items of material culture into art takes place through de-contextualization and re-contextualization. Both processes relate to the practice of display. Most objects are created for specific functions or contexts. For instance, a bowl used for ritual feasts may hold food that is symbolically important. Taken out of context and displayed among works of art, the same bowl might be admired for its proportions, its surface embellishment, the quality of its craftsmanship, and so on. It is not that these factors would have been ignored in the original setting. Rather, the process of re-contextualization foregrounds aesthetic and technical aspects of an object, and the object loses its performative dimension, which was primary to the original intent of the maker. Does that mean that objects should only be displayed ethnographically—for their value as records of an ethnographic present and in relationship to context? In reality,

PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS 39 both ethnographic and aesthetic displays are marginalizing because of the underlying dimension of temporality: the object becomes fixed in the past and, for the ordinary viewer, appears detached from present realities. Ethnographic knowledge may deepen an aesthetic presentation of objects, but it does not erase the sense of difference (an object of a different time, a different culture) inherent in the practice of display. A sense of us/them emerges from the dimension of time. Temporality can create a sense of hierarchy between cultures: historicizing Others often marginalizes them. Within the critical view of Othering, we can add processes of aesthetic and historical display to the list of processes that create a sense of us/them distinctions. Such distinctions are inherently ripe for exploitation.

Otherness: the idealist view A contrasting understanding of Otherness views it as an inherent and positive aspect of human experience. This theory posits the Other as a universal, innate knowledge structure, one that allows for the possibility of different ways of coming to know the world. The sense of Other is the precondition for the creation of any new knowledge, because the Other equals the expression of a possible world. In this view, people will always seek out difference as a way to understand themselves. Otherness is a fundamental condition of our knowing and communicating the world; it structures our processes of perception, knowledge, and representation. This underlying structure of Otherness allows us to explore and express possibilities beyond those that we already know. This theory, associated with the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, is more idealist in its conception; that is, it follows from a European tradition of philosophical idealism that focuses on understanding organizing structures of the mind. Deleuze proposes an alternative understanding of Otherness as a “structure of the perceptual field,” a condition of the organization of perception in general that he calls the a priori Other.6 “The Other is the existence of the encompassed possible . . . In short, the Other, as structure is the expression of a possible world: it is the expressed, grasped as not yet existing outside of that which expresses it.” 7 Otherness is the structure that allows for the distinction of consciousness and its object—not the fixed object of consciousness but the structure that allows consciousness to discern its object. Deleuze’s view of the Other as the basis for the way in which we “inscribe the possibilities” of experiences directly contrasts with the “fixing” of the image of the Other (the fixed object of consciousness) that often occurs in intergroup relations. In an idealist sense, the highly reductionistic representations of the Other, or stereotypes that occur most frequently in cases of cultural conflict, negatively constrain or disavow the structure of the Other. Stereotyping is a restriction of the other that undermines the larger and richer experience of Otherness. Trin T. Minh Ha notes that this reduced sense of the other is tied to situations of conflict.8 Processes of stereotyping may even lead to an attempt to destroy the Other. An example of

40 PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS the destruction of the larger sense of the Other is found in Durham’s discussion of the invisibility of Indians within the larger American culture. Contemporary peoples may refer to Indians as living in the past. The Indian is a museum object; indigenous peoples are displayed today in museums for non-native audiences, but living peoples may be invisible. Yet when differences are acknowledged rather than suppressed, they actually reveal connections and therefore provide a structure that leads to new knowledge. Each civilization invents the Other that it needs, both as a compensation for itself, and as a way to point to new possibilities of understanding. The theory that Otherness is a condition of our knowing the world acknowledges the common human experience of subject and object, self and Other. This process of discovering connections through differences shapes relationships between members of all cultures, whether these cultures are in conflict or not. Can you imagine humans without Others?

Figure 2.7 Maori chief with tattooed face. © Bettmann/CORBIS. Reproduced with permission.

Figure 2.8 Modern tribal-style tattoo. © 2008 Von R. Glitschka. Reproduced with permission.

When we view the photograph of a traditional Maori chief alongside contemporary images of tattoo designs, it is easy to see that the nineteenth-century fascination with the primitive continues today. The creator of this modern tattoo design was clearly aware of “tribal style” as specific source for his designs.

PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS 41 We can see, then, that in this second theory Otherness refers to very basic psychological, as well as social, aspects of intercultural processes in art. An attempt at applying this theory to art historical explanation is found in accounts of the move toward modernism, a period that saw the opening of Western artists to Africa and Oceania. The Paris Exhibition of 1889 displayed arts of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, and James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, of 1890, a study of ancient and folk magic and religion, contributed to the West’s opening up to possibilities inherent in other cultures. Like the arts of Japan, which had only begun to influence the West in the 1860s, these arts and myths were unknown out of their own regions until the late nineteenth century. In this context of the move toward modernism, the “primitive” in art referred to abstraction and simplicity of form. It is interesting that this attraction took place during a time when there was a concern over increased industrialism and materialism in the West. The rise of modern primitivism, then, reflects the attraction of industrial peoples to the art of those who are pre-industrial and preliterate. Primitivism refers to the tendency to admire the virtues of earlier or less materially developed societies and to represent these virtues in art. We have seen how it is linked to other polarities—

Figure 2.9 Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, c. 1771. Ironically, artists such as the American, Benjamin West, who depicted the “noble savage” did so using poses associated with European classical sources. © Private Collection/Phillips, Fine Art Auctioneers, New York, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library. Reproduced with permission.

42 PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS heathen vs. Christian, natural vs. artificial, irrational vs. rational—that may be harmful. But primitivism as an example of Otherness has as its basis a critique of one’s own culture. Critical reflexivity as a motive for primitivism has a long history in the West. Rousseau’s fondness for the idea of humans who had not been spoiled by the West was rooted in an antipathy to Western civilization and especially its institutions. Utopian visions of man’s original happiness serve as a foil for his strong critical analysis of inequality and injustice in Europe. Whether in contexts of competition and conflict or those of peaceful cooperation, people will always seek out differences as a way to understand themselves. Differences—even oppositions—actually reveal connections. These are, after all, paired terms. How does this theory of the Other pertain to art or visual communication? The study of indigenous or subcultural expression is a study of the Other. Comparative aesthetics involves an investigation of the Other. Otherness is implied in the term comparison: we are comparing cultures that are somehow alike but which still differ. Thus, we cannot avoid the issue of Otherness in intercultural studies. Because Otherness implies reflexivity, through a study of the Other we can explore how we structure our understanding of the world through aesthetic processes. Based upon the two contrasting theories, one possible starting point is to ask: Does our visual communication or art structure the world in a way that allows for the Other as possibility or does it fix the image of the Other? As an “outsider” to other cultures, my interest in non-Western art is reflexive because it reflects on the way that I orient myself to the world in general. Indigenous or subcultural art represents possibilities for visually structuring the world that may change my own visual experience of the world. The Other represents alternative ways of knowing the world visually or aesthetically that may change my own knowledge processes. The real question in representation is not who is behind the camera or holding the brush but how that person visually structures his or her perception of the world.9 It is worthwhile asking, does our relationship to artistic media point to alternative possibilities for structuring and knowing our world? The loss of the Other as structure is dangerous. What is meant by the loss of Other as structure? This loss, which occurs through the disavowal of differences, amounts to what Deleuze terms “Othercide,” a murder of the possible.10 Framed in this way, Difference or Otherness is essential. Othercide is dangerous at psychological and interpersonal levels as well as intercultural levels. According to Lacan, perversion is caused when desire is displaced from the object.11 For instance, the pervert disavows the difference between the sexes. (In this theory, we must understand perversion on the basis of a structure, not just a behavior or series of behaviors.) The pervert, then, lacks the structure-Other. Real Others can now only play the role of bodiesvictims. Otherness structures consciousness, processes of identity formation, knowledge, sexuality and communication. Rather than being a mechanistic, dualistic characteristic of group relations, it is the condition that allows us to reflexively perceive possibility and to create cultural change.

PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS 43 There are, then, implications of non-Western aesthetic processes for intercultural relations. Image making and other expressive processes used by cultural Others may motivate non-members to reconsider the way that they frame the world through image and narrative. The acknowledgment of difference is the basis of creativity and new knowledge. Yet, as James Clifford has pointed out, entering the modern world is often assumed to entail the loss of distinct histories. 12 The cultural distinctness required to create a sense of Otherness seems lost or muddled in the climate of cultural incest, or to use the more positive term, hybridity, that characterizes modernity. As the boundaries between independent cultures seem to dissolve, a feeling of lost authenticity pervades the modern era. Can group identity, formerly attached to distinct, bounded ways of life, survive in an era when the homogenizing effects of mass media seem ubiquitous? An underlying theme of this chapter is the necessity of acknowledging and experiencing the Other in an era when visual communication processes seem to undermine the very possibility of maintaining cultural distinctness. Yet, that experience of the Other cannot be reductionistic, stereotyping, or touristic in nature. Historically, Western painting, photography, film, and video have reinforced a touristic relation with non-Western peoples by emphasizing exotic aspects of their cultures. The danger of these touristic representations of the exotic Other is that they rest upon a limited number of rigid preconceptions rather than a full, rich understanding of a culture. As in much fiction film, touristic or otherwise, exotic images of the Other are romanticist; they express a longing for the past rather than creating a structure in which the Other represents possible futures. This is not to say that the past is an inappropriate subject matter, but that the representation of the past through limited preconceptions is another way of fixing the image of the Other. “‘Culturecide’ occurs through appropriating an image of aboriginals, then filtering it through the grid of a manufactured history.”13 We destroy the Other when we appropriate and process its past. These processes of touristic imaging may also influence the self-perception of peoples in other cultures, resulting in an assimilation of a romanticized foreign aesthetic. However, in order to know this we must more fully understand local ethno-aesthetics and be wary of transferring Western critical constructs such as “romantic” to non-Western processes of representation. Ethno-aesthetics may contain moral and spiritual dimensions not typically found in recent Western aesthetic theory. Given the limitations of Western commercial and touristic representations, what forms involve a different structuring of the Other as possibility? The most obvious answer is those expressions that are indigenous to a particular culture. Indigenous forms may reflect their maker’s attempt to preserve information about threatened ways of life, as well as addressing contemporary social realities from an advocacy point of view. In indigenous expressions, members of a culture are knowing, active subjects rather than the object of outsiders’ knowledge. We find in indigenous expressions a more personalized view of the world, often as seen through the eyes of charismatic spokespersons and visionaries. I am using the term “indigenous” here

44 PRIMITIVISM AND OTHERNESS to refer to expressions that are native to any culture, not solely to refer to aboriginal peoples. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the Other as a structure of the perceptual world is that it is integral to change; it “expresses the possibility of a frightening world which cannot be developed without the one preceding it passing away.” The other represents a passing away of a past world—the self is made of this past world: “If the other is a possible world, I am a past world.”14 Identity is based in the past; Otherness expresses possible futures. Thus, understanding the Otherness of a different culture may be threatening. As discussed earlier, this fear may lead to “Othercide,” a reduction of alternative ways of viewing the world. Given the centralizing, rather than localizing, tendencies of media processes, the risk of Othercide is very real. If media consist of centralizing processes and institutions that homogenize varied “ways of seeing,” then the Other will be collapsed into the subject.

Conclusion When studying expressions from other cultures, then, we shouldn’t primarily ask whether there is a style, an outlook, or a “code” that is characteristic of that culture’s approach. That approach would tend toward reductionism. A more nuanced approach is to ask whether styles and codes emerge from social processes and worldviews that point to alternative possibilities for structuring and knowing our world. To understand expressions from within the perspective of members of another culture is a form of Othering that creates the possibility of an expansive understanding of one’s own. This involves an effort to transcend the limits inherent in stereotypical and touristic views of Others in favor of an empathetic engagement with difference.

Chapter 3

COLONIALISM

C

by which a country or other central power maintains foreign colonies, especially in order to benefit economically from the relationship to the colony. However, the self-appointed right to maintain colonies is often justified by moral, not economic arguments. This moral aspect of self-justification brings us to the heart of our question: how does colonialism involve and affect art? There is often a linkage between ethics and aesthetics. The moral selfjustification of colonialist rhetoric will often have an aesthetic component. How are aesthetic systems tied to colonialist economic relationships and especially to the justificatory rhetoric of colonialism? The relevance of this question for art created during the height of European colonialism is obvious and that period was lengthy. But the question of colonialism is also relevant to art created today. Whether in the guise of globalism, post-colonialism, or neo-colonialism, the impact of the colonial period remains strong. In addition, with respect to the status of today’s indigenous peoples, questions remain whether a latent form of colonialism, internal colonialism, continues to this day. In its application to aesthetic expression, colonialism is often revealed in the linkage between power and representation. Who has the power to represent whom and to what ends? Representation is not simply an act of picturing an Other: it involves choices and assumptions made by the person who is creating the representation. Sometimes these are hidden. For instance, a photograph or drawing made by a European of an African in the late nineteenth century would have implied the following dynamics: surveyor/surveyed, researcher/researched, discoverer/ discovered. In each of these cases, who is the active “agent” in the partnership? The answer, of course, is the former. While the person making the photograph or drawing may not have viewed himself in the position of exploiting his subject, the very terms of the relationship, OLONIALISM IS THE SYSTEM

46 COLONIALISM

Figure 3.1 Émile Gorlia, Prisoners working, Belgian Congo, c. 1912. From today’s vantage point, these popular images celebrating what was perceived as “colonial achievement” reveal subtexts and meanings other than those intended by photographers and publishers or seen by viewers at the time. At the turn of the twentieth century, pictures of ivory caravans and rubber production symbolized economic success; they now imply exploitation and harsh labor practices. An image of chained prisoners, then a metaphor for colonial control over defiant populations, now shows African resistance to often abusive practices and heavy punishment for minor infractions. Similarly, photographs of road and railroad construction have become testimony to forced labor rather than visual examples of what was seen as “progress.” Source: “In and Out of Focus: Images from Central Africa, 1885–1960,” National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Available online at http://www.nmafa.si. edu/exhibits/focus/colonial.html (accessed November 27, 2009). © Émile Gorlia Collection, EEPA 1977-010018, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives. Reproduced with permission.

image-maker/represented native, have a power dynamic embedded within them that is similar to the dynamic of power that fueled the entire enterprise of colonialism. This is the way that power often works: not at conscious levels, but at the level of unconscious assumptions about others and through habitual, unquestioned patterns of action. It can be argued that power in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Most people would rather be powerful, by some measure, than powerless. So the question really becomes: what is a responsible or fair exercise of power versus one that is exploitative? In order for the exercise of power to be fair, the person who has it probably needs to possess an awareness of what constitutes its unfair use. Hidden habits

COLONIALISM 47 embedded in power relationships have to come into the open; the relationships need to be examined by both parties in the clear light of day. Based upon our earlier discussion of the fundamental impulse of humans to be drawn to the “Other,” it is unlikely that the representation of those different from oneself will cease. In order to represent well, one must learn, so that representation can become a natural and respectful outcome of the attraction to the Other. But the terms of representation can be examined and evaluated according to other motives, which may not always be based upon learning. An obvious antidote to the control of representation by colonists or their agents is that of self-representation. This would seem to be a simple and effective solution, but it is not. One problem that arises is that, by the time power relationships have shifted such that self-representation becomes a possibility, the tools of representation themselves may be derived from colonial sources. Thus, an African literature is written in French or English, an indigenous story is told on film, an old Aztec dance is performed in a museum. Whether it is a language, a medium, or an institution, the legacy of colonialism remains as a framing element in the effort at selfrepresentation. Often, the training to create self-representations in these languages, media, and institutions reflects long spells of education in schools that are much more related to the colonial system than to “traditional” modes of education. Given the level of acculturation involved in learning in Western languages, media, and institutions, how much cultural autonomy is likely to be expressed? Still, representational control is now in the locus of the member of the formerly colonized culture, so a certain amount of political agency will have been reinstated in the hands of the self-representing artist. Thus, self-representation represents a shift in power but not a “return” to pre-colonial expressive forms, as it might be easy to assume.

Historical background Colonialism was very much a part of the mindset of Europeans and North Americans during the nineteenth and immediately preceding centuries. Even though it may seem unimaginable and repugnant to many of their descendants today, it was a real social phenomenon with real consequences and so were the attitudes that led to it. Imperialist expansion through conquest, sometimes involving genocide, was a function of the significant power concentrated in Western Europe and, eventually, North America. Colonialism involved the extension of imperial practices by establishing settlements on these newly controlled lands, whereas the term “empire” implies that those lands could be managed from a home base. While a more narrow definition of the imperialist mindset refers to the extreme competition between European nations for land and resources during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the West the concept has much deeper origins in ancient Rome and Hellenistic Greece. In addition, the concept is allied with the age of exploration and the mercantile age that took place in Early Modern Europe (from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries).

48 COLONIALISM

Figure 3.2 Posters of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi and Uncle Sam. These posters representing Muammar al-Qaddafi and Uncle Sam were photographed on a wall in Libya in 1986. The US launched an air and sea raid on Libya that year in response to what it perceived as Libya’s acts of aggression. While it is tempting to think of processes such as imperialism and colonialism only in historical terms, many activists and commentators view such processes as alive and well in the present era, as is indicated by the anti-U.S. poster. Many similar images have been created in the wake of recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. © Shepard Sherbell/ CORBIS SABA. Reproduced with permission.

The desire to extend power through conquest is, of course, not exclusively European; for instance, during the thirteenth century Mongol invaders swept from the northern steppes into China. The presence of these outside occupiers triggered in the Chinese a search for all things “authentically” Chinese, which they considered a contrast to the barbarous culture of the northerners. Similarly, from the thirteenth century on, Turkic dynasties exerted control over India. And, during the sixteenth century, Mughal rulers from Central Asia formed an empire that extended from Afghanistan throughout most of northern India. Elsewhere, the Aztecs gradually migrated into the central Valley of Mexico and by the fourteenth century had established a capital, Tenochtitlan, which became the seat of an empire that survived, in part, on the basis of the brutal exacting of tribute from other Mexican peoples. By the sixteenth century another empire in the Americas, the Incan, was rivaled only by China in the size of the territory that it controlled. Much of their dominance came at the price of conquest and intimidation as well. Clearly, the desire for wealth and the attainment of land through power and conquest has not been unique to European and North American nations. We must view empire building and colonialism as

COLONIALISM 49 global phenomena. Thus, colonialism forms a necessary frame for understanding cross-cultural issues in art that is every bit as encompassing as the other major themes discussed in this book. Nor is colonialism solely the action of governments. Ordinary citizens—merchants, missionaries, explorers, scientists, soldiers, miners, trappers, fishermen, and, yes, artists—have taken part in the expansion into lands that were new, at least to them.

Figure 3.3 Tugra (Imperial Monogram) of Sulayman the Magnificent, Turkey, c. 1550–65. © Los Angeles County Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence. Reproduced with permission.

The Ottoman emperor, Suleiman the Magnificent, reigned during a golden age of literature and art (the sixteenth century). His empire extended from Russia and Iran in the East to Hungary in the West and included all of the presentday Middle East. His emphasis as a ruler was on codes of justice, but, as a poet and goldsmith himself, his rule had enormous influence in the arts. The Ottoman Empire involved a hybrid blending of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish civilizations, and its subjects included self-governing religious groups within the empire. Imperialism and colonization have been important historical processes within Islamic culture.

50 COLONIALISM It is the mindset of the people at a given time, not power in and of itself that fuels imperialism. For many in the past, greatness was associated with the accumulation of wealth. There may be many in our own time who measure their personal success by their wealth, so it is not hard to understand that this was a strong motivation in the past. With the desire for wealth as the underpinning, ideologies developed that enshrined the ideas of competition and conflict as not only justifiable but necessary for one’s individual or cultural advancement. In the nineteenth century the newest and most influential of these ideologies was nationalism, but competition between powerful forces was rampant before its emergence. Before the seventeenth century, the primary competition between powerful political forces in Europe centered on religion. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and the Crusades before, expressed the violent fervor of this competition based upon competing faiths. In the Muslim world, similar battles occurred amongst followers of competing power centers. Muslim culture was established and expanded through a series of powerful empires: the Umayyads, Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Mughals, the Safavids, and Ottomans.

Figure 3.4 Façade of Cathedral, Taxco, Mexico. Photo by the author.

COLONIALISM 51 Art, of course, played a key role in the religious wars of propaganda. The entire southern Baroque style (centered in Italy but with major variants in Austria, Germany, and Spain) is unimaginable without the underlying motive of the reassertion of Catholicism in the face of perceived Protestant heresy. Significantly, this same desire for converts led to intensive missionary activity by the Church during the latter sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Artistic expression animated this competition based upon the spread of faith. It is no accident that the centers of Mexican, Brazilian, and other Latin American cities may look more Baroque than those in Italy. While the religious competition in Europe remained intense during the seventeenth century, a new force was arising that eventually supplanted it as a basis of colonialist ideology: the modern State. It may be a surprise for some that nations, as a political formation, are fairly recent. In order to convince people to identify with a particular nation, leaders of newly formed nations depended upon myths that transcended earlier forms of social identification, such as those based upon clan, tribe, estate, city, region, principality, state, or a particular social class. The myth of the nation had to be a unifying myth and, therefore, a very powerful one. The arts have been recognized as a valuable part of this nation-forming stage. Shared aesthetic experiences that are expressed through the arts—from the celebration of verdant nature in the American landscape to the orchestrated pageantry of National Socialist Party rallies—have the power to unite diverse peoples into a uniform ideology. Consider for a moment the role of art in the formation of American national identity. American landscape painters, similar to Thoreau in his writing, focused on the innocent, unspoiled quality of the nature that they perceived in America of the nineteenth century. Through a fusion of symbolism (mostly related to atmospheric qualities of light) and an attention to naturalistic detail, they created an inviting portrait of unspoiled and resplendent nature. The romantic handling of light in landscape painting lent a moral dimension to the wildness of the nature that they found. In addition, sweeping panoramic views, painted on canvasses of ever increasing scale, conveyed the openness, the expansiveness of this “new” land. In Bierstadt’s paintings of the Rockies, for instance, space is vast, pure, open, and bathed in a golden spiritual light. This openness became a metaphor for freedom, the potentiality for free movement throughout an unbounded natural terrain. And this notion of “freedom” and unfettered movement has become a part of the American national psyche ever since. However, it was the assumption of these same painters that humans would have their impact on that landscape, and it was not long before small farms appeared in images that might previously have shown only wilderness. The colonization of the wild land, and of its original inhabitants, was viewed as an inevitable outcome of progress. In many ways, Native Americans were viewed as an element of the natural environment. Their respect for the natural world and understanding of its ecology made it seem to the new settlers like they were an extension of the land. And, if the land itself were to be conquered and converted into agriculture, then the Native way of life would have to disappear as well.

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Figure 3.5 Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada, California, 1868. © National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Reproduced with permission.

This popular painting by Bierstadt, which is one of his largest, was actually painted in Rome and toured throughout Europe before being acquired in 1873 for a family estate in New York. The painting is a composite invention rather than a representation of a particular view. Significantly, the scene was felt at the time to exemplify the perfect type of scenery that corresponded to the American ideal of nature. Bierstadt presents us with an invented but unifying ideal that helped form a national identity based upon a pristine “West” that resided in the national imagination.

We can tell that there is a certain ideology embedded in the landscape view of nature when we contrast it with arts created by Natives. Native visual arts are also deeply concerned with nature, but they do not represent nature as something “surveyable,” that is to say panoramic and expansive but separate from humans. Instead the values associated with nature are embedded within the very objects they create. For instance, the main elements of the calumet (sacred pipe) ceremony, the stem and bowl of the pipe, represent male and female and sky and earth. Joined together, there is a symbolic union of these cosmological realms. Catlinite (ironically named for a non-Native landscape painter) became the most commonly used stone for carving pipe bowls. It was seen as the congealed blood of the ancestors, and of the buffalo as well. In Native arts, we find a symbolic vocabulary about the spiritual power of nature, which is embedded in the artistic materials. An understanding of this sophisticated symbolism was not cultivated in the nineteenth century. Instead, it was the perception of Natives as “savage” that came

COLONIALISM 53 to dominate the popular imagination of the colonizers of the time. After all, “savages” need to be civilized and it was “civilization,” encapsulated in the rhetoric of God, gold, and glory, that the westward-bound settlers were bringing with them. A surprising aspect of nineteenth-century colonialism is how few critics there were of the process. Even socialists were not outspoken critics, though they decried the building of empire. Instead, colonization and the conversion to a capitalist economy were seen as an inevitable stage of economic evolution. It is worth remembering that Karl Marx, the architect of socialist theory, and a German, had been steeped in the writings of Hegel and that Hegel’s philosophy of history is one in which notions of cultural progress are central. “Progress” was the mantra that, repeated often enough, made colonization seem natural and necessary. To his credit, though, Marx saw the potentially negative effects of colonialism. He noted in his Manifesto that the world had been divided into that of the oppressor and oppressed.1 In terms of historical progress, he viewed the epoch in which he lived as that of the bourgeoisie: in other words, of modern capitalism. A key aspect of capitalism was the simplifying of class opposition. For Marx, it was the opening of foreign markets that had hastened this economic transition to capitalism and a world of haves and have-nots. He did not mince his words, seeing “Free Trade as another word for brutal exploitation.”2 For Marx, capitalism had stripped the world of the mystery of the priest and the poet and had drawn all nations into “civilization” as defined by the bourgeoisie. Western notions of “civilization,” then, spring from economic motives, including a desire to exploit other areas of the world for their resources. If that is the case, then civilizing notions seem to be automatically tainted when the motives that underlie them are economic and exploitative. Marx also saw clearly that this kind of global relationship creates a dependency between the exploited (have-nots) and the exploiter (haves). In contrast to Marx’s critique of the cruel disparity of wealth that accompanied colonialism, Social Darwinism is one example of a nineteenth-century theory that attempted to provide a positive account for power and its use in the name of progress. Progress in nature was viewed as resulting from an aggressive interplay of natural forces. Transferred to the social realm, aggressive competition in the name of progress was seen as a kind of practical necessity. The idea of a struggle for survival of the fittest played into the competitive fervor of the nineteenth century. In social terms the “most fit” was often conflated with the “most powerful.” If it was the Western Europeans and Euro-Americans who were most powerful, then it was, in a sense, their “right” to engage in conquest. Thus, Social Darwinism boiled down to little more than a “might-makes-right” theory in its actual application. However, it was accompanied at the time with a justificatory rhetoric that saw European nations as not only more powerful than others, but as superior in moral and cultural terms. By the logic of the day, these nations had a right to conquest, because they had a duty to rule others and to raise their spiritual and moral standards; this moral obligation to spiritually convert others and to rule them was the so-called “white man’s burden.” Within imperialism and

54 COLONIALISM colonialism lies a rancid strain of ethnocentrism. In their use of a civilizing rhetoric, colonists were attacking and destroying alternative belief systems, based upon a conviction that their own beliefs were superior. Actions based upon ethnocentric beliefs had disastrous consequences in much of the world: the destruction of whole languages, the attack on local religious traditions, forced attendance at colonial schools, the destruction of traditional food supplies, the forced conversion to a cash economy. The list of changes wrought by colonialism is long, but how many of these changes benefitted the colonized? If anything, there may have been a greater polarization of the world into “haves” and “have-nots” as a result of colonial actions. Does increased awareness of the effects of colonialism demand a critical reassessment of the Western ideas and values that led to these results? At the very least, cooperative rather than competitive societies can be envisioned, and the assumption that “might makes right” can be put to rest forever. Table 3.1 shows that 150 years after the critique that Marx offered of the division of the world into haves and have-nots, such social inequalities persist. The purchasing power of the residents of the world’s poorest country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is .004 percent of the purchasing power of the world’s wealthiest, Qatar. Taking more local comparisons into account, the PPP of Mexico is 28 percent of that of the United States, while the PPP of Nicaragua is slightly more than one half of one percent of the PPP of the USA. When these inequalities exist within the same region, it is easy to continue to think of the world in terms of global haves and have-nots. However, it was not solely wealth that fueled the colonialist expansion of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There was an equally intoxicating motive—freedom as expressed by the spaciousness of the land itself—that fueled the desires of settlers and conquerors. Table 3.1 Purchasing power per capita in dollars (IMF, 2009)

Top 10 (richest) countries Qatar Luxembourg Norway Singapore Brunei United States Switzerland Hong Kong Netherlands Ireland

Bottom 10 (poorest) countries 83,841 78,395 52,561 50,523 49,110 46,381 43,007 42,748 39,938 39,468

Congo, Democratic Republic of the Zimbabwe Burundi Liberia Eritrea Niger Central African Republic Sierra Leone Togo Malawi

332 355 400 424 680 719 745 759 826 885

Source: International Monetary Fund, “Report for Selected Countries and Subjects,” World Economic Outlook Database, 2010. Available online at http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/01/weodata/ weorept.aspx (accessed May 14, 2010).

COLONIALISM 55 Frederick Jackson Turner’s theory of the frontier in 1893 also provided a theoretical justification for expansion. The physical space of the frontier came to be seen in a liberating way; his feeling was that it would lead to a “freer” more independent outlook in the general populace. Space became a prime symbol of the hopes of the new nations. This view of space still pervades the rhetoric of expansion today, though space has become more limited. Based upon these views, overseas expansion was the common practice, rather than an aberration, into the early twentieth century. The taking of territories as possessions occurred, in particular, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In the light of the ideologies we have considered, not to expand was seen as a sign of cultural atrophy. Again, this rapid colonization was justified by the rhetoric of God, gold, and glory. The last of these, glory, was renounced or at least seriously questioned after World War I. But God and gold seem to still be motivating forces in the world today. In the nineteenth century, the subcontinent of India, the Pacific Isles, areas of the Middle East, and Africa were ripe targets for colonial power, just as North and South America and Southeast Asia had been in earlier centuries. Very few areas of the world remain unaffected by colonialism. Colonial territorial expansion tended to follow the great river systems of the world: upward toward the source of the Nile, up the Amazon, along the Niger River. These rivers to the interior served similar functions to the Mississippi and St. Lawrence in earlier times. This metaphor of “penetration into the interior” demonstrates how much colonization rested upon gendered terms, perhaps to be expected considering that most of the people involved in expansion and conquest were men. The entire history of colonization and its aftermath (the competitive war within Europe known as World War I) seems to provide evidence for Freud’s pessimistic thesis, developed in Civilization and Its Discontents, that men are aggressive by nature.3 Much of his book, though, concerns the necessity of social laws that create punishments—along with the concomitant psychological mechanism of guilt related to the breaking of laws—that control overt acts of aggression. Writing shortly after World War I, Freud was keenly aware of the aggressive tendencies of humans and the seemingly futile efforts of civilizing forces to control those tendencies. The question of whether humans are innately aggressive, however, is related to the larger issue of “nature versus nurture” in explaining human behavior. Are humans genetically aggressive or are there social forces that lead them to act that way? This debate has been notoriously difficult to resolve. But, the history of colonialism does offer evidence that aggression, whether of instinctual or social origin, is a common feature of intergroup relations. Modern colonialism also coincided with a time when distance was compressed with new forms of communications and transportation. The telegraph, train, and steamship were as transformative in their time as the computer has been in ours. Transportation and communications systems led to the hatching of grand schemes such as the Cape to Cairo railroad, which was proposed by Cecil Rhodes but never completed. Many of these communication and transportation networks were set up

56 COLONIALISM for the purposes of economic exploitation, specifically for bringing goods and raw materials to port. It is no accident that the nineteenth century witnessed a much greater pace of colonialism; territorial expansion was driven by industrialization— the extraction of raw materials and the development of markets for goods produced. These same logics operate today as a determinant of international relations. World affairs are almost always cast in the light of economic competitiveness. Thus, colonialism also led to a perceived need to modify the international political pattern. It led to the beginning of ideas about geopolitics: the world as a stage for the playing out of national ambitions. In this theater, the biggest was often equated with best. Isn’t the term “superpower” itself an outgrowth of the idea of national competitiveness, the very underlying dynamic that led to the harmful colonialist practices of the past? More hidden, perhaps, yet no less influential than the macroeconomic and political processes mentioned above is the effect of colonialism on the production of knowledge. How do modern epistemological systems reflect the social dynamics of colonialism? After all, it was in the colonial period that the contemporary academic disciplines such as the social sciences and art history as well as artistic movements such as modernism were born. Art history and anthropology are the disciplines in which the cross-cultural analysis of art is most likely to take place. Yet, these disciplines are Western in origin and, therefore, the frameworks that have been constructed for the analysis of art reflect Western—and sometimes colonialist— frames of mind. Modern art history began in German-speaking countries about one hundred years ago with the writings of scholars such as Heinrich Wölfflin (Swiss) and Alois Riegl (Austrian), who focused on problems of stylistic classification and the general theory of style. Wölfflin, in particular, sought to introduce a scientific method to the study of art and is considered the “father of modern art history.” These styles were seen as developing in a linear fashion and reflecting major moments of historical change as well as aspects of national identity. In fact, the attempt to explain how and why change occurs in art is a central question in Western art history. Yet, as Berlo and Phillips have noted, Western “linear” methods that respond to moments of change—cultural contact and conflict, epidemics, conversion, diaspora, etc.—may not be as sensitive to enduring artistic traditions. In addition to a bias toward change, a bias toward innovation may appear as well. For instance, the late-nineteenthcentury art that is discussed in today’s survey texts (Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin) is largely the art of the avant-garde. The vast majority of art that was produced during the time period, which conformed to conservative Victorian taste, is left out of histories that focus on innovation as a source of change. The framing assumptions within the discipline of art history may lead one to overlook art as a source of cultural continuity. One example is ceremonial art; for instance in Northwest Coast Native cultures, the potlatch as a communal ceremony celebration was often an occasion when objects related to a clan’s identity were displayed. These artistic expressions were relatively stable over time, because it was important for the identity of the

COLONIALISM 57 family to be recognized and maintained. Why would a discipline that was born in the late nineteenth century favor change and innovation as points of focus? The answer by now is familiar; the nineteenth century was shaped by a belief in progress, which is the same underlying value that provided justification for the destruction of Native cultures as part of the process of colonialism. Berlo and Phillips (1998) note that the focus on change in relation to non-Western art was part of a larger “artifact” paradigm.4 By the late nineteenth century, the collection of non-Native artifacts was aligned with “natural history.” Theories of cultural evolution—developed contemporaneously by scholars such as Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer with Darwin’s theory of evolution in biology—led scholars to see non-Western objects as artifacts of the societies that produced them. The collection and classification of artifacts was part of the scholarly project of understanding cultural evolution in general. But, implicit in this model of cultural evolution was the assumption that some cultures were “primitive” and that they become more civilized over time (a concept known as the unilineal theory of cultural evolution). In the United States, Natives were regarded as the Vanishing Americans and one of the core goals of many museums was to preserve the artifacts of “vanishing” cultures.5 The collection of artifacts was part of a project of comprehensive collecting. Many feel that too many objects were taken from the communities that produced them. The collectors probably felt that they were performing a service so that the objects could be studied and preserved; but, once again, to take so many objects reflects the assumption that there would not be descendants of the objects’ makers or that these descendants would have become so assimilated that they, perhaps, would not care about the “artifacts.” Anthropology and art history depend on known works (works that have been collected). Yet, the history of collecting reflects Western tastes, ideologies, and motives. Collecting raises ethical questions of ownership (Were the objects collected ethically? If not, should they be returned to their original communities?) and display (Are the objects displayed in a way that reflects and honors their significance in their community of origin?). We will consider questions such as these in more detail in the next chapter. The “artifact paradigm,” then, rests not only on a set of cultural assumptions related to progress and cultural evolution; it incorporates specific practices surrounding the collecting and display of objects that may be questioned, depending on the original circumstances when collecting occurred. Ultimately, these questions about “knowledge” and the collection of “evidence” to support that knowledge reflect a question that appeared at the beginning of the chapter: Who has the power to represent whom and to what ends? Even knowledge is never “merely” knowledge. Relationships of power are embedded in epistemological systems, as power is embedded in other aspects of culture and society. The concept that power is based upon knowledge and that power reproduces knowledge by having it conform to its own structure is associated with Michel Foucault, who coined the concept “power-knowledge.” In its relationship to power, then, knowledge is never neutral; it is always shaped by social relationships based upon power.

58 COLONIALISM There are other barriers to applying art history cross culturally. Some are linguistic; many non-Western cultures may not contain a word for, and, therefore, the concept of, “art.” “Art” may not have even existed in the contemporary sense of the term: terms such as sacred object, item of adornment, utensil may come closer to meanings that existed within non-Western cultures. Art is a Western concept, the modern meaning of which grows out of the Enlightenment (the eighteenth century). There can, then, be a kind of intellectual colonization when philosophical definitions and distinctions that occur in one culture are imposed upon another. For instance, in the West, the concept “art” involves a distinction between art and craft. Is a bowl a work of art? Under which conditions? In general, bowls would be classified as craft or even as industrial products in Western culture, not as art. Further, there tends to be a hierarchical relationship in the West between art and craft. Yet, in a nonWestern context, a feast bowl may be a treasured object in a community or household. The functionality associated with it does not lower its status. To project Western distinctions and the values associated with them onto non-Western cultures is a form of intellectual colonization. A concern for this form of colonization, which is perhaps less obvious than earlier forms, is alive and well today. The South Africabased scholar and advocate of an Africa-centered perspective of history, C. Tsehloane Keto wrote: The world of Africans and descendants of Africans and the world of scholarship about them is still the only one at the end of the Twentieth Century that retains a “colonial” signature whereby experts and authorities outside African communities control knowledge creation and exceed experts inside those communities. This does not apply to Europe, Asia or the Americas. This has led to an unfortunate predilection among Africans to concede expert knowledge to outsiders. African people have tended in the past to surrender the right to academic self affirmation to others, thereby accepting conclusions of a Eurocentric framework that have assigned a permanent peripheral role to the Africa centered perspective in the world’s growing knowledge industry.6

Legacy of colonialism Since the mid-twentieth century the colonial powers have relinquished outward political control over their former colonies. The list of powers includes Britain, France, Germany, and, more recently, the former USSR. However, economic relationships—relationships of dependency—that were established in the past still persist in some instances. It might be thought that the decline of spheres of national influence would lead people to seek security in more basic group affiliations (tribe, clan), that nation states and their influence would be supplanted by more local cultural affiliations as a basis for shared identities. In some cases there may be a re-tribalization of society within former colonies. However, in most cases the

COLONIALISM 59 concept of the nation state is a solid legacy of the colonial era. Aesthetic expression is part of the post-colonial process as many new states engage in nation building and revive traditional arts to assert their distinctness and independence. It is an irony that the very system that made colonialism rampant—nationalism—is now so firmly entrenched in the former colonies themselves. While anti-colonial movements may have been fueled by a desire for a return to pre-colonial social conditions, the end result became the “construction of post-colonial nation-states based upon the European nationalist model.”7 The pervasiveness of the concept of nation has formed a link between former colonizer and colonized that allows for neo-colonialist control of these new states. In addition, the concept of nation, which requires a unifying mythology in order to be effective in practice, has been used by powerful groups to suppress and discriminate against minority populations within these new states. Thus, nation and nationalism are powerful legacies of the colonial period; the evidence of the endurance of this concept, even with the negative legacy of colonialism, is strong. Have we truly entered a postcolonial era or have we merely shifted to a system of subtle external and internal neocolonialism? The term internal colonialism refers to the status of indigenous peoples: groups of Native people living within the boundaries of modern nation states. The First World movement that addresses the status of indigenous peoples is one kind of response to colonialism. Another is the assertive nationalism of the Third World. While many in the West seem to believe that “Third World” is simply a synonym for poor nations with inadequate social conditions and services, it is actually a political designation. It began as a label for those nations that were aligned with neither the United States nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. However, it is also true that the category Third World included many new nation states that had formerly been colonies. Thus, there is a spirit of anti-colonialism—a strong assertion of independence—implied by the label along with the implication of non-alignment. The term First World is, in part, a rejection of the label Fourth World that was once, and sometimes still is, applied to indigenous communities. Fourth World implied a high level of marginalization of indigenous peoples from self-determination and power. As sovereignty has become a clear goal in many indigenous communities, activists have appropriated the term First World (originally applied to the dominant economic powers of the West) and applied it to themselves. This term asserts their status as the original inhabitants of the areas in which they live. What may seem at first like merely a semantic exercise is, in reality, a product of a much more fundamental debate over the right to self-representation: who controls the labels that are applied to a group? Still, questions about sovereignty really reflect a Western model of governance (nationhood); this is why critics such as Ward Churchill have criticized the tribal council model as an example of an imposed Western system of government.8 The shift in authority for label and image making from members of the media, the government, or institutions such as universities and museums to those who are the subject of the labels is a shift toward self-representation. The act of

60 COLONIALISM self-representation raises important political and economic as well as aesthetic questions. Fundamentally, it shifts agency (political power and effectiveness) to those who have been marginalized. First and Third World art in the postcolonial era often serves as a medium for broad self-representation on political issues: “broad” because the issues affecting First and Third World people transcend local politics to include matters of global concern. These could be environmental, legal, economic, political, etc., but, quite often, the issues facing indigenous peoples in North America may be similar to those faced by aboriginal peoples in Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, South America, and elsewhere. Similar parallels exist for Third World nations whose history of independence may have occurred little more than fifty years ago. Art that is representative in the political sense of the term—to represent politically or to serve as a political spokesperson—may express the ideas of a global First World or Third World political movement as well as more locally defined communities. Frequently, the audience for this art, literature, film, and so on is not just the people within the indigenous community or Third World nation. The audience includes those living in the industrialized nations of the West. What are the assumptions that members of these Western industrialized cultures bring to postcolonial art that both restrict and enable them to understand the assertive self-representation? Postcolonialism also has reflexive implications for the descendants of the colonizers as well as the colonized. The whole question of self-representation can only arise in the context of neocolonialism; in a noncolonial system artistic expressions are simply the expression of a local culture rather than political representations for a potentially global audience. Thus, the ways that art may be said to represent indigenous cultures and Third World nations need to be explored in the light of political developments and alignments. Through their very existence, indigenous and Third World art and media critique the authority invested in mainstream (or industrialscale) image-making processes. The point needs to be considered: what systems of control maintain a colonialist practice in contemporary art and media? Some forms of control may include gatekeeping, economic control such as restricted access to funding, an economy of scale necessary to achieve international distribution, the definition of artistic and media expressions as products in the context of the marketplace, tokenism in decisions regarding participation in international events, and so on. The shift to self-representation raises other questions: What happens when the political Other increases its control of image making? Does this automatically increase the “authenticity” of the image? Is authenticity in image making defined in part by the ethnicity of the artist? (Some might argue that using a specific ethnicity as a litmus test for the “right” to speak about postcolonial issues is giving in to a kind of biological insider-ism. Wouldn’t this simply invert the exclusionary policies of the past?) Another question is whether “authenticity” as a criterion of images is relevant in a postmodern environment of image making; with the rise of electronic media and, more specifically, the Web, images function in a free-floating space

COLONIALISM 61 where it is often hard to determine their authenticity in relation to the intent of their authors. Thus, the idea that self-representation rests on a certain degree of “control” of image making may be mitigated in an environment in which images, texts, and music are so available for others to use and to manipulate. Another question that has been raised is whether members of formerly (and sometimes presently) marginalized groups may exoticize themselves? Nelson Graburn has made the point that replicas of traditional arts gradually will differ from the original functional objects.9 They may be less strongly made, different in scale, intended for the marketplace rather than the ceremonial plaza, and so on. Why would such objects continue to be made at all? Perhaps they are made because the exotic appearance of such objects has commodity value. For instance, miniature totem poles were carved in argillite, a rich black stone, for traders, miners, and tourists in the late nineteenth century. Replica “models” emerged that were

Figure 3.6 Argillite Casket (Charles Edenshaw), c. 1890, at the Museum of Vancouver, Canada © Photo courtesy of Sam Carter.

This interesting box takes the form of a casket. It is mounted on argillite wheels with ivory axles. The box is carved with varied design elements; on one side there is a carved lion head with a human figure in its mouth and forepaws. Does part of the novelty of the box rest upon the carver’s original combination of diverse forms and symbols?

62 COLONIALISM small-scale copies of originals. Not originally designated as art, these objects were novelties: items invented for trade alone. Another example of a transitional craft was the emergence of whalebone carvings as trade items. Woodland Indians also made novelties such as quill boxes that could be sold as collectible crafts to non-Natives. Most truly functional objects had died out by the end of the nineteenth century. At the time of the revival of traditional arts such as Northwest mask carving in the mid-twentieth century, there had already been an interim period of the creation of novelties and souvenirs. Thus, modern revivals of traditional arts emerge in an environment where there already is an awareness of the whole “market chain” of artworks as products. Included in that awareness is knowledge of the “awe” in which the art is held by members of distant communities, especially the awe of collectors. In a postcolonial environment, is the maintenance of exotic traits that are attractive to collectors an expression of sovereignty or a sophisticated form of salesmanship? Another issue that may arise in the postcolonial era is that, given the level of assimilation that occurred during the colonial period, there may be an attempt to create “differences” where, in fact, actual differences between peoples may have grown small. Do members of formerly colonized groups sometimes romanticize their own past in an attempt to create a separate identity? Such a strategic reconstruction is undoubtedly distinct from the conditions that led to the original development of the expressive form. And, again, the audience for the communication in the present may be members of the former colonialist nations. This contrasts with the primary function of in-group communication in the pre-colonial period. “Neo” styles—Neoclassicism, Neo-expressionism, Neo-Geo, and so on—never arise for the same reasons, take the same form, or convey the same meaning as styles in their original context and formulation. (I am using the prefix “Neo” to refer to the revival of earlier styles, not as a specific tie-in to neocolonialism.) Identifying the intended audience for postcolonial visual expression is one key to understanding the communicative function of art. The resurgence of ethnicity takes place in an environment when group members have become aware of perceptions of the world audience. This is not necessarily a “bad” development; it is just not the same context in which “ethnic” styles originally developed. The question arises whether “ethnic” roots are the best way to distinguish among artists or whether we should focus on the complex cultural interplay among people of varied backgrounds. Contemporary culture may involve many patterns that apply to members of all ethnic groups. And defining people according to whether they are members of formerly colonizing and colonized ethnic populations may feel artificially rigid and divisive in our own postcolonial age. However, the problem with this focus on universalizing cultural patterns is that it overlooks real problems that remain. Are there large disparities of wealth that continue between former colonizers and colonized? Are there disparities of health and education? Is there exploitation of the environment in former colonies more readily than in the colonizer’s homeland? When these disparities persist, many years after the end of

COLONIALISM 63 “official” colonialist policies, it becomes apparent that the legacy of colonialism and the divisions that it created remains.

Conclusion In this chapter we have seen that imperialism and colonialism were deeply woven into the mindset of nineteenth-century theorists and apologists of colonialism and the colonists themselves. Many people feel that imperialism continues as a motive underlying the actions of powerful nations, even in the present. In both cases, art plays a key role; it can either reinforce the worldview of the imperialist mindset through a kind of visual rhetoric celebrating empire and expansiveness or serve a subversive, protest role. Reflecting the latter, anti-colonialism has been a dominant feature of social life during the last half-century. We have seen, however, that imperialism and the desire to take colonies are not features of just one region of the world. They have been part of the actions of powerful dynasties and governments for centuries. Another social process, more particular to the modern era of the past three centuries, has been just as influential as colonialism: nationalism.

Chapter 4

NATIONALISM

N

in the context of cross-cultural relations. On the one hand, it involves competition between states and, therefore, the potential exploitation of weaker entities by stronger states as in the case of colonialism and neocolonialism. On the other hand, it is the very form that peoples emerging from the oppressive weight of colonialism or imperial rule seek in order to solidify their nascent self-governance. Art has been an aspect of both of these developments. In the case of powerful competing nations, art has served as a medium for proclaiming the grandeur, power, or unity of the nation. In modern pluralistic nations, the capacity to absorb styles from other cultures or internal subcultures— to co-opt those styles to the needs of the nation—is taken as evidence of the universal nature of the values underlying the nation’s political and social system. Rapid innovation in avant-garde styles or the adoption of new technologies can be seen as demonstrating the “advanced” status of the nation. The underlying value being reinforced in this case is “progress.” In the case of emerging nations, art often signifies the distinct identity of the nation within the community of nations. A clear cultural identity functions as evidence of the legitimacy of the nation as an independent political unit. Art can play a part in the reclaiming of past knowledge that may have been lost or suppressed during the period of exploitation and repression by outside states. This art may not be recognized immediately as “innovative” because it makes use of traditional tropes and styles, but it still serves a function in the service of national identity. Given the fact that the “nation” is a form that has lasted for two hundred years and which has gained many new adherents in the last fifty years (in the form of former external and internal colonies taking on the status of nation), it is unlikely that this form of political organization will disappear soon. Borders may be disputed, but this is evidence of the tenacious hold that nationalism has, not of its dissolution. ATIONALISM PRESENTS A PARADOX

NATIONALISM 65 A dispute of borders indicates that two nations are attempting to reinforce their national claims, not relinquish them. It is not the topic of this book to discuss whether the nation should remain the most salient political form in the world; our concern is whether the nation-as-structure significantly impacts cross-cultural processes in art. A short time ago during the “postmodern” era, the very status of nations, especially as defined by national boundaries—which were seen as artificial holdovers from the era of colonialism—was questioned. The relationship of “nation” to artistic production might have seemed an odd question in the postmodern era, an era that focused on fragmented, multiple identities that were constructed across national borders. Surely, major cross-cultural migrations, whether of diasporic refugees or those intentionally seeking economic advantage, would weaken the hold that nations have? This has not been the case. Adversity binds people together and the years of warfare and economic challenge within the last decade have strengthened ties within nations (if not among them) rather than weakening those ties. Defensive postures reinforce the modern nation-as-structure, because the function of defense was one of the original logics informing the idea of “the nation.”

Arguments against understanding art in relationship to nationalism What, then, are the limitations and benefits of nationhood for our understanding of cross-cultural issues in art? The question of relevance arises: Is this even an important question in relation to art? There are many possible objections to thinking of art in relationship to nation. First among them is the Kantian notion that art is by nature disinterested. Any art that is “interested” to the degree that its primary function is other than artistic—for instance to serve justice, promote peace, support claims to power, subvert claims to power, etc.—becomes suspect as art from a Kantian perspective. In protest, we may identify some art as, say, political in its tone. Clearly, this kind of art seems to exist. But, a formalist or modernist theorist, consistent with the logic of art being “disinterested” by nature, might identify political art as “propaganda” or at the best “prop-art.” The concern here is that art should not be subsumed under politics. Put in another manner, there is a desire to view aesthetic and political systems as distinct within a society for fear that the political (and closely aligned economic) might overtake the sphere of the aesthetic. Another argument against the relevance of nationalism for an understanding of art is cosmopolitanism. There are at least two sources for this viewpoint. One is the universalist implication of Kantian theory. If art is disinterested, how does it have meaning for audiences? For Kant, meaning was generated through form in art (which is why his theory eventually evolved into formalism). In addition, he argued that form was the only element that could be universal in its meaning. This does make sense at first glance. Most of us have had the sense of an immediate reaction to a work from a culture wholly different from our own. We are attracted to or repelled by an aspect of the artwork—moved by it somehow—without even really knowing what the work is “about.” Here we are responding to the ability of form to generate,

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Figure 4.1 “War Is Over”: John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1969. © Photo by Frank Barratt/Getty Images. Reproduced with permission.

Though agit-prop art has been around for some time (propaganda posters were common during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation of the seventeenth century) modern political art was revived in the context of the response to the Vietnam War. It is significant that Yoko Ono had a background as a conceptual artist before meeting and marrying John Lennon. From the 1970s to the present, conceptual art has been a fertile ground for political statements in art, such as Lennon and Ono’s own “Give Peace a Chance” campaign. Was Lennon and Yoko’s campaign art or political activism? An interesting clue as to its historical legacy is that a major exhibition devoted to their collaboration and the campaign toured in 2009—in art museums. Perhaps it is implicit in the Ono/Lennon union that their cross-cultural concern for peace was not specifically tied to the interests of any single nation, but was universal in nature.

NATIONALISM 67 or even to be, content in its own right. This ability of art to have meaning for people far removed in distance or time from the conditions of its original creation indicates that art can “cross borders” rather freely. Such border crossing stands as evidence of the cosmopolitan nature of art and this can even become the basis of a value claim, as in “the best art is that which transcends the boundaries of time and space most completely.” While it is true that art can be appreciated irrespective of the context of its production, and while it is true the best art may be that which transcends boundaries of time and place, it is also true that the whole meaning of art is not located in its formal structure. Subject matter, for instance, can locate art in the specifics of context and provide additional clues as to the interpretation and appreciation of the artwork. One shortcoming of formalism is the claim that all meaning is cosmopolitan in content and import. Sometimes we need the local tie-in in order to obtain the full understanding. Still, the notion that the most important aspect of art is the part that is universal or cosmopolitan in import stands as a powerful argument against the tie between nation or nationalism and art. From a universal perspective, the national is too limiting to be of much interest. Another argument against interpreting art in relation to nationalism is the postmodern perspective. Nationalism reflects acculturation to Western philosophies and values; at the very least, the idea of “nation” itself is Western in origin. Mixed or hybrid identities, resulting from the experience of immigration or of growing up in two cultures, seem to challenge this Western bias toward national allegiance. This “in-betweenness” is a status that challenges the idea that “belonging” to a nation can serve as a basis of art making and appreciation. This was a common thesis during the 1980s and 1990s. A more recent term, interstitial, has brought this concept into the new century. Interstitial means the spaces between; this can include the spaces between cultures, but also the spaces between artistic media (expressions that are not easily classifiable by medium). The term can also refer to the spaces between genres as in stories that are not clearly realistic or fantasy based. All of these interstitial spaces (in medium or genre) can become fertile ground for exploring spaces of cultural in-betweenness. However, while it may be true that many may not feel that they “belong” to a particular national identity, it is also true that many more do feel a sense of belonging to a group on the basis of national identity. We cannot, then, completely discount the notion that national identity can be tied to art solely upon the sense of “in-betweenness.” One would still have to account for that sizeable population that does feel a sense of belonging to their home nation. Another possible claim against nationalism is that global movements such as Africanism/Negritude or Islamic fundamentalism transcend national concerns. Negritude is a literary and political movement founded in Paris in the 1930s by a group of students from the French Caribbean and Africa. The founding members, Aimé Césaire, Léopold Senghor, and Léon Damas hoped to eliminate the barriers between black students from the various French colonies. They were not only concerned with the

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Figure 4.2 Tribal Dancing: A group of Eastern Nigerian tribal dancers performing in traditional costume for the Queen during her Royal Tour, 1956. © Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images. Reproduced with permission.

The expression of national identity may not solely be through the high arts. For instance, the clothing styles of a particular nation can be related to national identity and pride. Nigerians, who have a long history of skill as dyers, weavers, and tailors, take pride in their styles of dress and dance, which define the nation. Here, eastern Nigerian dancers performed for the Queen during her Royal tour of Nigeria in 1956.

cooperation between Blacks within the group, but also with the wellbeing and unity of the black race. This concern sparked the cultural movement we call “Negritude.” The founders of Negritude were in part inspired by their encounters with members of the Harlem Renaissance, many of whom were living in France at the time to escape racism and segregation in the United States. Amongst the most influential of those were Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. Césaire, Senghor and their colleagues were also taken with the jazz music of Duke Ellington and Sidney Bechet. Negritude strives to be universal, encompassing all people of African

NATIONALISM 69 descent. Yet, it is a complex movement which denounces colonialism, rejects Western domination, and promotes acceptance of the black self. It is through literature that both Césaire and Senghor begin to find their political voices, and each proceeds to take on an important role in his respective region after the end of colonialism. Although most artists and intellectuals no longer subscribe to many of Negritude’s theories, its influences are evident in the Creolity movement launched by intellectuals from the French Caribbean.1 Similar transnational movements have emerged amongst Native peoples. The older term pan-Indian seems to have been replaced by the term “indigenous” as a way to express the transnational concerns of internally colonized peoples. There is power to the claims associated with labels such as Africanism, Negritude, Creolity, Indigenous, and Islamicism, which each appeal to the members of many nations. For certain groups of people, their identity may be more tied to a transnational bond related to race, religion, or their status as historically oppressed peoples. Again, without attempting to take away the power of that claim, it is also possible to interpret each of these global movements as a stage in the formation of national identities based upon the values put forth within the movement. For instance, those involved

Figure 4.3 Flag of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

This pan-Islamic international organization, established in 1969, includes fifty-seven member states. The green background of its flag is representative of Islam and the calligraphy proclaims, in Arabic, “Allahu Akbar” or “God is Great.” The crescent also symbolizes Islam, though there has been a general prohibition against the use of religious symbols amongst adherents of the faith for centuries. This is the reason why Islamic art is often calligraphic or abstract in nature.

70 NATIONALISM in the transnational indigenous rights movement may be the same individuals who are strong advocates of sovereignty in their local community. They are simply trying to establish political autonomy with what they perceive to be as indigenous values at the core of their new national status. Islamicists have attempted to achieve, and have been successful in, their goal of establishing sovereign states. Once states, such as Pakistan, have been established, they may band together with other states in international alliances. Key symbols may express transnational solidarity. Thus, global “liberation” movements are usually a stage in the development of nationhood, not a basis of an argument against it. The reason for this is that each of the aforementioned movements was formed as an argument against the ideology of existing nation states, an ideology that had been experienced as controlling. Thus, the liberation argument is not against “nation-as-structure” but against what is perceived as a controlling, exploitative ideology. For some powerful leaders of modern Muslim nations, it is Judaism that constitutes an exploitative ideology. For instance, at a recent meeting of the OIC, the president of Malaysia proclaimed the dangers of Jewish control of resources and opinion in the West. The greater part of Dr Mahathir’s speech risks being ignored outside the Muslim world because of his allegations of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. “The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them,” he told the assembled prime ministers and heads of state. The Malaysians insist that what Dr Mahathir had been trying to say, was that despite having been a marginal and persecuted community the Jews have survived—by use of brains not brawn.2 Mahathir ruled Malaysia with huge popular support for twenty-two years. This support and the positive reception of fellow Muslim leaders to his speech indicate that contemporary Muslims have strong concerns about Judaism as a controlling and exploitative ideology. And it is, in part, this concern that has fueled Islamic nationalism. To this point, we have been considering a number of claims against the relationship between nationalism and art. The claims include 1

2

The formalist argument that art should be disinterested in order for art to contain universal meaning; this claim is countered by the “interested” character of contemporary modern agit-prop and conceptual art. Such art exists; are we to deny its status as art? Cosmopolitanism—the idea that the best art should cross national boundaries freely; this claim is countered by the idea that the specifics of context provide additional important clues as to the interpretation and appreciation of the artwork.

NATIONALISM 71 It may not only be a concern about Judaism that has fueled Islamic nationalism. Highly controversial actions by followers of Islam indicate distrust of other faiths as well.

Figure 4.4 Visitors walk by the site of the Bamiyan Buddha statues, which were destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban. © INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images. Reproduced with permission.

Written shortly before the destruction of these ancient Buddhist statues occurred, the following excerpt from a news article explains Taliban motivation and world reaction: Some images destined for destruction represent the most famous relics of Afghanistan’s history. Among them are two soaring images of the Buddha in Bamiyan, believed to be the tallest in the world — The Taliban campaign, launched on Thursday in the name of a purist vision of Islam, targeted all statues, including the two unique Buddhas. The Taliban want to remove any reminders of the centuries before Islam when Afghanistan was a center of Buddhist learning and pilgrimage. The Taliban also believe that Islam forbids the making of images, such as pictures and paintings of people.

72 NATIONALISM All statues destroyed “All statues would be destroyed,” said Taliban’s cultural minister Mullah Qudratullah Jamal, adding that “whatever means of destruction are needed to demolish the statues will be used.” Most statues date from nearly 2,000 years ago. They were largely untouched for more than a millennium after the arrival of Islam, surviving even the onslaughts of Genghis Khan in the 13th century and Tamerlane in the 14th century — “The abandoned relics are not our pride,” the official Bakhtar news agency quoted Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil as saying.3 This decision on the part of the Taliban stands as a testament to the dangers of ideologically driven nationalism. But, it is worth remembering that virtually all nations have been born in reaction against a controlling ideology. It is very unfortunate for lovers of art that the Taliban extended their prohibition against idolatry (human likenesses of divinity) to the monuments created by followers of another faith. But, their actions do remind us that artistic expressions truly do express values and that sometimes followers of differing value systems can come into violent conflict with one another. In those cases, the art will almost certainly be destroyed or altered. Consider for instance the following photo.

Figure 4.5 A US marine watches a statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled in Baghdad on April 9 2003. © Press Association Images. Photograph by Jerome Delay. Reproduced with permission.

NATIONALISM 73 Was the world outcry against the Taliban action in response to the destruction of artwork or the destruction of artwork by the Taliban? It is true that the artworks that were destroyed were of different value. One was ancient, the other modern; one tied to a controversial political leader, the other to a revered religious teacher; and so on. Still, the photograph of the toppling of Hussein’s statue demonstrates that an action (the destruction of statues) that may be seen as scandalous on the one hand may be celebrated on the other hand. And, in both cases, the underlying motivation for the action was ideological. The differences in our interpretation lie in the competing nature of ideologies. And ideologies are a core aspect of nationalism. For some, this is reason enough to suspect an understanding of art in relationship to nationalism. But, are there any among us who are free of ideology?

3

4

5

The postmodern attack on borders and boundaries as artificial—the idea that mixed or hybrid identities, resulting from the experience of immigration, diaspora, or of growing up in two cultures, seem to challenge the bias toward national allegiance. The problem with this argument is that it is partial. While some may feel that they “do not belong” to a particular national identity, it is also true that many more do feel a sense of belonging to a group on the basis of national identity. The claim that global movements such as Africanism/Negritude or Islamic fundamentalism transcend national concerns; this argument is countered by the idea that each of these global movements is a stage in the formation of national identities based upon the values put forth within the movement. The claim that nationalism leads to repugnant actions such as the destruction of the Buddhist and other statues; this is countered by the claim that the sense of something as “repugnant” is itself a reflection of one’s own nationalist ideology; are any of us free of ideology?

While each of these claims seems at the outset to have merit, upon further examination we see there seems to be a possibility of a relationship between nationalism and art that remains. Another claim against nationalism may be economic; some may feel that capitalism, especially the style that is practiced by multinational corporations based in powerful nations, destroys local economies. Since there seems to be a link between national self-interest and exploitative economic policies, shouldn’t the nation-asstructure be dismantled? Here is the first evidence that nationhood is weakening as a social force. But the reason that nationalism is weakening is not because of the complaints against transnational corporate power by anti-globalists. Rather, nationas-structure is being weakened by the power of those transnational economic processes, which are rooted in the success of these international corporations. There

74 NATIONALISM is a subtle relationship between transnational business forces in that they may underwrite exhibitions that focus on local “diversity,” in effect offering up a “spectacle of diversity” for consumer consumption. But such a display is no more diverse than the choice between the rides at Disneyland. The business sponsorship presents the appearance of diversity, but all of the seemingly diverse images of cultures reinforce the health of business. “It’s a small world after all.” Nationalism rests on a nostalgia for and glorification of the past; this nostalgia can easily be converted into a product in itself or it can be used to promote other products. Thus, one force that is undermining the nation as a basis of art making is the growth of multinational business. This argument can be stated, “National identity is a socially constructed ‘spectacle of diversity’ in a global economic environment controlled by transnational corporations.” The argument derives from the frame of neocolonialism. As we noted in the previous chapter, the possibility that colonialist relationships have continued into the present, albeit in less overt forms, seems to be supported by the evidence of continued inequities of power and wealth between former colonized and colonizing nations. The construction of a national identity for a foreign audience— as, for instance, in the “Afghanistan” show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2009—always rests upon processes of selection and display. These are two key ingredients in creating an “image” of a national culture. Selection and display are always done by someone; the question must be asked, “What are the possible motives of the organizers or hosting institution and its supporters?” Quite often, cultural “expansiveness” and “exchange” are seen as positive values in the formation of blockbuster shows that feature the art of countries such as Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia, India, or the aforementioned Afghanistan. But the context of this politics of display is often more subtle than the open notion of cultural exchange implies. A positive view of a nation, put forth in a spectacular exhibition of a nation’s historical culture, may be intended to counter negative imagery (caused by negative press) of certain aspects of the culture. The powerful cultural elite within the country being “displayed” may be eager for the positive view that emerges from the exhibit. Such positive views increase the chance of the empathy, aid, and business involvement of powerful trading partners. Sometimes the “image” may even spur on military involvement. Quite often such exhibitions feature the most conventionalized and most “positive” versions of a national culture for purposes of establishing the nation’s status as an international partner: a show’s selected curatorial perspective and the actual objects that are included may relate to a “self-orientalizing” mode of display. In such exhibitions, there is usually little hint of the current political and economic relations between the displayed nation and the country where the exhibition is being held. Instead, an essentialist version of historical continuity and aesthetic achievement is emphasized. Such “national” shows serve to mask the actual political debates of the moment, especially any internal dissent or factionalism within the “displayed” nation. The self-orientalizing mode promotes the glorified past and censors the debates and divisions of the present. Even scholarly debates about the interpretation of the past are likely to be downplayed in favor of cultural celebration and visual spectacle.

NATIONALISM 75

Figure 4.6 Crown from the excavations of the necropolis at Tillya Tepe, Afghanistan, c. 1st century BCE–1st century CE. © Kabul Museum, Afghanistan/The Bridgeman Art Library. Reproduced with permission.

The Afghanistan exhibition at the Metropolitan Mueum of Art in New York appeared during a time (2009) when the United States and its allies were at war with the Taliban. It occurred at the time when the U.S. government was considering significant troop build-up in the region. The focus of the exhibition was on Afghanistan’s national treasures. By focusing upon past treasures that will be “saved” through Western involvement, the implication is that there is a long-lasting value to supporting aspects of the culture that were once strong but which are now under siege by forces inside the country. The focus of the exhibition and the inclusion of certain kinds of objects are consistent with Western goals and concerns about controlling the Taliban.

What is the goal of such spectacles of national culture? “Culture” is functioning to attract foreign investment capital or other involvement. Quite often the nation that is being put on display is carrying a huge national debt and, at the same time, offers cheap labor or valuable raw materials that are available for extraction and export. The “exotic” history of the country spills over from the exhibition into tourism advertisements, promotional materials, and the like: it is there that we see the market link between “culture” and capital. But, it is not only a country that is ripe for exploitation that may “benefit” from this self-orientalizing image. Powerful nations with a huge stake in multinational business benefit from the positive spectacle of national culture that is presented to audiences: the image of “culture” found

76 NATIONALISM within the exhibitions legitimizes the orientalized nation as worthy of investment. Capitalist nations benefit from the global reach of capital and such shows function as an invitation to global investment or other involvement. The question remains, though, as to who benefits from such spectacles. Does the nation that is being hyped through a pseudo-image of itself benefit as a whole? Or does this spectacle serve to shore up the interests of the cultural elite, whose wealth depends upon their alliance with powerful trading partners? While such spectacles may involve state-imposed identity, the more likely scenario is that they emerge from the collaboration of cultural and business elites in the displayed and the displaying countries. Thus, the masquerade of nationalism or nation building is really a function of neocolonialist economic relations.4 There are several more claims against art being seen in relationship to nationhood. These objections can be bundled into one: that national governments often grow into independent entities that have the power to repress their own populace. This possibility seems to fly in the face of the concept of “the social contract” that is at the basis of the modern state, whereby states govern through the consent of the people. What are the mechanisms by which governments may become oppressive? Nations tend to become essentialist—identifying certain values as core and privileging the groups aligned with those values. This essentialism masks internal divisions and conflicts. Even so, if artists seek to challenge that essentialism, they are still responding to the nation as structure, even if only in a negative, critical fashion. Much art, of course, has reinforced rather than challenged essential national values. Based upon the rise of fascism earlier in the century, some might argue that nationalism has a historical association with the right wing and results in racism, militarism, colonialism, xenophobia, etc. Of course, some conservative members of society may find the concept of nationhood far too liberal, as, for instance, when governments interfere in market processes. These, however, are really internal arguments about the values of particular governments, not an attack on the idea of nation per se. A final argument against nation in relation to art is that nationalism tends to include a preference for “civilization” as a source of nation in contrast to the art produced by indigenous, small-scale cultures. This is because “nation” is a historical formation; based upon notions of cultural evolution and progress, it can be seen as one in a long line of possible forms of social organization. Since it is the most recent and pervasive model, it is tempting to see it as “the best.” In the same way, “civilization” might be seen as constituting advancement over preceding less-evolved cultures. This is to say that linking nationalism to art suggests the possibility of a normative dimension: that nations have produced the most advanced art because the nation is the most advanced form of social structure. Nationalism leads to the positive valuation of “advanced” culture. But, can art, as an aspect of culture, really be said to “advance” in this manner, or are there excellent examples of the expression of artistic and social ideals within any period? Thus, the normative dimension of nationalism also cannot be the basis for linking art to it. With all of these possible

NATIONALISM 77 objections, what is the value of linking art to nation as a social process? Why should we view art through the frame of nation at all? We have not yet considered any strong arguments for this linkage.

Arguments for understanding art in relationship to nationalism The strongest claim for linking art and “nation” would be that all art is political in some sense and is, therefore, related to our most common political structure: the nation. Why would we want to claim that all art is political? To echo Frida Kahlo, “the personal is political.”5 We tend to make a distinction between the personal and public in our understanding of the political dimension of life. But, that distinction does not really exist. The public dimensions of governments impact each and every one of our lives in a deep way. Consider, for instance, education. The core values that are formed within us, long before we have the capacity to critically reflect upon them, are instilled in an institutional setting, the organization and leadership of which is political. Similarly, the state has an impact on our individual financial wellbeing, both through its impact on economic processes and its power of taxation. It has a hand in our relationships too, by governing the terms of marriage and, significantly in recent times, divorce. The line between the personal and public, which might allow us to claim that the personal is exempt from the political, is decidedly blurred. In relation to art, we can distinguish between the aesthetic and the political, but we cannot fully separate these dimensions. Still it must be admitted that few people view art as a form of political representation that is significantly linked to politics. The linkage of art and politics is counter to many people’s assumptions about art as a form of individual selfexpression. Even if audiences allow for the possibility of political art, they tend to favor depoliticized art; many people reject or dislike overtly political art. If it is true that, at a conscious level, many reject the link between the artistic and the political, then it would be hard to say that art represents the values of anybody except artists and the art world. Does art function as representation of political beliefs and values at a national level? Is it an expression of the shared values of a group? If it does function to communicate common values related to political life, it probably does so in a way such that the ideology of the nation is deeply embedded in the artist’s psyche and process; it reflects political life in an unconscious way. Artists are the product of their environment, education, and influences. These work their way into artists’ creative processes in subtle, unconscious ways. The notion of art as a form of representation of political realities, then, is an indirect one. This representation is one that percolates up through the art in an unconscious manner. There are, of course, overtly political artists or a few artists who take a political turn at certain points in their career. But, for the majority, the life of the nation is going to be embedded in their work through the unconscious process of influence and through intuitive responses to national experiences, environments, and traditions.

78 NATIONALISM If we accept that even deeply personal processes such as the making and reception of artworks have a political dimension, it opens up the question whether the nation—as the most common form of political organization today—has any relationship to art. In most cases, nations were born out of a genuine expression of a desire for a people’s independence. They have grown out of the desire for liberation from oppression.

Figure 4.7 Che Guevara, “Tu ejemplo vive, tus ideas perduran,” 2007 (Havana, Cuba) © Clement Guillaume/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

This sign is based upon iconic photographs and prints of the charismatic revolutionary leader. The sign translates, “Your example lives. Your ideas last.” While Guevara remains controversial for his role in the Cuban revolution, as well as uprisings in the Congo and Bolivia, his image has become a global symbol for radical stances against political oppression. The fact that his image has become widely recognized speaks to the universal appeal of the idea of liberation from oppression.

This desire for freedom, which is a condition that some may regard as a natural right, has sparked many a revolution that has led to a new nation state. The most subversive political artists, including those who are openly critical of their own nations’ values, can only create their art because of the freedom of speech guaranteed by the concept of nation, or at least of democratic nationhood. It is true that not all

NATIONALISM 79 nations have incorporated freedom as a cornerstone, but freedom, in general, is more available now than under the preceding political forms, especially monarchies that tended toward autocracy. A positive understanding of art in relationship to nation building—in contrast to, say, a monarchy—is found in the expressive freedom afforded the artist. Another argument for the positive relationship of art to nationalism is that modern nationalism grows out of the breakup of colonial empires. Colonial powers had imposed political systems, often through the medium of the local tribal chief or local council system, as a way to control the remote rural areas found in their colonies. In addition, chiefs had become dependent on colonial powers to support their power in a region. Several other aspects of intercultural contact had led to increased political consolidation. Missionaries introduced institutional structures such as churches and schools into colonies. Administrators encouraged the development of formal codes of law, which included the definition and protection of private property. Intercultural contact also led to the need for negotiation and diplomacy, especially with regard to rights for land. Western governments demanded a structure of authority on the part of colonized peoples that would ensure the results of land negotiations. Thus, chiefly and tribal political roles developed but in a way that was advantageous to the colonizing power. The nation-as-structure dismantled the old system of chiefly privilege that was at the core of this colonizing effort. But, it also often challenged the traditional division of societies along tribal lines, requiring instead a national unity that transcends these divisions. In this light, the modern nation state is both anti-colonial and anti-tribal in character. However, there may be a range among nations in terms of the level of their anticolonial stance. Some states that have a relatively long history as a nation and large military budgets—the United States comes to mind—may be tempted to undertake imperial ambitions, which seem at odds with an anti-colonial mindset. The USA’s size, power and ambition can be contrasted with newly emerging states lacking in military resources; in those cases, the national ideology is likely to be much more anti-imperialist. The scale of the wealth and power of a nation is one factor contributing to its ability to play an imperial role. Fortunately, powerful, wealthy nations can choose not to play the role of imperial power. But, small, poor nations are unlikely to wear imperial armor because they lack the resources. Thus, the relationship between nationhood and art needs to incorporate an account of the age and wealth of nations: based on those factors, there is a spectrum among nations, from strongly anti-colonialist to potentially imperialist. Another factor affecting this question is that the range of opinions from anti-colonialist to imperialist can be found within the borders of a nation. Overall, though, we can say that the impulse to nationhood—the originating stage of each nation—is anti-colonialist and also a reaction against autocracy and imperialism. These are all motives that validate artistic freedom. In addition, the principle of the balance of power between nations—which was a key ingredient of the international system as it formed—counters and undermines imperialist tendencies when they do arise. Thus, the United States met

80 NATIONALISM with some stiff criticism from the community of nations when its policies moved in that direction during the early years of the century. Because of the spirit of liberation that animates the birth of nations, identification with the new nation has the potential to rehumanize the recently colonized. Colonization often involved degradation of local traditions. In response to this degradation, artistic expressions may function not only as statements of independence, but of renewed self-worth. National identity provides a sense of anchorage, especially when times are hard. Identity formation is a universal aspect of human psychology and much of our individual identity formation takes place in our interaction with others. We are social animals by nature and we form our identities in relation to communities, a process called collective identification. The nation is not the only community that we interact with: the family, extended family, groups that we share interests with, town, state, region, race, etc. are all important contributors to identity formation. Still, national identity may provide a sense of anchorage when other identities are confused or conflicted.

An example of the increase in self-reflexivity as a result of interaction with the cultural other is seen in the career of the celebrated Chinese artist, Zhang Xiaogang. Emerging from a troubled and isolated stage of his career, Zhang Xiaogang made a trip to Europe: In the 1990s, however, Zhang Xiaogang made a sharp break with his past, setting the stage for what would be a spectacular rise as an artist. Zhang says he essentially stopped painting in 1992 so that he could reflect on what he was doing. That year, he travelled to Germany. In Europe, Zhang visited galleries and museums and saw the works of artists he had long admired, such as Gerhard Richter. He says the trip to Europe also convinced him to rethink the style and themes of his work. He began to believe, he says, that the power of European art had something to do with the culture that surrounded it; and that perhaps his paintings were not Chinese enough but simply an imitation of something foreign.6 Through this encounter, Zhang began to completely restructure his subject matter and style. The process of self-reflexivity led him to discover what was important in his own experience related to modern Chinese culture. Zhang formed a deeply personal theme: the cost that cultural change has had on the family. In particular, his relationship with his own mother and other family members was explored in his new series of work, which has become wildly

NATIONALISM 81 successful in the world art market. He located this experience of the family in the context of a cultural turning point: He also chose a period that was incredibly popular with collectors: the Cultural Revolution. Other artists had already cashed in on doing Warhol-like experiments with Mao’s image or the Cultural Revolution, such as Li Shan and Wang Guangyi. But no one had really captured the family trauma of the time. And Zhang did it with stiff, almost expressionless faces that somehow hinted at the turbulence below the surface. In 1995, Zhang tried to explain his thinking: “I often subconsciously want to stand behind reality, to experience that which is hidden below this reality, those things we call ‘mysterious,’” he said. “I emphasize emotion.”7 In the paintings of Zhang Xiaogang we find that the personal and the political are deeply interwoven. Changes in the life of the nation are examined through their impact on personal relationships in the family.

Figure 4.8 Two models from the auction house, Christie’s, in Hong Kong, standing in front of a painting by Zhang Xiaogang, Bloodline: Big Families Series No. 2. At a Sotheby’s sale in Hong Kong in April of 2008, Zhang’s Bloodline: The Big Family No. 3 went for US$6,061,619, at that time the highest price ever paid for a painting by a living Asian artist. © ANNE CECILE GUTHMANN/AFP/Getty Images. Reproduced with permission.

82 NATIONALISM Many people do not realize the degree to which their national identity is part of their psyche until they travel abroad. Then they begin to realize that others recognize them according to those aspects of their speech, dress, and mannerisms that are associated with their nation of origin. Nation-based identity allows one to function as a community member at the international level. It is even a requirement for foreign travel, as anyone who has had the misfortune to lose a passport while traveling knows. Artists may play a special part in this international role. Intellectual elites, including artists, serve a necessary role as mediators between their fellow citizens and those of other countries. Not all members of society rise to the level of a “spokesperson.” With their powers of expression, artists of various kinds—visual, literary, musical—have the capacity to serve as cultural ambassadors, conveying through their art the values and complex internal relationships of the nations they represent. Ironically, it is when we become citizens of the world that we begin to realize how much we have been shaped by our nation of origin; experiencing the diversity of national and cultural traits throughout the world helps establish the comparative framework that enables us to see who “we” are. While this realization may include some healthy self-criticism of our birth nation, the understanding of its role in our development as individuals also increases. Selfreflexivity, gained though interaction with the Other, clarifies an understanding of one’s origins. We have seen some arguments for and against considering art in relationship to nationhood. While there are several arguments on either side, not all of these claims are weighted equally. The rise of nationalism as a genuine desire for liberation from oppression may outweigh many of the points grouped under “claims against nation.” Still nation-as-structure is being weakened by the power of transnational economic processes, especially the role of multinational corporations and the complex web of capital, currency, markets, labor, and raw resources extraction that transcends the control of any single nation state. We are in a position to acknowledge the continued legitimacy of “the nation” as the world’s most pervasive political model, but also to question the strength of the notion of national sovereignty in the modern context of global economic interdependency. It may be better to think of artistic processes in relation to limited models of sovereignty.

The role of the artist in national representation To think of artists as representing their nation requires a bit of a conceptual leap when we are used to thinking of artists as highly individualistic and self-expressive. But, as I noted earlier, the artist may “represent” national traits through subtle unconscious processes as much as through any overt strategy. National identity becomes embedded through education, influences, and traits absorbed from the larger society. This question of the artist as spokesperson for or representative of a nation or society takes on additional complexity in Third World contexts. What is the class position of Third World intellectuals who are responsible for cultural production?

NATIONALISM 83 They are a minority in relation to rural and urban working classes within their own country. But they are also mediators between their emerging nation and the wealthy nations and economies of the world. Artistic and intellectual productions provide a point of entry into the modern global economy (the world of the industrialist and the bourgeoisie). Often these artist-intellectuals may owe their position to a Westernstyle education. Their status within their own culture may be based in part on literacy in languages of global trade and intellectual production such as English, French, Spanish, and German. Their Western-style education becomes a source of a claim to power within their culture, but, at a functional level, it allows them to communicate with the global audience. Ironically, though, in attaining this education, they may have grown further in their social position from the working-class majority whose joys and challenges they express in their art. For some postmodernist artists the break away from local affiliations (whether a tribe or nation) becomes a mark of their personal artistic success. The idea is that if one claims one’s identity first as an artist and only secondarily as a member of a particular nation or tribe, then this is evidence of inclusion in the global, cosmopolitan art world. The underlying claim is that true liberation is achieved when art transcends the boundaries of identity, including national identity. What are the dangers of foregrounding one’s tribal, national, or ethnic identity in one’s art? One danger is that one’s art might be included in exhibitions, galleries, or publications on the basis of tokenism: “We need to do an ‘African’ show this year.” Another dangerous expectation is that one’s art “should” contain an outward political statement or, at the least, some kind of identity marker of being Hungarian or Senegalese or Thai or Navajo or . . . And, if this expectation of ethnic markers is in place, how does art that mixes many traditions fit into the “box” of that particular identity? In addition, does the desire to include such clear identity markers restrain innovation in art? Sometimes scorn may arise for those “clinging to ethnic styles”: such artists are seen as packaging and selling their ethnicity as a product. Perhaps the artist views his or her work as autobiographical—more concerned with self and identity at a personal level—and not social or political in nature. Another artist may tend to take global stands, perhaps against war, violence, pollution, etc., and feel that a national perspective is too limiting for problems that are transnational in nature. In some cases it can be seen as a sign of success to not be labeled an “ethnic artist.” In addition to the artists’ own goals, which may transcend local and national concerns, there are social facts, mentioned earlier, that make art less local than in the past. Many modern artists have received art school, and often university, training. Even in the Western world, this was not all that common in the past. Artists were trained in the workshops of artists, not in universities. But, since World War II, university degrees have frequently become the stamp of approval needed for entry into the art world. One’s economic survival depends upon the mainstream art world’s recognition and patronage, and often this comes about when an artist is addressing issues that are current in advanced educational settings. In the previous

84 NATIONALISM chapter on colonialism I discussed the relationship between knowledge and power. Colonialism resulted in a range of acculturation: it is ironic that the most radical of artistic expressions in form and content may be those that are most culturally assimilated into Western art theories and practices rather than those based in local traditions. Artworks informed by cultural critiques and theories that are de rigueur in contemporary academic training may be seen by traditionalists as emulating works by Western artists. It is true that many postcolonial artists do tend to use the language of creativity, personal expression, and cultural critique associated with contemporary Western art and culture. It is clear, then, that artistic elites play a complex role; they are between their culture of origin and the global, cosmopolitan system of the art world. A good example is found in the French political assimilation of francophone Africa. For example, in Senegal achievement in education was equated with fluency in French language and culture; the intellectual and national political leader Senghor was a product of that system. Many of the countries of Western Africa remain culturally bound to France. At the same time a major theorist and leader of the Algerian nationalist movement who advocated independence from France was Frantz Omar Fanon.

Figure 4.9 Portrait of Frantz Fanon, Mustapha Boutadjine, 2000. © Paris 2000. Reproduced with permission.

NATIONALISM 85 Born in Martinique in the Caribbean, Fanon (1925–1961) wrote several works on racism and colonial liberation. In 1960 he was appointed ambassador to Ghana by the rebellious Algerian government. Trained as a psychiatrist, his first book, Black Skin, White Masks (1952; Eng. trans., 1967), considered the psychology of racism and colonial domination. Just before his death from leukemia he published his most influential work, The Wretched of the Earth (1961; Eng. trans., 1968), which called for revolution by Third World peoples. Fanon identified three stages of liberation in the cultures of colonized peoples. He felt that liberation had to be based in the culture of the broader populace. In the first stage the populace is most concerned with the culture of the colonizer; this is the stage of assimilation. At this stage, “‘the mythical and degrading portrait’ created and spread by the colonizer ‘ends up being accepted and lived by the colonized.’”8 When the colonized accepts the image of the world that the colonizer presents to him, this legitimizes the colonizer’s views of social relations, religion, language, and history. Social control is exercised through education and religion and, in modern times, through imported popular culture. The non-native language becomes the “official language” of the colony and literacy in it is used to teach the history and values of the colonizer. This is the beginning stage, the conditions that revolutionaries will fight against. Those members of the colonized culture who assimilate most successfully will have a condescending view toward those who remain “native”; such people are viewed as backward. At this stage, there is a conflicted relationship between those who assimilate readily and those who resist assimilation. The film theorist, Roy Armes, stated that this confusion of identities is a crucial problem facing any Third World artist.9 The second stage of liberation involves a return to an idealized view of the traditional, pre-colonial culture. Based on either memory or nostalgia, this stage involves a “borrowed aestheticism” as part of the attempt to re-insert tradition into the lives of the people. Though this return to tradition is seductive—and a major theme of Third World art and literature as a result—Fanon considered such attempts at recovery of the past to be very difficult. As Armes stated, quite often the effort at recapturing the past develops into an art or literature “about tradition for a westernized audience”; he felt that a return to “superficially understood traditional roots is hazardous.”10 If the return to the past becomes the touchstone of the art of liberation, one faces the “ironic danger of embracing another set of colonial inventions instead.” In this view, the idea of traditional “customs” results from colonialism and there is a danger that these customs will become fixed in a way that serves neocolonialist forces. To paraphrase Fanon, History doesn’t change the diet of peasants today.11 He notes that the search for a national culture based in the traditions of the past is brought on by a fear of being swamped by present-day Western culture. In his third stage Fanon envisions art uniting with a people’s struggle in an authentic way. Out of this engagement with the present emerges a revolutionary literature, theater, music, or art: a truly national expression in art. Thus, we can see that in classic postcolonial revolutionary theory, it is not the stage of a return to

86 NATIONALISM traditional identity markers that exhibits the greatest authenticity; instead, it is the stage of defining a voice for the new nation that is most important, and this voice must arise out of the contemporary hopes of the populace. Ever the revolutionary, Fanon felt that citizens must substantiate their nation’s existence by fighting forces of occupation (the legacy of colonialism) and not by showing cultural treasures from the past. One can imagine that finding a voice in the present is not easy. The language and culture of the former colonizer remains, and it is accompanied by a sense of what was lost during the period of colonization. In addition, the new nation may not have developed along the lines of precolonial social divisions. It may require the development of a national voice among peoples whose strongest commonality is a sense of the shared oppression suffered during the colonial period. Finding that which is common to the experience of citizens in the present involves not only independence from the legacy of colonialism but the overcoming of precolonial tribal, caste, or class divisions: finding a source for unity in the present that transcends the history of oppression. Ideally, the experience of “nation” grows organically out of a shared culture. But if the boundary of the nation was imposed and is, therefore, an artificial boundary, or if the nation is heterogeneous by historical circumstance, then the nation’s identity may need to be constructed. While a constructed identity may seem to be less legitimate than one that is organically derived, this is not necessarily the case. The process of construction locates the locus of control (political and artistic agency) within the nation and within its present circumstances. Such conscious nation building on the part of many participants can help ensure that no single constituency (whether tribe, political party, or strongman) is able to dominate the nation’s process of self-definition. Fanon recognized that the problem of defining the nation should pre-exist the interests of particular political parties. If a conscious expression of the meaning of “nationhood” is not achieved, the risks of neocolonialism are real. As we have already noted, the true challenge to national sovereignty in the modern age is economic (a reflection of transnational economic processes). Neocolonialist economic processes can disarm the attempt at national independence; on the one hand there may occur a pretension of recognizing the political demands of the new nation, but this is coupled with economic processes that do not allow for complete independence. As Fanon noted, “The colonizer is incapable of changing material conditions in a way that restores dignity to the colonized.”12 This change in material conditions follows instead from the attempts at self-definition inherent in nation building. It should be noted that, for Fanon, the building of nations is different from the turn toward transnational liberation movements such as Negritude or Islamicism. Ultimately, a movement based on transnational ties of culture and race—as, for example, Negritude or Afro-centrism—comes from a sense of needing to “demonstrate” the existence of a distinct black culture to outsiders (whites, Asians, etc.). For Fanon, though, this desire extends a “racialization of thought” that is already present in the West.13 He felt that speaking of a pan-African or pan-Arab culture in

NATIONALISM 87 the process of nation-building would lead new nations up a blind alley in which national identities become limited to “exhibitionist demonstrations” of Africanism, Islamicism, and so on. There has been a parallel to Africanism or Negritude in the Arab world. Already, writing in the 1950s, Fanon had noted the “awakening of Islam.” He wrote that it too was a response to the “lies of the occupying powers” and that it echoed the earlier rise of pan-Arab culture during the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. While Arabism is a powerful motivator, Arabs also sing the praises of individual nations, a song that Fanon clearly prefers. For him, “every culture is first and foremost national.”14 Postcolonial art must, then, be an art of national liberation. Fanon noted that the process of liberation might lead to an art that is harsh in style. It is full of images, vigorous, rhythmic, and powerful in its colors and muscular action. But, he was concerned that this animated action would act as a substitute for engaging in the actual conflicts that would lead to full independence. He was concerned that in the real world the intellectual often follows styles and ideas up a blind alley in a “banal search for exoticism,” a kind of going back or going native that involves “becoming the sort of nigger the white man wants you to be.”15 Fanon demands of the revolutionary artists something deeper than quoting customs. Culture is not just custom; rather, custom is the deterioration of culture. Sometimes creating an authentic art of national liberation requires going against the current of tradition and opposing one’s own people. The truths of the nation are in the first place its realities and the artist must have the courage to present these truths, even if they are unpopular. National culture involves a whole body of efforts by which people describe, justify, and praise the action of citizens in the act of survival. This fight for an authentic cultural representation cannot occur apart from political realities. As Fanon states, national culture is not folklore.16 When culture becomes packaged according to old habits, traditions of dress and performance and so on, it becomes rigid. By contrast, an art that is passionate and engaged results from addressing one’s own people in the present. Well-meaning outsiders, functioning as specialists in “cultural preservation,” may seek to rush to the aid of traditional indigenous expressive forms. But these traditional styles of expression are much different than the emergence of vital new forms. There is dynamism in these emerging forms, because the process of nation building gathers together the elements needed for the formation of a modern culture. The modern postcolonial nation grows out of a struggle for liberation. Fanon stressed that it is a mistake to think that countries can skip the national period.17 Not only is it a stage that people must go through in the spirit of liberation, there is a certain urgency to this stage. It is in the context of the new nation that we find the disappearance of colonized man. Fanon, then, provides a compelling argument for the legitimacy of nation building as a frame for understanding art in cross-cultural contexts. And he guards us against various traps that artists might fall into as they struggle to create an authentic expression of liberation.

88 NATIONALISM Fanon, however, writes from the position of the revolutionary theorist and not from the perspective of the practicing artist. It is quite common for artists, and perhaps even necessary for them, to have a knowledge of past art, both within their national tradition and in relation to global developments within their medium. It is out of this dialog with art itself, along with the artist’s intuitive processing of present conditions, that an artist’s individual voice emerges. Fanon’s strong warning against the danger of a folkloric approach might have the effect of discouraging artists from this full engagement with the past. Another warning could be equally valid: to not know the past is to be doomed to repeat it, and, quite possibly, to repeat it in a crude manner. There are several ingredients, then, to a revolutionary art: a thorough knowledge of the pre-colonial traditions within one’s own culture of origin; an understanding of the intervening colonial languages, conventions, and values; a knowledge of world artistic trends, especially within one’s medium of specialization; and an attunement to contemporary social conditions. It is out of this mix of influences that an authentic art reflecting the conditions of one’s time will emerge. The audience for a revolutionary national art includes a global audience, probably more than Fanon—writing in the fifties—anticipated. This global audience will look for the particularity of the artist’s response to his or her conditions, but will more than likely expect evidence of an understanding of modern art, unless an artist truly is a naïve, folk, or outsider artist. This knowledge of the world of art goes beyond a confrontation of whiteness and blackness: it reflects the “world of art” as an entity that has come to transcend the former roles of colonizer and colonized. There is a danger that this global artistic perspective might continue to reify European and EuroAmerican analytical perspectives in aesthetics and art history, but there has recently been a move toward inclusion of many more examples from world art within these disciplines. Even with this risk, if a revolutionary national art is to have a general impact, it must address the analytical shortcomings of these modes of scholarship. As I have mentioned before, the status of nationhood is a passport to world citizenship. This applies to the world of artistic discourse, scholarship, and criticism as well as artistic production. To view new national trends in the arts as solely relevant to the nations that produce them is to miss out on the dialogic potential of art as a form of cross-cultural discourse. We need, therefore, to have both ingredients present: an art that is grounded in the reality of national liberation and identity as well as one that participates in the cosmopolitan discourse of the global art world. We can regard the chapter to this point as consisting of arguments for and against viewing art through the frame of “nationhood.” Within an either/or perspective some of the claims against the usefulness or legitimacy of “nation” as a frame for understanding art include that: • • •

the best art is cosmopolitan. mixed or hybrid identities lead to a sense of in-betweenness. the concept of nation incorporates a reliance on the language of the colonizer in order to establish nation.

NATIONALISM 89 • • • • • • • • • •

the concept of nation reflects acculturation to Western philosophies and values. global movements such as Africanism/Negritude or Islamic fundamentalism transcend national concerns. capitalism, and especially multinational business, destroys local economies and is a more powerful force than nationalism. classes of intellectuals are not “of” the people they purport to represent so they do not create a national art. present-day nationalism rests on a spectacle of “diversity” driven by transnational economic motives. Nationalism feeds the “politics of display.” nationalism rests on nostalgia for and glorification of the past. the concept of nation is essentialist and as such masks “internal” divisions and conflicts. increasingly, nationalism seems to be “state-imposed”; it reflects the needs of governments rather than of people. nationalism tends to include a preference for “civilization” as a source of national identity in contrast to the creations of indigenous, small-scale cultures. national identification may lead to a double code for art—one internal and national in scope, the other international.

There are several claims for the legitimacy of “nation” as a frame for creating and viewing art as well: • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Nationalism is a genuine expression of a desire for independence—for liberation from oppression. It reflects real changes in the economic and political lives of former colonies. It grows out of the destabilization of colonial empires. Nationalism is a truer reflection of social life than global identities such as Africanism. Nationalism shifts political and economic authority to the new nation. Culture is an organic part of national political life. The symbols of nation are not artificially created; they grow from the culture. Reassessment of the past in nationalism rehumanizes the colonized by rejecting the degrading portrait of the people formed during the colonial past. Nationalism provides a sense of anchorage when identities are confused. National identity enables citizens to function as community members at an international level. It helps keep wealth in the country in contrast to the economic exploitation that marked colonialism. Native intellectual elites serve a necessary role as mediators between their people and the West. Nation functions as a bulwark that counters and undermines international tendencies of neocolonialist powers in politics, culture, and economics. The concept of nation is not tied to the interests of a single political party or “strongman” and acts as an antidote to such parties consolidating power.

90 NATIONALISM While there are a significant number of claims for and against nation and, by implication, its value in relation to art, not all of these claims are weighted equally. Nationalism as a genuine desire for liberation from oppression may outweigh the counter-claims against it. However, it may be true that the claims for and against nation are weighted differently at different stages of a nation’s maturity. The powerful claim of nation as a vehicle for “liberation from oppression” is likely to be highly weighted in the revolutionary and formative stages of a new nation. By contrast, many of the arguments against “nation-as-structure” may apply to older, more powerful nations. “Nation” may be suspect in some cases because it has a historical association with militarism, colonialism, xenophobia, power mongering, and, sometimes, with paranoid, protectionist right-wing movements that have promoted racism. When nationalism becomes an ideology involving protectionism, greed, and competition, it undermines universal concerns of humanity—the common human experiences of caring, love, empathy, and belief—in favor of local prejudices and concerns. It is this exclusionary and destructive aspect of nationalism against which we become guarded (and for good reason). Patriotism can easily slide into chauvinism and ethnocentrism without awareness on the part of the patriot. One example of the thin line between patriotism and vigilantism is seen in the American Southwest, where illegal border crossings by Mexicans and Central Americans have been a hot-button issue for many years. A website reports about vigilante activity in the region: There will be no fooling around April 1 when hundreds of vigilantes swarm to a small stretch of the Arizona–Mexico border, picking up the slack where they say the government is miserably failing to stop the so-called “invasion of mobs of illegal aliens.” The month-long gathering, dubbed the Minuteman Project, has attracted volunteers from all of the country to come camp in the desert and monitor the border. Organized primarily to reap media attention to a region wrought with conflict and controversy rather than slow down the amount of undocumented travelers, the project has been called patriotic by some and racist by others.18 Is such activity an example of patriotism or xenophobic vigilantism? The danger is that national chauvinism becomes “naturalized,” in the way that all ideology functions, and citizens unconsciously focus on their “own” interests within a self-absorbed nation state. In addition, the symbolism of nationalist patriotism can be manipulated by the powerful. When this manipulation by savvy leaders leads to xenophobia and a reliance on war as a way to solve problems, one naturally questions the benefits of a nationalistic mode of thought. But there are more fundamental theoretical questions that arise as well.

NATIONALISM 91 In its origins, the state emerges from shared cultural traits. There is naturalness and authenticity to the idea of the state emerging from a groundspring of existing aspects of culture. Contrast this with the notion of the state’s creation of national heritage and its manipulation of the core “national” traits that it wants its citizens to embody. Socialist Realism (seen in both the Soviet Union and China) is an example of the state controlling ideas related to national character through art. The varied forms of fascism similarly employed art and pageantry to promote a particular view of the “Volk.” From an Anglo perspective, it is easy to see such tendencies in others who may have historically been enemies. But, it is worth questioning whether states in general engage in such manipulation of nationalistic symbols, especially as the state grows more powerful and autonomous over time. Should less authoritarian societies exempt themselves from the idea that powerful symbols can be used to control thought in the name of “national unity”? Perhaps it is for these reasons that the idea of nation, while accepted as a fact of modern life, is also seen as an ongoing irritant. If national identities are manufactured rather than emerging seamlessly from earlier stages of culture, then we have a few choices as to how to view the identity of each “nation.” National culture can be seen as a kind of public relations gimmick: a ploy to serve the needs of those in power and to make citizens “feel good” about their existing circumstances. Slightly more optimistic is the view that the governance of nations can be regarded as an art. This view has deep origins in the West. Platonic philosophy regarded the ruler as one who was especially skilled in statecraft. And Plato’s pupil, Aristotle, gave us a detailed account of one of its sister crafts, rhetoric. Thus, though one might agree with the concept of a national culture as a manufactured artifact, one could add that the quality of the manufacturing can vary tremendously depending upon the skill of the manufacturer. Skillful, honest statecraft—on those rare occasions when it appears—can be contrasted with the crass manipulation of national symbols. However, this view of nationalism as the manufacturing of national identity masks the nature of culture itself. The “manufactured sentiment” view rests upon an overemphasis on politics to the exclusion of other cultural processes. In recent decades there has been an effort to distinguish between nations along a number of cultural dimensions. Led by Geert Hofstede, researchers have measured cultural traits in a similar way that psychological instruments such as the Myers-Briggs test are used to identify personality styles.19 Cultures are seen as being closer to one pole or the other of such structural pairs as equality versus hierarchy; directness versus indirectness in communication; individualist versus group (collective) orientations; tendencies to emphasize tasks versus relationships; a tolerance for risk versus a habit of caution; and even femininity versus masculinity. Other researchers have identified additional dimensions along which national cultures vary. Each national culture ranks somewhere on each of these scales, whether to one extreme or closer to the middle. When one considers the combination of all of these traits, a portrait of a national culture emerges. This is a portrait of a national culture based upon the

92 NATIONALISM self-report of its citizens, not based upon an application of labels by outside researchers. Once compiled, these national portraits allow one to compare and contrast nations according to their values and tendencies. In doing so, some fascinating conclusions can be drawn. One is that national cultures can be grouped into families. For instance, the offspring of Great Britain—Australia, Canada, and the United States— tend to be much more culturally similar than different when compared to other nations. This occurs even though these nations have been separated politically from the “mother country” for many scores of years. Similarly, Asian cultures tend to be much closer to one another and none of these resemble the combination of traits found in Anglo or European cultures. Thus, cultural differences persist at the national level well into the modern era and in spite of the encroachment of globalization. This brings up the second general conclusion from these studies. Cultural traits persist. Though the social scientific methods of measurement that underlie the Hofstede approach did not exist one or two centuries ago, eyewitness accounts of cultures by outsiders were recorded. One can recognize in the results of modern social science research many of the very traits that were found in those early accounts. This is not to say that cultures do not change or “evolve” over time. But such research does call into question the notion that national identities are simply manufactured as part of some great “public relations campaign.” In the tussle of national politics, it is tempting to criticize the powerful for their attempts to control ideas and images. But that is simply what rhetors have always done. National identity, itself, rests upon much more deeply engrained cultural habits that cannot, ultimately, be controlled by a single leader or spokesperson.

Conclusion National identities rest upon the groundswell of national cultures. Cultures vary widely and, therefore, art can be expected to vary widely from nation to nation (as it has historically). Understanding the worldview that is expressed in art allows us to see how art is integrated with other features of a culture: its language, major faith(s), epistemological systems, political organization, educational processes, legal and medical systems, kinship systems, and so on. The aesthetic dimension is an integral aspect of the formation and expression of national identity. Knowing those traits that tend to run throughout a culture—individualist versus group (collective) orientations; tendencies to emphasize tasks versus relationships, etc.—will help us understand not only art as an expression of a nation’s values but the structure of a nation’s aesthetic system as well. Art is not separate from or above such values; it does not function only in the cosmopolitan, transnational sphere of a nation-less art world. Each and every artist, with very few exceptions, is herself or himself the product of a particular national culture. It is theoretically possible that a person will have moved so often as a youth and have lived in such a wide variety of cultures that they are not stamped by a particular national outlook, but this would be an

NATIONALISM 93 atypical instance. Because we (artists and non-artists alike) are all socialized into national cultures from birth, art cannot escape the bounds of national identity any more than other areas of social life. Fanon, then, was right about this: it is through the authentic engagement with social life today that an art of national identity, and of liberation, is created.

Chapter 5

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS

C

beliefs and behaviors of groups and interculturally to the relationship between groups of people. The term collective refers to this characteristic of “groupness.” In the context of intercultural relations, the collective function of art has increasingly become a concern in art theory and aesthetics. What is the origin of the collective function of art? Why does art have meaning for groups of people in addition to its meaning for individuals? And how does the collective meaning of art spread from one group to another? Through comparative study, one discovers that the collective function of art is often religious or spiritual in origin. Much historical aesthetic theory in the West, from Plato, Plotinus, Augustine, and Aquinas to Kant, Tolstoy, and Kandinsky, has had a spiritual or religious dimension. Art, as well as aesthetics, was primarily religious in the Western tradition until the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Even in the twentieth century many artists from Klee, Newman, and Rothko to Betye Saar and Joseph Beuys have talked about their art in spiritual (though often non-religious) language. Some recent scholars and critics have expressed concerns about the loss of this traditional connection between religion and art in the modern age. 1 Have science and technology undermined the spiritual function of art as these authors argue? Other theorists have celebrated the separation of art from its prior ritual, religious functions. Nietzsche influenced an entire generation of early twentiethcentury artists and thinkers who sought to break from the confines of traditional “religious art.” Still other writers question whether a sharp separation between art and religion has occurred in the twentieth century.2 What, then, are the relationships between religion, or spirituality, and art? And how do these connections relate to art’s intercultural function, if at all? One basis of the tie between art and religion is that artworks and religious symbols may work for us psychologically in similar ways. Aesthetic experiences that are ULTURE REFERS TO THE

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 95 charged with suggestive emotional power for an entire group resemble the “collective representations” of religion3 and politics.4 Collective representations derive their force from central, organizing ideas that are, in turn, expressive of worldviews. A worldview is the framework of beliefs and ideas through which an individual or culture interprets the world. Worldviews guide behavior or action as well. A worldview is the most total and integrated conception by an individual or culture of what it means to exist and to acquire knowledge. An individual’s worldview is formed through acculturation, and a culture’s worldview is formed historically over many generations. Because twentieth-century aesthetics often focuses on individual experience, the idea that art derives from a “central organizing idea” appears unlikely until one considers the unity of styles. By definition, styles consist of shared formal motifs, patterns or traits; their unity enables one to recognize and classify them. Style, then, serves as the basis for considering artistic expressions as collective representations, because styles point to assumptions and traits common to a culture. A collective representation is a particular symbol or representation that crystallizes the values of a group’s worldview. Many of the twentieth century’s collective representations are drawn from the mass media, but, as in the case of Michelangelo’s David or Sistine Ceiling, works of art can also function as collective representations.

Symbols and the collective meaning of art One element in developing a view of art as collective representation is to understand aesthetic expression as symbolic activity. Psychological theories of symbols help explain the universality of aesthetic expression. Twentieth-century Jungian theories of the archetype and collective unconscious have relied upon the comparative analysis of symbols in art. As we will see later, Jungian theories of symbol are controversial because some critics consider them to be unscientific. But they have had a major influence in the humanities and in their home discipline of depth psychology, so it is worth considering them at length here. An alternative to the approach to symbols found in psychoanalytical psychology is found in symbolic anthropology. This approach views culture as a symbolic system and a product of the human creation of meaning.5 Though not without controversy, psychological theories such as Jung’s help us understand the symbolic mechanisms by which art works in the mind. In Jungian thought art serves as a symbolic bridge between the conscious and unconscious mind but also as a link between the functions of the personality, allowing us to cross over to otherwise unreachable parts of ourselves. It is this bridging character of symbols that makes them of interest in a discussion of aesthetic expression. The meaning of the Greek symballien is to “unite, to connect, to bring separate parts together.”6 Art functions symbolically when it formulates an aspect of our experience that is relatively unknown. As Jung put it, “A symbol really lives only when it is the best and highest expression for something divined but not yet known to the observer.”7 Symbols formulate aspects of the unconscious.

96 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS When these unconscious aspects are widespread, Jung feels that symbols have a more general effect: they touch a corresponding chord in every psyche. Though symbols may touch what is common to all humans, they are by nature capable of manipulation; they do not simply “stand for” other things. People may act, play, and worship together but their interpretation of symbols differs. Artists have the ability to project symbols from the unconscious that have a collective meaning, but which allow for individual interpretation, depending upon the personality of the viewer. Jung’s concept of the primordial image or archetype refers to these shared aspects of the psyche that are then expressed in symbols. An archetype is a fundamental

Figure 5.1 Shiva Nataraja, South Indian, c. 1800. © Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums)/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

Eleventh-century Indian sculptures of Siva are primarily circular, reflecting a tie-in to Indian cosmology, which refers to the wheel of Karma, of destruction and regeneration. Here, the Hindu god Siva is represented as lord of the dance; the god is represented in idealized human form. One of his feet is placed on the demon ignorance. His flying locks terminate in cobra heads. Through this dance Siva periodically destroys the universe so that it may be reborn again. The work is full of movement and energy but also incredibly balanced.

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 97 aspect of the unconscious that is inherited from the collective experience of prior generations. Archetypes are distinguishable from personal images that do not have a collective significance.8 Through the symbolic expression of archetypes, artistic forms gain social value. In Jung’s usage, the function of the symbol is to reach the directly unknowable: that which is embedded in the unconscious of the individual and group. Thus, symbols have both a group and individual function. The circle as a sacred form, or mandala, is an archetype that interested Jung deeply.9 He was intrigued by the way that a symbol could carry meaning in a wide variety of cultural contexts. If something is truly archetypal, we would expect to find instances of it in many cultures. Archetypal theory, then, serves as a basis for comparative study. In its narrow usage, mandala refers to the circular images that served as the plans for temples in India. These plans were assumed to be sacred in their proportions. In Jungian thought, which emphasizes psychological balance, the importance of the circle is that it is a symbol of wholeness and integration. This symbol centers one in relation to space, whether this is psychological or physical space. Mandalas are often located within a square space that indicates direction; the spatial orientation that one performs within the circle in the square is a symbol of our human need for psychic orientation. Some cultures have such a powerful sense of this connection that their architecture is actually circular in form or built upon the plan of the circle in the square. This may include everyday as well as sacred architecture, indicating that the distinction between sacred and secular is less relevant for members of these cultures. Jungians might claim that the emphasis on four-fold directionality and multipliers of four reflects paired psychological functions such as thought and feeling, sensing and intuition. A building that has a mandala ground plan is a projection of the human unconscious onto the world. The prevalence of the circle as a symbol seems to point to the universality of human experience: psychological integration and balance, humans’ relation to nature and cosmos, and so on.10 But what might be controversial about archetypal theory? The existence of archetypes is difficult to prove scientifically. Is it even possible to prove scientifically that archetypes exist? Simply finding a number of examples that seem to relate does not constitute formal scientific proof of the existence of archetypes. Similar examples may just point to interesting coincidences. Another problem is that, by focusing on that which is similar in the circular forms of many cultures’ expressions, one may ignore very real differences between these symbols’ meanings for the cultures that produced them. Here is where a symbolic anthropologist might object to a Jungian approach: he or she would want to discover that which is particular to the meaning of the circle, for instance, within a specific culture. As with Freud’s theories, in the long run, archetypal explanations of symbols have been less influential in the sciences of psychology and anthropology than in literary and artistic criticism and in the analysis of myth. Jung’s ideas, then, point us to the general importance of art as symbolic expression for all people, but we need to know more about how and why symbol systems work, and vary, for different groups of people.

98 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS Figure 5.2 Mogollon Bowl (12th–15th century). © Detroit Institute of Arts, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

The Sacred Circle is central to Native American art and religion. An example of this is found in the pottery of the Anasazi and Mimbres people, ancestors of the current day Pueblo people of the Southwest. The patterns on Anasazi and Mimbres pottery incorporate highly abstracted symbols of the natural world and its processes. It is often difficult to interpret specific meanings of the symbols, but the nature-derived symbols on the pots reveal their makers’ belief in the spiritual dimension of everyday experience: spirit is found in nature. There is no top or bottom to the bowls, no implied hierarchy or ranking. Everything is contained and integrated in the universe, symbolized here by the round form of the bowl. The simple black and white designs symbolize this and the “other.” I am referring here not to a specific cultural other, but to the principle of the opposite, as in the relationship of yin and yang in Taoist symbolism. Otherness can be sensed as the possibility of the opposite that is about to happen. But, the opposing forces, symbolized by black and white, are not really separated in time; these opposites coexist in an integrated field, the hemispheric space of the bowl’s interior. These painted designs on the bowls’ interior surfaces have a basis in our perceptual mechanism of figure-ground; figure requires ground or context and vice versa.

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 99

Collective representations and religion In some contexts, aesthetic expressions, like religious and political expressions, evoke shared emotions and collective allegiances.11 A concert performance, for instance, can draw people together and create a sense of shared experience. Because of this collective potential, art may even substitute for the collective potential of religion or politics when people are disillusioned by these systems. Art becomes an alternative, autonomous source of spiritual fulfillment and communal connection rather than serving solely as a support for religious and governmental institutions. Later in this chapter I will discuss reasons for the separation of art from its traditional institutional moorings. At this point, I raise the possibility that art can substitute for institutional religion and politics simply to reinforce that it has the potential to serve a collective function. In the traditional aesthetic systems of the West and in most of the world’s cultures art has served a collective function. Can the same be said for the function of art in the contemporary world? Just as some philosophers and poets felt that art could substitute for religion (a common assumption of the Romantics and early Modernists) the loss of art’s collective function in the modern world has also been a source of concern. The historian and critic Lucy Lippard writes that the affinity many contemporary artists feel for “prehistoric” and archaic art reflects a desire to reintegrate art into social life: “These artists are rebelling against reductive purism and art-for-art’s sake emphasis on form or image alone with a gradual upsurge of mythical and ritual content related to nature and to the origins of social life.”12 It seems impossible, then, to cleanly separate aesthetic experience from religious or spiritual feeling; artists have responded to the divorce between art and spiritual meaning that occurred in some modernist movements with a reassertion of the connection between artistic and spiritual expression. Even in “secular” art that is divorced from specific institutional religions, spiritual motives are attributed to the artist—by the artist or the audience—and the audience associates spirituality with aesthetic experience. Can the affinity between aesthetic and religious feeling be a basis for reintegrating art into social life?13 The need for reintegration is readily apparent. I offer one piece of anecdotal evidence here: On a recent Sunday afternoon I visited a local museum. During the two-hour period that I was at the museum my companions and I were the only ones present, apart from the guards. This seemed strange in a county with a population of more than 400,000 people, but I have had the same experience on numerous other occasions and at other museums. This divorce between art and audience is not unique to the United States. In Mexico, for instance, it is rare to find significant numbers of visitors in art museums. There seems to be little interest in the “official” visual arts in many regions. If museums are perceived to be like churches by many people, they are often deserted churches. The exception, of course, is large museums that have achieved the status of a tourist destination; often these can afford to mount blockbuster exhibitions that play on the “celebrity” status of particular artists or movements. These shows receive

100 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS media attention because of the name recognition of the artists involved (Matisse, Cézanne, Vermeer). Another culture can function as a strong draw because of its exotic appeal; for instance, in Mexico City, there was recently an exhibition of art from Persia that was well attended. When people view these shows, they often use portable media headsets to provide a “soundtrack” for their experience. After the “show,” viewers are invited to buy a product related to their experience. This cycle of celebrity or exotic appeal, programming, and sales reproduces the economic system of corporate sales fueled by mass media advertising that dominates industrial culture. In the early twenty-first century, art is integrated into social life in the same way as other forms of experience, through the dissemination and control of products by large institutions, the mass media, and other corporate industries. Given this economic context, whether art’s so-called spiritual dimension is or can be a basis for its collective function remains to be established. Considering aesthetic expressions as collective representations, then, has the potential to help us see how aesthetic experiences are integrated into the life of communities. And historical examples of aesthetic and spiritual integration provide hope for art’s renewed meaning and usefulness today. On the other hand, this yearning for a collective spiritual function for art may be evidence of a nostalgic longing for the past. The traditional connection between religion and art, if it can be reestablished, seems to have as much importance for art as for religion. In the twentieth century artists and theorists often turned to other cultures in order to seek out this connection. The collective function of art, perhaps discoverable through its origin in religion, is an intercultural issue.

Religious—spiritual, sacred—secular Does the distinction between “religious” and “spiritual” art tell us anything about the collective function of art in different cultural contexts? Is there a useful distinction that can be made between these terms? Religious art expresses collective beliefs in relation to the teachings found within specific historical traditions (Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Lakota Sun Worship, Mayan cosmology, etc.). Religious art often tells stories related to a divine figure or source. In this sense, the classical art of Hellenic culture was religious, because many Greeks felt the world to be divinely ordered. However, some religious traditions may not include an assumption of the divine, focusing instead on the processes by which individuals gain enlightenment (Buddhism). I am setting aside another meaning of the term “religious” for now. This is the sense in which, for a devoted follower, only Christian or only Buddhist art can be considered religious, because the religion is considered by its followers to be the one true path. Instead, I am using religious in a comparative sense to refer to the religious function of art in general. Religion is a term that is, of course, open to great debate. One accepted meaning of the term, though, is that a religion is a system of belief and worship that is tied to a moral philosophy and code. Such a system is the product of the historical thoughts and activities of many people;

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 101 religions relate to group processes and collective beliefs. As such, religions have an institutional dimension. They involve groups organized according to established laws, principles, rituals, and so on. In contrast to religious art, spiritual art reveals the sacred in everyday life and expresses individual spiritual experience. Spiritual art is related to an individual’s search for meaning in life, and so it is less collective in its origins and effects. The religious and the spiritual often intersect, so the distinction between them is not hard and fast. Even so, the distinction is necessary because of historical developments. In the eras of modernity and postmodernity we seem to have more doubts about and agree less upon common values than in the past. If the search for spiritual values is more personal than in the past, then one can find the spiritual in places unrelated to the teachings and stories of traditional religions. Secular (non-religious) art and subject matter can convey spiritual experiences. Landscape is an example of a secular genre that has spiritual import for many artists and viewers. Scholars of religion might argue, and perhaps correctly, that there is no fundamental difference between the religious and spiritual because they both refer to a quest for fundamental values related to the divine, enlightenment, personal meaning, or some other core value. However, many artists seem to feel that the way this quest is contextualized and expressed makes a difference. Art that is conventionally religious fails to express the personal quest for spiritual meaning that is characteristically modern. Jacques Barzun, in an important lecture on “the rise of art as religion,” noted that for the early apostles of art as religion, including Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and Hegel, a major attraction of art was that it could lead to supreme spiritual fulfillment “free from ‘superstition.’”14 By superstition, I sense that Barzun refers not only to primitive belief systems but to the orthodoxies and myths of the major religions as well. Though it sounds contradictory, in contemporary art, the spiritual is most often realized in secular contexts. Secular refers to worldly places, experiences, and values, while sacred refers to religious rites, places, and usages. However, this distinction between sacred and secular, which was fully developed during the Age of Enlightenment (a period in the intellectual history of Western thought that corresponds approximately to the eighteenth century), leads to problems in the intercultural analysis of art. Other cultures (including historical cultures of the West) do not necessarily distinguish between sacred and secular. Rather, all aspects of experience are understood to be sacred or at least “spiritualized” in some sense. If contemporary Westerners understand “art” in a secular manner, what happens when they view the art of other cultures through this secular lens? Does the distinction between sacred and secular art apply cross culturally? If not, how do Westerners avoid the trap of imposing their own categories of understanding when seeking to understand the religious, collective function of art in non-Western cultures? Ideas about “sacred art” may only confuse us when trying to understand traditional Eskimo masks or African carvings because the sacred/secular distinction is not relevant. Even the viewing of historical indigenous objects as “art” by Westerners reflects modern, post-Enlightenment thought in a way that does not reflect the ideas

102 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS of the peoples who made the objects. The concept “art” has a social history, and its meaning in contemporary Western culture is so different from its meaning in other cultures and periods that it hinders us when we try to develop an understanding of the collective function of art. Another problem with extending the Western notion of “sacred art” cross culturally is that most Western religious traditions have supposedly been monotheistic in nature, while many non-Western traditions have been polytheistic. I write “supposedly,” because the assumption of monotheism downplays the contribution of “pagan” nature religions such as those of the Celts to Western culture. To the extent that the meaning of “sacred art” depends upon a specific Judeo-Christian or Islamic concept of a deity, the term has limited intercultural application. Nevertheless, in his provocative book, The Art of Living (1995), Crispin Sartwell argues that it is the contemporary modern West that is a historical exception by conceiving of art as independent from religion. For Sartwell, the modern concept of “art” is not a universal idea. Rather, the phrase “skilled or devoted making” captures the importance that members of each culture place upon certain processes and objects.15 For Sartwell, devoted making and related ideas such as “mindfulness” are sources of the universal significance of art, even in contemporary settings. Aspects of the Western conceptualization of art, such as innovation, uniqueness, or secularity, may cause harm when applied to non-Western artistic traditions. We know that “art” is potentially harmful because, when the concept “art” is introduced in non-Western settings, it leads to the dying out or changing in function and form of ritual, religious objects. This occurred in Eskimo mask making around 1900 with the inundation of whites into Western Alaska. After contact with the West, native Alaskans such as the Yup’ik stopped carving masks for religious ceremonies and began carving them without eye holes for touristic and decorative purposes. The masks were co-opted into a trade in “art objects” that had already been established with carved ivory. But this transformation took place in part because of the influence of missionaries who felt that the ceremonial masks and the performances that they accompanied were pagan and should be discouraged or outlawed. At the turn of the century, the Euro-American conception of the sacred generally did not extend beyond the context of Christianity. The masks’ intercultural meanings were controlled by economic and institutional religious processes rather than by their original contexts. The marketplace helped secularize, and Christian missionaries helped to undermine, the meaning of these religious masks. Another central concern in the intercultural appreciation of religious art, then, is the way that new contexts reconfigure and destroy the original, often religious, meanings of artworks. New meanings related to processes such as collecting, commerce, and tourism may emerge, but the original religious meanings are challenged in the process. Based upon these harmful effects of the concept of “art” and upon the strong ties between expression and ritual in the Inuit and other contexts, one might be inclined to search for a more appropriate term than “art” to describe, for instance, shamanic masks. Would it be better to view these religious objects as “fetishes,” “artifacts,”

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 103 or “relics”? Do the masks belong to a distinct category of “ritual objects” rather than to art? The question of labeling is not gratuitous; each of these labels functions to control the intercultural meaning of religious objects. Westerners must find a close corollary in our own languages to help us better understand the collective function of “sacred art.” The term “ritual object” seems to match the Western understanding of this art in its original usage. For instance, when a priest lifts a beautifully designed chalice containing the “blood of Christ” during the ceremony of communion, this compels belief in the transformation symbolized by Jesus’ death. Similarly, the shaman’s use of a mask in an actual Inuit ceremony invited the audience to believe in the ability of the shaman to transform into a natural or supernatural being. Thus, the ability to compel belief in the power of spiritual transformation seems common to both objects. Is the category “sacred art,” then, the same as that of ritual object? Not quite. Ritual object seems to place more emphasis on the performative function of the objects than the term sacred art implies. This performative function is also central to much of the historical art of the West. Most non-Western art has a function; this may be the reason for considering it “artifactual” (and thereby classifying it with ethnographic objects) rather than artistic. But this separation of (nonfunctional) art and (functional) artifact is highly specific to the West, occurring within the last two to three hundred years. Are we willing to accept this definitional separation between art and artifact as it applies to the collective function of religious art? By this definition, most of the art of the Renaissance is not artistic but artifactual because it had a devotional function and compelled belief in spiritual transformation. Yet most viewers consider Renaissance art as sacred art. Even supposedly “non-functional” Western art has a function as an economic commodity and a symbol of the buyer’s social status. (If someone can afford to buy single, one-of-a-kind artworks, this signifies wealth.) A distinction between art and artifact on the basis of functionality alone seems to be inadequate. Furthermore, the distinction based upon functionality does not seem to go to the heart of the ways that religious art conveys meaning in different cultures. Perhaps our problems derive from trying to understand non-Western art in the context of the “sacred.” In other words, there may not be direct corollaries in the contemporary Western aesthetic system for the kinds of purposes that religious art serves in other cultures. More than one aesthetic theory may have to be developed to account for the collective dimension of art that derives from religion. In comparing the art of the West and that of Africa, Robert Plant Armstrong proposes the existence of at least two distinct aesthetic systems.16 For him, in general, artworks are those objects filled with a powerful presence or vitality, which lead them to be held in special regard. We can tell art from non-art by what people do around art objects; artworks seem to be treated with a particular kind of regard or deference that we normally associate with our treatment of other human beings. Like Sartwell, Armstrong feels that art is marked by a powerful “presence” and that this presence evokes a sense of immersion in the process of making and experiencing art, both on the part of the artist and audience.

104 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS For Armstrong, though, the way that this presence is invested in an object varies culturally. The West has developed an “aesthetic of virtuosity,” in which one evaluates the importance of artworks based upon their excellence (which usually means the excellence of their formal structure, underlying idea, or technical execution). The artwork is self-validating; it does not depend upon communal, metaphysical, or other external contexts for its psychological effects. Following from this aesthetic theory, Western art would be expressive of spiritual (individual, psychological) but not religious experience. By contrast, an “aesthetic of invocation” invokes energy through communal and metaphysical forces. Artworks of this nature possess an “on/off ontology” because when they are not in use—when not enacted—they are not regarded as “special.” Artworks of this kind are more religious than spiritual in function. Artworks within an aesthetic of invocation are more stable because the energies that they evoke are assumed to be extra-mortal and because they are tied to enduring belief systems. Artworks within an aesthetic of virtuosity are inherently unstable as new standards of virtuosity are developed and applied to expression. Following from Armstrong, one way to “solve” the problem of the difference between the collective functions of art in cultures is to acknowledge the existence of clearly distinct aesthetic systems. We could never really experience an Eskimo or African carving as it was intended, then, because the values inherent in an aesthetic system of virtuosity would constantly impose themselves upon our experience of an object created within an aesthetic system of invocation. Yet, this idea—that aesthetic systems may differ to such a great degree that there is little overlap between them—is only one way to explain the relationship between the spiritual values of art in many cultures. Another possibility is to seek an analogue for the function of non-Western religious art in historical art of the West. To do this one would have to broaden one’s understanding of art to include aesthetic terms and concepts from before the Enlightenment: to recapture those Western concepts that have, so to speak, been “forgotten” in contemporary discourse about art. Classical ideas in Western thought—beauty, the Good, the One—may convey meanings similar to the collective, religious significance of much non-Western art. Traditionally, Western art may have functioned within an aesthetic of invocation similar to that described by Armstrong. This possibility reflects Crispin Sartwell’s position. He argues that, even today, we already have an aesthetic of invocation in Western culture present in the popular arts. For Sartwell, these everyday arts create a “mindfulness,” an immersion in just “being,” in a way that the elite fine arts cannot. Significantly for his theory, the separation of art into fine arts and crafts is a concept born of the Enlightenment. It did not inform the theories of classical aestheticians, who focused on techne or craft as the basis of all art. The “art of living” is to be fully present in the process of doing an activity, no matter what the activity is.17 Thus, art refers not to objects of a specific medium but to a process that engages us wholly; simply put, art refers to those processes that yield more experiential immersion than others. In an intercultural context, positions such as those of Sartwell and Armstrong effectively undermine the implicit hierarchy that places “developed” or progressive

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 105 cultures, with their high valuation of avant-garde art, “above” primitive, traditional or popular cultures. In the traditions of Romanticism and Modernism (and in their premises, which, I would argue, extend to the present) it is assumed that the artist has the right to be demanding of viewers, because she or he acts as a sensitive spiritual antenna of future social trends. Since the spirituality of the individual artist has replaced the tradition of institutional religion, the artist also takes on the role (however unconsciously) of spiritual antenna and moral compass. As art has taken on the mantle of religion it has ironically inherited the duties of the church, which include morality. Usually the artist acts as a social critic, so this is a curious kind of “reverse morality” rather than one that reinforces the existing social order. One of the most common objects of artistic criticism is modern materialism. The avantgarde has consistently justified itself by criticizing the material values of bourgeois life. In order to serve a moral function, then, contemporary art has adopted a revolutionary relationship to the everyday lives of most people that is the reverse of the integrated relationship between art and life found in indigenous and nonWestern cultures. Emotional autonomy from technological, industrial culture enables artists to be the force of spiritual “progress” in the contemporary West. Of course, this helps explain artists’ own material impoverishment as well. Thus, while avant-garde artists may long for the simple integration of art and life that assumedly occurs in “primitive” cultures (hence, the archetypal nature of Gauguin’s search), their role as spiritual and social antennae requires them to be outsiders in their own cultures. Gauguin’s experience in Tahiti was the ultimate expression of that outsider status in early modernism. The avant-garde reinforces a social hierarchy and categories of exclusion based upon spiritual and intellectual elitism; this exclusivity is seen in the continued self-justificatory rhetoric of the “difficulty” of their own work on the grounds that it is “good” for the audience to be challenged. This exclusivity is also the target of recent critics such as Sartwell, who criticizes the avant-garde by comparing the art of the West with the role of art in relation to religious systems elsewhere. By establishing a distinction between a more traditional religious art of invocation and a spiritual-critical-individualistic art, we are now in a position to consider ritual objects as sacred art in their own right. These objects need not be marginalized as fetishistic or superstitious. Nor should they be seen as less important, contemporary, or immediate than avant-garde art in the West, simply because the relationship of the artworks to time does not reflect the same temporal values found in the Western assumption of cultural “progress.” The sources of their meaning are simply different. For example, no mask in Alaskan native culture existed as a carving unto itself; it was always tied to stories, songs, beliefs, and dance movements. Dances that incorporated the masks were meant to influence the behavior of animals or to propitiate the spirits that govern nature. Taken as a whole, the masks represented the entire Alaskan Eskimo cosmology: good and bad mythical beings, deities such as the sun and the moon and other spirits that could be manipulated through the masks.

106 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS Additionally, the Eskimo’s own identity as a group was linked to the belief in spirits that were affected by the masks’ use. The term Inuit, which the Eskimo use to refer to themselves, comes from inua or “soul.” Ralph Coe describes this link between spirituality and identity in the maskmakers’ art. Any mask with an inner face or carved with a fragmentary part of another face—an additional mouth or partial nose for example— represented not an individual animal but the collective inua of the whole species: a reincarnative force . . . The plural of inua is inuit, meaning people, which is the name by which the Eskimos referred to themselves as a group.18 Masks represent spirits of men, animals, stories, and things of the unseen world seen in dreams and visions, but they usually have a human form. Inua means “its human being” or “its person”; the soul represented the “human beingness” of animals, cosmological bodies, and so forth. Most masks are spirit masks. When human attributes are present, the mask represents the vital force of a whole kind such as the seal inua; when not present, a mask represents a specific animal.

Figure 5.3 Mask, Yup’ik (early 20th century). Collection of Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada. Reproduced with permission.

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 107 Mask makers stress the importance of the “mind’s eye” as a source of inspiration and as a guide to the actual carving process since no formal plan is used in making the masks. In this sense, the “creativity” of mask making is much like that of the creativity of the romantic artist’s vision in the West, which develops out of the artist’s intuition and not from a formula or plan. But, for the Eskimo, this process did not set the artist “apart” from his or her community in the same way that contemporary artists in the West are seen as “outsiders.” The process of mask making kept alive the possibility of magical transformation in the community’s belief system. For many in the Eskimo community, masks magically transformed the physical into the mythical and spiritual. However, the reader may have noticed that many of the preceding passages have been in the past tense. In many indigenous cultures, belief in the transformative power of art has been undermined by external commercial and religious forces. Thus, even for non-Western peoples, the communal spiritually transformative potential of art may be more nostalgic than lived. To this point in the chapter I have been considering the collective and intercultural nature of “art” in relation to several distinctions that have developed in Western thought: religious and spiritual, collective and individual, sacred and secular, artifactual and artistic, invocational and virtuosic, traditional and self-consciously progressive (avant-garde). Since the late nineteenth century “spiritual art” has become more private in intent and meaning while “religious art” has implied collective belief and devotional practice based in the past. A recent search of the subject terms “art” and “religion” resulted in many entries, but most of them referred to art outside of the West. Has religion become a term that scholars apply to the beliefs and expression of others and spirituality a term that is applied to the West (albeit infrequently)? Religion seems to permeate the discussion of the art of “Others” but apparently has little place in the discussion of contemporary Western art. It seems that the divorce between religion and art is even more pronounced than the divorce between art and beauty in the twentieth century.

The critical role of art This “freedom” of art from the institutional constraints of religion and collective life has allowed it to play a much more critical social role. To the average viewer, much contemporary art may not appear “spiritual” at all; rather, it may appear selfanalytical and highly critical of contemporary society and the human condition. Even though contemporary art may not seem spiritual, this critical function is an extension of art’s assumption of the traditional role of religion. Art becomes the new arbiter of morality, though this often involves the inversion of moral codes rather than an affirmation of conventional morality. As Barzun has argued, in the early twentieth century the strategy of the Symbolists and other early Modernists was to represent art as the core of reality by which all other things were shown to be false and artificial and, therefore, subject to doubt.19 Art became the true measure of vitality; all other values were overturned or suspected in what Nietzsche called

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Figure 5.4 Joseph Beuys, I Like America and America Likes Me, 1974. René Block Gallery, New York. Photo: Caroline Tisdall © 1997 Estate of Joseph Beuys/ARS, NY. © DACS 2010 © Tate, London, 2010. Reproduced with permission.

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 109 This opposition of the spiritual and material continues to motivate influential late-twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists. In a famous performance piece, Coyote: I Like America and America Likes Me (Rene Block Gallery, New York, 1974), the artist Joseph Beuys wrapped himself in a felt blanket and stayed for a week in a room with a coyote. One of the few props in the room was a copy of the Wall Street Journal. For Beuys, the Wall Street Journal upon which the coyote had so persistently urinated epitomised the “ultimate rigor mortis” afflicting thinking about life today: economic capital is the only “substance” revered by a culture that is prepared to sacrifice everything in its name. What Beuys meant by “substance” (or capital) was utterly different, growing out of a shamanic perception of art (capital) as creative, animistic energy and imagination: the ultimate root of any possibility of growth towards a nontotalitarian world of social and cosmic totality.20 Beuys’ political artwork exemplifies the way that “spiritual” art served a critical role in contemporary culture in the late twentieth century, extending a tendency that began more than one hundred years ago with the birth of the avant-garde.

the “transvaluation of all values.” To take one example of artistic transvaluation, twentieth-century figuration often involves a dismemberment and defamation of the human image (think of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Willem DeKooning, Larry Rivers, David Salle, and so on), not a reflection of or glorification of the human form as appeared in the Renaissance. The process of transvaluation led artists to critique the materialism of the dominant liberal, democratic, capitalist worldview of the urban industrial culture of Europe and North America, especially the worldview of the middle class. In contrast to the glamour-less life of industry, work, and business, the artist envisioned a life unconditioned by material reality: hence, the nonmaterial, abstract nature of much “spiritual” art in the twentieth century. In cross-cultural contexts, though, the critical nature of “spiritual” art may create distinct tensions. Contemporary art’s critical edge exists in marked contrast to the affirmative, celebratory function of art within many non-Western and traditional settings. The contemporary artist in the West in large part continues to draw on the romantic avant-garde myth of the artist as “outsider”—challenging, cajoling, and critiquing the assumptions of his or her audience—and this position is increasingly assumed by artists in countries outside of Europe and North America as well, especially in cultures such as those of East Asia that take on the liberal, democratic, and capitalist values associated with “modernization.” This strong move toward

110 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS modernization and, as a result, toward an avant-garde function for art, began in Japan in the 1950s and in China in the late 1980s and 1990s. Despite this continuing global spread of the European romanticist model of the artist, the late twentieth century also witnessed a reverse influence, that of the traditional, “integrated” (and often religious or spiritual) artist as a way to reinvigorate the collective function of Western art. I turn to each of these possibilities next.

Increasing secularity of art Artists from Kandinsky to Beuys have seen “the spiritual in art” as a kind of antidote to the increasing secularity and materialism of capitalist cultures. But, as I noted at the beginning of the chapter, another thesis can be put forward: that art itself has grown increasingly secular in recent history. There are a number of social and economic developments that support this argument. First among these is that, in contrast to the Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods, artistic patronage today largely occurs outside of religious institutions. Up until the time of contact with the West, in most non-Western cultures “patronage” was most often tied to political and religious processes and institutions. In the West, the development of non-religious patronage and corresponding secular subject matter began in the Northern Baroque with the rise of a mercantile class. This development was reinforced through the rise of secular civic institutions, museums, academies, and eventually universities, that provided alternative avenues of support for the arts. Even these civic institutions, though, often justified their existence through moral claims—the “good” of art for the community—that are quasi-religious in tone. Thus, it was the rise of the dealer–gallery system over the last three hundred years that created the greatest independence of art and artists from religious patronage. This system and the related habit of collecting have had a major impact on the function of art in many non-Western cultures as well. The commodity function of art has, in many cases, supplanted its religious or moral function in indigenous communities. This shift in patronage helps explain the increasingly private function of “modern” art (from the Baroque on) versus the traditionally collective function of religious art. Now, an individual buyer can determine what she or he values in art, and an individual artist no longer has to meet the demands of a large, collective entity such as the church. This economic privatization of art made possible the split between individual expressions of spirituality and specific religious traditions discussed earlier. Coupled with the devaluation of functional art in formalist theory, this has led to the avoidance of religious instruction in art. Potentially, privatization both downplays the notion that there are common values that should be expressed (aside from commercial values) and downplays conventional artistic languages and symbols that make religious expression possible. One major cause of the secularization of art, then, is the development of commercial processes that encourage the privatization of artistic values and languages.

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 111 A second major cause of art’s secularization is science and technology’s perceived challenge to religion. This challenge began during the Baroque and Enlightenment. Its influence has both broadened (by affecting cultures outside Europe) and deepened (by challenging religious beliefs more fundamentally) since those time periods.21 Contemporary concerns over technology’s impact upon art and spirituality are found in the ideas of José Arguelles and Suzi Gablik. Gablik has written widely about the transformation of art in the late twentieth century. Many of her ideas about the relationship between art, spirituality, and technology are put forth in The Reenchantment of Art.22 She begins the chapter “Learning to Dream” with a statement of loss, implying that the West has lost specific spiritual methods and capacities. For Gablik, the West’s ego, buoyed by its technological obsession and patriarchal organization, blocks it from accessing the more “feminine” magical and mythological dimensions of reality. Gablik defines this condition as soul-loss, in which vital spiritual and emotional capacities connected with nature are contradicted by the world of mechanization. For writers such as Gablik and Arguelles, who wrote in a similar vein fifteen years earlier, technology, and related attitudes such as rationality and Cartesianism, lead to an absence of the sacred. Gablik critiques the West’s dominant worldview on the basis of its results: a culture that in her view is sterile, vacuous, empty, fragmented, starved for depth, meaningless, mundane, routine, monotonous, sick, violent, partial, alienated, fractured, distanced, materialistic, and destitute. Gablik states “We must see our present culture for what it is: an addictive system.”23 And, for her, much of this addiction results from an over-reliance on science and technology. Similarly, Gablik expresses foreboding about the computer age, a feeling that the “network consciousness” it creates will produce disconnected, disembodied individuals who lack the sensual, intellectual, and communicative skills needed to develop spiritually.24 She is probably right that reading and writing will become less valued and, therefore, less well practiced skills in the electronic age. But perhaps it is too early in the process to tell whether all of the effects of the new electronic media environment will be negative. The effects of technologies are hard to predict when the technology is new. It would have been difficult to predict the effects that the printing press would have on culture at the time of its invention. Some people at the time may have feared the loss of authenticity, creativity, or depth of thought resulting from printed versus hand-lettered manuscripts. To a certain degree they would have been correct: the mechanical press and its processes all but did away with the physical, personal touch of the scribe and the kind of skill involved in manuscript illumination. Of course, this did not stop the rapid development of print culture, nor did it undermine the positive effects of that culture. Gablik argues that we, in our technological obsession, have lost the sense of the miraculous, and because of this we have had a corresponding loss of consciousness of the power of the spiritual. Through forms such as rituals, altars, and votives, Gablik seeks to return us to an older, pretechnological form of consciousness. Yet, it seems that humans have always been interested in developing external

112 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS technologies along with internal knowledge. For instance, in his classic book, Prints and Visual Communication, William Ivins made the case that the medieval period, variably cast as either an “Age of Faith” or simply as a barbarous interlude between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, was actually a period of important technical advancement. Is technology necessarily contrary to spiritual development in a historical sense? Or have technologies, like those that built the Gothic cathedral, created unique potentials for transformation? Whatever our responses may be to these questions, it is clear that the ability to ask them is based upon an awareness of secularity and a fear that it is increasing. We have explored two possibilities regarding the relationship between art and religion: (1) that materialism, science, and technology have undermined the traditional religious function of art and that a new integration needs to take place in Western culture akin to the relationship between art and society in Non-Western cultures; and, conversely, (2) that the separation of art and religion is a sign of the liberation of art from its prior religious function, allowing art to play a more critical role in culture. A third position is to question whether a sharp separation between art and religion has really occurred in the twentieth century. This position emphasizes the spiritual motivations of art at its origin and shows how artists continue to play a pivotal role in each culture’s spiritual development.25

Artists as shamans In the twentieth century Western artists continued to be understood according to roles—revolutionary, bohemian, genius—that were defined from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries in Europe. These roles superseded earlier views of artists as artisans and craftsmen, common from the ancient through the medieval ages. Another way for artists to redefine their social role based upon the past is to once again define themselves as artisans—similar to those of the medieval guilds— an understanding that has motivated the nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts movement, the Bauhaus in the twentieth century, and other design reform movements. But, an understanding of the artist as artisan does not invest the artist with any particular spiritual insight or ability. As a result, this redefinition of the artist as artisan may have been adopted by contemporary designers, illustrators, and so forth but not by “fine artists.” There is a social role that precedes all of these subsequent roles: that of the shaman. Though the shaman is not understood as an “artist” in indigenous cultures where he plays an integral part, if contemporary artists were able to “tap” this primal relationship of psychic healer to society, this might reinvigorate the collective function of art. In the role of the shaman we see a potential reversal of cross-cultural influence, from indigenous and other NonWestern cultures to the industrial cultures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Even though his work was often critical, this was the spiritual tradition that Beuys was trying to tap. That is why he employed animals and remainders of the animal world in his pieces: to draw on the power of animistic belief systems. Though the

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 113 desire for a renewed collective function of art that drives the shaman-artist role is genuine, the development of this role has been controversial. In many indigenous cultures “art” enhanced the future well-being of the community through its role in “religion.” I set the terms religion and art off, because it is unlikely that these were identified as separate realms of experience in traditional indigenous and archaic cultures. Once we view religion and art as interwoven activities, this forms a basis for recognition of the hybrid role of shaman-artist. The shaman-artist is not a specialist in the same way that contemporary designers and artists are. Rather, he or she is part sorcerer, healer, priest, magician, and artist. The shaman served as a doctor who diagnosed illnesses and prescribed for the sick, but also understood and affected natural/spiritual forces, especially those that controlled the food supply. Traditionally, the image making of the shaman seems to have been connected to hunting and fishing rites. Shamans were the architects of the ritual dances that brought people and spirits into contact. As an architect of community rituals, the activity of the shaman was not a solitary activity as may be implied in the analogy of the shaman to the contemporary poet or artist. There is another sense in which the shaman’s world was not solitary, as Edmund Feldman describes: “The shaman knows that his totemic protectors are watching over him

Figure 5.5 A Tungusian shaman (coloured engraving) (18th century). © Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France/Archives Charmet/ The Bridgeman Art Library International/Archives Charmet. Reproduced with permission.

114 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS Figure 5.6 Norval Morrisseau, Shaman with Many Fishes, 1990. © Gabe Vadas 2010. Reproduced with permission.

One of the clearest expressions of the meaning of shamanism for contemporary artists is the work of the Ojibwa artist, Norval Morrisseau. Norval Morrisseau, b. 1931, wrote Legends of my People, the Great Ojibwa (1965), which rooted his art directly in the spiritually based storytelling tradition of his culture. Considered the founder of the Woodlands School of Anishinaabe painting, Morrisseau has developed a sacred iconography rooted in Native and Christian religious sources. His work is a continuation of the shaman’s scrolls that were the primary form of visual expression among the traditional Ojibwa. These scrolls (Wiigwaasabak) consisted of symbols on birch bark that shamans use as part of Midiwiwin society rituals. The latter is a secretive healing society found in the Maritime, New England and Great Lakes regions of North America. Morrisseau urges continuation of the oral tradition; the primary role of the artist is that of spiritual practitioner or shaman. He states, I transmit astral plane harmonies through my brushes into the physical plane. These otherworld colours are reflected in the alphabet of nature, a grammar in which the symbols are plants, animals, birds, fishes, earth and sky. I am merely a channel for the spirit to utilize, and it is needed by a spirit-starved society.26

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 115 and what he does. The earliest artist, then, is never alone—not in a psychological sense. We cannot overemphasize this point: Art at the earliest stages of human culture is meant to communicate.”27 In cultures such as those of the Inuit anybody could see spirits, but the shaman saw them most clearly. Part of the reason for the analogy of the shaman and artist is that he or she was often a man or woman who had been atypical, perhaps psychotic in behavior, as a child; these leanings were channeled into the accepted role of shaman. Thus, the artist, inspired by “divine madness” (a theory of creativity developed at least as early as the time of classical Greece), and the shaman are both seen as psychologically unstable or different but capable of serving a positive social and spiritual function. In Eskimo culture shamans knew quite a few tricks; they could supposedly survive severe burns, being thrown bound by hand and foot into the sea, or speared through the stomach without a mark of the experience. Through this “magic” the shaman compelled belief that he could transform himself into an animal, often an animal identified as a spirit guide. The magic of the shaman was fueled by the power of collective belief, not only because shamanism occurred in prescientific cultures, but also because the shaman’s performance usually grew out of a real need, such as sickness or the search for food. Specific art forms, such as the making of masks, were a way of interpreting spirits that the shaman contacted during trances. The masks were abstracted symbols of balance between all natural forces, which the shaman understood and could affect. Thus, shamanism involved a special kind of intuitive, non-rational knowledge and ways of putting that knowledge into action to achieve social and physical results. One source of evidence of the nature and degree of the shaman’s gifts is the visual record. As Feldman notes, shamans had a capacity to draw, engrave, or model forms convincingly in the absence of the animal or other model.28 The shaman could summon up and imaginatively produce visual forms of power and subtlety. The shaman, then, has powers valued by contemporary artists: the gift of seeing or “visualization,” the ability to abstract and remember essential features of the physical world, the ability to experience a wide range of psychological states (especially those considered intuitive or non-rational in a contemporary sense), and the ability to compel belief in the “magic” of his or her visions and actions.29 A renewal of the social role of the artist as shaman seems to provide an antidote to the distance between artist and audience that emerged from the “art for art’s sake” theories of the early twentieth century. According to Michael Tucker, the unique psychological and social capacities of shamans have served as an inspiration to a thread of twentieth-century art, literature, and music. In his book Dreaming with Open Eyes (1992), Tucker details the contemporary shamanic spirit in Scandinavian art and literature, American jazz, art, and psychology, European aesthetics, and so on. Shamanism helps him interpret the motives for synesthetic tendencies (color–sound relationships) in late romantic and early modernist classical music (Scriabin, Sibelius, Mahler, Orff, Messiaen, Stockhausen) as well as the mythic postmodern art of artists such as Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, and Sigmar Polke. Based upon Tucker’s argument, the intercultural influence of shamanism and its collective potential is

116 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS pervasive in twentieth-century art. In his view, the innovations of contemporary artists have gone far beyond the developments associated with “modernism” and “postmodernism” to create a fundamental shift in attitudes toward matters of consciousness and creativity: a shift encapsulated in the hyphenated role of the shaman-artist. Thus, the shaman is no longer contextualized within a specific cultural setting. Rather, the combined influence of anthropological and archeological discoveries (thereby creating a historical appreciation of the shaman’s role), the growth of depth psychology (which has opened us to new possibilities of the psyche), and the aggressive experimentation of artists themselves has led to the global, intercultural impact of shamanism upon the arts. Following from Tucker, shamanism is a major intercultural development in the relationship between art and religion. But it is the global nature of this cross-cultural realization of the shamanic spirit in the twentieth century that has become a cause for concern for some theorists.

Critique of the shaman-artist While Tucker sees the shamanic spirit as a positive impulse in twentieth-century art, other scholars have expressed concern that the shaman-artist results from the clumsy appropriation of indigenous expressions by Western artists. The poet and anthropologist Wendy Rose refers to this appropriation of indigenous, non-Western spiritual traditions as “whiteshamanism.” According to Rose, non-native poets and “visionaries” such as Carlos Castenada and Gary Snyder have drawn an analogy between the contemporary poet/artist and the traditional role of the shaman.30 In this role, the artist withdraws to solitude to seek visions; he or she serves a dual social role as both an outsider and one who validates experiences for a group; and the artist engages in a public act of “madness” (an acknowledgment of the unconscious or “irrational” as a source of power in art). This characterization by Rose matches Tucker’s view of the shaman-artist, though he makes the connection to artists working in several media and countries. But Rose feels that whiteshamans do not use any specific historical or traditional model (except for an ill-defined relation to native traditions) to support their role; they each invent their own model. This leads to some major problems. Whiteshamans lack significant community acknowledgment and training (they have no real qualifications for their role) and their artwork can quickly descend into invented rituals, relegating the artist to the status of a charlatan. The misinformation resulting from “invented traditions” obscures more “accurate” information and traditions. In a disconcerting way, the whole phenomenon of whiteshamanism depends on Europeans’ and Euro-Americans’ own system of self-validation. For Rose, whiteshamanist art is part of a larger process of cultural imperialism, in which the appropriation of native religions subordinates indigenous cultures conceptually in a way that is consistent with the general colonialist enterprise of political and

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 117 economic control.31 Euro-Americans try to “own” ideas in the same way that this group has imposed notions of land ownership; whiteshamanism is little more than intellectual “Manifest Destiny.” Rose feels that this ownership of native history and ideas relates to the problem of an assumed universality of knowledge resulting from Eurocentrism. In this view, the co-opting frameworks of knowledge, whether artistic or academic, are European-derived. The Western tradition acts as the big picture—the normative expression of intellect—while the thought and experiences of other cultures are seen as appendages, as areas of esoteric specialization. Rose acknowledges that all people are ethnocentric, but, for her, the intrinsic universalism of Eurocentric thought leads to the denial of one’s own ethnicity; “ethnic” is a term reserved for Others. Thus, whiteshamanism reveals fundamental intercultural conflicts in aesthetics and art. Following from the whiteshamanist attitude, indigenous religious expressions are viewed as “available” by members of non-native cultures to “use” in inventing their own myths or traditions. But this assumption of “availability” masks more fundamental problems of integrity and intent. Native artists such as the Hopi videographer, Victor Masayesva, Jr., have noted the importance of secrecy in spiritual matters and have stated that there are dangers in making information too available. 32 This seems to be a view shared in his community; the Hopi have prevented photographs of their religious rituals since the 1910s. According to native artists and critics, the right to “use” other cultures stems from those cultures—it is not all just “available.” One must beware of “inventing one’s own myths” or rituals if they involve the appropriation of key symbols from other cultures that have been radically decontextualized. Beuys’ appropriation of the coyote as a key symbol in the aforementioned piece is an example of the radical decontextualization of an American Indian symbol. (Please see the explanatory box that appears on page 109.) The nonNative can never “become Native,” so deep reflection is called for in this intercultural process of religious and aesthetic expression. Rose’s argument powerfully cautions those who seek to “incorporate” indigenous and archaic religious and expressive forms in their own art. However, her argument may rest on an overly literal understanding of shamanism as tied to particular cultures. She acknowledges that whites’ understanding of “shaman” is more general than the shamanic role in any particular culture or culture area encompasses (Siberian, Inuit, Plains). In part, the debate over whiteshamanism depends on whether shamanism can have a more general meaning than Rose ascribes to it and, if so, under what conditions. Her argument supports a relativist conception of shamanism. Michael Tucker’s study of the shamanic spirit in twentieth-century art is a much more general interpretation (perhaps universalizing) of the shamanic impulse in art than Rose allows. However, Rose’s analysis points out intercultural issues central to the larger issue of the connection between religion and art. Is the modern connection between shamanism and art a symptom of a larger process of cultural imperialism—a colonizing of the mind by European peoples that follows from their earlier conquering of land? As Rose notes, whiteshamanism lends

118 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS itself to cults, with their ties to “healing,” “medicine,” “blessings,” and so on. Rose’s critique seems aimed at the motivations of people who engage in whiteshamanism, as much as it is directed toward the practices thereof. For instance, Rose critiques Euroamerican feminism, which in recent years has focused on rediscovering the “lost power” of women. Rose’s concern is that this process is exclusionary: the search for “spirit power” focuses on white, non-Native, women, and there is a notable absence of Native women from “the women’s movement” in general. If a Native woman does hope to “fit in” to the movement she is often expected to fit the stereotype of “Native”—expected to adopt a “persona”—and she is rendered “unreal” as an Indian in white eyes unless she deals solely with Native issues. The effect of whiteshamanism on non-white peoples has been displacement, both from Native healing and artistic traditions and from full participation in non-Native cultural settings. Thus, for survival purposes some artists of non-European background have adopted Euro-American views of what it means to be a writer or artist, of what recognition to expect, and how to gain that recognition. In striking a balance between selling and selling out, “ethnic” artists may have to deal with the expectation, common in multiculturalism, that their art “should” be spiritual or political in some way. Another way of stating this is that whiteshamanism may be profitable at the expense of non-European peoples’ freedom to express themselves. While some non-Western peoples acknowledge the real need—rising out of spiritual barrenness—that fuels the growth of whiteshamanism, others are acutely aware of the kinds of expectations, and limitations, that this view foists upon non-Anglo artists.

The appearance of belief vs. actual belief Even more questionable than the political dimension of how shamanism in art functions is the actual artistic and religious significance of the shaman-artist role. Do works by artists risk having a halo of spirituality without really communicating collective belief? In her book Overlay (1983) Lucy Lippard discussed the problem of the appearance of collective belief in contemporary art without the presence of it. Lippard was writing about environmental works that echo the forms of archaic earth forms. These ancient works, from the Mississippian mounds, to the stone monoliths of Europe, the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico, and the scarred plains of Peru, seemed to be expressions of a collective belief in cosmological power and the potential of religious transformation. In those contexts, religious art is transformative in function, and does compel collective belief. But what is missing from the new earthworks and “personal altars” of today that echo the appearance of the old? They may no longer contain coded meanings that enable collective belief to occur; rather they replace the substance of belief with the style of earlier cultures’ expressions of belief in an attempt to capture a lost religiosity. The continued autonomy of art in the West prevents it from having an authentic religious function. A primary value of the expression of other cultures is that they

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 119

Figure 5.7 Andy Goldsworthy, Spiral Leafwork, 1988. © Leeds Museums and Galleries (City Art Gallery) UK/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor living in Scotland. He uses readily available natural materials—leaves, sticks, stones, pinecones, mud, snow—to create carefully ordered sculptures and, sometimes, impermanent arrangements that he photographs. Spiral Leafwork was created during a stage in his career when he began to explore Stone Wood, a plot of woodland near his residence in Penpont, Scotland, that became an experimental site where he worked out the details of his later work. Like the Natives who created the Great Serpent Mound, Goldsworthy creates order in nature. With stones, he has created cairns, which are stone sculptures associated with pre-modern cultures. While there is an element of beauty in many of Goldsworthy’s creations, he also embraces the reality of harshness, decay, and death as part of the reality of nature. Goldsworthy’s leafwork sculpture here and his snow sculpture of 1989 bear striking formal and medium-based resemblances to the Great Serpent Mound that was created during the Mississippian cultural period in Native North America. Each of these works features snake-like forms. And each involves nature as the artistic medium. But the contexts of modern artistic production and Native cultural expression are significantly different.

120 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS

Figure 5.8 Overview of Serpent Mound and foliage, c. 1986. © Richard A. Cooke/ CORBIS. Reproduced with permission.

The Great Serpent Mound, in present-day Adams County, southern Ohio, is a lengthy 1,400 feet long. It is an effigy mound, symbolic of a serpent, which has an egg-shaped head and a coiled tail. The specific purpose of the mound is unknown, but effigies in the form of carved pipes, pendants, and other objects were common features of Woodlands- and Mississippian-period cultures. This is the largest effigy mound in the world. It was not constructed for burial purposes, though there are burial mounds in the general area. In general, the creation and use of effigies relates to a belief in animals as spirit helpers. This mound was probably created by members of the Fort Ancient culture circa 1070 CE, though it could possibly have been built much earlier—as early as 1200 BCE—by members of the Adena culture. The Adena carved serpent symbols on small stone tablets. The Great Serpent symbol may serve an astronomical function with its coils aligning to the solstice and equinox events of the years. This would be consistent with other built features of the Fort Ancient, as well as general Mississippian and Woodlands cultures. The snake symbolizes rebirth and regeneration due to its cyclical shedding of skin. It is a symbol of life energy, wholeness, and healing. Another common symbol in Native cultures is that of the horned serpent, which may be referenced through the Great Serpent effigy. While the specific meaning of the Great Serpent Mound is unknown, there are many clues that its meaning was closely related to the religious belief system of Natives at the time.

ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS 121 open up windows onto one’s own traditions. Traditionally, members of nonWestern cultures often believe that there are rules for art: rules of content, context, form, and personnel. These must be followed and guarded. In traditional and nonWestern cultures art is often seen as sacred, useful, beautiful, and functional because functionality follows from beauty. The artist is not above or separate from society, not “different” or eccentric. This brings us to a primary problem of contemporary art in its relation to religion: the emotional and intellectual autonomy of the artist (and resulting artwork) undermines the possibility of shared codes that can convey collective feeling. Despite the developments of postmodernism, which have challenged the view of art as autonomous, much art, even that of the shaman-artist, remains largely autonomous in the industrialized West. This autonomy is not necessarily a problem in the context of the personal experience of spirituality, but it is definitely a problem in the context of religion. Religious art can be thought of as a vehicle for the expression of faith in response to authentic questioning about the meaning of life. Frequently, the authenticity of religious expressions emerges from people’s ability to discover meaning in the face of suffering, helplessness, vulnerability, and doubt. In the past, specific arrangements of forms—including those that are vertical or circular, monumental, massive, and durable—symbolized affirmation and renewal in the face of frailty and impermanence. Thus, in order to be effective, religious art depends upon living symbols and forms to authentically communicate the experiences of belief and doubt, joy and suffering. I have discussed many reasons for trying to better understand the connection between art, religion, and spirituality in intercultural contexts. Not the least of these is that the original collective function of art in virtually every culture is religious. Aesthetic expressions are similar to religious and political expressions in that they have the power to evoke shared emotions. But, in “developed” cultures one is confronted with several possible problems regarding the relationship between religion and art. First, art may have lost its collective function as it has become disassociated from traditional religions. Second, art may be seen as a replacement for religion, though its capacity to serve in this function is limited because of the privatization of art. (This development points to weaknesses in the status of both art and religion in contemporary culture.) Third, the “freedom” of art from religion has allowed it to play a much more critical role and, in the process, serve as an arbiter of morality, a role often associated with religion. Fourth, in addition to becoming independent of religion, art has grown increasingly secular. The values expressed in secular art may conflict with traditional religious values. All of these problems in the relationship between art and religion create further complications in an intercultural context. The distinction between sacred and secular art is not applicable to much non-Western art. When a Western notion of art (or religion) is imposed upon other cultures, this can lead to the dying out or changing in function and form of non-Western art and belief systems. Implicit hierarchies may emerge that place “developed” or progressive cultural expressions “above”

122 ART AND RELIGION IN INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS primitive or traditional cultural expressions. Universalizing the Euro-American idea of “progress” marginalizes much non-Western art. Furthermore, the Western expectation that contemporary art serves a “critical” function may create tensions in cultures where art has been viewed as celebratory or affirmative in the past. Viewing artists as shamans is one possible way to bridge some of these cultural divides, but the shaman-artist model has come under attack as an example of the appropriation of non-Western culture by some artists in the West. Another question is whether the shaman-artist role really leads to the conveyance of religious significance, or whether the appearance of belief becomes a pale substitute for shared spiritual experience.

Conclusion The relationship between art and religion has been significant throughout the history of world art; the origins of the collective function of art are in religion. Even in contemporary times, when art has become increasingly secular, it is often experienced in a spiritual way. The desire of artists to convey spiritual meaning may lead them to sources of spirituality outside their own cultures of origin. In addition, the forms of spiritual expression including ritual, myth, and shamanic performance have attracted artists. Values of beauty, ecstasy, transcendence, and enlightenment have been questioned during the last one hundred years, but there is a renewal of interest in concepts such as beauty in the present. Still, when these values are explored, they may be explored in private artistic vocabularies that are difficult for audiences to understand or embrace. We are left with as many questions as answers: How can art authentically express collective experience in the contemporary intercultural world? Does this collective function involve a return to some kind of religious role for art? What changes must occur in the social and economic organization of art worlds for art to have collective significance? What is the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, realms of thought treated separately for too long? This chapter may have raised more questions than it has answered regarding the relationship between art and religion in intercultural contexts. But these questions about the connection between art and religion challenge artists and theorists alike to think about the communal and intercultural function of art in our time.

Chapter 6

SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION

I

NDIAN RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM presents an example of the challenge of interpreting artistic symbols cross culturally. Indian art is a good place to study problems of symbolism, meaning, and interpretation because, as Jane Duran noted in her article on the Nagaraja, Indian art is heavily symbolic.1 Nagas, the subject of her research, are serpent forms or serpent–human forms. These images symbolize the life force that motivates birth and rebirth; like a river, they embody the water of life. Consistent with the function of symbols in general, the use of the naga symbol is conventional and embedded in context.2 But, as Duran notes, conventionality is not the sole basis of the effectiveness of symbols: “a symbol is at its best when it is conventional enough to be understood but not so conventional as to have passed into the range of the familiar.”3 It is this tension between the conventionality required for effective communication and the unconventionality needed for expressive effect that marks the use of symbols in art. Because of the use of unconventional symbols, the meaning of artworks will often be different for interpreters than it was for the creator of the work. But, we should not worry that art is incapable of conveying any meaning at all. To echo Duran, it is the nature of symbols to be embedded in context, and it is context that guides us as to their interpretation. The context of most Indian art throughout history has been religious, and the origins of Indian religion are found in the Vedas. The Vedas, which are the sacred chants that serve as a basis for Hinduism, may have had their origins in the Scythic steppes. (Because of the centrality of the Vedas, it is equally appropriate to refer to Hinduism as Vedanta. The name Hinduism actually derives from a Persian word for those living east of the river Sindhu.) Scythia is the ancient term for the steppes of the Black Sea, or the general region of modern southern Ukraine. Traditionally, scholars felt the Vedas were brought to India by

124 SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION Figure 6.1 Relief from the Snake Garden. © The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

the Aryans, a northern tribe whose land of origin is a matter of debate. The Vedic Aryans, thus, were a subgroup that migrated to northern India after the Aryans had settled there. The Aryan migration to India occurred during the second millennium BCE (1700–1000), toward the end of the Harappan or Indus Valley civilization (3300–1300 BCE). This early history of the presence of the Aryans in India is even referred to as the Rigvedic period, in reference to the religious praise poems that became the base of Indo-European religion. However, recent researchers attribute much of the development of Indian thought and culture to indigenous origins, not to the influence of an “Aryan invasion.”4 In Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization, David Frawley contends that the early dates given in the nineteenth century for the arrival of the Aryans were influenced by the Christian outlook of the day.5 It may also have been Christian missionaries who influenced the theory that the Vedas were a product of Central Asian nomadic groups rather than indigenous to India. According to earlier theories, the Aryans brought the ideas with them through an invasion based upon superior

SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION 125 power inherent in their iron weaponry, chariots, and horses. It was previously thought that the ancient Indians had none of these. Frawley argues, though, that chariots make an unlikely vehicle for a cross-mountain invasion, and that indigenous Indians might well have had the wheel, the horse, and iron. According to him, the more likely reason for the demise of the Indus Valley civilization was not invasion, but floods.6 Frawley’s arguments are interesting for our purposes because they demonstrate how a pattern of thought (nineteenth-century Christian missionary ideas) can have a lasting cross-cultural effect, even though they may have been overly influenced by the ideology of the time and, therefore, mistaken. And, of course, these historical assumptions have affected the subsequent interpretation of Vedic literature, by framing it as derived from traditions outside India. If, instead, continuity existed between the ancient Indus Valley cultures and the Indo-Aryans, it would support the view that Vedic literature is the world’s oldest literary tradition, and, in essence, substantiate India as the mother culture of other Aryan and European cultures. According to Frawley, Western Vedic scholarship has been colored by the imperialistic outlook of the nineteenth century and has served to support assumptions of Western superiority. For him, it is time to give India its due credit as a mother culture. Whether influenced by outsiders or developed within India itself, the early Vedic religion was sacrificial and ritualistic. These rituals were led by a purohit, or priest. Ritualistic Vedanta was greatly elaborated within the sacred text, the Upanishads, during the period 800–600 BCE. Two central concepts emerge in that later Vedic text: samsara—the transformation of the soul at death into some other form of life (reincarnation)—and karma—the belief that the type of body that the reborn soul enters in the future depends upon the nature of past actions. The goal of this process—the perfection of karma through right actions—is submersion into a world soul. The loss of the illusion (maya) of physical separateness, which characterizes the human condition, is attainable only after one’s karma has been perfected through countless rebirths. Penance, meditation, the yogas—each a form of self-discipline or spiritual self-control—are believed to speed this process. Buddhism, which incorporates related beliefs and concepts, emerged in India in the sixth century BCE (at about the same time period as Classical Greece). This thought system was an offshoot of Vedanta originally, but it soon incorporated sharp criticism of Vedic teachings. A central goal of Buddhism is the elimination of desire, which represents another attempt to break the chain of existence represented by the cycle of rebirth (samsara and karma). However, Buddhism held influence in India for only a relatively short period, from about the third century BCE to the second century CE. Over time, it spread eastward and exerted strong influence in East Asia rather than in its homeland. Buddhism owed its short-lived supremacy in India to the clarity of its formula for achieving salvation; there are clear steps of conduct, including asceticism and meditation, which one follows in order to seek union with the Godhead. But

126 SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION Hinduism, based upon the Vedas, regained its force with the appearance of the Bhagavad Gita in about the second century CE. This text emphasizes meditation, reason, and the selfless fulfillment of daily duties. It is highly poetic in form, providing an interesting antecedent to recent writers on Indian aesthetics such as Rabindranath Tagore, a twentieth-century poet who has poetically conveyed strong spiritual messages. The Gita also stressed bhakti (devotion), which is the adoration of a personalized god as a means of achieving unity with it; bhakti answered a fundamental emotional need for devotion and allowed for an infinite number of ways of realizing the Godhead. Under the Gita’s influence, Hinduism had regained supremacy in India by the sixth and seventh centuries CE. The earliest Hindu temples began to appear around this time, and these temples serve as important examples of the development of symbolism in art and architecture.

Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian poet and author who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 for his most famous collection, Song Offerings (1910; English trans., 1912). Tagore’s major theme was humanity’s search for God and truth. He was an accomplished composer, musician, and singer, as well as a painter and an actor. He, therefore, created and integrated many forms of art and saw all art as one; for Tagore, art is the conscience of man. Writing in “The Sense of Beauty” (1906) Tagore stressed the importance of discipline as preparation for art, an activity that he called “the cultivation of the field.” This emphasis reflected his spiritual approach to art: “A real artist must be a seeker, an ascetic. He cannot afford to be capricious.” Tagore, therefore, saw a clear linkage between aesthetics and ethics: “The Good, I repeat, is beautiful not merely because of the good it does to us. There is something more to it. What is good is in consonance with creation as a whole and therefore also with the world of men.” Consistent with the rasa tradition in Indian aesthetics, Tagore stressed the role of the emotions in art. Writing in “What is Art?” (1916), Tagore stated, “The principal creative forces, which transmute things into our living structure, are emotional forces.” He felt that the world becomes completely our own when it comes within the range of our emotions. Tagore felt that the genius of Oriental art is its discovery and expression of emotional content in the universe itself; speaking of the “Orient” he wrote, “their artists have seen this soul of things and they believe in it. The West may believe in the soul of Man, but she does not really believe that the universe has a soul.” For Tagore, then, philosophical ideas may be woven within the fibers of our personal nature, and we may experience these ideas through subtle aesthetic and emotional awareness. Throughout his career Tagore sought to fuse Eastern spirituality with Western scientific progress and understanding.

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Figure 6.2 Indian dancers perform at a function organized to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of poet Rabindranath Tagore, pictured in the background, in Bangalore on May 9, 2010. Tagore in 1913 became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh noted that the government had already set up a national committee with several senior ministers, state chief ministers and many eminent scholars, experts, and others, to suggest, formulate, and plan a number of events that would rekindle public interest in Tagore’s rich cultural legacy and in his thoughts, ideals, teachings, and values. © DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/ AFP/Getty Images. Reproduced with permission.

In Hindu belief, Indian temples are not halls of worship; rather, they are the actual residence of the gods. In India, most traditional art has been tied to religion and, therefore, religions permeate all aspects of life. This focus on the link between art and religion at such sites as the temples themselves is true even of modern theorists such as Ananda Coomeraswamy as well as the ancients. The linkage between religion and art is a basis of cultural continuity in India, even though modern Indian culture is rapidly becoming more secular. In a summary of Dr. Devangana Desai’s thirty-year-long research of the temples at Khajuraho, one of the most important Hindu temple sites, R. Champakalakshmi (a former professor of history at Nehru University, Delhi) states: As the finest achievement of the Nagara style of temple architecture, they are “monuments of manifestation” of Vishnu and Siva, symbolising the cosmic Meru and Kailasa mountains. Not built mechanically according to Vastu Sastra dictums, they are conceived of as mandalas or

128 SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION Figure 6.3 The Sanctum Sanctorum and the crowning tower, together constituting the “Sri Vimana” of Shiva temple at Thiruppalanam, Kumbakonam district. © S.Seetharaman/www.varalaaru.com. Reproduced with permission.

In its plan, an Indian temple is a mandala or sacred diagram of the cosmos. As noted in the previous chapter, the mandala is usually circular, but it can contain other geometrical elements. In its form, the classical temple had a womb chamber with thick walls and a heavy ceiling to protect the deity inside it. The god dwells there in the garbha griha in the form of a sacred statue. The whole construction of temples took place according to guidelines in canonical literature that were consistent with cosmological understanding. The site itself had to be chosen with care and sanctified. A consideration of temple planning leads us into a deeper discussion of symbolism. Each temple’s proportions were based upon modules that have special numerical references. The indentations and projections of the temple’s surface were also mathematically calculated.

consecrated sacred space guarded by dikpalas and vasus. The architect– priest has consciously produced the yantra formation to symbolise cosmic order on earth by following closely the highly structured metaphysical order of the Pancaratra and Saiva Siddhanta Tantric system in their images and their placement in the scheme of the temple. The architect–priest has used the non-discursive language of visual imagery to present this metaphysical structure, harmoniously integrating them with architecture, thereby unfolding the evolution or manifestation of the supreme being in the universe. The ascent and descent of graded peaks (miniature shrines called urah-sringas) on the sikhara centreing

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Figure 6.4 A mandala plan, reflecting the ancient Vedic science of Vastu Shastra, a method of planning and architecture that reflects the natural geometric laws of the universe. A temple’s height and proportions are rooted in the sacred geometries that are expressed in the mandala, which is the basis of its plan. A temple designed according to this approach enhances the experience of devotional pilgrimage. This particular outline of a mandala was made by Brian Houghton Hodgson, a British ethnologist, naturalist, and civil servant working in India during the nineteenth century. He was very interested in the culture of the people of the Himalayas and believed that its inhabitants were not of Aryan origin but of origin unique to India, and he advocated that education in India should take place in local languages. © Royal Asiatic Society, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library. Reproduced with permission.

130 SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION on its highest point, the finial, the cosmic axis, convey the rhythm of Dissolution and Creation. While cosmic symbolism characterises all major temples of the 11th–12th centuries in India (such as those in Thanjavur and Bhubaneswar), the design of the temples of Khajuraho seems to surpass the others precisely in its ordering of the miniature shrines and the religious imagery in a hierarchical organization.7 The temple itself is a symbol, and everything about its form conveys symbolic meaning. For this reason, Indian temples can be appreciated as sculptures as much as examples of architecture. The specific goal of the temple as a symbolic sculpture is to recreate cosmic order here on earth. Temples embody cosmic order through their plan (top view), which follows from a mandala or yantra (sacred diagram), and through the order present in the elevation (side view) of the temple, discussed here as a system of “graded peaks.” The highest point of the temple is also symbolic, for it is the culmination of a “cosmic axis” that runs through the center of the temple’s structure. This axis is the specific channel that connects cosmic and earthly order. The decoration on the surface of a temple has a clearly hierarchical organization that also conveys a sense of cosmic order. It is at Khajuraho that the relationship between all of these symbolic formal elements found in Indian temple architecture was most fully realized. The evolution of temple form, symbolism, and technique occurred over several centuries and culminated at Khajuraho in the tenth to eleventh centuries. According to Meister, the specific goal of art history is to tie morphology (form) to symbolic use.8 Meister explains the symbolic function of the ancient temples according to their iconic sign value (following from the semiotic typology developed by the semiotician, Charles Sanders Peirce). An iconic sign can both be and stand for its meaning. The key to unlocking the symbolic meaning of the temples is measurement. With the sacred diagram of the mandala as the underpinning, the floor plans of the temples correspond to a grid structure, and the sacred ground consists of the central four grids in the design. In the temples, there is a specific mathematical relationship of plan to elevation and of the outer walls to the inner sanctum; an emphasis on proportion runs throughout their design. Similar to pagodas in China, the central pillars of the temples act as points of cosmic origination. Again drawing from Peirce, Meister notes that the central pillar functions in “symbolic, indexical and iconic ways . . . these forms are what they are indexically and stand for something they are not symbolically.”9 An indexical sign is a sign that “indicates” that which it stands for; just as tears indicate sadness or smoke indicates fire, the central pillar indicates the spiritual principle of connection between above (spiritual) and below (physical) realities. Khajuraho is located in north central India—south of Agra, where the Taj Mahal was built centuries later—which is itself south of New Delhi. In modern Indian geography, Khajuraho is considered to be a remote area. Khajuraho, the subject of

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Figure 6.5 Map showing location of the Khajuraho temple complex. © 2010 Benjamin Piggott. Reproduced with permission.

Figure 6.6 The Khajuraho temples: View of Devi Jagadambi and Chitragupta temples. © Frédéric Soltan/Sygma/Corbis. Reproduced with permission.

132 SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION Desai’s and Meister’s research, has invited multiple, sometimes conflicting interpretations. Before considering those interpretations, let’s just observe the temples. The temples here were larger and more elaborate in form than elsewhere. There are more than twenty temples, so it is more properly a temple complex: as many as eightyfour temples may have been here at one time. As a varied group, they are not all affiliated with any one Hindu sect. However, like the temples themselves, the original site was very organized, and revealed a level of care that has not continued into the present: According to a local legend there were once 84 temples that formed the 10th century temple complex. The local people understood the lay of the land and created a wonderful township of 84 temples, 84 lakes and 84 wells. Only 25 out of 84 of the Chandella 10th century temples remain. Most of the lakes are dry and the wells are dysfunctional or filled with garbage. Khajuraho has an airport, five star hotels with hot and cold running water and artificially blue swimming pools but the village tanks are dry and the children have no clean drinking water.10 Punja, while noting the lack of proper water supply in the area today, gives us a sense of the planning and care that went into the original design of the temple complex.

Figure 6.7 The Kandariyâ Mahâdeva Temple. © 2010 Manish Ayachit. Reproduced with permission.

SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION 133 Kandariya Mahadeva temple, the largest at Khajuraho, can be considered the culmination of temple architecture in central India. Kandariya means cave; Mahadeva is another name for Shiva, one of the major deities of Hinduism along with Vishnu. Shiva is masculine in principle and associated with the lingam fertility symbol, which had its origins in Vedantic times. Shiva has a horrendous and ambivalent character (containing within him the power of destruction as well as creation). Shiva is the destroyer or transformer in Hindu traditions and, because of his awesome power, some of his worshipers (Shaivites) worship him to keep him at bay. At Kandariya Mahadeva, an architectural grouping, the mandapa, consisting of porches and an assembly hall, has been added in front of the garbha griha. The greatest architectural advance here is the roofs of the mandapa and their pyramidal eaves, which give the effect of rapidly cascading forms. The temple designers successfully combined proportionality with a sense of movement. From the ground, this movement is experienced as a rapid vertical thrust. This upward surge may be a symbolic expression of mountain peaks; Shiva’s abode was thought to be the Himalayas, and the Vedas took root in this region of India first as well. Of course, the entire temple form is not dissimilar to the lingam, symbolic of Shiva, which is protected at the temple’s core. The lower sections of the Kandariya Mahadeva temple are laden with deep sculptural friezes of deities and erotic scenes. Several scenes depict ritual intercourse, in which male–female couples are accompanied by attendants. Many of the sculptures

Figure 6.8 Figures on the exterior of the Kandariyâ Mahâdeva Temple. (Three bands containing a profusion of sculptures of exquisite composition and ornamentation.) © Lindsay Hebberd/ CORBIS. Reproduced with permission.

134 SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION focus exclusively on the female form. These are quite varied in poses and activities. The medieval temples of India feature a large number of female figures in their sculptural strategy. Khajuraho is consistent with this pattern. They are represented on walls, pillar-brackets, and other architectural parts of the temple. Various everyday activities of women are portrayed, such as applying make-up, removing a thorn from the foot, tying or untying the waist girdle, rinsing water from wet hair, writing a letter, playing a game of ball, carrying a baby, and dancing. The medieval Vastu texts specifically ordained the carving of female figures on temple walls. According to the Shilpa Prakasha, an Orissan (a state in central eastern India) text, “As a house without a wife, as frolic without a woman, so without a figure of a woman, the monument will be of inferior quality and bear no fruit.” This Vastu text further describes sixteen types of female figures (apsaras) in various activities such as nupurapadika, one with ankle bells, darpana, one with a mirror, and so on.11 The Vastu texts or Vastu Shastra (meaning science, doctrine, or teaching) are the texts that explained the Hindu system of design. Though applied primarily to architecture, they also contained guidelines for other arts such as poetry, dance, and sculpture. Vastu means the essence of a thing or the foundation of it as in a house or building. A visual dimension of the sculptural reliefs is their textural density. On the Kandariya Mahadeva there are three rows of sculptures, consisting of nearly nine hundred figures and many vegetable forms. The subjects include animals, gods, goddesses, and musicians, but, most famously, the female apsaras and the mithunas or couples. Every inch of surface seems to have been covered or embellished in a complex way. These intertwining forms are often interpreted as “mannerist” in traditional Western histories. Therefore, they are seen as a sign of the weakening of the temple tradition; in one Western view, the figurative forms are contorted and interlocking, and represent a sacrifice of warm, humanistic representation to manneristic effect. But the sculptures are, in fact, very organized. More recent scholars point to the organization of the sculptural friezes, which echo aspects of Hindu cosmology; the three levels of sculptures may correspond to three doctrinal levels in Saiva Agamas (Sanskrit texts, dealing, in part, with aspects of temple design and construction), an organization that “points to a meaningful way of looking at religious monuments. It is not just the study of an architectural development or style but also that of the conceptual scheme underlying it that is important in comprehending the monument erected for religious worship.”12 Thus, we can see that temple design and construction was highly planned and quite conscious, as indicated by the texts of the time period. Specifically, the plan and decoration of temples was closely tied to religious theory and teaching. At Khajuraho, erotic imagery received its fullest symbolic development in a spiritual context. The sculptures are deliberately sensuous: the fullness of breasts, the twisting forms of the figures, and loosened clothes are only some of the erotic cues present. Erotic imagery is one category of sculpture found at the temple complex but the most foreign to Westerners (and, indeed, to most people) in a religious context. What was the meaning of this strong emphasis on sensuality

SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION 135 Figure 6.9 “Symbol of Love,” Khajuraho sculptural scene. © 2010 Manish Ayachit. Reproduced with permission.

during the time that the work was created? Was it simply an expression of the enjoyment of sex? Or was there a general moral breakdown of the time, similar to the supposed mannerist stylistic decay that is thought to have taken place? The latter thesis—of stylistic excess combined with moral decline—is often put forward to explain the heightened sensuality of sixteenth-century European mannerist art. Some of the scenes on the temples, including those of oral sex, orgies, and masturbation, are often considered taboo in other cultures. Only in recent times have these taboos been challenged. One way to understand the erotic symbolism of the work may be to place it in its intellectual context. As Dr. Desai states in her authoritative book about Khajuraho, “Architectural expansion of the temple was accompanied by conceptual developments in the religio-philosophical systems regarding the Supreme Being and its manifestations, the One and its many forms.”13 One branch of “religio-philosophical systems” is aesthetics or the philosophy of art and beauty. We can relate the overt sensuality of the sculptures to the concept of rasa, the core term in Indian aesthetics, which was being developed during the same period that temples were being constructed. According to rasa theory, art invites us to experience, and in this sense it is different from instruction. Rasa, or the theory of taste, was developed by

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Figure 6.10 Khajuraho sculptural scene representing sexual practices traditionally regarded as taboo in the West. © 2010 K. Pasupathi. Reproduced with permission.

Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1020 CE), a philosopher, mystic, and aesthetician from Kashmir, who lived at the very time that the temples were being constructed. A description of his life and insights seems to support the emphasis on sensuality found in the Hinduism of that time. For instance, Gupta held that food prepared by mixing different ingredients gives pleasure, but it becomes fully pleasurable to the eater only when he eats it with his mind applied to the eating process. As a theory of taste, then, rasa is an extension of the mindfulness that is at the heart of Hindu meditation practices. One of the goals of rasa theorists has been to distinguish refined taste from the common emotions. At the same time, the emphasis in it was upon direct sensual experience, rather than an extension of theological concepts or ritual practices. In spite of this attempt to distinguish taste from common emotions, emotions themselves are recognized as part of the process of appreciation. As the much later theorist, Tagore, stated, the world becomes completely our own when it comes within the range of our emotions; a key element of rasa, then, is emotion.14 Sensuality in art is meant to evoke an emotional response of delight, happiness, or liveliness rather than sexual desire per se. Art itself is a form of “delight,” a concept closely related to taste, flavor, or relish in rasa. Key to the appreciation of art is the distinctiveness of taste. However, art is also a path to transcendental ecstasy and not solely concerned with the physical aspects of taste. How can art help accomplish this breakthrough? According to rasa theory, it should occur intuitively, not through

SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION 137 explicit methods. This concept of the immediacy of experience is a quality of the connection between the artwork and audience. A sense of immediacy, an experience of oneness between the audience and the artwork, an immersion in the pleasure of the experiential dimension of art, a capacity for delight and happiness: it is in these contexts that a fuller appreciation of the erotic temple sculptures can be developed. A branch of Hinduism, Tantrism is also concerned with the relationship between sensual experience and spiritual development. In Tantrism, identification with the godhead occurs through engaging in meditation, ritual, wine, and specific, controlled practices of sexual intercourse. Incorporating the belief that sexuality has magical spiritual properties when it is controlled, Tantrism was a movement from the fifth century that had influenced all of the major religions in India, but which gained greater acceptance in the tenth century. The devotee engages in a number of ritualistic practices, rooted in taboos, which were believed to lead to self-realization much faster than ascetic methods. However, in Tantrism, these practices represented deliberate transgressions. For instance, the eating of meat—forbidden in Hinduism in general—sometimes took place in Tantric ritual contexts. Of course, the taboo is present even when it is transgressed. So the sexual representations may relate to Tantric ideas. In fact, Dr. Desai demonstrates in her book that Brahmanism and Tantrism, which had previously been at odds, reached a point of religious synthesis at Khajuraho. One of the reasons for the presence of erotic sculptures may be directly linked to Tantrism. The images form a code for expressing otherwise inexpressible Tantric concepts: Erotic sculptures have been placed on the wall portion between the two balconies in the three major Hindu sandhara temples. This wall portion is actually the juncture of the big hall (mahamandapa) and the sanctum (garbha griha). Here, at this juncture, the architect seems to have employed visual puns, through a language called sandhya binasha. This is a coded language used by esoteric religious practitioners and Tantric texts to conceal their doctrines from outsiders. This enigmatic language employs erotic terminology to convey experiences that cannot be expressed in ordinary language. For instance, when one reads: “A washerwoman clings to the Yogi (ascetic) on his neck,” it is found to be erotic if taken literally. But in the code language of the Tantras, it means that the washerwoman (i.e., Dombi-Kundalini energy) has ascended to the chakra (subtle energy center) of the neck. Similarly, erotic figures on temple walls could be metaphoric and might conceal a deeper symbolism.15 Tantrism does raise the interesting point, related to both rasa and the sculptures: Can a transcendence of the sensory world occur through an immersion in the sensual and its emotional associations (as in rasa)? After all, art itself is a sensory medium: can it point toward or evoke the experience of the transcendent? An alternative interpretation is that we could view these sensual images as representations of desires that must be conquered. (This seems consistent with a Christian or Islamic view. Both religions had developed a negative view of the body and its expressions by that time. In Christianity, for instance, dance was prohibited

138 SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION within the physical confines of the Church.) The idea that the makers of the images had intended a moral warning against sexuality seems unlikely since a sculpture in the form of a lingam is in the inner sanctum. However, the poet Tagore writes that, “beauty can never be realized in all its purity unless it is viewed apart from our sensual desires.”16 Here, Tagore, a relatively modern author, seems closer to the Western religious perspective in his views. By the twentieth century, of course, he could have been influenced by it, but many Hindus also distrust the sensual dimension as a path to beauty and religious experience, focusing instead on asceticism. It seems, though, according to one writer, that there is little support from within the period for an interpretation of the images based upon the expression of moral condemnation: Sexual motifs in objects of art seem to have been just another subject.17 Silpasastras, Vastusastras, and other authoritative texts refer to the portrayal of erotic figures in art as just another element and not as a controversial or debatable subject. The photographer and travel writer, Kaul, notes, As a matter of fact, even though the court poet of the Chandelas, Krisna Misra, wrote an anti-sex play in the eleventh century and staged it fifty miles from Khajuraho, he had nothing to say on the erotic figures. What is noteworthy is that he proudly describes the voluptuous devadasis of the temples of Kashmir!18 Kaul does not state the source of his observations, or of his reasons for considering Krisna Misra’s work an “anti-sex play,” but, returning once again to the most extensive scholarship on the temple, we learn, The author [Desai] sets her discussion of the religious imagery against the cultural ethos of this region and period as well as the erudite court ambience of the Chandellas. She takes up the allegorical play Prabodha Chandrodaya, composed by Krishna Misra at the Chandella court, to explain the religious milieu of Khajuraho and the twilight language (sandhya bhasha) of the sculptural puns used on the temples, emphasising the interaction between the sculptors and poets of the court.19 Once again, we can see that a closer reading creates a much different impression. The literary context turns out to be central to understanding the temples and their erotic relief sculptures, not peripheral or irrelevant. Not only are sexual practices discussed in the play, they form a basis for creating the proper religious interpretation: The period was also marked by a synthesis of Tantric and VedicBrahmanic world-views, which the play reflects. Tantric practices thus drew authenticity from the Vedic and Smarta forms, a process widespread in India at this time and registered by the Kashmir Pancaratra

SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION 139 system and the Saiva Siddhanta, both of which inspired the Vishnu and Siva temples in Khajuraho.20 Just as the temple sculptures could have served the function of negative moral instruction (though this is unlikely, as we have seen), they may have served another positive instructional function. Perhaps what we see on the walls is a kind of visual Kama Sutra. The ancient text is famous worldwide for its detail in describing sexual relationships. For instance, there are multiple ways of kissing described in the Kama Sutra including the nominal kiss, the probing kiss, the touching kiss, the straight kiss, the bent kiss, the turned kiss, the pressed kiss, the greatly pressed kiss, and so on. If illustrated Kama Sutras are a feature of our own time, might not the elaborately varied sculptures represent a visual encyclopedia of lovemaking techniques from the era? While seemingly innocent and harmless—and certainly alluring—the problem with understanding the temple sculptures as similar to a secular sex guide that has been recently popularized in the West is that the interpretation of the imagery in relation to the religious and philosophical intentions of the time is undermined. The erotic imagery occurs within the context of the overall design of the temples, of sculptures of other subjects, and of philosophical and religious ideas within the period. Thus, the idea that the images function as an exotic three-dimensional sex guide falls far short. So the question remains, can sex be part of a path to spiritual fulfillment, and, if so, was this the intended meaning of the temple sculptors and priests? A remarkable aspect of Hinduism is its tolerance: it recognizes many deities and many spiritual paths. In Hinduism, yoga (meditation) and bhoga (sensuous fulfillment) are different paths to the same end. In some ways the iconology of the temples is an extension of the earliest impulses of Indian art and religion. The lingam-like sculpture and the exterior sculptures may have grown, in part, out of the fertility cults of the ancient Indus civilization, though this association with the phallus is debated. Phallic shaped stones are among the earliest religious sculptures, along with clay figurines of the earth goddess and the yoni (female genitalia). Phallic and goddess imagery is prominent, even dominant, in much European Neolithic art as well. In India, “The apsaras and surasundaris of Khajuraho and other medieval temples are auspicious motifs whose origin can be traced to vegetation spirits (Yakshis) and fertility figures of early Indian art at Sanchi, Bharhut and Mathura.”21 A primary religious belief concerns the conservation and generation of life; this, in turn, leads to the ritualization of sexuality including ritual copulation and the worship of male and female genitalia, which are accorded magical powers, in some early religious systems. Just as the earliest civilizations shared these traits, phallic worship is found in other later cultures than the Indian including the Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Mesoamerican. The decorative representation of sexual acts in both secular and sacred settings can be considered as an extension of these beliefs, and sexual knowledge itself became considered an essential part of education in many cultures prior to its subsequent

140 SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION repression. One of the extensions of fertility imagery is that it can come to be considered protective in nature. Rites of fertility involved actual sexual practice or its symbolic representation. Fertility includes not only its primary purpose of procreation but also its wider connotations: the aversion of evil, death, and misfortune, and the promotion of life, happiness, prosperity, and auspiciousness.

Figure 6.11 Ancient Shiva Stone from the Elephanta Caves. © 2010 Anthony Maw. Reproduced with permission.

This Shiva stone is found in one of the Elephanta Caves, which are located on Elephanta Island in Mumbai Harbor. The caves contain ancient sculptures dedicated to Shiva, which were created sometime between the fifth and eighth centuries by builders whose identity is debated. The caves were carved from solid rock. There are many relief panel carvings of detailed scenes that appear in the caves along with the Shiva stone seen here. A Shiva stone or lingam is an icon of Shiva; the word lingam means sign or symbol. A lingam symbolizes divine power, energy, light, and glory. Shiva is the creator and is expressed in sound through the syllable OM. The association of the lingam with a phallus is controversial. Some feel that this association is itself a reflection of the influence of foreign scholars; this debate over the relationship of the Shiva lingam to the phallus is over one hundred years old. The key issue here is that the worship of Shiva, who is symbolized by the lingam, is not simply phallic worship; rather Shiva is the primal generative power that animates the universe. Within this cosmic, generative system of power and energy, the male and female are two complementary forces.

SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION 141 The auspicious and protective aspects of erotic figures have been recognized by the Silpasastras and other authoritative texts on temple art. The Brihat Samhita of the sixth century clearly ordains that mithunas (couples) should “decorate” the temple door, along with ganas (goblins), and other auspicious and luck-bringing motifs. Erotic motifs were considered protective and auspicious (shubha, mangala) in function.22 Another aspect of the interpretation of these images is the social context of their production. Khajuraho was the capital region of the Chandellas, who ruled the area from the ninth through the thirteenth centuries. As Foucault and other writers have demonstrated in the late twentieth century, social institutions instantiate relations of power. Because these temples were undoubtedly commissioned, the extreme sensuality of this temple sculpture may have reflected the power and patronage system of the time. It is likely that the temples were commissioned by wealthy kings, in part, to display their status. “From AD900 onwards, the ruling dynasties of the feudal age competed with one another in displaying their wealth and power by building larger and more lavishly decorated temples. Many temples in India built between AD900–1300 blatantly display erotic themes. Khajuraho is one such site, among many others, one may add.”23 An increase in the degree of ornamentation, in scale, or in the cost of materials signifies great wealth and, sometimes, the selfindulgence of the kings themselves. The desire for newness and opulence on the part of wealthy patrons—for the sake of displaying their status—can be one source of stylistic elaboration. Another popular interpretation is that perhaps the wealth of the period allowed for new attitudes about love to appear, probably an attitude where love, or alankara, and erotic sentiment, or sringara, were related to leisure pursuits, afforded by affluence. A more critical view, though, is that the “indulgent” sculptures may reflect an excessive concentration of power and wealth, excess that corrupted the temple heads, who over-indulged themselves in luxury and in prolific sexual activity with the devadasi (temple girls) and the women of the town. In this view, powerful priests demanded that women be donated to the temple for their pleasure and they developed a visual system that reflected their corrupted tastes and aspirations. A similar thesis has been proposed by some Western scholars as a way to explain the origins and development of Tantrism: that the inclusion of and focus upon sex as a path to enlightenment reflected a relationship of exploitation between male priests and female temple concubines. However, in a compelling work of religious and social history Miranda Shaw argues that this theory reflects scholarship informed by earlier Western moralistic views and tends to undermine or ignore the contributions of women to the development of Tantrism (in this case Tantric Buddhism).24 If we extrapolate this argument to the case of the classical Hindu temples, it does raise the question of whether women were active participants, or perhaps leaders, in the development of the thought system underlying the creation of the sculptures. This may still be an open question. In a review of the book, Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women, Sally Sutherland takes issue with the perspective of the volume’s editor, Julia Leslie, who cites “the need to see women merely as passive victims of an oppressive

142 SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION ideology but also (perhaps primarily) as the active agents of their own positive constructs.”25 By contrast Sutherland argues that traditional Hindu society has been largely patriarchal, and that she is “more inclined to see women as victims, although not necessarily passive, who struggle with and develop strategies to survive oppression.”26 The actual status of women during the period when the sculptures were created was probably mixed and dependent upon class. At the social level there was a double standard for the genders. Men could enjoy sex with as many women as they could afford, financially and physically, and according to their status, whereas the married women of high society were confined to their polygamous husbands. There was no “free love” in the period, as some may naively imagine to be the case from the explicit display of sex in the art of the temples. . . . Some of the Chandella queens, however, seem to have taken interest in charitable work. The Chief Queen enjoyed a distinctive position in the royal court . . . On the whole, women were respected and those belonging to the upper classes owned personal property. They were able to make donations for the construction of temples, wells, and other public buildings, and give charities to Brahmins. There is mention of queen Satyabhama who made donations to Brahmins on the day of a solar eclipse. Another Chandella queen, Kalyanadevi, built a well and a rest-house for pilgrims. She was educated and she arranged to get the genealogy of her husband`s and that of her father`s family inscribed. The chief dancer, Padmavati, at the Chandella fort Kalanjar is also known to have made donations to the Shiva temple.27 This participation of upper-class women in the temple culture of the period is not surprising, because the values expressed in the temple decorations were deeply rooted in Indian culture. After all, the amalgamation of religion and sex had ancient roots as well as more contemporary sources in India during that time. The fundamental symbols of India, such as the naga, reflected primal beliefs in a connection between sexuality, fertility, and spirituality. It is tempting to understand the religious–sexual connection of the period, as expressed in the temples, in relation to Shiva. One interpretation of the temples is that they were built to celebrate the mythic marriage of Shiva and his consort, a union that is feted by modern devotees: For at Maha-shivratri in Khajuraho, they celebrate the marriage of Shiva and Parvati. On the night of Shivratri they re-enact the wedding of Shiva, the destroyer of Kamadev (desire that causes all suffering) and father of Ganesh (Lord of Wisdom). The erotic sculptures are a metaphor of the union of Shiva and Parvati, the marriage of two cosmic forces, of light and darkness, sky and earth, spirit and matter. Therefore, it is the people who infuse meaning and soul into a historical site.28

SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION 143 Figure 6.12 “Shiva and Parvati,” Khajuraho sculptural scene. © 2010 K. Pasupathi. Reproduced with permission.

While the modern faithful may infuse soul and meaning into the site, even this folk interpretation turns out to be a later invention. Dr. Desai also demolishes the more recent and somewhat novel and fanciful interpretation that the different groups of temples dedicated to Siva, Vishnu and other deities . . . represent a divine audience at Siva’s marriage to Parvati, celebrated on Sivaratri at the Matangesvara temple, and that the erotic sculptures mark the consummation of the marriage. This Dr. Desai achieves by showing that such a marriage festival supposedly based on the Siva Purana was unknown in the Chandella period (10th to 12th centuries A.D.), nor does the Siva Purana mention the marriage rite on Sivaratri festival. Such a festival was perhaps a 19th century innovation under the Bundella rulers, who revived the neglected temple town by introducing new festivals.29 After so many divergent attempts to interpret the meaning of the temples and their famous erotic sculptures (which comprise less than a tenth of the total amount of surface decoration) is there a best way to interpret their meaning? This question returns us to the original point that the temples can perhaps best be understood as three-dimensional sacred diagrams or mandalas.

144 SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION The goal of the temples is to represent a progression of spiritual manifestation. Again, from a summary of Desai’s work we learn: The key concepts in the two temples are Vaikuntha and Sadasiva, representing the intermediate stage of the transcendental-unmanifest to the immanent-manifest forms, where the movement towards creation begins. From the formless to the form, there are several graded manifestations of Vishnu and Siva, and these find their hierarchical and ordered places in the various niches leading ultimately to the sanctum. The visual representation of the process from the unmanifest to the manifest guides the worshipper through the avarana or surrounding deities to the centre, that is, the innermost sanctuary. The diverse manifestations of Vishnu and Siva are placed in the main niches of the jangha, while dikpalas, navagrahas, Matrikas, and deities including Ganesa and Karthikeya are placed in appropriate positions from the inner doorway to the outer walls (vedibandha). Again there is a graded, hierarchical positioning as a protective mandala, magico-protection being a major function of such deities. Dr. Desai demonstrates this through numerous tables and diagrams indicating their placement. Sectarian affiliations determined even the placement of deities other than the chief deity in a subordinate position. This is a feature of all medieval Saiva and Vaishnava temples. It is in this context that the positioning of the erotic figures becomes significant, for they are mostly found in the juncture (kapili) connecting the shrine and the mandapa, that is, the meeting point of the divine and the human (or twilight zone), as they are figures in conjunction and speak a sandhya bhasha or intentional language with double meaning or pun (slesha). Marriage scenes, conjoint images and pairing of divinities are other ways in which the ordering of images is determined. Female figures (sura sundaris) both as auspicious and fertility motifs and protective symbols figure commonly in medieval temples.30 From the unmanifest to the manifest, from formless to form: the intention of the temple designers was to represent abstract spiritual concepts in a physical manner. How can one express the infinite (expressed here as the formless or unmanifest) in the admittedly fixed physical medium of temple sculpture? Which visual properties are most likely to be emphasized and to be de-emphasized? The idea of the infinite includes the pervasiveness, variety, and contradictions of life force in all its manifestations. Perhaps it is for this reason that the designers chose a complex though organized scheme that was inclusive of many elements, including the sexual. Again, it is worth remembering that sexual images make up only a small fraction of a larger whole, and it is in this broader context that the images are best appreciated.

SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION 145 In his film, India and the Infinite, the noted Western historian of religion, Huston Smith, notes the existence of an organic bodily metaphor as the basis for Indian social organization and as a basis for understanding her “introspective psychology.” 31 How might this insight—of an organic body as the basis for a social or spiritual system—be carried into art? One might expect an emphasis on number, order, and divisions within an integrated whole: this is precisely what we find at Khajuraho. Sometimes, though, as the divisions multiply, it is possible to lose sight of the integrated whole. A characteristic of Hinduism is its tolerance of many ways of seeking spiritual realization. Because of the multiple paths of discipline and the multitude of images or entry points to the spiritual path, it has been tempting for Western scholars to identify Hinduism as a polytheistic religion. Yet, a key commentator on the relationship between religion and art in India, Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877–1947), has rejected the label of polytheism. It may be that the temptation to apply that label comes back once again to the problem of the image: “the image is not God, but an aspect of God (God is not determined by form) . . . His various forms or emanations are conceived by a process of symbolic filiation.”32 If the Godhead is unlimited by any form, the problem presented to artists is to develop a system of images that conveys infinitude and formlessness; this is what the architects at Khajuraho were attempting. The problem that presented itself to Indian artists is rooted in the basic structure of Indian religious belief: Brahman, the core religious concept, is understood as pure consciousness or bliss. Because of this, the world of the senses had long been regarded as unreal, and the goal of yoga and other spiritual disciplines was to transcend the material world. How might art, created with material substances, play a role in this transcendence? Is art a part of the absolute, or is it a component of the mundane? A basis for the attempt to express the infinite through physical materials occurred in rasa theory, with the realization of the importance of the emotions. Art maintains links to the world of the senses; it is not only a mystical, meditative experience devoid of physical limitations. Instead an artwork’s power comes from one of the rasas (possible emotional responses) that it evokes. In addition, because of the way that meaning is created, an artwork can function symbolically, both as the place where meaning resides and by pointing outside of itself to abstract spiritual concepts. The temples function in each of these ways: they are meaningful and divine in themselves because of their mathematical proportionality (iconic in Meister’s term); they evoke rasa or emotional response in the viewer through their sensual reference and materiality; and they point to a nonphysical philosophical concept, the progression from the transcendental (unmanifest) to created form (manifest). Symbolism is understood here in a specifically religious context. For the Indian architect, the physical symbol stands for or emanates from a more ideal spiritual reality. This concept is familiar to Western students of the symbolic functions of art in the context of aesthetics. For instance, the neo-Platonists, especially Plotinus, recognized the need for physical symbols that would point toward the nonphysical (his theory of beauty in art was based on the claim that it pointed toward the divine).

146 SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION Coomeraswamy goes further in his explanation of why we need symbolic expressions for religious purposes. He writes that gnosis—direct knowledge of God—is only available to the perfected Yogin.33 By contrast, the rest of us must identify our consciousness with form; this is achieved through a trance-like state of internal visualization.34 A mandala, or sacred diagram, in which ideal proportions between basic units are present, is an aid to this visualization process.35 As stated earlier in this chapter, the temples at Khajuraho are examples of mandalas. The floor plans are based upon yantras, which are purely geometrical forms or “ideal, symbolic forms,” according to Coomeraswamy. With respect to intercultural processes in art, we have seen that both Western and indigenous theories and tastes have blocked a full and accurate understanding of the origins and development of Indian temple art. This blockage begins with the questionable account of the origins of the Vedas themselves, an account from the nineteenth century of an outside invasion that is only recently being scrutinized. It may be that the Vedas are much more related to the indigenous cultures of the ancient Indus Valley region than had been previously thought. Similarly, moralizing interpretations of the temple sculptures’ functions seem to be discordant with the opinions put forth in the religious texts during the time when the sculptures were created. And Western-inspired social analysis, which focuses on inequalities of power, may over-emphasize the role that power relations played in the construction of meaning in the temples at the time: rather than exploited, it may have been that women were active participants in the creation of religious meaning as well as admired subjects in art. In addition, we have seen that popular interpretations of the temple sculptures are also misleading. Understanding the temple sculptures according to a secular sex guide that has been recently popularized in the West undermines the interpretation of imagery according to the religious intentions of the designers. Similarly, understanding the temples in the light of folk festivals celebrating the union of Shiva and Parvati distracts us from the complexity of the architectural expressions and the richness of the philosophical and literary traditions that led to their creation.

Conclusion The interpretation of symbols is a key aspect of understanding art cross culturally. Examples such as the naga symbol, with its origins in ancient India, demonstrate that symbols are conventional and embedded in context, but they can also be adapted in innovative ways. In India, as elsewhere, the context for symbolic expression has often been religious, and the origins of Indian religion are found in the Vedas. The Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita are poetic elaborations of Hindu thought; this poetic approach to spirituality is echoed in the expression of modern writers such as Tagore. The daily use of symbols is related to bhakti or devotion. Devotion is seen as a response to a fundamental emotional need in Hinduism and the idea of emotional refinement is also a key element of rasa as conceptualized in Indian aesthetics. The

SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND INTERPRETATION 147 most important emotional response associated with sensual art is delight, happiness, or liveliness. Hindu temples serve as important examples of the development of symbolism in art and architecture. The temples symbolize cosmic order on earth. There were texts that provided specific guidelines for temple construction, including the presence of female figures. Though it has been interpreted in many ways, erotic imagery within the Hindu tradition developed in a specifically religious context. It especially reflected the synthesis of Tantric with Vedic-Brahmin worldviews circa 1000 CE. Alternative interpretations of the temples abound. For instance, a social approach might emphasize the wealth and privilege of the kings who were the patrons of the temples or of the priests who occupied them. An approach focused upon gender could interpret the temples as reflecting the repression of women, or, alternatively, as a sign of their full participation in the religious life of the day. While all of these interpretations may contain an element of truth, it is also true that these artistic expressions symbolize through their form as much as through the scenes illustrated in their friezes. The formal complexity and integration of the temples is an expression of a worldview. The best guide, then, for interpreting the complex temples and their controversial relief sculptures is to discover how the symbolic dimension of the artwork is embedded in context. In particular, how do the religious, philosophical, and literary discourses of the tenth century point us to the possible intentions of those who commissioned and created these impressive works? Though the famous erotic images may display a general lack of inhibition by traditional Western standards, it is also true that India’s ancient spiritual systems such as yoga and Tantrism require great personal discipline. To quote Tagore once again, “our passions must be checked so that they illumine rather than burn.” The temples of Khajuraho reflect just this combination of sensual passion with intellectual, spiritual, and artistic discipline.

Chapter 7

STYLE AND ETHNICITY

A

conveyed meaning interculturally throughout history. The intercultural functions of art and design continue to increase in importance with economic and political internationalization. But what are the means by which art and design are able to have cross-cultural import: How is meaning conveyed interculturally? Perhaps the earliest attempt in art history at explaining how artistic meaning can cross cultures emerged from the analysis of style. Stylistic similarities and differences point us to particular relationships between art and culture, especially the role of art in forming ethnic or national identities. Through a focus on the work of Diego Rivera, this chapter explores the strengths and problems of ethnic style as a way of understanding meaning in intercultural contexts. RT AND DESIGN HAVE

Style When asked about style, many people may relate to the idea of personal style: style as an expression of self.1 Style expresses personal taste, but it also functions like a signature; it is unique and identifies the self to others. In this process of identification, personal style expresses one’s reflexive sense of distinctiveness. Like the uniqueness of one’s signature, styles—of gesture, posture, clothing, speech, or dance—can communicate identity concretely and immediately. Due to this personal dimension of style, we are attuned to the idea of continuity within an artist’s style. At least some continuity of personal, expressive style would be expected over a lifetime, and this applies to artists as well as individuals. Earlier theorists of style wrote that continuity in the form of a repeated motif, pattern, or trait is what helps one identify a style as a style at the personal, group, or national level.2 Central to the definition of style, then, is that it consists of a constancy of formal patterning across time and instances of personal and artistic expression.

STYLE AND ETHNICITY 149 Just as style acts as a means of identity formation and expression for individuals, so it is for groups of people. It enables individuals to express their sense of belonging within a group and is a way that a group expresses its identity to other groups. The expectation of continuity carries over from individual to group styles as well. Stylistic unity or integration is sought as an expression of group cohesion. This ability to view the stylistic unity of the expressions of a given group makes style analysis useful as a categorizing tool. Archeologists and art historians can make very fine distinctions between the styles of different periods and groups. But, it would be a mistake to think that stylistic categories are merely imposed on people and periods for purposes of “sorting” them. Rather, stylistic distinctions arise from the lived experiences of people, and from close observation of others’ expressions. The assumption that groups will have identifying stylistic characteristics may, however, lead to value judgments. Cultures with strong stylistic unity may be viewed as “stronger” than cultures without strong unity. Stylistic integration or unity is an expression of the cohesion and pervasiveness of the central values of a culture. By contrast, one of the reasons that people may be uncomfortable with “labeling” another age or culture as consisting of or having “a style” is that within any one culture multiple styles co-exist. A group’s style may in fact be an amalgamation of many varied styles. How does one deal with stylistic multiplicity—with a lack of unity—within a period or group (or even within the career of an individual artist)? Do too many styles add up to a non-style? If a group or culture lacks a distinct style, should that lack be perceived to be a problem or a weakness by “outsiders”? These questions arise, in part, because stylistic multiplicity has increased exponentially in the last one hundred and fifty years, even reaching the point where some theorists claim that style analysis is no longer a useful way of thinking about art.3 Many readers may feel that one characteristic of the time in which we live is that there is no stylistic clarity or unity and that this stylistic disintegration is an advance over the imposition of stylistic unity in earlier periods. Stylistic disunity has often been associated with postmodernism. But the fact that we experience this disunity at all reveals a deeper, underlying assumption: that stylistic unity can serve a valuable communicative function. While this acknowledgment of stylistic multiplicity is characteristic of our own time, the more common assumption historically has been that style unifies different kinds of expression in a time period; therefore, the lack of a unified style implies a lack of clear group identity. Perhaps that is why people often revive styles of earlier periods. If, as a group, we sense a stylistic void in our present expression, “retro” styles help fill that void. However, there is a potential problem with simply reviving styles from earlier periods. At the personal level, style enables one’s deep emotional response to art and immersion in the creative process. Having a deep source for style, whether in the process of creation or appreciation, is a sign of authenticity. Style reflects an “innermost core,” the authentic expression of self. By contrast, a simple revival of the style of another period seems incapable of expressing these innermost feelings, because the “formula” for expressing the feelings has been borrowed from others.

150 STYLE AND ETHNICITY That is why most successful revivals, such as the Renaissance, have added something distinctive to the earlier style that reflects the artist’s and audience’s own experience. In discussing individual style, I noted that original style seems to reflect deep aspects of a person’s character or personality. Similarly, we could say that collective styles are the expression of the deeply held values and internal processes of a group. It is difficult to say whether groups have “personalities” in the same way that indviduals do, but there is an ethos or shared value system that characterizes each group, and styles of expression reflect this ethos. In art, a recognizable personal style is linked with the artist’s intent. Can we similarly speak of a group’s “intent” if we discover a unifying style? Certainly, we seem to make judgments about the authenticity of a group’s style in the same way that we make judgments about an individual’s sincerity. This judgment is based upon an assumption about the relationship of style to the group’s intent or motive: is the group’s style an expression of cohesion at some deep, authentic level or a superficial manifestation? For instance, if a historical style is revived solely for the purpose of economic benefit, we may suspect it. These questions about the basis of a group’s stylistic identity may lead us to become skeptical about particular styles and even skeptical about the general idea of style. Over the last thirty years postmodern styles have involved quite a bit of just “playing around”: juxtaposing styles for effects such as humor, parody, or surprise. Rather than reflecting collective identification, perhaps in our own time style functions more like an affectation, a self-conscious striving to “fit in,” “stand out,” or debunk common assumptions. Increasingly, artists, critics, and members of the general public seem to question whether style is something superficial and malleable— akin to the “image” that politicians try on for public consumption—and quite apart from the central goals and ideas of artists and designers. Earlier in the twentieth century artists had adopted an anti-style style. Ironically, though, even anti-styles such as Dada and its late-twentieth-century stepchild, punk, later came to be recognized as styles. The implication is that everybody, and every culture, has an identifiable style, whether they seek to create one or not. Style seems to be a universal aspect of human expression. For this reason, style remains a central component of comparative and intercultural analysis. Part of the reason for the universality of style is that its source is in bodily experience: an outcome of natural movements, gestures, and feelings. An individual or group style functions like a habit or set of habits; it becomes embedded in our self-body sense. The French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, used the term habitus to refer to this deeply embedded, bodily basis of styles.4 As such, the experience of style seems to go much deeper than superficial rationalizations or explanations about culture. It points to those beliefs that become ingrained in the “way things are” for a particular group. Put another way, style is one way of recognizing the ways that a people’s identity grows out of habits and beliefs. Style is a way that groups “naturalize” their belief systems; through style, the values of a group are embedded in practices of expression and taste that seem “normal.” It comprises more than the most superficial level of conformity to the needs of a group. Style

STYLE AND ETHNICITY 151 reveals states of mind, different ways of thinking, acting, and feeling that one experiences as very personal, but which are, in fact, a source of the linkage of the individual and the group. Individual or personal style is important. Our personal experience of style forms a basis for understanding its relevance to processes of identity formation. As in the development of each individual’s unique signature, personal style has bodily basis in habitus. But the rest of this chapter will focus on the idea of group styles, especially in relationship to ethnic identification. As we have seen, culture relates to the behavior of groups, so understanding how style functions at the group level is central to our understanding of cross-cultural processes in art. Ethnicity refers to the cultural formation of identity at the group level; as such, ethnicity is a highly important component of intercultural processes in the arts.

Ethnicity and intercultural art An important dimension of styles is the way that they create identification within socially defined groups. One way to understand this identification process in an intercultural context is to consider the functions of ethnic styles. Ethnic identity is dynamic and, as such, it must often be reaffirmed in new ways. Particular kinds of expression—music, speech, visual expression, dress, dance—act as “badges of identity” that clearly create a sense of who does or does not belong to a group. We most often recognize this ethnic identification in the expression of members of “other” groups, while one’s own ethnic identifying expressions may be somewhat invisible to one’s self. “Our” style is internalized or “naturalized”; it is experienced as natural and necessary, and therefore is transparent to our own perception. By contrast, the style of the “Other” is sometimes perceived as clearly evident because it is different. Yet, whichever ethnic group we belong to, we are another’s Other. Thus, ethnicity, like style, is a universal dimension of human experience. It is not only members of so-called minority groups who are “ethnic,” though that is the way the term is often mistakenly used in North America. (I refer to minority groups as “so-called” because, in many regions of the United States, non-Caucasians form majorities, even though non-whites may be a minority of the total U.S. population.) Why is ethnicity part of the experience of all humans and, therefore, a part of our artistic expression? To answer this, we need to briefly consider the sources of ethnicity. According to Fredrik Barth’s landmark study, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, ethnic groups are formed based upon at least four characteristics: (1) a shared biological or racial background, (2) shared communication systems (languages, etc.), (3) shared cultural traits, and (4) a personally affirmed identity or sense of belonging.5 In reality, these are interwoven characteristics; they are usually not experienced as separate. The concept “ethnic” encompasses race, language, culture, and personal affirmation and cannot be limited to any one of these. For instance, race alone does not constitute ethnicity. If it did, one would have to consider all Caucasian peoples

152 STYLE AND ETHNICITY of European origin as belonging to the same ethnic group, but this is clearly not the case. Ethnicity, then, is formed on the basis of racial, symbolic, cultural, and psychological bonds, but—and this is an important aspect of Barth’s theory—these shared bonds become points of collective identification through the process of interfacing and negotiating with other groups.6 Ethnic groups are interdependent, but, at the personal level, ethnic identification occurs on the basis of the process of inclusion in or exclusion from a particular group. An interesting question is whether ethnic identification can occur within a group if one of these four traits—racial, symbolic, cultural, or psychological—is absent. For instance, is it possible to consider “American” as an ethnic identification in the same way that one speaks of ethnic Irish or ethnic Croat, even though Americans are from many racial backgrounds? Probably not, which is one reason that the discussion of an American identity is difficult. As a form of collective identification “American” functions at the national rather than the ethnic level. This is the case because the United States is largely a nation of immigrants, and because it remains pluralistic in its racial and cultural composition. However, there are many examples of cross-ethnic identification within the United States, in which the disaffected members of one ethnic group identify with another group. This can be thought of as a kind of ethnic appropriation: adopting traits (including styles of expression) related to another group’s ethnic identity because of a loss of identification with one’s own ethnic origin. One could consider the attraction that inner-city AfricanAmerican culture held for members of the 1950s Beat generation, or that AfricanAmerican rap or Caribbean Rastafarianism held for Native American youths in the 1980s and 1990s as examples of ethnic crossover. The biological, cultural, communicative, and psychological elements of ethnic identification are expressed through style. These can be analyzed separately and then synthesized to form a portrait of processes of cultural identification within a group. Perhaps one of these four traits is absent; perhaps one is stronger than the others? Identifying the relative strength of these elements of identification will help understand the socio-psychology of a group at particular stages of its development. The process of collective identification within and between groups changes over time. At a particular point in a group’s historical evolution one of these traits— biological, cultural, communicative, psychological—may be more important than the others; the strength of these individual sources will vary across time. The possibility and frequency of crossover points us to the importance of personal affirmation as an ingredient of ethnic identity. A person must feel that they belong to an ethnic group in order to fully be a part of it. If someone does not personally identify with an ethnic group, do they still “belong” to that ethnicity? This question arises because some writers on ethnicity, such as Jack Forbes, have argued that racial categorization violates the personal integrity of one’s identity.7 That is, racial categorization is imposed from the outside and is, therefore, not as important to identity formation as one’s personal sense of belonging. Forbes argues that identity is really a matter of choice, but is it? Or are there a number of “givens” of race,

STYLE AND ETHNICITY 153 culture, and language that lead us to identify, and be identified with, particular groups. It could be argued that, without these “givens,” the formation of identity would be impossible. It may be that even if an individual does not personally affirm belonging to an ethnic group, the individual may still be perceived as “belonging” to that ethnic group by others. However, it is more often the case that people experience belonging at an unconscious level, and the conscious rejection of one’s ethnic identity is somewhat rare. One can state, then, that ethnicity usually includes the four elements proposed by Barth: the biological, cultural, communicative, and personally affirmed. Aesthetic expression, with style as the linking mechanism between individuals and groups, is very important in the process of ethnic identification. As we have seen, style, expressed through aesthetic practices, is rooted in the biological rhythms and makeup of one’s own body (biological); it is tied to distinct worldviews within cultures (cultural); it is part of the way that identity is communicated to others (communication/language); and it is an element that invites us to participate in the practices of a group (personal affirmation). Now that a connection between aesthetic expression and ethnic identification has been established, here is a cautionary note. Ethnic rivalry has frequently been the cause of war. Similarly, prejudice on ethnic and racial grounds remains a major ingredient of social conflict in the United States and other multi-ethnic societies such as South Africa. Just as style is a vehicle for ethnic identification, style can be used to identify people as “Ohers” and serve as a vehicle of prejudice. When people label another group, it is often the stylistic expressions of that group that they are exploiting to create stereotypes. Style plays a part in negative group relations as well as in the positive expression of identity. Style may not cause problems such as racism, separatism, and homophobia, but it is certainly one way that prejudices become formulated and directed against others. This caution must be taken seriously because it is very hard to separate the analytical concept “ethnic” from the valuative dimension that ethnicity plays in each of our lives. Does the term ethnic imply a value judgment or is it merely descriptive? An earlier meaning for ethnic was heathen or pagan, in contrast to Christian or Jewish, which indicates that it historically connotes values. In North America whites rarely refer to themselves or their expressive culture as ethnic, unless they live in an ethnic “enclave” (Irish-American, Italian-American, etc.). If one buys an “ethnic” pattern in a fabric store, it is the one that is intentionally exotic or Other. In these subtle ways, ethnicity continues to be a mechanism of marginalization, a way of defining and containing Others. Because it is very hard to separate the valuative and descriptive dimensions of the term ethnic, one might argue that the concept should be downplayed altogether. This desire to avoid a discussion of ethnicity is rooted in the fear of deep emotions that may be stirred by talking about sensitive issues. Yet not discussing ethnicity allows people to continue to identify their own ethnicity as transparently “natural.” It is only through a discussion of both the analytical and valuative dimensions of the

154 STYLE AND ETHNICITY concept that we can recognize the ways that ethnicity is an aspect of intercultural processes for all people. Based upon this discussion, if ethnicity is identified as a variable in intercultural processes of art and design, what should we try to include in our analysis of these activities? We have seen that ethnic identity is dynamic. Like style, ethnicity is located in the balance between consistency and change; thus we might focus on processes of identification. How do artistic styles, symbols, content, and strategies related to group identification change over time yet remain consistent enough to provide a context for identification, a basis of belonging? Are there signs when this balance between consistency and change has been upset? I have noted that the styles of Others can appear clearly evident, perhaps even artificial and unnatural, in comparison to the relative transparency, “trueness,” or naturalness of one’s native styles of expression. Through stylistic continuity, beliefs and attitudes become ingrained in the way things are, helping to form a subtle ideology that becomes internalized over a period of generations. Eventually, “normal” portrayals of the cultural Other may be challenged through the presentation of an alternative portrait by members of that group. This challenge through a process of self-representation occurs through intercultural contact: there is a relationship of power involved in the representation of one group by another, as well as in the move toward self-representation. Thus, the struggle for control of identification occurs through processes of representation, a process that includes not only what is portrayed, but also how the subject is portrayed. Aesthetic practices are important in this discussion of the reconstruction and transformation of cultural identity because of their persuasive appeal for identification. The power of this persuasive appeal can only come about through the juxtaposition of styles. The common source of this juxtaposition is the encounter between groups that are different from one another. Style “animates symbolic response through a comparative process.”8 Put another way, group difference is recognized through stylistic contrasts. As the listener or viewer recognizes familiar and unfamiliar stylistic components through a comparative process, he or she invests music, art, and other aesthetic forms with social and personal meaning. This tension between familiar and unfamiliar stylistic elements is resolved when audience members supply a “new symbolic association for the unfamiliar stylistic elements.”9 In this formation of new symbolic associations, intercultural relations are negotiated. Through the comparative experience of style, one discovers the dialectical context of aesthetics, expressed here through the terms familiar and unfamiliar. Comparative analysis, then, might identify those expressive elements that seem “strange” somehow to outsiders, but which make perfect sense to members of the culture. Explaining the distance between these two experiences (familiarity and strangeness) of the same expression will help identify valuative and structural differences between the two groups. Like the sense of difference or strangeness discussed above, cross-ethnic identification is another important variable, because it is similarly located at the interstices

STYLE AND ETHNICITY 155 of self and Other. This is a highly reflexive variable: The attraction of another group for oneself may point directly to one’s dissatisfactions with the culture of origin. However, even if a person is so dissatisfied with his or her group of origin as to disavow all group affiliation, the “givens” of race, culture, and language may override this absence of personal affirmation in the eyes of others, and cause them to identify the person as still belonging to his or her “native” ethnicity.

Ethnicity and national style in the work of Diego Rivera All of these dimensions of ethnic identification and intercultural communication can be understood better through the analysis of the aesthetic expression of a culture, especially through stylistic analysis. This relation between style and ethnicity can be explored by considering Diego Rivera’s references to pre-Columbian Aztec imagery in his murals. Though trained in traditional and contemporary European artistic techniques, Rivera chose to make use of the styles and themes of indigenous Mexican art in his development of a modern national and ethnic style. In painting his dramatic murals such as the History of Mexico (1929) Rivera drew on pre-Columbian sources. The mural located in the National Palace, Mexico City, includes the head of an Aztec eagle, the tribute pages of the Codex Mendoza, and illustrations from the Codex Florentino (Aztec texts found by the conquistadors and Jesuits). Until 1928 Rivera had portrayed an image of a revolutionary and popular national culture. With this mural, he was attempting to represent Mexico’s entire national evolution in order to create a broad historical context in which to understand the emergence of a new state. Earlier, he had focused on the revolution itself (1910–17). By 1928 he felt he had the historical distance that he needed to create a sweeping vision of Mexican history and identity. The revolution had resulted in the formation of a party, the PRI, which became the national government by the end of the 1920s. This relative stability allowed Mexicans to view themselves as a newly unified nation. The evolution of Rivera’s work in the 1920s expresses the dynamic, unfolding nature of Mexican national and ethnic identities. Visual consistency with ethnic Aztec styles and symbols was required to show that the Mexican people had experienced a continuous past and shared a view of the future. But, part of the shared sentiment of the time included hostility toward imperialism, whether that involved perceptions of the United States or Spain. As a result, stylistic and thematic change was necessary to show this distancing from European and North American domination. Thus, Rivera’s artistic development of the 1920s involved a balance of consistency and change that expressed the dynamic and stable elements of Mexican ethnic identification. Rivera’s mural is an example of how national governments and artists sympathetic to them may consciously attempt to establish a national culture through referencing historical “ethnic styles” in a way that transcends the experiences and realities of individual groups.10 Ironically, the very multiracial or multicultural character of a society often increases the sense of urgency in establishing a common culture for

156 STYLE AND ETHNICITY

Figure 7.1 Aztec Codex Borbonicus, “Tonalamatl,” detail depicting Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca (vellum). © 2010 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./DACS. Reproduced with permission.

Quetzalcoatl means feathered serpent. Though the word comes from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, this is a deity who was worshiped in Teotihuacan long before the Aztec arrived in the great Central Highlands of Mexico. The feathered serpent was also worshiped by the Mayans, who called it Kukulcan. The origins of the symbol seem to be with agricultural symbolism related to the regeneration of life. For the Mayans, the serpent was a vision serpent who aided the shaman in his quest. For the Nahua peoples, including the Aztecs, the deity was connected with many activities, but especially with learning and knowledge. The feathers of the serpent meant that it could fly, so it inhabited the boundaries of sky and earth. Cholula was the site most strongly associated with the worship of Quetzalcoatl. In this codice, the serpent is depicted with Tezcatlipoca, who is symbolic of the night, war, strife, and the black, mirrorlike mineral, obsidian. This image, then, depicts two rivals, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca. The Codex Borbonicus is a pictorial document (like all codices) that was created by priests shortly before the Spanish Conquest of Mexico in the sixteenth century. For a painter such as Rivera, these codices provided a direct record of the visual language of his indigenous ancestors.

STYLE AND ETHNICITY 157 the purposes of national unity. Alternatively, group identification may lead to social conflict in nations where several subcultures compete for influence. How is aesthetic expression part of the negotiation between these conflicting subcultures? In some cases, as with Rivera’s mural, the appeal to a particular subculture takes precedence over the art of other subcultures and “stands for” the ideals of the nation. In the case of Mexico there are three major groups, the indigenous, mestizo (or mixed race) and the descendants of the Spanish. Each of these groups can be further divided into subpopulations, but Rivera chose to emphasize the artistic lives of Mexico’s indigenous population in his work.11 This mural was commissioned by the National Government and created in the National Palace. It was an explicitly public art—some might even call it propagandistic—and an attempt by Mexico’s leaders to define ethnic identity. As such, Rivera used readily identifiable symbols that invited a sense of belonging or “Mexicanness” by referencing Mexico’s indigenous people and their art and myths. The mural and those others that accompany it are not a straight journalistic record of events; they record an artist’s idea of “Mexico” and Mexican history reclaimed from colonialist control. The portrayal of the pre-Columbian world is in glowing emotional, even nostalgic terms.12 In the center of the stairway mural the mythic figure Quetzalcoatl is seen sitting serenely among his subjects. In Aztec culture Quetzalcoatl was the white god-king who created culture, civilization, and learning: a god of supreme confidence, knowledge, and authority. Thus, Rivera directly references pre-contact systems of culture and communication. To Quetzalcoatl’s left, his indigenous subjects cultivate crops, especially maize; to the right, a Native carves a piece of stone sculpture. Rivera strongly references the shared cultural, biological, and racial background of the people of Mexico. Contemporary Mexicans are invited to identify with their indigenous ancestry, which had been the subject of colonialist prejudice and degradation. Rivera suspends criticism of this mythic pre-European world. Indeed, in later imagery such as his images of flower vendors, Rivera’s depiction of Indian life is often highly romanticized. This seems to be Rivera’s way of expressing his personal affirmation of Mexicans’ native ancestry and cultural origins. He did not wish to judge the ancient indigenous world by the standards of European Christianity, so he did not show the internal causes of this world’s demise: its superstition, intertribal warfare, human sacrifice, economic exploitation, and so on. Instead, Rivera depicts the downfall of native culture as resulting from Spanish conquest and subjugation. (That conquest would have been much more difficult if the Spanish had been unable to exploit existing hatred for the dominant Aztecs among those tribes that the Aztecs had subjugated.) In affirming the organic wholeness of indigenous ethnicity and culture, Rivera criticizes the violation of Mexico from without (for instance, by the United States) and from within (by local tyrants of Spanish descent). Rivera’s work invites a great deal of cross-ethnic identification that is highly reflexive. Most contemporary Mexicans are of mixed-race ancestry, not solely Native

158 STYLE AND ETHNICITY or European in descent. Thus, Rivera is inviting people who contain some European ancestry to identify with the people who were the victims of violent treatment. There is a dynamic of attraction (to a mythic indigenous past) and repulsion (to the violence of European conquest and subsequent social change) in Rivera’s murals that is fueled by cross-ethnic identification. After all, the majority mestizo population is not indigenous, but it is being invited to identify with indigenous arts and lifeways. At the center of the central section of the mural is Mexico’s national symbol, the Aztec Eagle. The heroes of independence and of the battle against Cortez are closest to the Eagle. On the left- and right-side sections are images of the violation of Mexico. For instance, the outer right arch portrays the United States’ Mexican invasion of 1847. In this first historical mural by Rivera, then, Aztec imagery, symbols, and styles of representation are used to show what had been violated and what could be renewed through the contemporary affirmation of Mexican identity. To a large degree the new national identity of Mexico rests upon a renewed sense of the country’s ethnic heritage. Those ethnic “givens” of race, culture, and inherited visual symbols were affirmed in the process of nation building. Rivera returned to the National Palace to create more murals in the period from 1942 to 1951. He concentrated on the pre-Columbian life of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec

Figure 7.2 Diego Rivera, detail of History of Mexico showing the Aztec Eagle. © 2010 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./DACS. Reproduced with permission.

STYLE AND ETHNICITY 159 city that was at the site of present-day Mexico City, because he saw this reality as the source of the nation. However, this was a nostalgic reality. This idealized view of Mexico’s pre-conquest past carries over to his other representations of pre-Columbian cultures such as the Zapotecan civilization from the same period. The Zapotec are natives from southern Mexico who still retained indigenous lifestyles in the 1920s (some do even today) and, therefore, provided a kind of living evidence of Rivera’s evocation of indigenismo, the fundamental trope of Mexico’s modern valuation of native ethnicity. Was Rivera’s evocation of an idealized indigenous ethnic culture an authentic response to his own contemporary situation? Rivera’s use of images seems to be an example of constructing a “mythic tradition” in response to very specific social conditions. One hypothesis that can be generated from this consideration of Rivera is that the conscious development of modern ethnic styles occurs most readily in contexts of cultural contact, conflict, and competition. It was an intercultural environment of European, mestizo, indigenous, and North American cultural influences that led to the creation of the modern Mexican identity. Even though Rivera’s evocation of history is mythic as much as it is ethno-historically “accurate,” it is still an authentic response to his time. His work is tied to an emerging social structure (the new Mexican nation), social processes such as the shifting of class and ethnic alignments in revolutionary Mexico, and the expression of an alternative worldview to that of Christianity. Ethnic styles emerge, then, as part of the recognition and elaboration of differences, whether these are social, racial, or mythological in origin. They emerge in conditions of interaction, which are often conditions of competition and hostility as had occurred within Mexico and between Mexico and its colonizers. Ethnic art styles can develop at several levels of social organization including tribe and community. They are not solely limited to nationalist expressions but often help fuel nationalist feelings. Though Rivera’s work represents one example of the “uses” of ethnic style in intercultural and revolutionary contexts, his work is not an isolated example. More recently, in West Africa, contemporary performers of Ghanaian highlife songs have drawn upon a performance tradition that integrates several art forms—music, song, dance, enactment, and a participating audience—to comment on society.13 Much of the political flavor of these forms originated in the reaction to colonialism: “The period of anticolonial struggle in Ghana, for example, was dominated by a fierce cultural pride and intense nationalism. The people and their creative artists profoundly shared these aspirations of the nationalists in song, dance, and drama.”14 The same anti-imperialistic struggle continued to motivate contemporary performers such as the Nigerian saxophonist Fela Anikulapo-Kuti who had been jailed for his political views before his death. In struggling against “Western cultural imperialism,” he “wants Africans to reclaim an African identity by re-discovering their traditional religions (he has frequently reviled both Christianity and Islam), traditional methods of healing, and indigenous lifestyles.”15

160 STYLE AND ETHNICITY There are strengths and weaknesses of ethnic style as a variable for intercultural analysis in art. A common but mistaken assumption about ethnicity is that it is solely racial in character. The understanding of ethnicity based on race alone often carries unfounded evaluative connotations. Understanding ethnicity in racial terms is an outgrowth of colonialism; the exaggeration of racial prejudices helped colonial leaders justify their exploitation of non-European peoples. Race is simply too limited, on its own, to fully explain ethnic expression. Race does not accurately reflect style differences among members of the same race. It does not help explain the expressions of mixed-race people, who comprise a growing segment of the world’s population. Ethnic expression is tied to, but not encompassed by, race. However, it would be equally as wrong to ignore race as a dimension of ethnicity as it is to reduce ethnicity to racial terms. Ethnic expression is tied to our sense of self and “Other.” More specifically, aesthetics and ideology intersect in the representation of the Other. In contexts of intergroup relations a group’s identifying characteristics, which promote affiliation within that group, may be used to label another group as Other. The ethnologist, du Preez, writes that this ideological tendency to reduce other groups to particular, stylized roles is a core element of political identification.16 As a reflection of this dynamic, the “ethnic” may be tied to a sense of the folk or exotic (a reified Other), while one’s own ethnicity seems transparently natural (an unreflexive self). Because of this reductionistic use of the concept “ethnic,” it is seen as a sign of success to not be “labeled” from without as an ethnic artist. To the degree that art is seen as ethnic, it is viewed as outside mainstream or Euro-American stylistic developments, so the label “ethnic” is marginalizing. And ethnic art and design is easily controlled in a commodity marketplace according to preformed concepts about how it “should” appear, according to preconceived notions about appropriate ethnic subjects, patterns, colors, and so on. It is impossible to fully appreciate ethnic art in a context of reception in which ethnic styles serve the needs of the market by acting as officially recognizable marks of authenticity, easily assimilated into the economics of display. Ethnicity cannot be regarded as a deterministic, fixed variable. Rather, the experience of ethnicity is dynamic and negotiable; it is subject to reflection and change. As a result, the analysis of ethnic styles must explore the balance of continuity and change in artistic expressions. Do current models of style analysis allow full consideration of both change and continuity in ethnic styles? Most Western models of style analysis focus upon the importance of influence in stylistic development.17 Influence-based models are geared toward understanding questions of cultural diffusion and evolution. The Western academic understanding of style tends to focus on style change. While influence, diffusion, and evolution are important processes to investigate, the analytical models themselves can sometimes have normative effects: one begins to assume that styles should evolve or change. Innovation becomes valued for its own sake, and audiences may become suspicious of styles that do not change, at least in terms of their status as “art” styles. The predominant assumption of an influence model is that new styles will emerge as art “progresses.”

STYLE AND ETHNICITY 161 By contrast, some cultures value styles as consistent, continuous identity markers. In historical Meso-America, groups worked very hard to maintain style differences rather than assuming influence and change as a “norm.”18 The Western model of stylistic influence privileges contact and change over the maintenance of continuity and difference. While the Euro-American conception of style tends to draw from an influence-based, evolutionary paradigm, it should be recognized that this is not a universal understanding of style. Members of other cultures, such as the descendants of the Maya, who reside today in southeastern Mexico and Guatemala, may place high value on stylistic continuity. Members of non-Western cultures, therefore, define not only their accepted styles (the actual motifs, patterns or traits found in works), they also define their specific experience of “style” as a concept or value.

Conclusion Ethnic styles vary in the way and the degree to which they symbolize difference; they can be invented, or they can result un-selfconsciously from centuries of aesthetic expression. Thus, no source of influence or trajectory of style development is inherently more “natural” or better than another. The marking of ethnic identity through aesthetic expression is often a strategy (conscious or unconscious) for practical survival. Instead of applying a European-derived model of style and style change universally, we need comparative analysis of the varied models of style. Another possible problem with a focus on “ethnic style” as an analytical tool is that it may obscure the development of personal styles within a culture.19 There is a danger that a simplistic use of “ethnic” style can lead to a reduction of the varieties of expressions within a culture. Can individual creativity and accomplishment be accounted for at the same time as one maintains an awareness of group identification? There is a danger here that a double standard may arise. The analysis of the individual artist continues to be prevalent in the history of Western art, but the analysis of group styles tends to be common in considering non-Western, especially tribal, art. Should this be the case? It is a consistent pattern in the study of art, due, in part, to the absence of a written record in many cultures, so that the names of individual artists are not known. But, care must be taken, even in accounts of more recent art history, to focus on the personal as well as the group. Another limitation of “ethnic style” as a variable is that the analysis of cultures according to group styles favors certain cultures and conditions of contact for consideration. This follows from my earlier discussion of the relationship between art styles and culture: only cultures recognized as having “distinctive,” unified, or strong styles may be singled out for analysis. Ethnic groups with hybrid styles or less developed styles may be overlooked. As discussed earlier, the most distinctive ethnic styles may emerge in conditions of cultural competition and conflict. The analysis of ethnic style tends to downplay other kinds of intercultural interaction such as cultural incorporation. There are, then, several possible dangers of employing an “ethnic style model” for understanding intercultural processes in art: ethnicity

162 STYLE AND ETHNICITY may be inaccurately reduced to race; the analysis of ethnic style may lack reflexivity (an awareness of the role of ethnicity for one’s self); current models tend to overemphasize influence, diffusion, and evolution; personal styles may be overlooked; and cultures with “distinctive” styles tend to be singled out for analysis. Despite these problems, there are also benefits to continuing to refine the analysis of style and ethnicity. Analyzing ethnic styles helps one understand the interaction of several aspects of group identification: the biological, cultural, communicative, and personal. Styles of artistic expression are clearly related to identity construction and help in understanding the patterns of belonging within a particular culture. Style is associated with agency; it results from active, creative processes. Ethnic style may be used to assist scholars in understanding the rhetorical, political, and economic goals of groups and individuals as in the case of Rivera and the Mexican government. Recognizing that ethnic style varies with cultural conditions leads to identification of the variety of circumstances that can lead to the development of group styles. Viewing style in relationship to ethnicity, a legitimate and important aspect of social reality, helps to demonstrate how expressive styles are part of the essential nature of experience, and not superficially imposed. Both styles themselves and the understanding of style as a concept are organic parts of the cultures that create them. Artistic expressions continue to depend upon style to some degree; by understanding style in relationship to ethnicity we can begin to see why this is the case. Aesthetic practices have both divisive and synthetic potentiality in inter-ethnic relationships. The us-and-them polarization so common in intercultural contact tends to be self-perpetuating and impedes change; hostility and retaliation result from rigid ideological dualism. Though the historical reasons for opposition between ethnic groups cannot be ignored—these must be acknowledged and negotiated— fixed perceptions of the “Other” never lead to cooperation between groups. We can hope that political and religious leaders will help groups overcome division, distrust, and fear, but history demonstrates that leaders often perpetuate ethnic divisions in order to solidify group loyalties. Understanding the multiple sources of ethnic styles guards against the simple reductionism so common in polarized ethnic relations and helps prevent the dualistic thinking that is one source of prejudice.

Chapter 8

A SENSE OF PLACE

A

a source of one’s feeling of “belonging” to a location or community, and, as a result, a dimension of intercultural relations. Any analysis of sense of place can help us understand core values in cultures other than our native culture. How is a sense of place generated? A sense of place is developed through the interrelation of several elements: poetry and literature, art, religion, social life, and views of nature. A sense of place, though, is not imposed as much by religious or political institutions (an ideological formation of place) as it is formed through a person or group’s profound experience of place. A sense of place involves specific physical ties to a location as well as understandings of nature that are part of worldviews. This chapter considers how art expresses sense of place, with specific examples and comparative analysis drawn from Eastern and Western landscape traditions. One region where a sense of place was expressed early through art is East Asia. In China and Japan a sense of place arose out of the conjoining of artistic, poetic, and religious expressions. Asian theories of art are deeply permeated with a philosophy of religious mysticism—of the ultimate unity of all things—that has been largely unacceptable to naturalistic thinkers in the West. In Western popular culture, Eastern beliefs and practices are often portrayed more for their exotic qualities, quaintness, and even quirkiness than for their philosophical value. Eastern beliefs are something to be marketed. For example, a TV commercial for “Tic Tacs” showed people in yogic poses tempted by small breath fresheners. The implication of the commercial was that even health nuts or “New Agers” interested in Eastern religions can be tempted by the candies. Additional commercialization of Eastern beliefs and practices has occurred in Kung Fu shows and movies during the last forty years. East–West artistic diffusion is an established fact. Major luminaries including Manet, Degas, and van Gogh, along with abstract expressionists such as Tobey, SENSE OF PLACE IS

164 A SENSE OF PLACE Pollock, and Reinhardt and Asian Americans such as Noguchi and Shimomura, have been influenced by Eastern art and philosophy. Diffusion also takes place in popular culture. This began centuries ago with the Western fascination for chinoiserie but flowered in the nineteenth century with the popular taste for japonisme. The interest of the Beat poets in Zen and the widespread influence of Eastern thought on the human potential movement (the 1960s to the present) continue these traditions of diffusion. As part of this complex interaction within both high and popular culture, are there main points or “nodes” where the ideas of East and West have intersected? One node may be in the area of landscape, which has contributed greatly to the development of sense of place in art. To understand the importance of this point of intersection, though, we need to locate the development of landscape in the context of Asian aesthetics. Landscape painting began in China; we now turn to that tradition and the aesthetic theories on which it is grounded for insight into the development of sense of place in art.

Foundations of Chinese aesthetics Ancient philosophies in China (Confucianism, Taoism) and Greece (Platonism, Aristotelianism) contain many interesting parallels and contrasts. Ancient China and Greece had little direct cultural contact, though crosscurrents existed with India. Cultural influences between East and West were mediated through Iran and other nations of the Middle East. Thus, a comparison and contrast between aesthetics in ancient China and Greece is largely based upon a consideration of two distinct cultures. Other contrasts that can be drawn in developing an awareness of Chinese aesthetics are internal to Chinese culture. The changes from one belief system to another—Confucian to Taoist, Buddhist, and, much later, Marxist—can be comparatively analyzed within China’s own cultural context. In addition to philosophical influences, other points of comparison include artistic processes (brushwork, ceramic processes, filmic conventions, etc.), subject matter, and genres (the figure, landscape, portraiture). The present chapter connects landscape to collective understandings of place. An underlying assumption throughout is that ways of representing the land act as metaphors for states of mind. Let us first consider some points of comparison as avenues for understanding how sense of place became embodied in landscape. A comparison of early Eastern and Western thought shows many surprising resemblances. Similar theories arose at about the same time in widely separate parts of the earth.1 Consider the case of Plato (428–348 BCE), Socrates (469–399 BCE), and Confucius (551–479 BCE). Confucius, the Chinese sage who founded Confucianism, and Socrates lived within two generations of each other. Both philosophers profoundly influenced subsequent thought. Throughout their lives, Socrates and Confucius were best known as teachers. When Confucius died at the age of 72, he had taught a total of 3,000 students who carried on his teaching. Socrates’ academic legacy included his pupil, Plato, as well as Plato’s student, Aristotle, and the schools of thought they formed.

A SENSE OF PLACE 165 Three doctrines of Confucius are particularly important. The first is benevolence (jen), best understood as enlightened self-interest, that is, putting the self in the position of the other and then treating the other accordingly: “Do unto others what you wish to do unto yourself.” The second doctrine concerns the superior man (chuntzu). The superior man is one who practices benevolence regardless of family background. Ritual propriety is the third doctrine. Confucius emphasized right behavior in one’s relations; people should act with propriety. Thus, one behaves ritualistically with others in order to ensure social harmony. Such behavior is called li, which refers to the norms that guide people in their social relations. In China, Confucianism is tied to social order and conservative ethics. This was similar to the ideas and effects of Platonism in the West. Plato tended to distrust the visual arts because he associated them with the imitation of appearances, and he was concerned that the mere imitation of appearances can be misleading. In Plato’s view the imitator doesn’t actually use or make the objects he imitates, he or she just imitates them. This manipulation of appearance, so to speak, was dangerous because it occurred at a distance from the “truth” of things. As such, Plato felt that art and artists should be carefully monitored and managed. The Platonists and Confucianists were ultraconservative in calling for a return to ancient simplicity and for a council of elders to regulate the arts. Each of these philosophical traditions sought natural and mathematical laws to correspond with their high valuation of social order and balance. Around 239 BCE a method was invented in China for deriving standard musical tones arithmetically that was very similar to Pythagorean theories of the mathematical and physical basis of the tones of the lyre. In both China and Greece, the orderly production of sounds was linked to order in the universe, including seasonal cycles. For instance, many Chinese musical scales are pentatonic; this five-note scale corresponds to the Wu Xing, or five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water), that are at the heart of Chinese cosmology. Hence, the first duty of a ruler was to maintain tradition in music and ritual; this was the reason for the conservative attitude toward the arts in both ancient cultures. Ways of maintaining order were assumed by each philosopher to be universal in origin. Since they are universal, they are evident and discoverable in nature. In these ancient wisdom traditions, the ideal was that the ordering principles of nature would be incorporated into artistic creativity and social organization. One philosophical strand, then, that influenced the development of landscape was socially conservative in nature and could be expected to lead to a tradition that emphasizes communal values and intergenerational continuity. These are roles that landscape eventually served in China, but the seeds of the actual genre were sown in the ground of a different tradition, Taoism. Like Confucianism, Taoism is also similar to Greek thought because it holds that enduring forms lie behind and organize perceivable reality. Lao Tsu, the sage and author of the Tao Te Ching, states that “the shape changes but not the form.”2 But Taoism differs from Confucianism because it states that the Tao is an absence at the source of all things. The Tao is elusive and cannot be defined but includes image,

166 A SENSE OF PLACE essence, and form. This is different than saying that forms are structures that can be discovered intellectually (as in Platonic and Confucianist theory). Taoism is a philosophy of non-interference with nature, of letting nature take its own course. The Tao can be described as the void that underlies all sensory experience, the source of all things that lies behind apparent reality, the energy or force that exists before birth—formless, colorless—being itself. The Tao is symbolized by the circle, which has no beginning or end and is empty. Over time, Taoism inspired both Chinese and Japanese artists; we will see its influence in our discussion of Zen later in this chapter. Taoism helps us to understand aesthetic expression in China more than Confucianism. For instance, the philosophical principle of the Tao was expressed in Taoist- and Buddhist-influenced art as emptiness.3 But, Taoism is less helpful than Confucianism for helping us to understand Chinese social structure. Thus, the history of Chinese art and thought is not a story of one dominant worldview but of more than one complementary framework. Taoism was more free and individualistic than Confucianism, less devoted to past rules and classics. The Tao Te Ching advises us to distrust societies’ rules and regulations. Social structures corrupt individual and natural spontaneity. The debate between Confucianists, who advocated social structures and norms, and Taoists (Lao Tsu was possibly a slightly older contemporary of Confucius; their conversations and debates would have begun during their lifetime in the sixth century BCE) is similar to debates about the need for social contracts in contrast to “natural,” unfettered human nature that took place in the West during the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Taoism led to a freer, more informal type of art. This attitude was reflected in the artist’s relationship to media. For instance, painting should involve a spontaneous expression of the inner spirit, not a striving for likeness: the sage is “guided by intuition, not the senses.”4 However, Taoism and Confucianism are more alike in their ideas about nature than either resembles the West. Confucius said: “Nature is vast and deep, high, intelligent, infinite, and eternal.” In the West painting emphasized representation, the creation of the illusion of solid form, for hundreds of years. Western painting tended to be more methodical than that of the East. By contrast, many Chinese paintings reflect and attempt to represent the eternal spirit of nature rather than its appearance.

A sense of place in Chinese landscape painting Taoist thought is not naturalistic in the mimetic sense of Western naturalism. It is naturalistic in the sense of trying to “follow nature”; it emphasizes attuning oneself to natural processes but not imitating nature. In later centuries, this became a nature full of spirits, both good and bad. Ironically, Taoism later becomes highly ritualistic, even though Lao Tsu specifically warned against this. (Of course, this same development occurs in some Christian traditions; they became highly ritualized and displayed great wealth, even though early Christians had warned against this.) What concerns us more than the development of Taoism per se is its impact on Chinese

A SENSE OF PLACE 167 art and aesthetics. Taoist thought, combined with Buddhist influences, created the climate necessary for the birth of the landscape genre in China. Buddhism arrived in China through the efforts of Bodhidharma, an Indian prince who became a monk and arrived in China in the fifth or sixth century CE. By this point in time (fifth and sixth centuries), a school of Taoism—Shangqing—had been formed in southeastern China that incorporated its own liturgy, holy places, and patriarchy.5 This was the first Taoist movement to integrate some features of Buddhist thought. Landscape painting emerged in China during the Six Dynasties, 220–618 CE, the period of the Sinicization of Buddhism. In addition to being the period when landscape painting was first practiced, the Six Dynasties saw the emergence of art criticism and of shan-shui or nature poetry. This intellectual “discovery” of nature as an aesthetic concept bore fruit in the Sung period, 960–1127 CE, which is historically divided into the period of the Northern Sung and Southern Sung. The attitudes toward landscape that emerged during this period became the classic models for later generations of painters.

Figure 8.1 Kuo Hsi, Early Spring, 1072. © National Palace Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China. Reproduced with permission.

168 A SENSE OF PLACE Kuo Hsi is an example of a Northern Sung artist who was widely respected within his own time, the late eleventh century. He wrote a book called Lofty Messages of the Forests and Streams. In the book he quoted verses such as Clouds wait brooding for snow and hang heavily over the earth; The wail of autumn is interrupted as the wild geese sweep over the sky. ... Heavy with rain the spring flood rushes rapidly through the night; Not a soul on the bank; a solitary ferry lies aslant the water.6 According to one early commentator, the fact that Kuo Hsi had poetry as a source for his painting indicates that the relationship between poetry and painting was already beginning to become conventionalized.7 A close association between the two forms of artistic expression made the birth of landscape painting possible. Common to the response to nature in both poetry and painting is that nature symbolizes spiritual ecstasy and transcendence, not danger. The success of Kuo Hsi’s painting depends in part upon chiaroscuro, a strong modulation between light and dark within the work, to create a sense of drama. Kuo Hsi aimed for emotional effects, created through the structure of his work, that are more general than the realistic depiction of a particular scene might have achieved. In The Path of Beauty (1994), a short overview of Chinese art and aesthetics, Li Zehou explains the goals of Sung painters, which had such a strong influence on subsequent generations. Painters like Kuo Hsi sought to paint the spirit of a place. In expressing internal spirit or vital rhythm, painters naturally concentrated on surroundings that were familiar to them. Northern Sung painters combined exact observation of their immediate environment with a generalized expression of the spirit of the land. Li Zehou calls this approach “imaginative realism.”8 This phrase implies that landscape developed from an image of the mind, or a metaphor for a way of being, rather than an exact depiction of the environment. Though Kuo Hsi and other Northern Sung painters such as Fan Kuan were inspired by poetry, they did not attempt to express any specific poetic theme or metaphor. The Northern Sung style is characterized by the painter’s “absence of self” and a deliberate lack of literary intention. Rather than a literary theme, it is the “impersonal process” of painting that clarifies the self and that makes feelings and intuitions clear. This lack of a poetic theme and attention to the spirit of a place gives the viewer “space” to enter and interpret the painter’s landscape of the imagination. One way that landscape painting creates a sense of place, then, is by representing an environment that viewers can “tour, enjoy and live in” in their imaginations.9 The emotional effect that viewers feel is not a result of the painter’s personal emotion, but a result of a lasting pictorial concept that sustains the viewer. When nature becomes a cherished idea, as occurred through the confluence of nature poetry and landscape painting in eleventh-century China, a people’s “sense of place” evolves to a new stage. This evolution evolved in a qualitatively different

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Figure 8.2 Liang Kai (attr.), Homeward-bound Fisherman Covered in Snow (late 12th–early 13th century). © Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

relationship to space: landscape led to a change in valuation of distance in nature, from dread to wonder.10 A wide horizon and the positive valuation of distances may be visual metaphors for an expanding sense of self or “other-worldliness” as well as a lack of external constraints. Perhaps, for the Chinese viewer, the world grew larger and was filled with more positive possibilities through the evolution of landscape painting. Another painter of the Sung Dynasty, this time of the Southern Sung, is Liang Kai (thirteenth century). He practiced a spontaneous mode of working, creating an image in a few minutes, but arrived at this method after years of training and practice. Some Southern Sung artists even used bold flung-ink techniques. The style was practiced by Buddhist monks and involved a kind of staccato, rapid brushwork that is very decisive and quickly executed. Painters felt that this working method reflected the spontaneity or “naturalness” of nature itself. The spontaneous rapid

170 A SENSE OF PLACE nature of the painting was also associated with the suddenness of the mystic’s enlightenment. During the Southern Sung, brushwork, as an extension of calligraphy, grew even more central to the painting process. In Southern Sung painting, the idea is to express the infinite by means of the finite. Space, as one way of expressing the infinite, increasingly became a pictorial concern. In some paintings, instead of painting an entire scene, the priest-artists would focus on a fragment or “closeup” of a branch or other subject. The style was tied to a Buddhist sect in China called Ch’an that became known as Zen in Japan; it is hard to distinguish Southern Sung painting from art by Zen monks.

Zen Buddhism and art The transformation of Ch’an into Zen is itself an important intercultural process. The source of Zen Buddhism is Taoism in addition to Chinese Buddhism. Zen Buddhism did not begin in Japan until the twelfth century, so it is a late formation that reflects the interrelationship of both Taoist and Buddhist influences in China. Both the Taoists and Zen Buddhists distrust intellectual theorization as part of teaching; logical thought, and dualistic thought are viewed as obstacles to enlightenment. By contrast, both value direct insight or intuition as a form of knowing; these are developed through a kind of “wordless teaching” that comes about through a relationship between a master teacher and a student or disciple. In this light, art itself is a skill or meditative practice that one acquires by doing. It is not a religion or philosophy, but an act of being. Art relates to the overall philosophy of Zen, in which one learns by doing rather than through rules written in texts. There is no holy book in Zen; rather, awareness is focused on concrete reality. Common to both Taoism and Buddhism is the sentiment that humans are at one with nature. The same principle that informs all things in nature also animates humans, so there is no separation between human and nature by virtue of human reason or intellect, as we find in the West. This view of nature is not an expression of primitivism—a desire to return to primal sources—it is an expression of the desire for the freedom and emancipation from the bounds of the ego that are found in the Way, which unifies nature. Following from the idea of the natural, Zen aesthetics comprises these values: artlessness and directness (do); asymmetry (fukinsei); simplicity (kanso); austere sublimity (koko); naturalness (shizen); deep reserve/profundity (yugen); freedom from attachment (datsuzoku); and tranquility (seijaku). In contrast to earlier Japanese Buddhist traditions, such as Tendai, Shingon, or Pure Land, the Zen Buddhists are not interested in cult pictures involved in esoteric rituals or liturgy. Instead, a stance of openness to nature itself is seen in Zeninfluenced art and architecture. Zen isn’t really a religion of social good works or elaborate rituals. Rather it is an attitude that carries over into the arts, whether of ink painting, flower arrangement, the tea ceremony, or the rock garden. Because Zen followers strive for direct insight into spiritual reality in all aspects of life, artistic process and meditative process are

A SENSE OF PLACE 171 the same. The meditative experience is manifested in the arts, and art liberates the self. But, art is not a wallowing in the self, as is sometimes implied by the term “self expression.” The ego is not the primary basis for art making. Instead, the self is seen in the larger context of the Self, the awareness of the unity of all things. It is the values of Zen, which, as we have seen, had their origins in Taoism, that eventually had a strong influence on twentieth-century Western artists. These artists felt that Western aesthetic theories no longer helped explain their understanding of art as a process. This receptivity began in the twenties in the thought and practices of artists such as Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, continued through the forties and fifties with the teachings of John Cage and on into the sixties and beyond through interpreters of Zen such as the philosopher Alan Watts. Similarly, there is an important lineage of Zen’s influence in European modernism. Thus, a set of values that had its origins in ancient China, ended up transforming the way that Western artists and philosophers think about creativity nearly 2,500 years after its formulation in the Tao Te Ching. Let us now return to the development of a “sense of place” in Chinese landscape painting itself. The dynasty that followed the Sung Dynasty in China was the Yuan (1279–1368), which involved a new cycle of experimentation. During this period, the ideal artist was the sage–scholar–painter, aloof from the “dusty” world of everyday affairs. These painters immersed themselves in the wholesome world of nature, reflecting Taoism’s distrust of social institutions. By the Yuan Dynasty, landscape painting was considered to be the only proper subject for the creative painter. Huang Kung-Wang is considered the greatest of the four great masters of this dynasty. He lived in a time of political turmoil; this was the dynasty during which China was ruled by the foreign Mongol invader, Kublai Khan. Huang took a junior official posting in the Yuan administration, then was arrested, imprisoned, and dismissed. After his dismissal, he supported himself as an herbalist, which was typical of somebody with Taoist leanings. The main medicines in the traditional Chinese system are, after all, derived from nature. Huang’s life and art reflect an “unlearning” of society’s values, which allowed him to express himself more directly. He never put his brush to paper except in response to intense, intuitive feeling. The wave-like mountains and light touch of the brush, the delicate shades of ink and sense of atmosphere are seen as evidence of a relaxed, generous spirit in a difficult political age. A Ming Dynasty critic wrote of him that late in life “he lived in a cottage that did not shut out the rain and the cold, but there he sat, cross-legged, humming poetry.”11 Huang lived the Taoist ideal described by Lao Tsu: “The sage wears rough clothing and wears the jewel in his heart.”12 But there is a sense of definition or clarity to Huang’s work not seen in the earlier misty landscapes of idealized nature. Huang’s work is an embodiment of the idea that “the Tao abides in non-action, yet nothing is left undone.”13 From the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries in China, at about the same time as the Gothic period in Europe, Chinese landscape painting expressed a profound sense of place. That is, there was an attachment to place, expressed in art,

172 A SENSE OF PLACE that reflected the most sophisticated and complex values of the Chinese people. The art of these periods, the classical age of the Sung and Yuan Dynasties, strongly influenced later artists in China and Japan, and solidified the Chinese people’s deep attachment to their land and beliefs. The confluence of nature poetry and landscape painting related to another confluence: that of Buddhism and Taoism. As Miranda Shaw writes, this joining of different artistic and philosophical traditions originally took place in a particular location, Hui-yuan’s monastery.14 Through the experience of place in landscape painting and poetry, the original, primal, innate character of nature in abstract Taoist thought became associated with direct experience. Chinese landscape painting more than depicts a scene, it develops an inborn wholeness or oneness in the artist and viewer through a resonance with all living things. Now, let us compare the cultural construction of place in China with Western landscape traditions.

Comparative analysis of place There is a parallel between the closeness to the land that is valued in Taoism and that expressed in the Dionysian rites of ancient Greece. For instance, the ancient Mycenaeans worshiped in places like caves and mountains, an expression of their attachment to the mysterious forces of nature. The Dionysian, as a modern philosophical concept, comes from the German philosopher Nietzsche’s attempt to explain the origins of Greek tragedy. Nietzsche held that all art owes its evolution to the struggle between Apollonian and Dionysian forces.15 The worship of Apollo and Dionysus (later named Bacchus in Roman times) and mystical religions such as Orphism gained acceptance in Greece from 700 to 601 BCE. But the sources of Dionysian ritual and celebration are much earlier; they are expressed in early myths such as those of the Mycenaean civilization (2800–1100 BCE). As conceptualized by Nietzsche, Dionysus is the god of rapture whose closest analogy is with physical intoxication. Ancient people recognized a similarity between the rapture of collective rituals, tied to the cycles of nature, and the loss of a sense of individual self that was associated with chemical intoxication. The revelry associated with spring, the rhythmic force of primitive hymns—of all the magical rites that bring humans together in a “mystical experience of the collective”—are expressions of the Dionysian spirit in Nietzsche’s view. The root of Dionysian power is a closeness to natural forces that are, for Nietzsche, the “eternal and original power of art.” Dionysus’ wild spirit seems to be reflected in the “concentration of the daemonic” in the Taoist sage. Taoist sages are represented as “riding and taming” wild animals, which very closely matches classical representations of Dionysus. Taoism emphasizes that all things are moved by a single, unifying principle. Similarly, Dionysus can be viewed as a symbol of the idea of the interconnectedness of all things. Taoists became experts in the plants, especially the herbs, of their mountain retreats; they were able to tap the healing power of nature. Dionysian rituals were tied to the sustenance that the earth provided and its magical properties of regeneration. Indeed, the

A SENSE OF PLACE 173 closeness of Dionysian cultures to the earth and its mysteries was a source of some concern for the more Apollonian-minded Athenians in later centuries. But, just as ancient Taoism did not lead to the development of landscape in its own right—it required the confluence of Buddhism and development of art criticism16—neither did the Dionysian spirit. Early “nature art” in these two traditions was marked by the development of isolated motifs from nature. For instance, the early Chinese used the “cloud-breath” motif to represent nature’s dynamic energy. And Dionysians developed a symbolic vocabulary of animals to stand for particular powers that derived from nature. In the West, nature did not move to the center of art until the nineteenth century, long after landscape had been established in the East, though its importance was anticipated in Dutch art of the seventeenth century. Before that time, most art in the West had been oriented toward humans; nature had a secondary status for much of the history of Western art. The West is not necessarily an exception in this regard. In China, the pre-Han landscape was primarily a setting for humans, who were the primary subject of interest.17 In the art of both ancient cultures nature served

Figure 8.3 Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis in the Desert, c. 1485. Copyright The Frick Collection. Reproduced with permission.

174 A SENSE OF PLACE the role of a backdrop for historical, religious, or mythological work but was not the subject of art in its own right. Why, though, did the genre first appear in Western art some eight hundred years later than in China? People in the West have a history of viewing nature as something that is “out there”: separate, distinct, and something to be conquered. Historically, nature has been seen as a threat that must be controlled. In the process of learning how to control it, nature came to be regarded as an object of analysis, and manipulated for human progress and gain. Bellini’s vibrant painting of St. Francis is a good example of the role that nature played in Western painting. Because Western artists and intellectuals concentrated on analyzing nature, they represented it as real and volumetric. This approach is very different from Chinese landscapes, which focus on line, space, and atmosphere as the primary qualities of nature. Even in a religious picture such as this one by Bellini, the landscape is depicted realistically. The saint himself is not an abstract symbol, but a person of flesh and blood, and he is located centrally, dominating the form and meaning of the composition. There is a sense of volume and concreteness to the image, achieved in part through Bellini’s mastery of a relatively opaque medium, oil paint. As a subject of analysis and control, nature here is described for us as solid and substantial in its Figure 8.4 Fan K’uan, Travellers amid Mountains and Streams, early 11th century. © National Palace Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China. Reproduced with permission.

A SENSE OF PLACE 175 materiality. This is the case even when the subject is the patron saint of nature, St. Francis. By contrast, in Fan Kuan’s famous painting from the Northern Sung Dynasty, Travellers amid Mountains and Streams, the human figure is almost absent. The landscape takes front stage. Nature is immense and people and the products of civilization are minuscule by comparison to the scale of nature.18 The landscape conveys a sense of immateriality and wholeness. The scene has been idealized, beautified so that every element of the landscape is in harmony with the other elements of it. All of the elements are integrated and interdependent, expressing the philosophy of interconnectivity at the heart of Taoism. In this tradition the mountain is the home of the gods. Pines, clouds, and water each have religious significance. Fan Kuan’s handling of the medium conveys the peacefulness and natural perfection one might experience in the mountains. In contrast to the solidity of Bellini’s painting, Fan Kuan’s conveys transparency and insubstantiality, a metaphor for the ever-changing but eternal spirit of the mountains. This idea is reinforced by the monumentality of the painting, both through its size and the composition, which conveys a sense of immensity. Rather than a particular scene, viewers have a sense that we are seeing a representation of the Way itself: the metaphysical heart of things, not the physical substance of them. The areas of absence are as important as what is represented. The areas of absence in the painting evoke those spaces where the spirit resides. Roads and streams wind in and out of the areas of the painting. In contrast to a single vanishing point, the painting uses shifting perspective points; there is no single vanishing point that organizes the perspective in a way that privileges the individual viewer as in Western landscape. Our eye moves with more freedom, but we must concentrate on particular fine details and brushwork to appreciate the painting. If every bit of surface was filled with the sense of solid materiality that we see in Bellini, would this painting convey spirituality in the same way? One may accept the contrast between the method and centrality of landscape in Eastern and Western art, but is the Chinese “sense of place” that is tied to landscape an aesthetic that people still identify with today? In China, many artists learn to paint by copying traditional landscapes. Reproductions of landscapes are common in homes and public spaces throughout the country. The regions which inspired this tradition, such as Guilin, have become major tourist destinations. These images retain spiritual associations and an ability to evoke collective feeling. Feelings of cultural pride occur through appreciation of the landscapes. There is a relative stability to Eastern views of nature—expressed through the thousand-year history of painting—that may surprise many Westerners, who are accustomed to cultural change. While the “sense of place” in China is different today than in the historical past when landscape emerged, the genre has been remarkably central to Chinese art down to the present. The role of landscape in expressing a sense of place has even influenced the art of China’s neighbors such as Japan, which has both incorporated elements of Chinese landscape painting and adapted landscape to its own unique context.

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Figure 8.5 Fuji in Clear Weather, from the “36 Views of Mt. Fuji” series (“Fugaku sanjurokkei”), 1831. © British Museum, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

Mt. Fuji is a holy site for many Japanese. To depict everyday activities taking place near the mountain imparts a meditative rhythm to the activities of daily life. Hokusai (1760–1849) produced a landscape series, Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji (1823–31), that expressed this sense of natural majesty. Of the more than 30,000 prints, sketches, and paintings that he produced, these are among his most treasured works. From Hokusai’s prints we sense an atmosphere of transparency that pervades the entire oeuvre. Like the Chinese landscape paintings of old, the medium remains ink rather than an opaque medium such as oils. Even though they are printed in color rather than painted in black ink, the sense of atmosphere in these prints is like a breath of calming serenity that pervades each work. Similar to the earlier landscapes, the “sense of distance” in the series results from this atmospheric approach. Solid matter seems to dematerialize into a vapor; breath or pneuma is expressed as a vital force. The color in each of these prints is finely modulated. As in Fan Kuan’s Travellers amid Mountains and Streams, one senses the possibility of transformation of nature in these works: from form into formlessness; from the substantial to the insubstantial; from the solid to the ethereal. Thus, in Hokusai’s series of prints, we once again see the infinite expressed in the finite. A sense of place is evoked through this combination of particular location and immanent spirit.

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Figure 8.6 Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.803 Ship in a Storm, from the “Little Liber” (engraved by the artist), c. 1826. © Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library. Reproduced with permission.

Turner’s mezzotint engraving Ship in a Storm seems to convey the same possibility of spiritual transformation that we see in Eastern art, but what is different about this work? Turner seeks out nature in what humans would experience as its most passionate, powerful, dramatic, and irrational moments. Storms, soaring heights, consuming fires, and crashing waves all act as metaphors for the tempestuous inner life of the individual; as expressions of the Sublime. There is an emphasis on feeling, imagination, and individualism within this Romantic genre of the landscape. One is raised above the commonplace by the attraction of nature’s fearfulness. Nature is sublime because it is superhuman: beyond human control but capable of inspiring powerful emotions. Hence, Romantic landscapists emphasize the most extreme or exotic occurrences in nature. Many of these paintings inspire wonder and awe rather than calmness and peacefulness, which is much different than the reverent, harmonious view of humans in nature or as part of nature that we find in Hokusai and earlier Chinese landscape painting. But the paintings are among the first to impart spiritual and cultural values to the land in a Western context.

178 A SENSE OF PLACE In order to trace this continuity of feelings about the land we can turn to a more recent tradition, the nineteenth-century Japanese print. The same sense of space and spiritual serenity that characterizes traditional Chinese landscape carries over into Hokusai’s representations of Mt. Fuji in the nineteenth century. It should be noted that over the centuries between 1300 and 1800 Japanese artists had developed their own tradition of landscapes of the imagination that was influenced, in part, by the earlier tradition in China. These included the Zen-influenced landscapes of artists such as Sesshu, but also the nature-based painting of artists of the Kano, Rimpa, and other approaches. The Japanese had fused this Taoist/Buddhist influence with their animistic religious tradition rooted in Shinto. Japanese art reflects continuity with the Taoist and Buddhist ideal of breaking down the barrier between the external world and the internal self, stressing a oneness of mind and object. But Shintoism, with its emphasis on nature spirits or kami, is the source of an even more deeply felt reverence for nature: of the communion of all living things. In the nineteenth century, contemporary with Hokusai’s work, a distinct landscape genre developed in the West for the first time. In large part, this tradition was tied to a view of “the Sublime” that had been developed by philosophers such as Shaftesbury and Kant during the Enlightenment.

Sense of place How does the concept “sense of place” help us understand aesthetic systems interculturally? As in the way that Hui-yuan’s mountain monastery was a unifying factor in the development of landscape painting, a relationship to a particular place is important in the development of sense of place. Taoist and Buddhist hermits lived in the mountains, which led to an association between mountains and meditative trance states. An interesting parallel exists between the attitude toward mountains in China and Japan and the mountain as the site of spirit quests in Native American art and religion. In each case the spiritual power of nature is identified with a particular landscape and does not exist only as an abstraction. A sense of place is heightened when the natural world is seen as original, primal, or innate in some way. Taoist, Dionysian, indigenous, and Romantic views of nature can be compared in this regard. As Lao Tsu stated, “knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of Tao.” If we think of the connotation of the word “indigenous” in the West, we can see that it implies that Native people’s special attachment to the land carries special rights and responsibilities. Do immigrants have the same relationship to the land as people whose ancestors have lived in a place for, say, 15,000 years? Thus, a natural place can be ancestral in the same way that human ancestors help us feel “rooted,” and there is a different sense of reverence for place when it is ancestral. Perhaps this relationship accounts for the qualitatively different experience of place in “rooted” cultures. Lao Tsu stated, “the universe is sacred; you cannot improve it.”19 This acceptance of the sacred “givenness” or wholeness of nature can

A SENSE OF PLACE 179 be contrasted with the desire to mold nature, changing it according to human needs. If nature has this sacred quality to it, then the profound experience of place through ties to nature can be a restoration to an inborn wholeness. In addition, there is a harmonious kinship associated with the collective experience of place. Nature serves as a model for human behavior, instead of humans imposing their will upon nature. In order to open oneself to the possibility of this kinship, Chinese and Japanese painters emphasized the “empty spaces” in the natural world—the valley, sky, and water. This can be taken as a visual expression of Lao Tsu’s statement, “empty yourself of everything—the source is stillness.”20 A sense of place emerges when nature itself guides our conduct. A sense of place can be a source of “great medicine” in a real physical and psychological sense. Specific processes and herbs in nature restore wholeness. For the Taoists the mountains were a site for forging the spiritual and physical together through herbalism and alchemy (“great medicine”). Lao Tsu spoke of “carrying body and soul and embracing the one.”21 There is no ranking of body and soul; rather an alchemical union of the physical and spiritual occurs through the knowledge of “the one.” A sense of place involves an exploration and cultivation of self; this expansiveness of self is reflected in the importance given to atmosphere in Eastern painting and the horizon in Western landscape painting. The sense of distance implied by areas of “absence” and by an expansive horizon metaphorically allows the self to expand. Specific settings are conducive to particular activities. For the English and German Romantics, nature inspired the pursuit of hiking, poetry, music, and solitary reflection. Similarly, nature was the site of herbalism, poetry, painting, and meditation for medieval Taoists and Buddhists. Like a seed, a sense of place has to be cultivated culturally and physically. Mountains and countryside have not always been a source of inspiration; more frequently they were a source of fear due to their remoteness, the solitude they enforced, the difficulty of surviving there and of traveling through them, and the spirits that were thought to reside there. Animistic belief systems, common throughout the world including Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, and Thailand, held that nature was inhabited by spirits; some were benevolent, some were dispossessed and angry at their state of homelessness. These angry spirits could do harm if enraged and many spirits gathered in the mountains. But in Chinese landscape painting and poetry, mountains were reshaped as links between heaven and earth—mystical mountains—that contain an abundance of chi (spiritual energy). A sense of place was constructed through imagery intended specifically for meditation or visualization. Like icons of saints or of the Buddha, images of the land allow us to focus our minds. A sense of place, then, is part of the development of an integrated self as well as a source of a sense of belonging to a specific location.

180 A SENSE OF PLACE

Influence of Asian art and aesthetics I have noted similarities and differences between the construction of place in Western and Eastern landscape traditions, but Asian art and aesthetics has strongly influenced Western artists during the last one hundred and fifty years, and landscape has been central in this process of diffusion. In the late nineteenth century van Gogh and his contemporaries including Degas, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Whistler studied Japanese prints and were influenced by their colors, composition, and subject matter. Hokusai’s and Hiroshige’s ukiyo-e prints—pictures of the Floating World—were made by Japanese artists for wide distribution. Many reached Europe. These prints portrayed actors, geishas, landscapes, stories, and everyday life in Japan from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Some of the last prints of this genre depicted the results of contact with the West. (Japan’s seclusionary policies were not successfully challenged by the West until the efforts of Admiral Perry in 1854 toward the end of the Edo period during which ukiyo-e had flourished.)

Figure 8.7 (a) Ando or Utagawa Hiroshige, Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake (Ohashi Atake no Yudachi), plate 58 from “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.” © Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library. Reproduced with permission.

Figure 8.7 (b) Vincent Van Gogh, Bridge in the Rain: After Hiroshige, c. 1887. © Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation). Reproduced with permission.

A SENSE OF PLACE 181 Most of the later prints portrayed daily life, reflecting keen observation of human activity and landscape. Early prints were often of courtesans and scenes from popular plays (Kabuki theater). But the landscapes were among the most influential of the prints in the West. Hiroshige—a contemporary of Hokusai’s—created many landscapes and other nature studies. Like Hokusai, he was also known for his atmospheric effects. Van Gogh made a copy of his print Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake (c. 1857). Van Gogh had access to a number of Japanese woodcut prints. He saw in Japanese art traits that he felt would sweep away some of the stultifying academic, classical concepts of European art. Van Gogh was fascinated with Buddhism, but also disturbed by it. His attraction to Buddhism was one reason why he shaved his head in 1888. Van Gogh was drawn to the spontaneous joy of color he perceived in Japanese prints and also to their atmospheric effects. He was also inspired by the warmth and sunlight of southern France, where he spent the last two years of his life. Perhaps van Gogh’s subsequent popularity is related to his own attempt to capture the mood or spirit of a landscape, a lesson that he learned in part from the East. The vitality of place is expressed by the brightness of the light in his work and he worked with much more highly saturated color than had been seen in earlier painting traditions. Other Japanese influences were evident in his work: the unusual placement of figures, the varied use of dot and line and the calligraphic use of the brush. In a letter to his brother Theo in 1886, van Gogh wrote, “In a way, all my work is founded on Japanese art.” This influence continued for subsequent generations of many Western artists as well. The diffusion of Japanese art and religion was partly due to a shrinking world as transportation and communication technology brought cultures into contact. The world was becoming smaller in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But artists’ openness to other cultures was due in part to their formal experimentation. Western artists were increasingly open to new artistic methods at the turn of the century. This openness reflects a loss of confidence in Western intellectual and artistic traditions. Examining the ideas of Chinese and Japanese aesthetics was one way to reflexively consider the limitations of Western ideas about art. By the midtwentieth century there were changes in attitudes about the nature of creative activity itself. These influences primarily came from the East, not only from art but from Eastern philosophies or worldviews as well. A fundamental change took place in thinking about art as American artists of the forties and fifties tried to achieve a synthesis between East and West. Specific characteristics of Eastern art and creativity—abstractness, spontaneity, linearity, calligraphic, and automatic qualities, along with simplicity and directness in composition—began to appear in the work of artists such as Mark Tobey and Morris Graves. Their interest in the East was part of an attempt to move away from the copying of nature that had been a goal of Western artists for centuries. These artists felt that the task of art was not mimesis; rather the artist should try to become a part of the process that nature uses in generating forms. Increasingly in American art the creative process was given more emphasis than the final art object. This

182 A SENSE OF PLACE emphasis on “process rather than product” was central to the work of John Cage, the influential American avant-garde composer. Cage’s chance methods of composition also reflected an attitude toward nature rooted in Eastern philosophies. One influential Chinese book was the ancient Book of Changes or I Ching, which focuses on cosmic rhythms and the role of chance in life. For artists, this realization of indeterminacy and acceptance of impermanence and change led to a new appreciation of chance and change as dimensions of creativity. Chance processes were introduced into creative activities by many artists in the mid-twentieth century, including the choreographer Merce Cunningham and composer Cage, who were familiar with the I Ching. More recently, the Chinese conceptual artist, Huang Yong Ping, has experimented extensively with the ancient text and especially its use as an oracle. Describing one of his artistic projects, he states: The House of Oracles brings together all sorts of objects and photographs relating to the I Ching (Book of Changes) and other systems of divination that I used between 1989 and 1992. I still consult the I Ching on every project that I do. This allows me to obtain unexpected possibilities and find alternatives to my hesitation or indecisiveness as to what to do or how to carry out a project. Since 1987 my method of working has gradually changed from “choice guided by chance” to the use of oracles. These two methods or systems both consist in minimizing the individual power of the artist, that is, the myth that art is the creative act of a single individual. The system of divination is older than “choice guided by chance”; it is also a strategy that enables me to shake off Western influences and at the same time to access sources more readily (i.e., Chinese traditions).22 Huang Yong Ping is Chinese, but active in France. The Western influences that he mentions may refer to Dada, a movement that also strongly influenced Cage. But, since Huang Yong Ping is Chinese himself, the I Ching does more than echo the emphasis on chance process that was also an element of Dada; it serves to reconnect him to sources and processes related to ancient traditions within his mother culture. American artists began to view artistic creation as a kind of visualization, occurring in a mental space akin to a meditative state. Specific books such as the Tao Te Ching were read by artists, including the painters, Mark Tobey, Jackson Pollock, and Ad Reinhardt, by the sculptors, Carl André and Isamu Noguchi, by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and by the composer John Cage. The concept of the Tao—the void that underlies all sensory experience—led to an interest in large areas of empty space as an expression of the Way. But the empty space is not empty; it is a source of energy, the empty ground that makes being possible. This Taoist concept is a source of much of the compositional openness of Buddhist painting, but also influenced the compositional theories of twentieth-century Western artists and designers. For instance, Frank Lloyd Wright credited Lao Tsu with the realization that a building

A SENSE OF PLACE 183 does not consist of four walls and a roof but of the space within: the space to be lived in. For Wright this definition of architecture as the experience of space rather than structure established the basis of a philosophy of organic architecture. Eugene Herrigel’s book, Zen in the Art of Archery, which was first printed in 1953, was also immediately popular, probably because Herrigel applied the concepts of Zen to a particular skill. The Japanese-American artist, Isamu Noguchi, was aware of traditional archery as a child and had read Herrigel’s book. His sculpture, The Bow (1970), may be a direct reference to this spiritual and artistic discipline. As described earlier, Zen has had a strong influence on Western artists who felt Western aesthetic theories no longer helped explain their understanding of artistic processes. Poets such as Gary Snyder and Diane di Prima, the performance artist Laurie Anderson, artists such as Franz Kline and Adolph Gottlieb, and many others have felt the powerful attraction of Zen-mind as a path to Self discovery.23 In some individual cases, it may be questioned how deep or profound this knowledge of Zen actually has been, but the general influence of Zen since mid-century illustrates artists’ desire to open themselves to the aesthetic theories and ideas of Eastern cultures. This influence has grown throughout the decades since the fifties and continues to be felt in the present. Much of this influence may have to do with the Zen attitude toward nature and place; for the practitioner of Zen, nature is in us and we are of it. Zen practice emphasizes the groundedness, the “hereness,” of the moment. This emphasis on living fully in the present, wherever one may be, imparts a sense of stillness or feeling “at home” within one’s self. There is little sense of “must” or “should” or “ought” in Zen as found in the moral precepts of other religions, even though Zen practice requires practice and discipline. There are few ethical imperatives because Zen is not a “belief system” in the religious sense. Rather, it is a “way of being,” a highly aesthetic set of practices that cultivates a sense of the poetry of nature. Zen artists such as the poet Basho (1644–1694) are noted for their expression of nature in simple, profound terms. Basho was able to create with directness and a profound feeling for nature because he was immersed in specific places such as Edo (Tokyo) and Fukagowa, where he lived as a recluse for much of his life. He developed into Japan’s greatest Haiku poet because his feelings for nature were fused with Zen spirituality. Through his attention to detail and reverence for nature, he elevated Haiku above the level of social amusement to become a major genre of poetry that expressed, and continues to express, the identity of the Japanese people. In a specific poetic form, Bashu crystallized the Japanese sense of place and identity. Our interactions with our environment are a major basis of the conceptual sense of place that we develop. It is not too much to assume that evolving relations to nature will be reflected in aesthetic expression. “Art itself must have begun as nature—not as imitation of nature, nor as formalized representation of it, but simply as the perception of relationships between humans and the natural world.” 24 Ultimately, each culture’s unique aesthetic expression has emerged from its profound relationship with nature. If the essence of a culture can be found in its relation

184 A SENSE OF PLACE to nature; if specific ties to the land unite communities; if a spiritual affinity derives from a view of the land as sacred, then the envisioning of place found in art can lead to a general aesthetics of place for members of all cultures.

Conclusion One reason for the Eastern influence on Western artists in the last one hundred years may be the general loss of sense of place, or displacement, in Western art and culture. Displacement occurs for many reasons: political and economic dislocation, immigration, war, racism at both the institutional and personal levels, shifts in gender and family relations, and even through education. Economic “development” often takes place at the expense of both humans and nature, reducing much of the natural world to the status of “natural and human resources.” In short, many social and economic changes can have the effect of displacement, and the more rapidly changes occur within a culture, the more the effects of displacement are likely to be felt.

Figure 8.8 Ansel Adams, Mount Williamson, the Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California, 1945. © 2010 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Reproduced with permission.

A SENSE OF PLACE 185 Even so, in the modern era the expression of a “sense of place” continues through the images of photographers such as Ansel Adams and many others. Adams said of his work that his goal was to “present visual evidences of memories and mysteries at a personal level of experience.” This is very much a romantic statement; it focuses on the subjective, individual response of the artist. In Adams’ work we have a combined sense of awe and respect for nature. Of course, as contemporary viewers, most of us see these photos from our homes and offices in cities, whether on calendars, in books, in television documentaries, and so on. The sense of place that we associate with the images must be much different than the sense that somebody living in one of these remote environments might have. Even in the present, a profound sense of place, which grows out of the linkage between the spiritual and the natural, may be a way of countering displacement. The study of comparative aesthetics opens one up to the possibility of a general aesthetics of place. This chapter has explored the implications of comparative aesthetics for understanding place attachment in aesthetic experience. We have seen that the source of sense of place is in the interrelation of several elements: poetry, art, religion, social life, and views of nature. Together these comprise the conceptualization and expression of place, the activities within a place and responses to the physical attributes of specific places. A sense of place, then, is not generated so much by institutional religious or political systems (an ideological formation of place) as through a group’s profound experience of place. Studying comparative aesthetics points us to an alternative experience of place: in or on the land. This notion is an extension of worldviews that do not simply revolve around the ownership of objects and property as the primary basis for experiencing place. The concept of property limits the experience of place because it reduces nature to the status of a commodity. In an alternative view, representations of place inspire visualization or meditation. Art that expresses a sense of place does not simply represent the natural world. Rather, it expresses the vitality and essence of nature, a sense of belonging, and profound spiritual meaning.

Chapter 9

ART AND SOCIAL ORDER: A SYSTEMS VIEW

The society of masks is the entire world. And when it moves onto the public square, it dances the way of the world, it dances the system of the world.1

A

ethical and social functions; they help establish and maintain social order. This position can be contrasted with the idea that works of art are best understood apart from their cultural context, as autonomous products of artistic imagination and virtuosic skill that invite disinterested contemplation. In an autonomous view, art has several attributes. Artworks are special, unique, nonutilitarian, ego-identified (with an individual artist), self-validating, innovative, “without rules,” and often for sale or exhibition as a commodity. While these attributes may describe dominant Western attitudes toward art over the last two hundred years, they do not comprise a comprehensive theory of art. Equally important are views of art based upon its complex relationship to social systems. The attributes of “the autonomous view” found in modern Western culture contrast with the attributes of “integrated art” found in other aesthetic systems. In some cultures aesthetic expression may not be identified with a distinct category, “art.” But, there are social “rules” or guidelines for aesthetic practices that are followed and guarded. These include “rules” of content, context, form, and personnel. Aesthetic practices are often community oriented and religious, just as we saw in the chapters on art and identity and art and religion (though they may not be recognized as such if the distinction between sacred and secular has not been introduced). Contrasting with the autonomous and non-utilitarian view of art, artworks can be seen as beautiful and, therefore, useful or functional based upon their beauty. (Usefulness is a quality of that which is beautiful, because beauty restores balance and harmony.) The artist is not above or separate from society— not “different” or eccentric as in the view of the artist as “bohemian”—so aesthetic RT AND DESIGN SERVE

ART AND SOCIAL ORDER 187 expression is less likely to be ego-identified. There is little pressure toward innovation, at least not just for the sake of innovation alone. Cultural continuity may be valued more highly than innovation. In an integrated view, aesthetic experience is understood in the context of religion, community and personal narratives, beauty and its utilitarian functions, and cultural continuity. An autonomous view of art, then, comprises only one set of attributes that might be associated with aesthetic experience. The assumption of autonomy is part of an aesthetic system that grows out of a specific cultural tradition. Other aesthetic systems contain attributes that strongly contrast with an autonomous view of art, so an autonomous view cannot function as a total theory of art. To help account for the co-existence of strongly contrasting views of art, we need a theory that addresses aesthetic systems within cultures. The goal of this chapter is to place art as symbolic expression within the context of a systems view of culture. What does it mean to speak of an aesthetic system, and how are aesthetic systems related to the other systems that make up a culture? This discussion will provide us with a groundwork for seeing how art contributes to social order, which may challenge the common view of art in the West as revolutionary or avant-garde, as somehow outside or ahead of culture. However, in a systems theory of art neither an autonomous view nor an integrated view is better than the other. Rather, each makes sense within its cultural context. This chapter is related to intercultural issues in art because it demonstrates that there is more than one basis for understanding the cultural functions of art. My goal is not to advocate for a particular aesthetic theory, but to demonstrate that all aesthetic expression, even if it is highly critical, abstract, or innovative (and, therefore, relatively more autonomous), is tied to culture. In developing a comparative understanding of aesthetic systems, I will draw from research about the Dogon and Yoruba cultures.

A systems orientation to art A systems orientation to art involves a transition from thinking of art as the production of individual, unique objects, or compositions, to viewing art as part of the collective production of symbolic meaning. Systems theory engages the social nature of aesthetic experience as much as the psychological. This orientation may be broader than the term “art” encompasses, because it considers how art is integrated into a total system of belief and actions. For instance, in writing of the place of masks in the Dogon culture of Mali, Henry Pernet states that to understand Dogon masks we need to view a total system of interrelationships: Interpreting a single mask as standing for or representing “a spirit” is much too limited.2 A systems approach to aesthetics addresses problems of organization and relationships within a culture. How are objects, information, or events organized? How do they relate to each other? The systems approach shifts the focus from the private intent of an artist to an environment of information and experience that artists and audiences alike operate

188 ART AND SOCIAL ORDER within. There are many systems that make up a culture. Among them are linguistic, economic, political, kinship, cosmological, and aesthetic systems. Systems theory points out connections between the aesthetic system of a culture and political, religious, economic, kinship, and cosmological systems, but it does not reduce one system to another. Aesthetic experience does not simply extend other kinds of activity; aesthetic processes are distinct activities in their own right because they comprise those experiences where the aesthetic is the central or most salient feature of the experience. (Following Robert Farris Thompson, I define the aesthetic as skilled or devoted making that results in objects filled with a powerful presence or vitality.3) In other words, I would not claim that we can only understand art through politics or religion or economics, but we can better understand aesthetic activity in relation to these other systems. The relational aspect of systems is highly important. Pernet used this feature of a systems view to account for the ties between language and art in Dogon culture. He identified several levels or kinds of language: so dayi (clear words), bolo so (back words), bene so (side words), and giri so (front words). These distinctions were simplified by another anthropologist, Dieterlen, into the categories of “popular” and “learned” speech.4 Pernet and Dieterlen found that the Dogon had created a system of meaning such that each part informed the other and the whole. The meanings of an utterance changed depending on how it was situated within the overall system. Thus, Dogon performance masks relate to a “network of very dense correspondences” that occur in language, ritual, and architecture. The same masks can be read at different levels because they are part of a complex system of meaning. These masks are cosmogenic (related to creation myths), even if not tied to “spirits,” because they are part of a larger set of explanations.5 For instance, the amma ta mask has a very plain meaning—it represents a granary door—but also symbolizes the opening of Amma’s (a Dogon god’s) clavicles. That the same expressive symbol has multiple meanings is not necessarily contradictory. Rather, this multilevel character of symbols is an important ingredient of a systems approach. Acknowledging multiple meanings of an expression allows for complexity within a culture, but this also makes the task of intercultural interpretation more difficult. For instance, Pernet wrote that it is very difficult to know the relationship between popular and learned understandings within a culture. We can understand the complexity of this seemingly simple relationship when we think reflexively. What, for instance, is the relationship between the popular and learned understanding of, say, a Jackson Pollock painting in the West? A popular reading of Pollock’s work might be a skeptical one; for instance the British satirist Craig Brown has stated that he is “astonished that decorative ‘wallpaper,’ essentially brainless, could gain such a position in art history alongside Giotto, Titian, and Velázquez.”6 A learned understanding would be one that places Pollock in the tradition of experimentation with a medium that was a key feature of modern art. For instance, the term “action painting” has been used to describe Pollock’s revolutionary contribution to the technique of painting. The relationship between these two understandings

ART AND SOCIAL ORDER 189 is complex, but the relationship also changes over time. The two may intersect in debates over the relative importance of traditional notions of skill in painting and their importance for judging works of art. The relationship between the popular and learned understanding of Pollock is probably different now than when he was active in the forties and fifties. So far, we have been focusing on the relational role of symbols within aesthetic systems. But understanding art within a systems approach does not limit aesthetic expression to its symbolic dimension. Aesthetic expression is performative as well as symbolic. The doing of something re-establishes equilibriums—familial, cultural, cosmic—so that the order established in the cosmos, culture, or family may continue to exist. In understanding art’s role in the creation of social order, one examines questions of action and agency as well as the organization of knowledge and meaning systems. For instance, visual metaphor in architecture is densely woven into the land. Architecture is a “lived” or “felt” system of meaning: It is a result of human action, and, in turn, affects subsequent actions. This is the case for the Dogon, who live in the area of the Bandiagara Cliffs that parallel the Niger River. Their architecture consists of many kinds of earthen houses, the great house (residence of the lineage head), men’s house, women’s menstrual house, and graves dug into the walls of the cliffs among others.

Figure 9.1 A Toguna building in Ende Village, Dogon Country, Mali. © Travel Ink/Gallo Images/Getty Images. Reproduced with permission.

190 ART AND SOCIAL ORDER The care taken with the construction and placement of the toguna or men’s house is symptomatic of the way that architecture embodies lived meaning. Aesthetically, the toguna varies greatly in quality. In its most classic expression, however, it is an architectural form of startling boldness and arresting formal beauty. In such instances, it is roofed with layers of millet thatch of equal thickness, but laid crosswise, one above the other, until a flat roof is achieved which is as high as or even higher than the habitable area beneath, thus balancing this open, lower architectural space with a solid, upper volume of equal or even greater proportion.7 This author goes on to note that the entire Dogon village is anthropomorphic in plan, and that the toguna serves as the “head.” “This is not by accident, for it is here, in the toguna, that the council of the elders sits to deliberate upon village matters and it is here that the younger men are instructed in moral behavior and political responsibility. It is, metaphorically speaking the storehouse of Dogon wisdom.”8 Architecture such as that of the toguna, then, is a good example of how aesthetic systems are actually “lived” systems. They do not consist of disembodied symbols in arbitrary relationship to one another. Rather, aesthetic systems are grounded in the experience of real places. In addition, the description of the Dogon toguna provides us with an example of the linkage between aesthetic, ethical, and political systems in one culture because the overall design of the built environment reflects and facilitates relationships of trust and power in Dogon society. Rather than focusing on individual objects or events, systems theory focuses on the relationship between events, objects, people, and environments. These relationships are the “rules” or organizing patterns that maintain the system. In order to endure, any system must find a way of maintaining itself, of achieving equilibrium, and adapting to change. Perhaps the most important set of organizing relationships in Dogon culture is enacted during the sigui ceremony. This ceremony involves masks to recall two primordial, mythic events: the revelation of the spoken word to humans and the appearance of death among humans. Dogon believe that the revelation of the spoken word to humankind began a chain of mythical events that created the principal items of Dogon culture, such as weaving, smithing, agriculture, and house building. Thus, the sigui ceremony re-enacts a mythic event central to the Dogon knowledge system. Another important aspect of this ceremony is the way it incorporates initiation as part of the process. A systems view allows us to see the importance attached to all stages of a process; the stages of preparation and initiation are central to most aesthetic processes. In many cultures knowledge of religious and philosophical concepts is transferred not through books, but through complex processes of initiation and preparation. The practice of making masks for the sigui creates its own social process and organization called the Awa society. In Dogon culture circumcised males belong to

ART AND SOCIAL ORDER 191 a secret society. Before the sigui festival, the men go into a retreat for about three months and learn a language specifically for the festival. There they learn the incantation and texts associated with the creation of the world and emergence of death. They also carve the great masks at this time, which are hidden in rock shelters near the village until the festival. During this time of preparation a great mask is carved, which has an appearance that is suggestive of a snake. Apparently the snake is sculpted as a support for the Dogon concept of nyama (or vital force). The Dogon use masks and drawings to transfer or control nyama. Just as there are rules governing the activity of men in this process, there are prohibitions against women carving or wearing masks in Dogon culture. Women participate in the sigui ceremony by preparing and serving beer, which men drink to refresh themselves during the multiple days of the performance itself. The relationships or “rules” that maintain the Dogon system, such as the prohibition of women from the masking society, may be unacceptable in other cultural contexts, but it would be difficult to pass judgment on these “rules” unless one understood the entire system of relationships that bind Dogon culture. However, the rules are not fixed. The Awa society is weakening as new belief systems such as Islam affect the organization of Dogon social relationships. Much of what the anthropologist Marcel Griaule wrote about the masks in 1938 is now historical information, because the social and religious organization of the villages has changed. A systems view points out connections between the aesthetic system of a culture and political, religious, economic, social, and psychological dimensions. For instance, there has been an out-migration of young Dogon men seeking work. This economic process will undoubtedly have a profound effect on religious and aesthetic systems as young men are exposed to new belief systems and aesthetic practices and share these influences when they return to their villages. Also, cash crops such as onions, rice, and tobacco have become more important than they were in the past, and tourism has played a major role in the Dogon economy since the late 1960s.9 Several thousand vehicles carrying mostly French tourists will travel the Dogon’s stretch of the Niger in peak season. In modern times Dogon religion and art increasingly takes place in the context of Islam and Western technological and economic systems. Even speaking historically there is little support for an idea of a “pure” Dogon culture that will survive outside influence. The Dogon were conquered by the French over a period of twenty years at the turn of the twentieth century, which led to major developments: the introduction of schools, roads, currency, and manufactured goods. Thus, our understanding of the Dogon aesthetic system must be a dynamic one that reflects the interaction of aesthetic and other cultural systems. We have seen that “the representation of the system of the world” through aesthetic expression can serve several social purposes. It can have a pedagogical function, as in the case of the Awa clan’s initiation processes. Aesthetic practices can be emblems of identity—of belonging to a particular clan such as the Awa. Aesthetic participation can be part of a social contract; by participating in the sigui ceremony

192 ART AND SOCIAL ORDER or meetings at the men’s house, Dogon males take on social obligations. Each of these functions—the pedagogical, emblematic, and contractual—points to the role of institutions in maintaining social control. (By institution I am referring to the idea of a group organized for some common purpose.) The institution of the Awa clan preserves and re-enacts Dogon beliefs. One reason that institutions are powerful is that they provide a channel for individuals to acquire identity. This relationship of Dogon masking, dancing, speech, and drumming to identity indicates reasons for the endurance of these practices after other functions have disappeared due to changes in religious belief. The Dogon may no longer believe as fervently in the primordial revelation of the spoken word to humankind as they once did, but can still find value in participating in the sigui ceremony. The belief systems that led to the development of Dogon art have undergone change, mostly through the challenge of Islam. This art serves a different function now than in the past that is not necessarily “religious” in the Western sense of the word. But it is difficult to make distinctions in the context of a “total event” such as that of the sigui ceremony as to the exact meaning of actions for the participants themselves. One reason is that the knowledge of religious and philosophical information varies quite a bit within a culture. Many Dogon may not know the religious or philosophical concepts that lie behind their religious art (perhaps only 5 to 20 percent of the males and fewer women have this knowledge). More than 80 percent have an incomplete understanding of cosmology and philosophy related to their aesthetic expression. Most people may have partial knowledge of the ideas symbolized. Similarly, many Europeans and North Americans might find it difficult to interpret the religious or philosophical symbolism of much Western art. What percentage of Westerners could offer a full explanation of the scenes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, one of the central images of Christianity, let alone an interpretation of contemporary religious art such as Mark Rothko’s paintings in the Rothko Chapel in Houston? One would not have to assert, then, that all participants in an aesthetic activity must have a full and equal philosophical understanding of the event for it to be meaningful. Participation alone can create meaning. Aesthetic systems involve ties between the organization of social structures, knowledge, cosmology, belief, and action. Ideas about space and other visual relationships are incorporated in these systems. In a systems approach one looks for relationships among expression, beliefs, and social organization. For instance, if a culture is patrilineal or patrilocal (families that descend from or live in the context of the father’s line), this may lead to gender-specific art forms. In Dogon culture, the chief priest is also the village leader—called the hogon—though his power is more religious than political. The village itself is organized around extended family or clan relationships. These factors, the religious leadership of a single powerful male and organization by clans, can begin to help us understand why Dogon aesthetic expressions take the form they do. Some readers may be thinking that this idea of “aesthetic systems” works well for a tightly integrated culture like that of the Dogon, especially in terms of their

ART AND SOCIAL ORDER 193 traditional culture, but may wonder how this model of aesthetics is applicable to Western culture, to other complex African societies, or to intercultural contexts where art seems so varied and individualized. How can we conceive of “aesthetic systems” in the face of so much variety? Here we face a paradox: though Westerners may assume art to be individualized and, therefore, idiosyncratic, people in the West also represent the totality of their worldview through art. To focus on the individual element in art is one aspect of this worldview: Western belief systems incorporate a high regard for the individual. This is reflected in Euro-American social values: individual rights, privacy, “choice,” the right to vote, and other political expressions of individualism. The downside of this protection of the individual, of course, is difficulty in finding group consensus. Like members of other cultures, Westerners act according to their beliefs. It is just that they tend to value individual autonomy over group cohesiveness, and their art reflects this ethos. In the West, especially within Great Britain and its former colonies, there is a collective belief in individualism. We have seen, then, that the object of a systems orientation is to see how art is integrated into or a part of a total system of belief and actions. An aesthetic system comprises a “network of very dense correspondences”; for instance, the same masks can be read at different levels because they are part of a complex system of meaning. Masks recall a series of events; they are not just a representation of a “spirit.” Rather than focusing on individual objects or events, a systems theory focuses on the relationship between these: the rules or organizing patterns that maintain the system. These “rules” change over time, which is part of the reason for the emphasis on event and process in systems aesthetics. A systems view allows us to see the importance attached to all stages of a process including that of initiation and preparation. Aesthetic systems help organize social relationships. For instance, when a new great mask is carved this involves new initiates so masking serves as a form of socialization. Now, let us further consider one way in which art helps maintain social order, the linkage between artistic expression and ethics.

Art and ethics Throughout his discussion of Dogon masks, Pernet points to the system of social and cosmological relationships that is assumed to be correct by the Dogon. Masking stems from representing “founding events,” mythic occurrences that determined the way things are and, therefore, the way they ought to be arranged in the future. The beliefs expressed in Dogon art often have a moral dimension, a sense of “oughtness,” such that art is an expression of right action. The process of masking in Dogon culture is an example of how aesthetic valuation can be tied to other kinds of normative judgment. Because it involves judgment, aesthetics is closely linked to ethics in our understanding. Edmund Leach goes even further in this linkage: “Logically, aesthetics and ethics are identical. If we are to understand the ethical rules of a society, it is aesthetics we must study.”10 Here, Leach virtually collapses the distinction between

194 ART AND SOCIAL ORDER ethics and aesthetics, a position that downplays the qualities of experience particular to each form of judgment. The equivalence that Leach establishes may miss important differences between aesthetic and ethical judgment. For instance, the end goal of ethical judgment is justice or moral choice, while the end goal of aesthetic judgment is engagement, appreciation, or evaluation. But the important part of the equivalence that Leach draws is that ethics, like aesthetics, is evaluative and embedded in our physical and emotional relationship to our world. In other words, many ethical norms are not fixed in some absolute sense. Instead, they emerge from the experience of living in a particular culture, in our own particular bodies, and so on. In a similar way, aesthetic experience is bodily and sensory; it is not just abstract and theoretical. Our value systems are rooted in our experience of the world. The significance of beliefs for the Dogon is derived in part from what they experience aesthetically during a performance event. The conceptual explanation of the reasons for that event may not concern them. Through action, movement, and gestures, beliefs and values are enacted and shared. A good example of this connection is seen in the Hare mask, which embodies multiple meanings, each rooted in the Dogon’s contact with the world. The mask is a symbol of game pursued by hunters, and it refers to mythic animals that died because they ate part of the “first harvest.” The Hare mask is based upon the daily activities by which one survives—the hunt—but given a larger mythic meaning through symbolic expression. Survival is no small issue for the Dogon because they live in a very arid, harsh climate. In spite of the aridity, there are some densely wooded areas containing baobab, acacia, and kapok trees near the cliffs where they live; these provide the raw materials for the masks. Through the local materials that they select for carving, the Dogon instantiate the world in their value system and imprint their values upon their surroundings. The animals that provided the inspiration for many early masks including leopards, lions, crocodiles, and antelopes have disappeared from the area. Here is another dimension of the lived world—its transitory nature and the mortality of all living things—that finds its way into Dogon art. Thus, another intercultural dimension of art is that art is always grounded in a particular relationship to an environment. The realization of the complexity of that relationship and the reasons for its evolution are keys to the crosscultural interpretation of art. Part of the reason for complexity is that evaluation and interpretation can be conflated: Over the past century, Dogon traditions of masquerade have been recognized by scholars as providing an open system of accumulation and change essential for the mask’s survival. Yet paradoxically the very aspects of the mask’s evolution that have proved the strength of the tradition and its ability to survive into the twenty-first century have been taken by outsiders as proof of the masks’ decline . . . Terms such as “traditional” and “adapted,” “ethnic” and “theatrical,” “sacred” and “profane,” “ritual” and “tourist” have been frequently applied to dances

ART AND SOCIAL ORDER 195

Figure 9.2 Dogon dancers wearing masks. © 2010 John Fleckles. Reproduced with permission.

Masks such as the kanaga mask have multiple meanings, many of which are tied to the experience of creation and death. At the top of the mask is a cross of Lorraine, which here may reference the myth of creation. The upper part of the cross represents the heavenly, the lower part of the cross, the earthly; thus, the mask overall functions as an axis connecting the two. During the dance that is done when wearing the mask, the dancer will bend down. By pointing his cross to the ground, he is creating a connection between the earth and sky. The kanaga mask also represents the kommolo tebu bird. The popular explanation is that the cross represents the wings of the bird. But, the mask also helps transfer the bird’s nyama (spirit) to a cave drawing. When a being is killed, a mask is carved to protect the hunter from the nyama of the killed thing. As I noted earlier, the Dogon use both masks and drawings to transfer or control nyama. Nothing suggests the mask itself incorporates or represents the spirit of the being or an ancestor. Rather it is a medium for controlling and understanding real experience as perceived by the Dogon. During a funeral ceremony dancers with masks will dance on the roof of the house of the deceased in order to lead his soul (nyama) into its final resting place. Thus, the function of the kanaga mask relates to the overall purpose of all masks for the Dogon, which is to lead the souls of their deceased to their final resting place and to consecrate that resting place. The value attached to masks by the Dogon comes from aesthetic expression’s experiential basis in life and death.

196 ART AND SOCIAL ORDER that occur. However it is important to recognize that the (somewhat old-fashioned) structuralist paradigm that emerges here has served to trap scholars into writing about Dogon masquerade in a manner that makes no sense to Dogon people and, furthermore, fails to take account of the more complex nature of both historical and current realities. In “reality,” tradition is itself open to adaptation, a quality that in fact guarantees its survival; all mask performers are “ethnic” (i.e., indigenous); dances commanded by tourists often attract an “ethnic” audience; and “ritual” (i.e., formalized patterns of behavior) inevitably pervades all masquerade performance, given the rules to which the dancers must adhere.11 Richards’ recent research, then, shows us that openness to change is as much a part of the reality of the masks for the Dogon themselves as are “traditional” meanings. In fact, even in their traditional symbolism the masks already had multiple meanings associated with them. Dogon masks and dances have multiple meanings related to the most fundamental experiences of life and death. Aesthetics, then, like ethics or religion, is normative and embedded in our lived experiences. Aesthetic expression is normative because it is based on agreed upon social standards; it is embedded because it is part of our physical experience of reality. Due to this normative, embedded character, aesthetics relates to other domains of judging value including ethics, politics, and religion. How might aesthetic experience link up with these other social activities? I will explore this linkage further by considering how aesthetics relates to ethics in the Yoruba culture of Nigeria. But, before considering how aesthetic valuation is tied to ethics, what does “goodness” mean in the context of African thought? This question has been raised in the context of African philosophy itself and, as such, is not an example of an imposition of an outside ethical concept onto African thought and experience. In African philosophy, goodness means many things: ethical goodness, morality, exemplary conduct, and character. Goodness is an expression of the way the world ought to be, and the way that it is when it is in balance. In this sense goodness is closely tied to beauty, because beauty is an expression of balance in many African cultures. Onyewuenyi, an African philosopher, notes that for Socrates the beautiful was also coincident with the good.12 In the classical aesthetic theory of Plato and Socrates, art was an instrument of moral and political training. A similar connection exists for the Yoruba. Onyewuenyi writes that only a few Western aestheticians have the “long view” of the past.13 Most view the artist as a “free agent,” which has led to the loss of the tie between aesthetics and ethics in Western culture. Onyewuenyi advocates taking a broader view—that “how one views the world is an expression of how one evaluates life.”14 One way to understand this connection between evaluating one’s moral beliefs (ethics) and the art of one’s culture is to consider the moral and ethical basis of art

ART AND SOCIAL ORDER 197 criticism. Art criticism is judgment in action; it rests upon a system of reasoning (aesthetic theory) from which standards are derived. Criticism is applied philosophy, because it adopts the ideas that philosophers develop more formally and applies them to concrete experiences. (And, of course, philosophy may grow out of the inductive knowledge and judgments of criticism.) So, if a culture does not have a history of written philosophy, we may be able to discover the premises that help people form their judgments by analyzing their criticism. Another way to discover the linkage between art and ethics is to analyze the system of arts education or training in a culture. For many West Africans an education in music is an education in ethics, because the order associated with rhythmic structures in music relates to social order.15 Similarly, randomness destroys both musical and social structures. In many ways, when we are involved in arts education, criticism is at the heart of the process. Students are invited to identify the most important qualities of an artwork and relate them to questions of form, interpretation, and judgment. In his book Calliope’s Sisters (1990) Richard Anderson notes the importance of criticism as an inroad to aesthetics. Anderson writes that traditional Western aesthetics assumed the absence of internal classification systems in non-Western cultures. More recently, researchers in aesthetics have sought out these systems. Anderson synthesizes earlier research into Yoruba aesthetics by Robert Farris Thompson, the Drewals, and others. Taken together, their research shows the importance of criticism as an inroad to aesthetics.16 The “canons” or critical categories that these researchers have identified embody Yoruba social values. The principles of criticism that the Yoruba apply to carving, a prominent artistic medium in their culture, include: (1) jijora —what Anderson calls mimesis at the midpoint— so that a representation of a human looks like a person but is not completely idiosyncratic, (2) ifarahon (clarity), and (3) didon (smoothness, luminosity). Other Yoruba principles include proportion, moderation, fine surface detail, delicacy, roundness of form, bilateral symmetry, and exceptional skill of execution. We can recognize many of these principles as standards of beauty, but how are social, moral ideals tied to standards of beauty in Yoruba culture? In masking and carving, one way that the Yoruba tie beauty and morality together is to focus their representations on the head, which they consider the seat of consciousness and moral capacity. For the Yoruba, the entire face is a mirror of the soul, which has often lent Yoruba art the character of “psychological realism,” even though we may not read the image as representative of a particular individual’s psyche. In classic masks and sculptures we see an expression of Yoruba principles: jijora, ifarahon, didon, and so on. Many of these terms of criticism and appreciation can be encapsulated in an overarching value, ephebism, which is the portrayal of a person at an optimum age. Ephebism is associated with youth, a time when bodies are most strong and vital. Visual traits that are expressive of ephebism include erectness, symmetry, proportion, and clarity. This concept is the basis of an integrated stylistic system, because dance and music parallel sculpture

198 ART AND SOCIAL ORDER in expressing ephebism. The strong, youthful dancer expresses the vitality within the music. Art that represents the head also functions as a medium between the divine and the human; it communicates between the Ori-Inu, the inner head or “destiny” of the individual, and the Ori-isese, the primal head in heaven. The head is the site of a person’s essential nature or iwa as well as her or his ase (soul). Iwa can be translated as harmonious energy. It also refers to a condition of (a) harmony with the ancestors, which helps perpetuate beliefs and institutions, and (b) harmony within one’s immediate social environment, leading to cooperativeness. The harmonious internal balance of a person’s energy is directly related to conditions of social order. In representations of the head, the individual person is related to a sense of order valued in the whole culture. A similar relationship takes place in other cultures. Both individual and social forms are organized on the basis of the same substratum or “ground” (in this case, iwa can be considered the ground). As with other people, for the Yoruba the critical categories that shape their evaluation of their expression define to a great extent who they are as a people. The Yoruba assume that this critical substratum is ultimately divine in origin. The world is divinely intended or formed according to values such as clarity, luminosity, delicacy, and symmetry, so art necessarily reflects this order. Comprising this divinely intended structure are a number of “oppositions” or categories of seemingly opposed qualities. Yoruba moral and aesthetic principles are formed around a number of deep-seated dualisms, which I will discuss shortly. These categories unite the perceived and “felt” world of aesthetics with the ethical code of the world as it “ought” to be or “really is.” When students first become acquainted with stylistic and critical analysis in art, they may question why people categorize art according to contrasting terms, concepts, and periods. The answer resides in the deep-seated human need to perceive order and pattern in life. When art creates order—and when we are able to recognize it—it reminds us that we are part of a “whole,” whether this is understood in religious, natural, or social terms. In some ways, the dynamic of aesthetic experience resembles those of ethical, religious, and political experience. For example, collective representations in religious systems help create a concept of the holy or sacred through categorization in much the same way that parents use their power to teach us right from wrong, clean from unclean, and so on. As an example of the connection between religious and aesthetic classification, one form of categorization in Christianity—the distinction between body and mind, and the implication that the mind is “pure” while the body is “impure”—has had an enormous effect on the role that dance plays in Western culture. In Christian cultures, dance had been forbidden in church settings and traditionally was frowned upon in other social settings, often being associated with pagan rituals. (This is very different from the worshipful role that dance plays in Yoruban culture, which is possible, in part, because the Yoruba do not create a dualism between body and mind.) Mary Douglas showed how religious teachers create the sense of the holy through such categories as pure–impure and sacred–

ART AND SOCIAL ORDER 199 profane. These categories of morality that are derived from religion reduce ambiguity and create social order. There are specific practices associated with the holy; in Western cultures this would include music rather than dance. Aesthetic practices embed categories of order experientially. In many cultures, assumptions about the “spiritual” form the basis of social structures. Symbols of order require symbols of transgression in order to exist; the category sacred requires the category profane to maintain its sanctity. For each of the critical categories that the Yoruba discuss positively, there has to be the possibility of its absence. Thus, roundedness, valued highly by the Yoruba, could be contrasted with an unpleasing sharpness or angularity of form. Beauty helps create social balance and order, in part, because there is also the possibility of its absence. To experience order or beauty in both art and life means that you can perceive the absence of it. This sense of the presence and absence of order is one way in which spiritual and aesthetic experiences are linked. It is true that much of twentieth-century art deliberately focuses on the random, the unplanned, the ugly, and the ill formed. But, in large part, the power of these expressions lies in that they are transgressions of pattern and order. Similarly, Yoruba ceremony includes ridicule for those who have been or are “out of control”; symbols of transgression are included in the ceremony. Aesthetic expression has the capacity to evoke fear as well as harmony and a sense of well-being. This takes on specific meaning with respect to the witches (aje) in Yoruba society. In other African societies witches were hunted out and destroyed, but the Yoruba view them as both great mothers and angry mothers with a capacity to do both good and evil. In their

Figure 9.3 Yoruba Gelede mask. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Reproduced with permission.

200 ART AND SOCIAL ORDER worldview, all women are potential witches. Therefore, it would be impossible for society to do without them. The Gelede society of western Yoruba functions to placate the aje and their goddess Yemoja. She is also the mother of the orisha, the pantheon of Yoruba gods, and associated with the sea and rain. The masked dances of the Gelede society are performed in the event of a catastrophe, a sickness, or during social events such as funerals. The most important dance takes place at night when the great masked Efe figure comes out. Efe, a symbol of masculinity, represents the male descendants of Yemoja. He has the power to calm the witches as well as neutralize their malice; the ceremony is an attempt to appeal to the positive dimension of the mothers. Thus, the Gelede cult seeks balance between two opposing forces, creativity and destruction. Through flattery of the aje, the Gelede society hopes to secure social well-being. The meanings of aesthetic, religious, or political symbols are highly effective in the sense that evaluative categories seem to have a “given” character embedded deeply in unconscious thought processes and bodily experiences. We live the categories through the experience of dance, gesture, dress, music, and art. This sensory and embedded nature of Gelede society performances is part of what drew one of the most prominent researchers into Yoruban art into involvement with his topic. Henry Drewal writes of his choice of subject matter for his dissertation, I chose Efe/Gelede because it epitomizes for Yoruba people a deeply moving, multi-sensorial, multimedia spectacle of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and movements captured in the praise “the eyes that have seen Gelede, have seen the ultimate spectacle” (oju to ba ri Gelede, ti de opin iran).17 Drewal goes on to describe in detail the sensory aspects of such a spectacle: A warrior masquerader’s powerful aura . . . its performative power or ase, resides not only in its striking colors and assemblage of power packets attached to its costume, but other multi-sensorial elements as well—the powerful chorus of praise songs that energize it; the kinetic energy of its dance amplified by the aggressive and threatening demeanor of its attendants; the pain of whips striking flesh; the rushing, boisterous crowd; the gritty taste of dust kicked up in the chaos; the pulsing beat of drums; the heavy thud of the masker’s combat boots; and especially the pervasive, overpowering stench that emanates from the animal sacrificial offerings on its blood-soaked tunic! The crowd, sensing the presence of danger, death, and violence in that place and moment, responds accordingly.18 The bodily meaning of dualistic categories is revealed in the Yoruba ideas of hot and cool. This refers to states of order in Yoruba orisha, the categories to which the

ART AND SOCIAL ORDER 201 gods themselves belong. Coolness is the essence of Yoruba social order. It manifests itself as control: staying inside the rhythm of the dance is a primary expression of coolness. Water is an attribute of the cool: therefore, the dancers of the cult of Osun, one of the orishas, are highly controlled and composed. But in Yoruba cosmology, there is a constant oscillation between hot and cool. Some gods, such as Shango, Eshu, and Oya, are considered hot. Shango presides over thunder and lightning and his axe is said to be the thunderbolt. This gives rise to the Shango cult image: a double-headed axe on the head of a staff. In Yorubaland thunderstorms with lightning cause natural disorder, thereby creating social disorder by the problems that they bring: heat, fire, thunder, chaos, and destruction. The common principle of hot gods is disorganization. With respect to order, aesthetic expression has a two-fold purpose. The personal function of aesthetic expression is that of maintaining harmony or order in the body and psyche, and the social function of aesthetic systems is the maintenance of order through systems of classification. The value of coolness encourages Yorubans to hold destructive personal emotions in check; the maintenance of personal tranquility and harmony are pillars of Yoruba ethics. Moderation is seen in conventions of expressing the body, such as staying inside the tempo during a dance, and finding a midpoint of mimesis in sculpture. Thus, personal comportment and social values are linked through aesthetic practices. Though Yoruba aesthetics and ethics are organized around strong contrasts such as hot and cool, these should not be seen as unbridgeable dualisms. A state always implies and therefore includes its opposite: motion and change, stability and dynamism, hot and cool. There is no necessary contradiction between these states. In fact, there is a necessary unity to the categories. Yoruba beliefs can be understood as a series of interdependent dualisms.19 The public aspects of each orisha are seen alternately as opposing and complementary pairs. For instance, Ifa exemplifies certainty, order, and reconciliation. Eshu is more pungent in character; as a trickster figure, he is disruptive, defiant, and erotic. He illustrates the possibility of uncertainty, even within the destiny of Ifa divination rituals. His shrines are found in the marketplace, at crossroads—all places of change and potential conflict. The role of Ifa divination, then, is to pair Ifa and Eshu together. Ifa transmits the wishes of Olorun (God) to man, and Eshu conveys man’s wishes back and distributes reward or punishment. This link between Eshu and Ifa is shown in the equipment that the diviner uses (palm nuts, trays, bowls, etc.). Though Yoruba philosophy is dualistic, there is the assumption of an underlying, unifying force that connects all things. African ontology (the philosophical explanation of essential being or reality) assumes a unifying essence, defined as “force.” The existence of this underlying, unifying force cancels out the idea of separate beings or categories and produces an overall philosophy of interconnectedness.20 According to Onyewuenyi, the African “feels himself to be in intimate and personal relationship with other forces acting above and below him in the hierarchy of forces.”21

202 ART AND SOCIAL ORDER In the process of organizing ourselves socially, categories of order define to a great degree who we are. But in any system of categorization such as those found in religion, art, or politics, a question arises: who has the power to define and control the categories and their “transgressions”? In Yoruba culture “cool” harmony is tied to authority, custom, and security. “Hot” energy is tied to expansion, autonomy, and innovation. Somebody may benefit from an aesthetic that emphasizes one or the other of these extremes. Thus, another question regarding the relationship between art and social order is, within any culture, who controls aesthetic experiences and to what ends? In Yoruba culture, secular arts—crowns, whisks, scepters, relief carvings on compound doors—often convey social status. This art embodies goodness as a way to express the propriety of submissiveness to legitimate authority. The role of aesthetics in group identification relates to processes of social control and relations of power. Thus, the priest or the person taking on the role of the ancestor in Yoruba culture is also the person who has social control. In Yoruba, the king is divine; he represents one social order and is a consequence of Obatala, the sky god. Another

Figure 9.4 Yoruba crown. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Reproduced with permission.

ART AND SOCIAL ORDER 203 social order is represented by the edan Ogboni. This is the name of the cult that worships the goddess Onile or Ile, the earth goddess. The earth is similar to the sky in being an orisha. Onile is coeval (began to exist at the same time) with Olurun, the sky god. The earth is as old as the sky, hence of equal authority. The Ogboni cult is claimed to be a remnant of an earth cult that is older than the institution of divine kingship. Thus, the Ogboni edan—which are brass ritual staffs—generally appear as two figures, one male, another female, linked together by a brass chain. They are usually kept in the dark and are modeled in clay, the hard red soil of a termite hill being used as a core. The soil is left within the brass figures, giving them a link with the earth. They also relate directly to the earth by being inserted into it with the long spike at the bottom of the staffs. Upon the death of the owner of a pair of edan, the corpse is placed with the edan at each temple and the chain over the forehead, comprising a visual statement of the simultaneous numerical relationship of two and three. As a society, the Ogboni have both a judicial and a king-making function, but the society is a secret society. The power of both the divine king and Ogboni is exercised through witchcraft as much as through political power. The role of aesthetics in group identification relates to processes of social control, but these processes can be difficult to discover. The exercise of power is often subtle and secretive. A Yoruba king’s power is visually symbolized by a beaded crown. A classic symbol of the sky, the Yoruba crown has a veil. When the king wears this, he is believed to

Figure 9.5 Eliot Elisofon, Oba Ademuwagun Adesida II, the Deji of Akure, on throne in courtyard of Akure palace, 1959. © Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Reproduced with permission.

204 ART AND SOCIAL ORDER be the actual spirit; he is impregnated with the godhead and is the actual union of the living king with the deified royal dead. The beaded crown links the king with the ancestors. One is represented through hard, rigid, earthbound materials, such as brass and iron; the other is represented through ethereal materials—beads floating in tiny streamers. But each is primal and sanctioned by the gods. Like the masks in Dogon culture, the crown of the Yoruba king and staffs of the Ogboni cult stem from representing “founding events” that determined the order of things. These expressions are bodily and embedded, quite literally rooted in the earth, or, alternatively, floating in the air. In addition to being normative and embedded, aesthetic expressions point to the divine king as a person of exemplary character, one who in his very being maintains the continuity of ancestral values. In Yoruba culture ethics is tied to aesthetics through this expression of exemplary conduct and character: ethics concerns a real way of being as much as an abstract concept of “goodness.” Power is organized and seated in Yoruban culture through a profound interdependent dualism, even though the poles of the dualism may be perceived as oppositional as well as complementary. We know that the dualism is, at root, interdependent because of the Yoruban belief in an underlying “force” that acts as the substratum or ground that makes life possible. This essential force cancels out the idea of separate beings. Ethical and aesthetic categories can be experienced at many levels but relate to the same unifying principle.

Conclusion A systems approach to aesthetics, then, is a multileveled, highly contextual approach for understanding art. Art is seen as a product of a certain social environment, but also as a way that social order is created. Reciprocally, the definition of what art is or can be is socially defined and the order of society is defined through art. Systems aesthetics seeks evidence of aesthetic layering and integration within a culture. In Yorubaland, dance and music parallel sculpture in the values that they express: energy, complexity, polyrhythmic structure, and, most of all, a sense of composure, not showiness. In Dogon and Yoruba cultures dance, art, and music are sophisticated forms of communication that help one recognize patterns and order in the complexity of human relationships.

Chapter 10

GENDER AND JAPONISME

A

in a variety of ways. Visual styles can be coded according to traits associated with a specific gender (and these traits may vary depending upon cultural contexts). Traditions of gender specialization, often passed on implicitly, may lead men or women to gravitate toward particular artistic media. One’s gender might afford advantages and disadvantages in obtaining training or professional opportunities within art. Gender affects how one understands and tells the story of art; thus, it impacts art history and criticism as well as the production of art. Each of the above—stylistic traits, specialization in particular media, professionalization, and historical and critical analysis—has been strongly critiqued from the perspective of gender theory since the 1970s, but social reform based upon the advocacy for the rights of women has a 200-year history. In fact, women writers from as early as the seventeenth century—such as Arcangela Tarabotti—had railed against the unequal treatment of women in areas such as education and economic life. It was in the nineteenth century, though, that feminist ideas began to coalesce into social reform movements. Considering its major role in social theory within the last two centuries, it is not surprising that gender functions as a powerful frame for cross-cultural analysis in art. When considering the art of a culture other than one’s own, it is useful to keep in mind that the gender relations within that culture may differ greatly from one’s own context. In addition, the understanding of gender in other cultures has a reflexive capacity for teasing out the impact of gender relations upon art, or the ways that art expresses gender, in one’s own. Gender theorists often view art as reflecting relationships of power and, in particular, power inequities between women and men. As with other areas of power imbalance in society, the attempt to address the imbalance of power based upon gender has its origins in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But the full implications of this critique are still being discovered. This chapter is organized into RT RELATES TO GENDER

206 GENDER AND JAPONISME three sections. First, we will consider the social background and implications of modern gender theory; second, we will consider the cross-cultural application of gender as a frame of analysis by considering two moments in the history of Japanese art. With this historical basis, we will then view the role of gender in the context of a specific pattern of cross-cultural interaction: the late-nineteenth-century fashion for all things Japanese known as Japonisme.

The social critique of gender in the West Gender was one of many social issues that drew the attention of philosophers and social reformers during the nineteenth century. For instance, the utilitarian philosopher, John Stuart Mill, wrote a defense of women’s rights (1869) that strongly argued that the subordination of one sex to another is a wrong.1 Mill’s philosophical analysis reflected a struggle for social change on the part of women that had begun in the late years of the Enlightenment with the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft and eventually culminated in the achievement of voting rights for women in many Western countries during the decades of the teens and twenties in the twentieth century. However, Mill’s concern, aligned with those of other writers in this field, was not only the political liberation of women, but their psychological liberation as well. He argued that men had put everything in practice to enslave the minds of women and that women are taught from an early age that the ideal of their character is submission to men. He made a powerful observation, writing almost 150 years ago, that, “attractiveness becomes the polar star of feminine socialization.” 2 This emphasis on women’s physical attractiveness can be viewed as a form of submission to male priorities and interests. When accepted as a defining trait of women’s identity or value, a focus on physical appearance does, of course, limit a broader understanding of women’s humanity. Such a limitation for Mill was untenable; he argued that it is characteristic of modernity that humans are no longer born into “their place.” Their position in society should no longer be determined by their sex or race, as had been the case in the past. Individual choice and freedom is much better than being born into a fixed social place by virtue of race or sex. Some of Mill’s concepts became central to the development of feminism as a social philosophy. How, then, has feminism had an impact on art over the span of time from the nineteenth century to the present? To reflect back upon Mill’s critique of the role of “attractiveness” in the socialization of women, it is obvious that images are an important medium for conveying ideals of attractiveness. Whereas these images may have been conveyed through paintings in the past, now advertising and popular culture serve a similar role. This connection between the social functions of imagery from the past to the present has been detailed by theorists such as John Berger (focusing on fine art and advertising),3 Sut Jhally (focusing on music video),4 and Jean Kilbourne (focusing on advertising).5 Each of these theorists presents a critique of representational systems. Images of attractiveness in women have been and continue to be highly coded according to specific sets of visual conventions that

GENDER AND JAPONISME 207 comprise representational systems. While the general critique of representational systems has been a consistent part of feminist theory for forty years now, it is interesting to note that many of the visual codes continue to be firmly in place and may have even increased in their pervasiveness with the rise of the Internet. The concern here is one of power and control. Many of the social conventions underlying the representation of women had been developed and controlled by men. The gender-based argument considers representations of women by men to often limit female individuality by presenting women in highly codified and objectified ways. Representation is central to the development of role identification (people often internalize what they see); if the codes of representation are male dominated, this makes the achievement of psychological equality difficult if not impossible. As we shall see, one attempt to counter these codes that favor the male viewer has been the development or discovery of a distinctly female visual vocabulary. Other major areas of impact of feminist theory on art have included heightened interest in the relationship between women and their own bodies. The body is the locus of specific experiences—sexuality, the transition to puberty or womanhood, giving birth—that distinguish women from men. The biological as well as the social basis of female identity has received much interest in art. Social structures, as well, have been critiqued: activists such as the Guerrilla Girls analyzed and criticized the structure of power in the artworld, which, in the past, has led to the exclusion of women from educational and professional opportunities.6 Activists may begin to develop social networks that are independent of men. Such female-centric networks have historical antecedents in the ancient role of the goddess and the matriarch; the traditional social arrangements formed around such belief systems have received much attention in recent years. Many of these preceding critiques incorporate a concern for the ways that people, especially men, have impacted women’s sense of self. Has a woman’s sense of her autonomy been empowered or limited within the context of traditional social arrangements? If we choose “limited,” then it is worthwhile to discover the sources of that limitation in order to challenge it. Finally, these larger concerns have led to a re-evaluation of the history of art. During the last fifty years, the discipline has engaged in a self-critique of its methodology based upon feminist concepts. Feminism is a social movement, but one that has emphasized goals related to psychological liberation. Generally, feminism means the advocacy (by both men and women) of women’s rights to full citizenship: women should have political, economic, and social equality with men. This general social goal is the reason for the tie-in between feminism and the goals of members of races that have been marginalized; taken together, women and members of traditionally marginalized races have engaged in an aesthetic of liberation that reflects their desire for full social equality. The goals of women have centered upon obtaining the opportunities available to the men of their own social class. One of the first such areas of concern for modern feminists was education. Prior to the eighteenth century, women were often not educated at all, or, if so, only to elementary levels. When they were

208 GENDER AND JAPONISME educated, the emphasis was often placed upon “soft” subjects such as the arts (subjects that might make them more attractive to men) in lieu of education in “hard” fields such as science and mathematics. Another concern of feminism has been for women to gain access to and equal opportunity within traditionally male professions; one of these traditionally male professions is that of artist. The desire to achieve this goal of equality has occurred against a backdrop of prejudice. In some cases this has involved a belief that women are “inferior” by nature in certain activities. In other cases the prejudice has involved misogyny, the hatred of women. Ultimately, these beliefs and emotions on the part of men may have been rooted in a fear of the loss of their power and control. The movement toward social equality involves a movement for equality of power. When people feel that their own claim to power is threatened, defensiveness is often the result. Women have made important gains in the last century by obtaining the power of the vote and by holding political office in greater numbers. Still, real power goes beyond the opportunity for political participation; it involves social and economic power, and social and economic equality has been slower to arrive for women. On a global scale, women continue to control only a fraction of the income and the real property that men control (though women may soon control more wealth than men in some industrialized countries). Feminism addresses international problems and is an international movement; it is similar to anti-colonialism in this regard. Thus, one “frame” that gender analysis brings to a cross-cultural analysis of art is to question how art reflects the relationships of power that exist within cultures worldwide. Sometimes, these relationships of power are embedded in that most familiar of institutions: the family. Traditionally, the way that women have been tied to men is through marriage. Some writers such as Virginia Woolf saw marriage as a form of servitude; she felt that women remained in traditional marriages by force or economic duress. (This assumption is probably true; women who had little opportunity for education would have had few avenues for economic self-support outside marriage.) Of course, at one time, most marriages were arranged in such a way that they economically benefitted both the bride’s and groom’s families. But the argument against marriage in modern feminism is not against arranged marriages; it is against the patriarchal structure implicit in modern marriage. In the movement of change toward equality, marriage has been challenged or, at the least, the traditional structure of male provider and female homemaker has been radically altered. A recent theme of popular journalism is the issue that many modern female professionals are facing a challenge in identifying suitors of similar social and educational levels. Such statements may sound obvious from within our present perspective. But it has only been in the last forty to fifty years that the traditional structure (educated male provider; less educated female dependant) has been so strongly challenged. The problem of better educated women having to “settle” for less educated men would have been unimaginable a generation or two earlier. Fifty years is not long at all in the span of human history. When we consider the change away from traditional marriage in the context

GENDER AND JAPONISME 209 of the vastness of human history, the dramatic nature of the shift in the present becomes evident. The divorce rate, which has escalated sharply throughout the last fifty years, may be further evidence of the shifting economic and power dynamics within marriages. One product of this shift in the structure of the “institution” is that more women are free to pursue the role of artist. Many modern women have achieved an independent creative space in their lives that is tied to psychological as well as economic liberation. Psychological liberation and personal independence have been a core of modern feminism in Europe and North America. The mode of liberation is action, and it is, therefore, a rejection of the passivity traditionally associated with “The Second Sex.” In fact, it was Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) that attacked the myth of femininity, encapsulated as the submissive, passive, “clinging” female.7 The audience for de Beauvoir’s argument was women as much as men; she felt that women themselves too willingly accepted a subservient role in relation to men. The argument raises the possibility that true independence may involve renouncing advantages as well as disadvantages of women’s alliance with men. In this sense, some strands of modern feminism may involve an implicit challenge to male roles such as fatherhood. Financial and psychological independence affords women the choice to raise children independently of men. Where men do remain involved in family structures, relationships have become increasingly interdependent (with both partners sharing equally in responsibilities) in contrast to the old model of strict role separation and dependency. We can see, then, that the structures of dyadic relationships, families, marriage, professional life, and women’s relationship to their own bodies have shifted radically during a relatively short time.

Feminism in art There are several ways that feminism has impacted art and its theory and history. These can be thought of as a series of crusades: One crusade has been to critique the social structures that have kept women from historically being acknowledged as artists. This critique focuses on the social forces that have kept the “canon” of great male artists in place. Relationships of power generated questions about inclusion and control: who has the power to control the canon? Women have been historically excluded from the canon. As we have noted, women often did not have access to education or apprenticeship and, therefore, fewer women than men were trained as artists. As a result, there were simply fewer women artists in many cultures throughout the world. Second, the telling of history itself reflects relationships of power. If most art histories written prior to 1970 were written by men, it may be that male bias led men to exclude accomplished women from their histories. The re-evaluation of the discipline of art history in essays such as “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists” by Linda Nochlin (1974) led to a questioning of what gets left out of art history, and why?8 An attempt to redress the problem was found in Women Artists, 1550–1950 written by Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin.9

210 GENDER AND JAPONISME Have there been no “great women artists” prior to the twentieth century? Or has history been written in a way that leaves women out? Is there an intellectual distortion to the way that history has been researched and written? One result of this questioning has been to fill out the record about women artists of the past. An initial reaction, then, was to rediscover “forgotten” painters of the past such as Angelica Kauffman, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Judith Leyster.

Angelica Kauffman, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Judith Leyster are important examples of female artists who had been left out of traditional historical accounts during the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, but who are now often included in major canonical surveys of art history. Of these, Artemisia Gentileschi probably made the most important contributions to art. A stylistic follower of the influential artistic innovator, Caravaggio, she is now better known as an artist than her father, Orazio, also one of the caravaggisti. There have been several books written about her, exhibitions featuring her work, and a movie made about her life in the last three decades. Gentileschi painted her version of Susannah and the Elders, a common subject during the Renaissance and Baroque, at seventeen years of age. The work features a nude Susannah who looks like a real woman and truly shows off Artemisia’s skill in painting the figure. Several of her later works center on a violent scene described in the Bible, Judith and her maidservant decapitating an enemy general, Holofernes. The violence of the scene may reflect the influence of Gentileschi’s rape, or possible rape, by an associate of her father while she was still a teenager. Because the theme of violence against women is a concern of modern feminists, it is inevitable that a painting that could be read as a work done in reaction to this form of violence should become central to modern feminist interpretations of art history. Judith Leyster was a genre and portrait painter from Haarlem, the Dutch city that was the home of the noted portrait painter, Frans Hals. She knew Hals well and was probably influenced by his spontaneous, painterly style of handling paint. Leyster interpreted a number of the common themes of the day, including the subject matter of musicians. Unlike some of the female still-life painters of the period, who had long, successful careers, she stopped painting after her marriage in 1636. But her lively interpretations of daily life and themes related to gender such as courtship and prostitution have made her of interest to recent scholars. Angelica Kauffman was a Swiss painter, active in England during the eighteenth century. She was noted for her portraits of the English nobility, as well as allegorical and historical subjects, and for becoming the only woman in England to be a member of the Royal Academy. Each of these artists has received additional attention based upon the scholarship influenced by feminism during the last four decades. Feminism has had significant impact upon scholarship in art history along with its impact on contemporary art making.

GENDER AND JAPONISME 211 Though it seems strange today when these names are now more familiar, it is true that Gentileschi was left out of the record as late as the 1970s; for instance, the second edition of Janson’s History of Art (1977) made no reference to her.10 Then again, “greatness” itself becomes an issue. The question arises whether standards of “quality” have been used as a basis of systematic exclusion. Respondents have made the argument that many women painters of the past are not in the canon simply because they were not producing at the same level of quantity, quality, and originality as male artists. This debate was an important one in the last thirty years of the twentieth century, but, my suspicion is that most people now tend to find the question of “the canon” itself somewhat dated and easy to redress; it is not that difficult to include important women artists in the canon. The real issue is not so much that of “inclusion in the canon” but those processes that led to the systematic exclusion of women from art making in the past. A lack of access to education, training, and social networks coupled with assumptions of inferiority meant that many women did not have the opportunity to be serious amateur or professional artists. The issue of the canon is somewhat varied in its cross-cultural application. Some cultural contexts parallel the situation in Europe. In Japan, for instance, there is very little mention of female visual artists in standard histories until the twentieth century.11 By contrast, in indigenous cultures where the line between art and craft is non-existent, many works produced by women (in the media of pottery, fiber traditions, hide-working, and so on) are readily viewed today as “art.” Thus, the problem of “exclusion from the canon” rests upon distinctions between “fine” and “applied” art that emerged in Europe, but which may not exist elsewhere.

Interpretation of specific works and historical revisionism Perhaps more presently controversial than the issue of the canon is the importance of recent gender theory for the interpretation of specific works, especially when the gender-based interpretation may involve the imposition of present values on works of the past. For instance, are Artemisia Gentileschi’s many versions of Judith Beheading Holofernes directly tied to her gender and the sexual dynamics of her own life? Gentileschi had apprenticed with her father; she was not allowed into the academy for training because she was a woman. Her father hired an artist specializing in architectural illusions, Agostini Tassi, to help her with developing her skill; sadly, Tassi raped her when she was nineteen. It is tempting, therefore, to interpret her work in the light of this violent personal experience with a man. Still, Gentileschi did marry shortly after the trial and she retained a lifelong personal relationship with her father, so she seems to have had positive relations with men as well. It can be difficult to know the psychological state of an artist at the time that they are creating a work. A book by Frima Fox Hofrichter offers a feminist view of paintings by Judith Leyster. For instance, she views the woman in the painting titled The Proposition as an “embarrassed victim.”12 However, another scholar, Wayne Franits, notes that it was

212 GENDER AND JAPONISME customary for men to offer money to women as a courtship ritual at this time in Holland.13 To what extent should interpretations of historical paintings and the motives of artists who lived in the past be influenced by modern gender theory? Questions of the “reach” that modern thought about gender should have in the interpretation of specific works are very much alive in art historical scholarship.

Issues of representation Earlier I noted that systems of representation are one way that relationships of power inequality may be maintained in gender relations. Because men are generally perceived to hold power over women, feminism can involve direct criticism of those practices and structures of representation that men employ. These may include terms of relationship such as “looking” as well as more formal power roles, implicit in phrases such as “chairman of the board.” The concept of the “male gaze” refers to the man’s “right” and power to look as opposed to women’s role as the object of the look.14 In this view, cinema and advertising conventionally place the audience in the viewing frame of heterosexual males. Famously, the photographer Cindy Sherman has challenged the male image of women as sweet, sexy, and servile, thereby subverting the “controlling power” of the male gaze. Her large, glossy photos present herself as the model. In some of these images Sherman remakes the nude by incorporating prosthetics or artificial body parts. In other images she assumes contradictory roles associated with women; Cinderella and the prostitute are fused into the same image. In this combining of the natural and the artificial body and the “good” and “bad” woman, Sherman points to the socially constructed nature of stereotypical images of women. Representation is important because the stereotyped gender roles that are sometimes depicted have the power to shape beliefs and behavior. In addition, some of these roles are deep-seated. They may seem “given” or even ordained, as in a Biblical or “natural” sense. But gender roles are often cultural in origin rather than “natural” and, therefore, the attitudes that support the roles are capable of being changed.

Gender specialization in style, medium, and materials Are certain visual structures or kinds of subject matter more frequently chosen by women? Is there a female artistic vocabulary? If so, how is it defined? During the period of second-wave feminism in the 1970s discussion about this issue centered on the question of female centripetal or centered imagery vs. male “scattered” or diagonal imagery. While some might regard this discussion as an example of the essentialism of second-wave feminist discourse, we will soon see that the question of female and male visual vocabularies is not limited to the West. The Japanese have classified visual traits by gender as well. The question of female visual vocabularies has led to some shifts in historical perception. For instance, the works of Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo are

GENDER AND JAPONISME 213 understood differently now than at the time of their creation, based upon the assumption that their works contain female subject matter and/or visual structures. O’Keeffe, who did not necessarily consider herself a feminist artist, developed a stylistic vocabulary that seems to refer to women’s experience at a core, subconscious level. For her part, Georgia O’Keeffe wanted to be known as an artist, not as a woman artist; she was very individualistic in her approach and saw her painting as “nobody’s business but my own.” Given O’Keeffe’s stated independence, the question arises: if there are identifiable female visual vocabularies or strong preferences in subject matter, is the presence of these traits a path to liberation or another kind of “box” that women may find themselves in? In 1915 O’Keeffe’s canvases came to the attention of the photographer and art exhibitor Alfred Stieglitz. What follows is a digression, but it is an important one: Stieglitz felt that O’Keeffe was the first woman artist to bring to her work the true essence and experience of womanhood. Do you agree? How can an assertion like that be made, or can it? In a symbiotic twist, Stieglitz’s own photos of O’Keeffe are among some of his most striking images. Taken together, they form a much different image of “womanhood” by a man than had appeared before in art; she is depicted as a strong, autonomous, creative individual in his photos. Stieglitz, who was older than O’Keeffe, already held strong influence in the art world; with his journal Camera Work he had helped to establish photography as an art form and his gallery “291” was presenting the work of major European modernist artists to America for the first time. Stieglitz gave O’Keeffe her first one-woman show at his New York gallery in 1917. The show was a success and from that point on, O’Keeffe received critical acclaim throughout her life. In addition, Stieglitz and O’Keeffe later married. She joined the circle of young artists around Stieglitz and so, like Frida Kahlo, O’Keeffe’s professional development was tied up with a long-term romantic relationship with another artist. These relationships of power, influence, and romance remind us that, even as late as the early twentieth century, a woman’s reputation in art may have rested, in part, on her relationship to a powerful man, which is further evidence that the structures of power from the past were still largely in place. Other elements that were proposed as “female” visual traits during the seventies included a uniform density or overall texture of the surface of an image or object; tactile, repetitive, or detailed patterns, and hue preferences including cloud colors, pinks, and pastels in general. Almost immediately, during the second-wave period, there was a strong reaction against the notion of any kind of purist understanding of particular visual traits as being essentially feminine or masculine. The readers will have to consider for themselves whether they feel that it is generally possible to determine simply by looking at the interplay between visual structures and subject matter that a work has been created by a woman or a man. Another question would be, if there generally are recognizable visual differences, do they arise from essential or arbitrary differences between men and women? In addition to the question of differences in styles and subject matter that may be associated with art created by men and women, there may be differences in the

214 GENDER AND JAPONISME Figure 10.1 Georgia O’Keeffe, Black Iris, 1926. © 2010. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence. Reproduced with permission.

There are aspects of O’Keeffe’s work, especially her extreme close-up paintings of plants and flowers, that have been interpreted as particularly female in subject and composition. Later becoming known as central core imagery, the images contain a centrally balanced composition, often built around a hollow core. O’Keeffe’s floral abstractions often seem to include a subconscious reference to female anatomy. But flowers themselves are sexual, so this may be reading too much into the work. Nevertheless, Stieglitz felt they expressed the essence of womanhood in a way that no previous artist had.

materials and media that they employ. One of the concerted efforts of modern feminists has been to elevate media traditionally associated with women’s craft to the status of fine art. Traditionally, those art forms associated with the domestic sphere, especially fiber arts such as weaving, quilting, embroidery, and so on, have held a different social status than the fine arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Whereas in the modern Western tradition there is a hierarchical relationship between art and craft and between men’s and women’s arts, gender theorists argue that in non-Western contexts, even though gender specialization may be present, men’s and women’s arts play a complementary role in relationship to one another.15 Specialization may occur without the presence of the implication of hierarchy. The complete absence of gender specialization in art, however, seems to be rare in most cultures.

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Gender and art in classical Japan: further consideration of gender and style Many of these issues regarding specialization of subject matter, style, technique, or medium according to gender have been present in art for a long time. Such issues can be useful in understanding art in non-Western contexts. To explore these issues, let us turn to an example from the Japanese tradition, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. This “tale” was, in fact, the world’s first novel and it is almost 1,000 pages long in English translation today. Here is an example of a passage from the novel: Half hidden by a pillar, one had a lute before her and sat toying with the plectrum. Just then the moon burst forth in all its brilliance. “Well now,” she said. “This does quite well as a fan for bringing out the moon.” The upraised face was bright and lively. The other, leaning against an armrest, had a koto before her. “I have heard that you summon the sun with one of those objects, but you seem to have ideas of your own on how to use it.” She was smiling, a melancholy, contemplative sort of smile. “I may be asking too much, I admit, but you have to admit that lutes and moons are related.”16 An image of upraised faces, softly leaning figures, musical instruments, and subtle states of emotion: such a poetic image would require an equally subtle style of illustration to convey such refined emotional states, metaphorical allusions, and aesthetic tastes. Not long after it was written during the classical Heian period (794–1185), the novel was illustrated in a series of horizontal illustrated scrolls (emaki-mono), making it not only the world’s first novel, but the first illustrated novel as well. The first example of illustrated Genji scrolls probably dates from about 1120–1130. Less than one-fifth of the original illustrations survive, but many subsequent sets have been produced. The original scrolls seem to have been worked on by teams. Each included a nobleman (eshi), known for his calligraphy, and a group of painters who were specialists in ink drawing and the application of color. A black line sketch would be done first and then the pigment specialists would apply many layers of thin paint (a process called tsukuri-e). These layers of color would obscure the original outlines, resulting in areas of “flat” color that contained little gradation in brightness or hue. In representing the human figure, details tended to be sparse. Rather, detail would be lavished on patterns in clothing and architecture. The tendency was to simplify faces and other aspects of the figures, because it was felt that it is difficult to capture the beautiful emotional range of the fictional characters as described in the novel in paint. In addition, to do so would interfere with the reader’s own intuitive concept

216 GENDER AND JAPONISME regarding the characters’ emotional states. The technique used to illustrate The Tale of Genji and other romantic fiction that followed was referred to as onna-e or women’s pictures. This is a style that emphasizes a pictorial stillness reflective of the workings of the inner or private world. The direction of psychological energy is introverted and the focus of the narrative is upon the emotional states of the characters. Much of the emotional power of these images derived from subtle uses of color. There was a high level of color awareness during the Heian, an awareness that reflected the rule of taste during that courtly time. During this high point of Japanese classicism, the subtle combining of colors was considered as important as the possession of refined taste in the writing of poetry, the blending of incense and the creation of fine paper. Calligraphy, music, and poetry were considered skills of particular importance for women. Onna-e may be contrasted with otoko-e or men’s pictures. In this approach, the final images retain their dark calligraphic outlines: line takes precedence and it is not obscured by later coloration. Color is applied transparently. Figures are shown in

Figure 10.2 Fujiwara Takayoshi, The Tale of Genji (12th century). This illustration was created over one hundred years after the writing of the novel and the scrolls from this period are heavily deteriorated, but a sense of their brilliant coloration is evident. The courtly clothing of the women depicted seems fantastic in its billowing fullness. In fact a woman of the court would wear as many as six to twelve layers of fine clothing, paying careful attention to their color combination. © AISA/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

GENDER AND JAPONISME 217 active stances and the calligraphy used to render them itself suggests movement. Such extroverted and physical subjects are reflective of the outer or public world. In contrast to onna-e’s tendency toward abstraction, otoko-e tends more toward realistic depiction. We can see, then, that gender specialization in Japanese art emerges from a sense of the rightness of the “fit” of a particular style to specific kinds of subject matter. While there was a clear association between gender and particular styles, techniques, and subjects in medieval Japanese art, it would be quite controversial to propose that the distinct aesthetic for women and men is based upon essential differences between the sexes. It is equally likely that the differences between visual approaches associated with men and women resulted from social conventions that developed over a period of time. One issue to be considered, then, is whether the specializations that do occur are the result of social convention or whether there is a deeper biological basis for them. Earlier gender theorists tended toward the former concept, but recent research into the biological differences between men and women is lending greater weight to the latter thesis. For the sake of argument, let us assume that biological differences between women and men have led to the creation of “female visual styles” that are distinct in essential ways from “male visual styles.” A second question arises: if they exist, is the existence of “female visual styles” liberating or constricting? It helps to remember that liberation from oppression and the achievement of equality with men has been the consistent goal of the feminist movement. So the idea of “female visual styles” can certainly be analyzed with regard to this goal. One concern of those who feel that essentialist notions of style or subject matter are constricting is that the assumption of stylistic distinctness unfairly sets up an expectation that women’s art should look different than men’s art. The assumption of difference becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, if there truly are essential distinctions between men’s and women’s art, acknowledging these differences sets up the possibility of a “different but equal” argument in art as in other areas of life. Such an argument is liberating. The argument becomes useful when considering judgments of quality in art: If there is a distinct female visual vocabulary, perhaps that means that the basis of judging artistic quality is different for women than it is for men. Alternatively, what if women’s artwork is stylistically or technically indistinguishable from men’s? Does that matter? Would that be more of an indication of having reached equality with men? What then would be the basis of judging quality in art that is universal or “cross-gendered” in its application? The early feminist theorist, Linda Nochlin, felt that, if there are style traits commonly associated with women, they are the product of a sensibility that is a product of its time, and not something inborn or genetic. Another troubling question is whether the attempt to understand “men’s” and “women’s” approaches in art tends to downplay important differences between artists within a gender. Perhaps women are not any more alike in an easily identifiable way than men. Still, there do seem to be traits that the members of each gender

218 GENDER AND JAPONISME share. Advertisers certainly know this and are very adept at targeting products toward either a male or female audience.

Women’s relationship to their bodies and emotions in art The relationship of women to their own bodies—not solely in a physical sense, but as a way of engaging deeply psychological meanings—has a long history in modern art. We have already noted that Georgia O’Keeffe may have created a bodily based symbolic vocabulary even though she did not identify herself as a “woman artist.” Later in the twentieth century, self-consciously activist artists such as Judy Chicago used bodily references to create a specifically female-based and feminist art of historical awareness. At about the same time, the body was explored as both subject and medium in Performance Art, which reflected the influence of Dada. For instance, in her performances Carolee Schneemann used the body as a symbol and a medium to explore self-knowledge and social stereotypes. The implication of this turn toward the body is that bodily based knowledge is more fundamental than logical or other purely mental knowledge. Gina Pane is another woman who has used her body as a site for art and self-revelation. She had several operations performed on her body such that it became as malleable as clay to a sculptor; this physical alteration of one’s own body involves the discovery of one’s limitations and possibilities. The marks or “wounds” created in this process of self-selected alteration become part of the body’s memory. Traditionally, a woman’s body is tightly controlled by socially defined needs and expectations, especially those related to sexual reproduction. To willfully alter the body in artistic contexts often involves a challenge to these forms of social control. It is challenging for many to accept a language of the body that subverts mechanisms of social control. An accusation could be made that this strong emphasis on the body in women’s art undermines the potential for women to make more rational, logically structured art. The body is, after all, “messy.” It, and the emotions associated with it, are not easily contained by the rational mind. But, the emphasis on the body is really an extension of an issue that we have already considered: representation. One way that mechanisms for social control of the body arise is through systems of representation. The body is “contained,” as it were, by the conventions and expectations within a particular period or culture. To take control of one’s own body and to use the body as a basis for self-expression is to engage in a powerful critique of systems of control. This is the reason why third-wave feminists, beginning in the 1990s, have reclaimed slang with derogatory connotations—bitch, cunt, whore— and incorporated it into their own discourse. Changing and controlling the meaning of these terms is a form of empowerment. Let us return to the Japanese context in order to understand the relationship between the representation of the body and social convention. The story of The Tale of Genji concerns the life of a handsome prince born to the emperor’s favorite wife. Though she is the emperor’s favorite, she is too low in rank

GENDER AND JAPONISME 219 for her son, Genji, to become heir to the throne. Even so, Genji is handsome, cultured, and sensitive. He seems to express genuine affection for women. His romantic intrigues and affairs take up the first two-thirds of the novel, while the last third concerns the lives and loves of two of his heirs in Kyoto after his death. The most

Figure 10.3 Heian woman in court dress. Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. H. Yoshikawa. Image obtained from A Celebration of Women Writers, edited by Mary Mark Ockerbloom, and hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries http://digital.library. upenn.edu/women/.

“The figure was drawn for the purpose of showing the details of dress and therefore gives no indication of the grace and elegance of the costume as worn. It shows the red karaginu, or over-garment; the dark-green robe trimmed with folds, called the uchigi; the saishi, or head-ornament, in this case of gold but sometimes of silver; the unlined under-garment of thin silk; the red hakama, or divided skirt; and the train of white silk painted or stained in colors.”17

220 GENDER AND JAPONISME important theme in the novel is the pathos of life, the moving or emotional quality of experience. During the Heian period, artists and poets were absorbed with the varieties of subtle emotional states, as seen in paintings, diaries, letters, screens, and scrolls from the period. (In fact an emphasis on the subtle varieties of human emotion is a trait of Japanese art in general.) However, it was considered to be a challenge to visually convey the emotional states of individual characters. Rather, artists used the convention of the “view into the interior from above” and other revealing spatial arrangements as metaphors for the emotions felt by the characters in the interiors of the palace. Color and pattern referenced particular emotional states as well. In terms of the representation of women, though, there was little to distinguish the image of one woman from the next. Instead, a highly conventionalized code of “beauty” governed their representation. Courtly beauty consisted of a heavily whitepowdered face, touches of red upon the cheeks, brightly painted red lips, and eyebrows painted high in the middle of the forehead. Another convention of beauty was that members of both sexes blackened their teeth. Such carefully codified conventions of beauty were accompanied by a strong emphasis on fashion. Even with this strong emphasis on conventions of beauty and fashion, the position of women in Japanese society was not simply one of exploitation and control: “The Chinese called Japan the ‘Queen Country,’ because of the ascendancy which women enjoyed there. They were educated, they were allowed a share of inheritance, and they had their own houses. It is an extraordinary and important fact that much of the best literature of Japan has been written by women.”18 Instead, the reign of conventions of beauty is a reflection of the over-refinement and strong emphasis on protocol that is characteristic of court life in general. Members of the court led privileged lives, which meant that they had the leisure time available to focus upon fine poetry, sumptuous apparel, and music. Color sensitivity in matters of fabric choice was so keen that a lady at court might be humiliated by even slight perceived faults in the combination of the hues found in her clothing. Quoting diaries written during the period, Amy Lowell explains, The ladies all painted their faces, and the whole toilet was a matter of sufficient moment to raise it into a fine art. Many of these lovely dresses are described by Murasaki Shikibu, for instance: “The beautiful shape of their hair, tied with bands, was like that of the beauties in Chinese pictures. Lady Saemon held the King’s sword. She wore a blue-green patternless karaginu and shaded train with floating bands and belt of ‘floating thread’ brocade dyed in dull red. Her outer robe was trimmed with five folds and was chrysanthemum coloured. The glossy silk was of crimson; her figure and movement, when we caught a glimpse of it, was flower-like and dignified. Lady Ben-no-Naishi held the box of the King’s seals. Her uchigi was grape-coloured. She is a very small and smile-giving person and seemed shy and I was sorry for her . . . Her

GENDER AND JAPONISME 221 hair bands were blue-green. Her appearance suggested one of the ancient dream-maidens descended from heaven.”19 A little later she tells us that “the beaten stuffs were like the mingling of dark and light maple leaves in Autumn” and, describing in some detail the festivity at which these ladies appeared, she makes the comment that “only the right body-guard wore clothes of shrimp pink.”20 There were two ways, then, in which an artist could represent women during the Heian period. One involved placing them in interior settings that, based upon the way that they were rendered, conveyed specific relationships between the human inhabitants; the other was to represent them according to very refined standards of taste regarding cosmetics and dress. Taken together, these comprised a formalized visual poetry that could convey to the knowledgeable audience of the time the broad range of emotional states experienced by the main characters in the literature. A section of the narrative text in The Tale of Genji concerns Genji’s knowledge of a lover’s illness, his dread of her death, and his sense that the grief accompanying her loss will be too much to bear. In the section of the scroll illustrating this scene, the sharp angles of the architecture suggest his lover’s disappearance from the world, and his fear of his own impending grief is suggested by the wind-whipped grass in the garden outside. This rarefied world of poetry, color, and courtly fashion was challenged, of course, by the militaristic culture of the feudal periods (Kamakura, Muromachi, Momoyama, Edo) that followed the Heian era. Still, the degree of refinement associated with the poetry and visual culture was so high that the Heian came to be regarded as the peak of classical Japanese culture. The accomplishment of the women poets, diarists, and novelists of the period was integral to the development of this judgment. How might such refined expressions and stringent conventions from a period so deep in the past apply to more recent ideas about women and, in addition, to the cross-cultural phenomenon known as Japonisme? To answer this question, we need to consider an intermediate period, the Edo, which was the last of the feudal eras. The images—ukiyo-e prints—that eventually reached the West were created during the Edo period (ruled by the Tokugawa Shogunate). In its social origins, ukiyo-e, which comprises images and novels of the “floating world” of ephemeral pleasure, could not be more different than the refined courtly culture of the Heian. The Tokugawa Shogunate imposed a heavy class structure during the Edo period. As an artistic genre associated with the urban lower and middle classes of Edo (present-day Tokyo), ukiyo-e was a popular, not a courtly, art. Early subjects of the printed images were the inhabitants of Edo’s entertainment center including courtesans and Kabuki actors. Much of the action related to romance and fashion took place in the Yoshiwara or “licensed quarter” of Edo, which was also its theater district.21 Though this was a much different environment than the Heian court, one aspect remained consistent between the two worlds. Like the earlier illustrations, ukiyo-e

222 GENDER AND JAPONISME Figure 10.4 Utagawa Kunisada, Actor in Female Role, c. 1798. © Brooklyn Museum/ Corbis. Reproduced with permission.

In its origins, the popular dramatic medium of Kabuki did involve female performers; as Kabuki developed, though, female roles were performed by male actors. Certain actors (onnagata) specialized in playing women. Often, these actors did not look particularly feminine, so their success depended on their ability to convincingly take on feminine mannerisms. Thus, popular prints of the period could portray women themselves, especially as characters in popular romance narratives, men who specialized in playing women, and courtesans.

prints reflected tastes in fashion. However in ukiyo-e, pictures of the floating world represented changing fashions amongst the emerging middle class in Edo society, not a courtly elite. Because tastes were assumed to be fleeting, the representation of changing fashion contrasts with the rigid conventions of “fine art” painting at that time.

GENDER AND JAPONISME 223 Figure 10.5 Hishikawa Moronobu, Beauty. © Burstein Collection/ CORBIS. Reproduced with permission.

Significantly, the most important ukiyo-e artists focused upon images of women. Moronobu was the first to employ the print medium beginning about 1673. His prints and paintings already show a preference for the bijinga genre (images of beautiful women). Later, Suzuki Harunobu (1725–1770) was considered one of the most famous and finest printmakers, and he produced images with titles such as “Lady Josan no Miya and Her Kitten” (1769) and “Courtesan seated on a carp reading a love letter” (1770). An artist indebted to Harunobu’s influence, Torii Kiyonaga, became famous during the 1780s with prints such as “Ladies of the Bath” (1785), in which we see slender elongated figures in a bathhouse scene. He was soon followed by Kitagawa Utamaru, who was the dominant designer in the 1790s. Utamaru created many popular images of beautiful women: teahouse waitresses and geisha, dancers, and so on. It was only during the nineteenth century, with the careers of Hokusai and Hiroshige, that the primary focus of artists shifted from female subjects to landscapes and famous scenes.

224 GENDER AND JAPONISME The tradition of the geisha and courtesan represented in ukiyo-e is laden with complex contradiction. On the one hand, geisha are associated with high accomplishment in the artistry of dance, music, and poetry. It may often have been that they focused on these arts, and the related art of conversation, during most of their working hours. On the other hand, the Yoshiwara itself was a licensed quarter because it was a prostitution district. In this district, there were different classes of courtesans, from those who comprised sophisticated artists and entertainers to those whose services were primarily sexual. While the cultural contribution of the famous licensed district was significant, social conditions allowed for the exploitation of women. An excerpt from a guidebook, written in the late seventeenth century (the very period when the ukiyo-e genre was being established), notes: One day a certain shrewd courtesan confided in a taiko (a male entertainer): “Of all the miseries of the world, there is nothing quite as bad as the lot of a courtesan. She seems carefree in the eyes of the people, but painful reality lurks underneath. Over the years, from my initiation ceremony to this day, my expenses have only increased and I cannot even make ends meet. Generous men who give me money are rare, while deceivers are numerous . . .22 A study in contradiction, the Yoshiwara district saw both the flowering of Japanese popular culture, in the form of novels, theater, dance, art, and music, and, unfortunately, economic exploitation of its female prostitute-performers. When we regard the images of these courtesans, however, we find an idealized vision. Their robes are resplendent, their hair perfectly coiffeured in the style of the day, their gestures subtle, seductive, and refined. A courtesan’s skin color was lightened in a manner reminiscent of the paste-white make-up of the Heian period. Not only were these women important artist-performers, they were often the fashion trendsetters for all of Edo society. Just as there had been a focus on color and pattern in clothing during the Heian, so in the Edo period it was exquisite and expensive clothing that set the highest-ranking courtesan (oiran) off from her competitors. Because a meeting with the most desirable courtesans would have been financially out of reach for most men, images of these high-ranking women served as status symbols as well as elegant reminders for the wealthy men who were able to visit them. The hierarchy was so clear that some women (tayu) were considered accessible only by the daimyo or feudal lords who were required to maintain year-round residences in Edo. Less wealthy men might occupy themselves with a teahouse waitress or geisha (dancer) and there were many images produced of these women as well. Over time, the more accessible geisha became the dominant class of courtesan and the culture of the oiran began to fade away. Images of these women focused primarily upon elegant aspects of their apparel and coiffure, not upon daily activities. This is an important point, because the existence of a “quotidian image” in Japan has been proposed as a point of contrast between Japanese images of women and

GENDER AND JAPONISME 225 those that emerged in the West in the context of Japonisme: “Whether women of the court or courtesans, officiating at a tea ceremony, or sharing communal activities, the figures . . . are presented within a framework of quotidian purpose and industry.”23 This is a false opposition: Utamaro, for instance, created many images of decoratively beautiful women. In Japan, as in the West, images were constructed in such a manner that women were to be “looked at” and men were the implied viewers (and consumers) of such idealized views. At the same time, though, the detailed images of the highest fashions of the day would have appealed greatly to women viewers. The trope of “attractiveness” is one that absorbs the attention of members of both genders. Often, women may notice many details about other women’s apparel, cosmetics, and hair fashions that men fail to notice. Men may not even possess the vocabulary to make the fine distinctions between certain forms of dress, hair, and bodily carriage that women can describe in detail. The idealization and observation of female appearance in art, then, has an audience among both sexes.

Gender and Japonisme: cross-cultural issues in gender It can be challenging enough to try to understand attitudes toward gender within a given cultural context, especially when it is removed in time and place from our own. Images from the period help us to a degree, but, as we have seen, images may well be overly idealizing and somewhat misleading as to the actual social relations within a period. There is little in the history of the representation of women in Edoperiod Japan that would reveal to us the terms of exploitation that existed in the licensed quarters. Considering the complexity of the relationship between art and gender within a culture, the issue may become even more complicated when images from one culture begin to influence another. Ukiyo-e prints depicting beautiful women (bijinga) were collected by Western artists from the beginning of Japonisme (in the early 1860s). It is coincidental that Japanese prints began arriving in Europe during the same decade that Mill was writing his defense of women’s rights. Clearly, there were already ideas afloat in Western society that gender relations were in need of those changes that eventually would lead to the liberation of women. Given that context, in its impact upon gender did Japonisme have a liberating effect or not? One point to note at the outset is that, even though women had become more active as novelists during the nineteenth century in Europe, the visual arts were still primarily a male domain. The images of women that appeared in Japanese-influenced Western art were largely created by men. Exceptions to this statement can be found in the increased participation of women in the applied and decorative arts and theater by the end of the nineteenth century, but most of the paintings and prints that are familiar to us today were created by men. James McNeil Whistler was an important artist of the period and an early fan of Japonisme. An American expatriate, he had lived in Venice for a time, studied and

226 GENDER AND JAPONISME collected ukiyo-e prints in Paris, and eventually settled in London for the duration of much of the rest of his career. In addition to being one of the first avid appreciators of Japanese art, Whistler was a leader of Aestheticism, a movement in literature, design, and the visual arts that celebrated the cultivation of beauty. Implicit in this movement was the rejection of any overt moral or social function for art: art was to be appreciated for its own sake. We would expect, then, that Whistler’s representation of women would be tied to his appreciation and cultivation of beauty. Though, at one level, Aestheticism was radical for its rejection of a “socially useful” art, at another level the presentation of women as an embodiment of beauty has had a long history in art. Perhaps because of the traditional nature of this construct, Whistler’s representations of women have come under attack by modern critics as presenting women as “passive” receivers of the male gaze. On the other hand, his images were criticized during his own time for their perceived attack on the “innocence” of the women depicted; they were considered radical at the time. His images managed to shock Victorian critics and to become primary examples of conservative, patriarchal imagery for modern feminist critics. That contrast in itself shows how much ideas about gender have changed in the last 150 years. These criticisms swirled, and continue to swirl, around a series of paintings titled Symphonies in White that Whistler created during his early career. Whistler himself intended these images of his mistress and business manager, Joanna Hiffernan, to be formal studies, and he used a formalist language to describe their import; this language anticipated the critical vocabulary of early modernist theory by several decades. However, this is not the primary meaning that modern critics take from the work. Lesley Ball Higgins states, “Symphony in White, No. 2 thoroughly reinscribes the patriarchal stereotype of woman as a vain and thoughtless vessel.”24 Higgins feels that Whistler perpetuates stereotypes in his representations of women by showing them as passive objects rather than as active agents in their own right. For her, the Japanese-influenced images that followed the Symphony in White paintings made this objectification of women even more apparent: Three of Whistler’s most famous paintings in the Japonisme mode, Rose and Silver: La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine, Caprice in Purple and Gold, No. 2: The Gold Screen and Purple and Rose: The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks (1863–1864), are also his most luxurious in terms of vivid textures and colors. They should be regarded, however, as much more than fanciful exercises in dressing Western women in eastern garb and surrounding them with decorative oriental bibelots. Strategically, Japonisme has displaced and subsumed the women, metaphorically dramatizing their noncentral status within their own (or Japanese) culture. Two different semiotic systems are skillfully conflated in each painting, with a net result of estranging the woman from viewer and painter, highlighting their essential status as foreign Other, commodities to be treasured, posed, and exploited as much as the robes, fans, and vases.25

GENDER AND JAPONISME 227 Figure 10.6 James Abbott McNeill Whistler, La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine (The Princess from the Land of Porcelain), 1863–65. © Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, USA/Gift of Charles Lang Freer/The Bridgeman Art Library. Reproduced with permission.

According to Higgins, then, Whistler conflates beautiful women and beautiful objects. It is significant that Higgins considers these objects to be “commodities” rather than artworks. By doing so, she inherently rejects the claims of Aestheticism (the appreciation of art for art’s sake) and inserts an economic element into her interpretation. Thus, Whistler treats women not only as objects, but as objects that can be bought and sold. Here, the implication is that men such as Whistler not only objectify women, but they do so in order to control and exploit them economically. In contrast to this relationship, a liberated woman would be active, creative, and in control of her own economic destiny. However, by representing women as posed, treasured commodities, Whistler, in Higgins’ view, undermines that possibility: “Further The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks presents a parody—or travesty—of creativity. This is not a potter’s studio or another such workplace; the woman is as ornately finished and functionless as the porcelain pieces that surround her.”26 In order to place her argument in a theoretical context, Higgins references two leaders in the development of feminist art criticism. Linda Nochlin had stated that in much Western art, woman becomes a kind of “human still life.”27 And John Berger had summed

228 GENDER AND JAPONISME up the problem with the generalization that, in art, “men act and women appear.”28 For Higgins, the problem with Whistler’s images is that they circumscribe the role of women. It’s as if women are born into a role of passivity and vanity. “Whistler’s notion of beauty depended upon the construction of female subjects who were rare, passive, frail, and domestically confined—figuratively bound by patriarchy rather than literally bound by the feet.”29 Higgins’ criticisms of Whistler’s images of women are vigorous. But, it should be noted that, by linking his images to patriarchy, her criticisms could be leveled against most of the images of women that have been created within the Western cultural tradition. Her criticism is not just of Whistler; it is of an entire tradition of image making. The cross-cultural implications of Higgins’ argument become apparent when we realize that entire cultures can be viewed in gendered terms. Does Whistler’s Japonisme extend the tendency to see the exotic East as “feminine” and passive in contrast to the active, “civilizing” West? Colonialism marched forward based upon an assumption of progress and change. It was the West that saw itself as the prime agent of progress in this movement. The Orient was, by contrast, viewed as a world of tradition. Once again, Higgins quotes Nochlin in order to clarify this link between Whistler’s gender constructions and prevailing notions of progress in the West. In his paintings the “absence of history” not only confirmed Western assumptions that the Oriental world is a world without change . . . untouched by the historical processes that were “afflicting” or “improving” . . . [or] drastically altering Western societies at the time” (Nochlin 1991: 35–36), but effectively re-endorsed the notion that women have no proper or crucial place in human history or contemporary events.30 Thus, Higgins rests her argument upon a general critique of Orientalism. A critical understanding of Orientalism, with its origins in the writing of Edward Said, defines it as a European image-making tradition that reflected the imperialist mindset of the day. Thus, images of “Oriental” cultures emerge that are intentionally exotic, colorful, and sensual, but which “fix” those cultures in a historical moment. The Orient becomes a vehicle for the projection of Western fantasy and imagination, but it is, at the same time, limited by that fantasy-laden projection. Orientalist images do not depict the East as it is, but as Westerners imagine it to be. In many cases, it was images of Oriental women (or Western women in Oriental garb) that captured the imagination of Western artists. Thus, the Orient itself—and women—are products of, and contained by, the projected desires of European male artists. “In the work of Ingres, Gerome, and others, the nude was given new life by the orientalist movement, a Western myth, . . . which colonizing Europeans refashioned through literature and imagery as a timeless mise-en-scene for erotic fantasies of captive, sexually subservient women.”31 A contrasting tradition of image making would be one that attempts to represent the East—and women—as real and powerful in their own right.

GENDER AND JAPONISME 229 Given this historical and theoretical backdrop, it is helpful to question whether the critique of Orientalism does, in fact, apply to Japan. [A]lthough the terms of Orientalism are used today for almost any Western writing on Asia, the primary subject of Said’s critique is Islamic and Hindu regions. His target is British, American, and French interpreters whose discursive representations, buried in liberality, convey “the White Man’s difficult civilizing mission.” Rarely alluding to Japan, Said can routinely refer to “the mistrust with which [Western culture’s] learned attitude to the Orient has always been freighted”. Yet such generalizations apply to perhaps every area of the Far East except Japan. Unlike India and most of Asia, Japan was never formally colonized by the West.32 The question arises, then, whether Japonisme, like Orientalism, can be understood as the product of an imperialist, colonizing mindset. Perhaps Japonisme involved a genuine enthusiasm for the products of a newly discovered culture, independent of the desire to exploit it? This question becomes even more important when we consider the attraction of women themselves to Japan and to the East in general. (An earlier fashion for expressions of the Orient had been found in chinoiserie. This fashion rage occurred during the eighteenth century, especially in the context of Rococo taste, and also involved the participation of a large number of women.) To this point, it appears that Orientalism in general and Whistler’s Japonisme in particular rested upon the exploitation of the East by the Western male artistic imagination. Higgins implies that an implicit goal of that exploitation was to sustain patriarchal control over women and to achieve economic control over the East through imperialism. But what if women themselves had long been active agents in the discovery of Oriental art, style, and fashion? Simply stated, Japonisme was a fashion amongst women too. Considering the large numbers of artworks including fans, clothing, combs, and so on that were created for women during the period, the taste for Japan may even have been more passionately embraced by women than men. Women found that the “exotic” East stirred and liberated their imaginations. Quite possibly, much of their attraction to Japan rested upon the very same attraction that Whistler captured in his paintings: an aesthetic sense of beauty animated by their appreciation of Japanese design and color. In the introduction to her book, Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism, Mari Yoshihara writes: Part II, “Performing Asia,” deals with the diverse ways in which white American women “performed” what they understood to be Asian-ness by engaging in different forms of racial and cultural crossdressing. I examine how white women’s performances of Asian-ness,

230 GENDER AND JAPONISME and particularly their embodiment of “Asian” gender roles and sexualities, not only turned them into powerful agents in the production of Orientalism but also empowered them as American women. . . . My discussion of Amy Lowell, who used Asian forms and themes in her poetry, shows that literary orientalism made it possible for Lowell and her readers to “try on” Asian-ness and assume alternative gender roles and enjoy the pleasures of cultural cross-dressing.33 When we consider the role of women in their active engagement with Eastern cultures, we find that there are other motives for the embrace of exotic sources of beauty, aside from an imperialist desire to control the Other. The embrace of Japan was a form of liberation. It allowed artists, aesthetes, and collectors in the West— including women—the possibility of expanding their aesthetic awareness and vocabulary. The motive that was driving women in their participation with Eastern cultures was the same motive that was driving Whistler. An overview of Yoshihara’s book states its central claim clearly. The connection between aesthetic discovery and personal freedom and empowerment is clear: As exemplified by Madame Butterfly, East–West relations have often been expressed as the relations between the masculine, dominant West and the feminine, submissive East. Yet, this binary model does not account for the important role of white women in the construction of Orientalism. Mari Yoshihara’s study examines a wide range of white women who were attracted to Japan and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and shows how, through their engagement with Asia, these women found new forms of expression, power, and freedom that were often denied to them in other realms of their lives in America. She demonstrates how white women’s attraction to Asia shaped and was shaped by a complex mix of exoticism for the foreign, admiration for the refined, desire for power and control, and love and compassion for the people of Asia.34 Exoticism can, and probably often does, emerge from an admiration for the refinement of foreign design traditions. It does not automatically imply a desire to exploit those who created the designs. There are, then, two possible limitations to Higgins’ traditional feminist view of Whistler’s Japonisme. Whistler was motivated by the same admiration of Japanese design that was common among women during the time period. When he represented Western women in Japanese-style dress, he was representing them in a way that they felt was both exotic and beautiful. Quite possibly, Whistler’s models were collaborators in the creation of these images that are suffused with exotically inspired beauty, not victims of his patriarchal gaze and brush. Furthermore, Japan itself is not automatically subject to an Orientalist critique because it was never formally colonized. I do not deny that inequities of power

GENDER AND JAPONISME 231 remained between men and women in both the East and the West during the late nineteenth century. But we must guard against the binary opposition that portrays women as merely passive and submissive when they are represented in art created by men. Quite often, the model is an active participant along with the artist. Additionally, when a woman is represented in art based upon values of beauty, it is possible that the representation is not meant to demean her or to portray her as a passive “empty vessel.” Rather, this form of representation involves the same admiration of beauty that women themselves feel in their attraction to the arts of the East. Beauty is a universal human emotion or “sensibility” and is a worthwhile element of cross-cultural artistic creation. To this point, we have considered Japonisme in the work of Whistler, but the attraction to Japanese art—and issues pertaining to gender—were common to many of the most progressive artists of the late nineteenth century. Edouard Manet, for instance, is now famous for his desire to paint images of modern life: for his focus on the “here and now” of Parisian daily life. For him, Japanese prints were themselves magical containers of real life. His friend, the novelist Emile Zola, had linked Manet’s art to Japanese prints as early as 1866. A photographic reproduction of Manet’s controversial painting, Olympia, is included in Manet’s portrait of Zola. Olympia is controversial in part because all of the details in the painting have been simplified, resulting in a starkness that disturbed audiences at the time. But the critics of the day also felt that Olympia had “the perfume of Japan” about her, indicating that Japan was associated with a degree of sexual licentiousness. The scandal of the painting, of course, is that the female subject is recognizable as a prostitute, but the painting is regally titled. Was Manet poking fun at the more idealized nudes of the day, which relied for their legitimacy on allegorical and mythological associations? The distinct contour of the nude figure, achieved through strong value contrasts, also reminded critics of Japanese art. For them, Japanese influence in Manet had to do with a “frankness of pattern,” which resulted in the very directness that so offended viewers at the time. In Olympia, Manet was teaching us how to see nature in massed form rather than through isolated details. This “synthetic” approach became a consistent area of formal influence for subsequent painters. Even more direct in its effect upon audiences, though, was the recognizable subject; Manet peeled back the veneer and revealed the sexual culture of the period in France. It is worth remembering that pictures of courtesans had been one of the most common Japanese subjects in ukiyo-e. Thus, Manet fused simplified formal structures and a directness of subject matter based, in part, upon his encounter with Japan. He painted a reclining nude, a staple of the Western tradition, but did so in a more radical way than he might have had he not encountered Japanese art. Even so, Manet’s Olympia did reproduce a number of gender and ethnic stereotypes that have been deconstructed in modern visual culture. In the portrait shown overleaf, the artist Morimura plays the role of Olympia and her black servant. A student commentator in a seminar considering issues of cultural hybridity wrote:

232 GENDER AND JAPONISME

Figure 10.7 Yasumasa Morimura, Portrait (Futago), 1988. Acquired 1997. Gift of Vicki and Kent Logan. © Yasumasa Morimura, 97.788. Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Reproduced with permission.

As with the figure in Olympia, Morimura covers his genitals, but his lack of breasts and broad shoulders reveal that he is a male. The Japanese photographer also poses as the prostitute’s African American servant. Thus, Portrait simultaneously realizes and subverts Manet’s work, forcing us to question issues of ethnic and gender identity. Authorship may be attributed to Morimura in the sense that he created the piece himself, but in order to understand the full meaning of his work the viewer must understand the cultural and artistic heritage that influenced its creation. The piece itself blurs the lines between genres—a photograph manipulated to look like an oil painting, a self-portrait in which the real character of the sitter is almost completely obscured. Each new reference adds to our enjoyment and understanding of the work.35 The subversive effect of Morimura’s photograph is based upon reversal, a common strategy in postmodernist art. That the photograph continues to carry a shock value, more than twenty years after it was created, reveals that the common roles that Morimura was subverting—such as making a male the receiver of the gaze— remain in place. Manet had already employed a reversal by representing a prostitute in the pose of a nude goddess, but Morimura takes the reversal one step further. Both works share reversal as a strategy, but, more importantly, they subvert the emotional pleasure traditionally associated with viewing the female nude. By making

GENDER AND JAPONISME 233 the conventions of representation apparent and not transparent, our role as viewers is called into question. The emotional effect felt from viewing each image is now derived from the shock of subverting our role as viewers and not from traditional notions of beauty or desire. This additional subversive move on the part of both artists indicates that each has moved beyond his points of inspiration—Manet beyond Japonisme and the tradition of the Western nude; and Morimura beyond Manet—in order to develop a uniquely modern perspective. Significantly, for our purpose, the capacity for developing this contemporary point of view emerged out of a cross-cultural dialog with the Other. Another controversial artist in relationship to gender, Edgar Degas, exhibited with the Impressionists but did not really share the same artistic concerns. His background was that of an academic figure painter in the tradition of Ingres. Though he was grounded in the Western figurative tradition, he owned over a hundred Japanese prints and albums by Utamaro, Hokusai, Hiroshige, Kiyonaga, and others. Perhaps this passion for Japanese prints helps explain Degas’ increasing concern for movement and gesture in his representations of the figure throughout his career. When one compares Degas’ images of women bathing with Japanese figurative compositions, a vitality related to movement and gesture is evident in both groups of work. Inspired by the Japanese, Degas cultivated the look of spontaneity, though he claimed that there was no art less spontaneous than his own. The subject matter of women was to play a major role in Degas’ development. He depicted them involved in everyday activities; for instance, ironing and, quite frequently after 1880, at their toilette. Compared even to Olympia, these were nontraditional nudes. Degas wanted to show women tending their own bodies, not posed as if to be seen by men, but engaged in routine activities that involved natural, unrehearsed gestures. For some viewers, his work involved honesty in representing women that had not been seen before in the West. He did not idealize them as goddesses and queens, but was he charmed by women and attracted to them? This question remains unanswered or, more appropriately, answered by each viewer individually. Some find in his images a cool disregard for the personhood of individual women. Others find in the spontaneity of his subject matter a fresh approach that suggests a true interest in his subjects. One thing, however, is certain; creating the illusion of casual spontaneity is not easy to do. Capturing the model in motion is much more difficult than representing a model in a still pose. In many of his pastel drawings, Degas also focused on the setting that the figure occupies, not just on the figure. With his technique growing more liberated as he grew older, the entire surface of each image was activated and energized. Degas often focuses on women’s backs in a manner similar to the Japanese, who felt that a woman’s back and neck were the most expressive areas of the body to represent. Sometimes, the women in his images of the toilette are accompanied by a servant who aids them, which is also similar to Japanese art. The gesture, activities, and settings of the female figure in Japanese art gave the Impressionists new ideas of how to represent the figure; a new freshness and intimacy was found in their

234 GENDER AND JAPONISME Figure 10.8 Ishikawa Toyonobu, A Girl Coming from Her Bath (18th century). Degas is said to have owned many Japanese prints, including images of women bathing, which may help to explain his fascination with capturing casual poses of woman at their bath. This image is by Toyonobu, an ukiyo-e artist of the eighteenth century. Toyonobu was one of the first to experiment with semi-nude forms in the bijinga sub-genre of ukiyo-e. These images of women with loose robes that reveal their breasts and legs were intended to be suggestive or erotic in nature, which is consistent with the fact that many of the prints depicted courtesans. Toyonobu was known for his rose-colored printing, though he stopped making prints after Harunobu’s introduction of the full-color print in 1765. © Burstein Collection/CORBIS. Reproduced with permission.

views of the human subject. One can observe this transition in the career of a single artist, Degas. Many of his images were “reaction poses,” a product of drawing the figure very quickly. Formal and stately poses gave way to a much greater variety of movement. These common gestures were not seen as “proper” in European art, but Degas, based upon his encounter with Japanese art, broke away from his own classical training to create vital, experimental images of women. His understanding of the spontaneous pose was developed even further in the 1890s by ToulouseLautrec. Like many of his fellow avant-garde artists Toulouse-Lautrec wanted to go to Japan. He never made it; instead, he decorated his studio with kakemono (hanging scrolls), bought ukiyo-e prints, and knew the collections of prominent Parisian collectors. Like Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec also developed similar themes to those found in ukiyo-e: portraits of actors, dancers, and circus entertainers, scenes in brothels and erotic scenes, and images of the actions of everyday people. However, unlike Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec focused primarily on the seamy underworld of Parisian society as it metamorphosed from a historical city into a modern metropolis. Toulouse-Lautrec’s turn to the underbelly of Paris was the result of a nihilistic sigh

GENDER AND JAPONISME 235 at the end of the nineteenth century. One source for this weariness was the sense that traditional European values were being replaced by an increasing sense of alienation, especially in the industrialized, urban cities. People migrated to the city and found themselves surrounded by strangers. As a result, the figures in ToulouseLautrec’s pictures are often lonely and dispirited, even when there are overtones of gaiety in their seemingly “fun” activities.

Figure 10.9 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Sofa, c. 1894–96. © AFP/Getty Images. Reproduced with permission.

Toulouse-Lautrec went a step beyond the simple depiction of courtesans; he showed them in their downtime, making love to one another. While it is open to question how comfortable he was with lesbians or bisexual women, the fact is that he gave us several images of women loving women, something that is not seen among the art of his contemporaries. Toulouse-Lautrec’s bold treatment of lesbian themes and his highly individualized images of women may reflect the liveliness that he sensed in Japanese prints of courtesans and actors. It’s almost as if the prints gave him permission to represent the world in a colorful manner that had never been seen in Western art. The strongest formal influence of the ukiyo-e prints is seen in Toulouse-Lautrec’s flat, bold, asymmetrical graphic art, which was, in itself, highly experimental. But, it is in his view of women that we perhaps find his greatest innovation.

236 GENDER AND JAPONISME Toulouse-Lautrec was born into a provincial aristocratic family, but was an outcast because of medical problems that drastically stunted his growth and left him with physical deformities. He moved to Paris in 1882, probably to escape the humiliation of his condition. Once in Paris, he documented the life of the “entertainment district” of Montmartre, with its lively cabarets and prostitutes. The parallel to Edo’s Yoshiwara is apparent. His images of the Moulin Rouge and the performer Jane Avril mocked traditional beauty and propriety in art. Toulouse-Lautrec was not a mere satirist; he possessed a sophisticated, painterly technique that imparted a sense of life to his images. The flesh tones in his figures are distorted by acidic green highlights. But, he did not make these images to mock his subjects, at least not the women. The entertainment district of Paris was inhabited by social outcasts. He identified with these female subjects; some of them were his close friends and, undoubtedly, he was a client of some as well. Toulouse-Lautrec would even live in brothels for months at a time. Based upon this familiarity, he was able to paint the life of the prostitute in such a way that she was neither idealized nor vilified. He saw prostitutes as people and represented them with both objectivity and empathy. Another major example of Japonisme’s relationship to the liberation of the image of women during the 1890s was found in the flowering of the first international design style, Art Nouveau. This style reflected a rejection of Victorian aesthetics and morality. Though one would not know it from the name, the first indications of Art Nouveau were in England where it descended from Aestheticism and the Arts and Crafts movement. Japanese art, with its curvilinear tendencies derived from centuries of calligraphy (sho), inspired the swirling, sensual line known as Whiplash that is the defining feature of the style. In addition to calligraphy, another source for asymmetry and irregularity of line is nature. And it was the tendency to abstract motifs from nature that provided the Art Nouveau artists with their main pictorial ideas. Abstracted motifs derived from nature had, of course, been prominent in Japanese art for centuries. Influenced by Symbolist poetry, uninhibited responses to nature became visual metaphors for opening oneself to a world of sensual reverie. For these artists the female form became the perfect bridge between the natural and the poetically sensual. By the standards of the Victorians and Edwardians, the style was decadent. But that was the heart of its attraction. Could it be that these natural, flowing women were more than just decorative beauties gracing ceramics, furniture, and prints for the pleasure of male viewers? Partially nude women with flowing hair also expressed heightened freedom and eroticism for female viewers. The sinuous style expresses a passionate affirmation of feminine energy and allure. It is not surprising that women should symbolically stand, in art, for fertility. But Art Nouveau artists went beyond traditional symbolism to directly link women with evidence of fertility in nature: buds, blooms, and blossoms appear regularly in tandem with the youthful female form. We find in Art Nouveau an erotics of viewing, a sense of pleasure as liberation. Japonisme inspired a breaking of taboos, an important counter-liberation to the repressive climate of latenineteenth-century tradition and morality.

GENDER AND JAPONISME 237 Figure 10.10 Aubrey Beardsley, The Climax (illustration from “Salome” by Oscar Wilde), 1893. © Private Collection/ The Stapleton Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

Aubrey Beardsley was the first artist to challenge conventional morality with his Japanese-inspired Art Nouveau illustrations of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (English translation, 1894). Emerging from a dreary first job at a London insurance agency, Beardsley was only twenty-one when he produced his illustrations for Wilde’s play; they were first published by The Studio magazine in 1893. The images brought notoriety and fame to the young artist, but they also sounded a new style that had electrifying effects upon an old theme in art. Salomé had famously performed the “dance of the seven veils” for her stepfather King Herod so that he would bring her the severed head of John the Baptist, who had earlier spurned her as a lover. When her wish was fulfilled, Salomé grabbed the head of the Baptist, still dripping with blood, and kissed it passionately while incanting “I have kissed your mouth, Iokanaan.” “Beardsley has drawn Salome gazing with sadistic lust into the face of the butchered Iokanaan. She hangs suspended in a nightmarish abstract setting, surrounded by distorted flower forms and creeping “whiplash” lines. The delicacy and grace of the drawing creates a dramatic contrast with the horror of the scene.”36

238 GENDER AND JAPONISME Working in the stark black-and-white language of the woodcut, Beardsley graphically formulated the Art Nouveau femme fatale. He was influenced by a combination of sources: the sensuality of French literature, Wagner’s operatic passion, and the elegant, calligraphic, and decorative qualities of Japanese art. That such controversial passions such as willful seduction and unchecked lust are expressed in elegant linearism is part of the intrigue—and success—of Beardsley’s art. His erotically charged work was considered indecent at the time that it was created. Even the author of the play might have found it a bit too intense for his fundamentally humorous sensibility. But the work was marked by great individuality. And to show the dark side of the erotic imagination is also a form of liberation. Thus, as with Manet, Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec, we find that the impact of Japonisme upon gender involved the loosening of restrictive conventions. Beardsley created images that were, at once, shocking and beautiful. “Beardsley transfigured sin by the abstract beauty of his line.”37 To transfigure sin—a deep source of fear and guilt in the Western psyche—into beauty is a daring and liberating move. Considering the beginning of our discussion about Japonisme and gender, it is interesting that the influence of Japan upon Beardsley’s art did not come directly from Japan but rather from the influence it had on a fellow artist, Whistler. Thus, to the degree that Japan functioned as an embodiment of beauty for Whistler, this is an integral element in Art Nouveau’s further borrowing from the Japanese idea. Art Nouveau takes the aestheticization of Japan one step further and joins it with the liberation of the West’s erotic imagination, which had been partially buried under layers of sin, guilt, and judgment.38 Beardsley’s contribution was individualistic but not isolated. For instance, a few years after the illustration of Salomé, René Lalique created the brooch, Dragonfly Woman (1897–98). Lalique had established his own jewelry workshop in Paris in 1886; by 1890 he was recognized as one of the most important Art Nouveau jewelry designers. He created many innovative items for Samuel Bing’s shop, La Maison de l’Art Nouveau, from which the movement took its name. Dragonfly Woman is a corsage ornament created with gold, enamel, chrysoprase (a translucent green quartz), moonstones, and diamonds. Chrysoprase is used for the head and body, while the wings are of enamel, gold, and irregular moonstones. The wings are edged with diamonds to convey the iridescent character of the insect’s wings. The wings are hitched to the body and the tail bends too, allowing this large brooch to move and, indeed, even to transform from one state to another. The suggestion of the transformability of the human and the natural is the key to its appeal: The brooch embodies many of the themes that characterize the Art Nouveau style. Nature, metamorphosis, and eroticism are all expressed in this disturbing, fantastical image of a bare-breasted woman emerging from a large dragonfly . . . Metamorphosis, or change from one physical form to another, was a major theme for many Art Nouveau artists. Here, woman and insect are fused into an almost menacing creature with

GENDER AND JAPONISME 239

Figure 10.11 René Lalique, Dragonfly woman corsage ornament, 1897–98. © Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2010. Reproduced with permission.

golden claws. The idea of the femme fatale, or dangerous woman, was a recurrent theme in many Art Nouveau creations.39 Though the Dragonfly Woman ornament is perhaps not as menacing as Salomé, there is an element of “danger” implicit in its imaginative construction. In relation to gender, this element of danger is part of both the limitation and the potential of Art Nouveau as a style. On the one hand the femme fatale reinforces a conventional stereotype. The Marionic image of women (derived from the image of the Virgin), tied to the purity and devotion associated with the role of motherhood, had long been accompanied by a contrasting stereotype of feminine sexual expression as seductive, dangerous, and sinful. The femme fatale is an extreme formulation of the fear associated with that “danger.” However, the femme fatale image is only one of many kinds of representations of women found within the style: much of Art Nouveau is celebrative of feminine energy and sexuality. In that context, our response to the image that is presented in Dragonfly Woman is not to judge female sexuality as “sinful,” dangerous and, therefore, requiring control, but to recognize it as powerful. To acknowledge the power of feminine sexuality and to celebrate it origins in nature—in the natural basis of the order of the world—along with its formation in the imagination, is a form of liberation. That this liberation takes place in the context of the creation of artistic beauty is notable. Here, in these examples from the late nineteenth century, we find artistic evidence that women continued to remain a common subject matter in art created by men.

240 GENDER AND JAPONISME But, we have seen that, in each case, the artist transcended the conventions of representation in their creative process, inspired partly by their encounter with the art of Japan. Through their creativity, they created the possibility of a response based upon beauty. It is probably safe to assume that not every viewer will find the work of every one of these artists beautiful, but the possibility of a response based upon beauty does exist for each of the works that I have discussed. Is there a way in which beauty is empowering rather than disempowering? Beauty springs from a creative process: it is the product of an authentic emotional and intellectual response toward something that interests us, whether a person, an element of nature, or an inspiring object or idea. The sense of beauty enlivens us and opens us to a sense of possibility. Beauty is relational; it involves an emotional connection between ourselves and an Other. Much of the following century, the twentieth century, seemed to involve a rejection of beauty in art. But, what seemed like a rejection, often involved a turn toward the beauty of the disfigured or horrific. Even that which surprises us in a disturbing way carries within it the seed of beauty. Thus, it was their very departure from the formulas of the past, inspired by their encounter with an exotic Other and their fresh way of seeing women as subjects in art, that enabled the artists of Japonisme to create an art of captivating beauty and authentic emotion. I would not argue that such images are “ideal” in relationship to expectations about gender. But, I do feel that Japonisme involved a complex borrowing from a non-Western culture that formed part of the process of an aesthetics of gender liberation.

Conclusion In this chapter we have considered the implications of modern gender theory— feminist theory in particular—for art. We have seen that feminism has had an impact on the interpretation of specific artworks, the discussion of which works by women should be included in the canon, and the discussion of social systems that have systematically excluded women. In addition, we considered aspects of style and subject matter by twentieth-century female artists and considered their relationship to feminist claims. In the middle portion of the chapter we applied gender as a frame of cross-cultural analysis by considering Japanese art during the Heian period and, additionally, in the Edo period when ukiyo-e emerged as a popular style of imagery. We saw that many of the issues raised by feminist theorists are applicable to crosscultural interpretation and that some of these issues have been fore-grounded within Japanese culture. Finally, with this theoretical and historical basis, we considered the role of gender in the context of a specific pattern of cross-cultural interaction: Japonisme. In that context, we saw that cross-cultural influences affected the representation of women by Western male artists. In some cases, their representations were radically different than seen in past modes of representation. Thus, gender as an element of cross-cultural influence can have a liberating effect or, at the least, can lead to significant cultural change.

Chapter 11

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART

M

of art as “self expression.” It may come as a surprise for many to know that historically and cross culturally art has not been considered in that light. Art has been viewed as craft, as a medium for religious devotion, as propaganda, as a vehicle for enlightenment, and as the pure investigation of form. None of these necessarily involves the element of self-expression as a primary function of art. In addition, the concept “self” (inherent in self-expression) has varied across time and place and has been particularly deconstructed in the context of postmodernism. Recently, postmodernist theorists have placed a larger emphasis on social dimensions of art; this might lead us to replace the idea of selfexpression with that of self-representation. To represent oneself appears to be a social act, especially when there is an element of persuasion or strategic positioning in the act of representation. What, then, are some of the key points to consider when we think about self-expression or self-representation cross culturally? Much of this book has been concerned with what might be considered “macro” processes: culture, religion, ethnicity, social order, colonialism, nationalism, and gender. It might feel inconsistent to now turn to the “self” as a core element of art. Are we now neglecting the analysis of those encompassing concepts in favor of a private, idiosyncratic, and elusive concept: the self? Another option would be to understand the “self” in relation to those macro processes. One way to understand these relationships is to see how the idea of the self varies: How do changing ideas of the self reflect changes in culture, religion, ethnicity, and so on? How might this variation affect our cross-cultural experience of art? The modern concept of self-representation already implies selfhood and an authority to represent the self. This authority can be called “agency,” which is a political concept. Concepts such as the aesthetics of liberation (from colonialism, or tyrannical leadership, or prejudice, or poverty) require a political concept of the OST MODERN PEOPLE THINK

242 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART self as a social “agent.” Macro considerations, when concerned with “rights” that are social, moral, or legal in nature, lead us to redefine the meaning of “being,” or of having a self. Issues of abortion, the right to die, ethnicity, race, and gender all depend upon an understanding of personhood or selfhood. “Self-representation,” which incorporates the element of agency, is both personal and political. In our personal thinking, we tend to separate ourselves into our private and public selves. But recent art, with its strong element of autobiography, has shown us how the personal has a very public dimension. By seeing this carry-over or linkage between the personal and social, it becomes easier to understand that often the self is not a given; rather, the notion of selfhood is constructed within a particular era or cultural context. Though we often think of our experience of the “self” in terms of our individual personalities, there are social conventions that shape what it means to be or to have a self. The realization that the “self” is a social construct allows us to trace changes in the meaning of the understanding of “self” as it is constructed in art. How do broader socio-cultural changes affect fundamental shifts in the concept of the self and its formation in art? Throughout the twentieth century we witnessed a general shift in Western aesthetics from an understanding of art as self-expression, consistent with intuitive (Bergson, Worringer, Croce), psychological (Dewey, Collingwood), and metaphysical (Kandinsky, Tolstoy) views of artistic creativity, to an understanding of art, and presumably the artist, as socially or symbolically constructed. These theories have been generated from Marxist, semiotic, structuralist, and poststructuralist frameworks. In these theories, the “self” is tied to collective processes. For instance, we tend to accept that the representation of the human face in art functions as a representation of an individual’s character, temperament, selfhood, soul, or identity, and not solely or even primarily as a physical likeness. But these concepts—character, temperament, selfhood, soul, or identity—are themselves defined socially. Our ability to understand them depends upon the nature of the language in which we think and the society into which we have been socialized. Once we grasp this concept—that the notion of self is socially constructed—it becomes possible to think of the self and, indeed, of one’s own self, as derived from multiple sources. However, while it is possible to conceive of the notion of self in general as constructed from multiple, and even perhaps conflicting, sources, it may be more challenging to see one’s own self as constructed in such a complex manner. Does your own experience involve seeing your “self” as constructed from a variety of sources and, potentially, sources that are fragmented and recombined like so many elements of language? Or do you feel that your self is based upon a more basic continuity, rooted in your own sense of “embodiment”? If the latter, what is the source of that basic continuity, considering that one’s body changes dramatically over the course of a lifetime? Thus, giving the self a physical basis does not necessarily yield greater continuity in our experience of our selfhood. One of the advantages of studying art cross culturally and across time is the reflexive value that we develop for understanding the nature of the self. In many

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART 243 cultures, traditional concepts of the self have suggested spiritual immanence: a conceptualization of the self as “soul.” The sense of the self as soul has been developed through visual metaphoric representations of the activity of inner life. For instance, those self-representations that focus on strong facial expressions belie the movement of the soul: the emotional activity of the soulful interior of the self is reflected on the face. In addition, the gestures of an individual could stand for the state of their inner life. The evidence of the gestural motion of the brush reveals the soul of the artist as well. Another visual metaphor for the soul is light.

Figure 11.1 Dante Charles Gabriel Rossetti, Beata Beatrix, c. 1864–70. © Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites, a movement that began in 1848, constructed a notion of the self as “soul” and used a number of common devices to convey this concept including facial expressions, gestures, and contrasts of dark and light. In addition, they relied upon a vocabulary of symbolism derived from the medieval period, a time when the concept of the self as soul was dominant. Here, Rossetti has idealized his model—his wife Elizabeth, who tragically died of an overdose of laudanum after giving birth to a stillborn child—in the image of Beatrice, the love of the medieval Italian poet, Dante. Rossetti was a poet and translator of medieval Italian poetry as well as a painter.

244 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART The image of light in Pre-Raphaelite representations, flooding through a window or quietly emanating from a flickering candle, often symbolizes states of the soul. Still, the relatively stable spiritual conception of the self as “soul”—expressed in so many ways—has been challenged by nineteenth-century representations of psychological subjectivity (which is often understood to be ultimately biological and not spiritual in origin) and twentieth-century expressions of the loss, fragmentation, and social contradictions that arise from multiply constructed selfhood. Several questions are raised as one considers the varied philosophical conceptions of self in relation to specific artistic traditions. Some of the most important questions to be addressed are definitional: Can the various concepts of selfhood even be delineated in relation to their formation in art? Others are methodological: How does the analysis of basic formal principles such as color, light, line, and shape guide us in our understanding of the nature of interior life (or interiority) as expressed in art? Light is a common metaphor for interior states because it symbolizes selfknowledge and renewal or “enlightenment.” Similarly, shadowy or dark images may represent troubled interior states or obscured elements of the self. The question of how “self” is encoded and expressed is a fulcrum for several central issues in recent theories of art: the role of the human body in creating art and its role as a subject, ties between aesthetics and the philosophy of mind, different understandings of selfhood in different cultural contexts, and ties between individual and collective identity. Understanding the self, especially in relation to consciousness, has occupied the branch of philosophy known as phenomenology since the tradition’s inception by Edmund Husserl. The goal of phenomenology is the objective study of phenomena normally considered to be subjective; the “self,” of course, is a prime example of subjectivity. Because art often involves bodily as well as mental processes, I find the particular phenomenological tradition that views perception as being bodily in origin to have the most value for explaining how art “works.” This concept of a bodily basis of perception is most often identified with the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Unlike his colleague, Jean-Paul Sartre, who argued for the freedom of the self to project consciousness unto the world, Merleau-Ponty felt that we need to accept the embodied nature of humans as subjects in order to adequately interpret human engagement with the world. Merleau-Ponty’s position also contrasts with earlier views of the self such as John Locke’s, which focused on the role of memory and psychology in establishing personal identity. Thus, the expression or conceptualization of “self” in art relates to debates about personhood in the philosophy of mind and body. As developed in Phenomenology of Perception (1945), the major achievement of Merleau-Ponty’s early philosophy was to locate the activity of perception in the body, rather than in a form of transcendent consciousness. He identified mental activities with the physical organism but denied a quantitative or causal analysis of bodily activity. This effort was a reaction to Cartesianism, which he felt creates a discontinuity between consciousness and the world. The central problem arising from Descartes is that the world is reduced to the status of a term of thought and

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART 245 only assimilated through the knowing mind. By locating perception in the body, Merleau-Ponty held that perception precedes all further science or knowing. The effect of this move was to point out the inadequacy of a dualistic body/mind model of consciousness. Henceforth, conceptualization is dependent upon perception. In this view, physical, biological, and mental processes are logically interdependent, which relates to the importance of affective processes in aesthetic interpretation. This interdependence of mind and body challenges sense-datum theory, which holds that mental processes are somehow separate and therefore capable of objective observation. By giving consciousness a locus in the body, knowledge is seen as “perspectivistic” and incomplete. Thus, meaning and affective response are intermediary between subjectivity and things. For the phenomenologist, it is intentionality that distinguishes consciousness from everything else in the universe. Husserl believed in a “self-behind-the-self,” a pure consciousness that is the starting point of all knowledge; others in the phenomenological tradition do not share this view. Whereas Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology located intentionality in a transcendent ego, Merleau-Ponty located intentionality in embodied consciousness. For Husserl consciousness exists as a pure region; for Merleau-Ponty it exists in a realm of contingencies. The intentional relation is a lived relation. This is an important point because the aesthetic problem for the phenomenologist is that of aesthetic experience’s relationship to intention: What is the source of intention and how is it revealed in the art object? In MerleauPonty’s view, the subject and object are no longer separate; rather the subjective mode consists of the process of perception, the objective mode of the act of expression. Because perception proceeds from a bodily perspective, it is always particular and biased. The body itself is an intentionality; it deals with the world and makes the world appear as meaningful reality. Aesthetics can be conceptualized in relation to the body: the embeddedness of consciousness through a unity of physiological, psychological, and symbolic components. For the purposes of understanding the representation of the self in art, the embodiment of meaning takes place through a process of vision. I am not referring only to the purely physiological aspects of vision, but to the process of perception and expression that comprises a communicative gesture. In Merleau-Ponty’s view of perception, “body” cannot be approached as an abstract or formal system, as if from a purely external point. Consciousness is of the body, not somehow transcendent or “above” it. The body or “flesh” as it is sometimes translated in Merleau-Ponty’s work is always—has always already become—determinate, oriented, slanted, characterized by style. Style, then, is as multiple and as unified as the flesh: it can be as general as the style of being itself, or as particular as the style through which we recognize our friends and acquaintances, the way one gesture fits into a lifestyle. Of the former, the style of the field of fields, Merleau-Ponty writes of “a sort of incarnate principle that brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being.”1

246 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART The general use of the term “style of being” in this passage indicates MerleauPonty’s claim that bodily perception is ontological—characteristic of the Being of beings—as well as ontic or applicable to individual beings. To the degree that Merleau-Ponty, like Heidegger, sought to call us back to a “remembrance of being,” he investigated this being through bodily perceptual processes. Merleau-Ponty’s “style of being” is not of the physico-mathematical or even the purely linguistic type; it is a unique conception of how “being” characterizes behavior toward others and the world, a certain way of patterning the world. “Merleau-Ponty calls these patterns ‘dimensions of history.’ . . . These are the styles that characterize historical epochs. On this basis, in The Prose of the World, MerleauPonty investigated style in the intertwining fields of painting, language and perception.”2 The disciplines are interlinked and manifested in interrelated styles that have a physical basis. Merleau-Ponty described the origins of style: Style exists (and hence signification) as soon as there are figures and background, a norm and deviation, a top and bottom, that is, as soon as certain elements of the world assume the value of dimensions to which subsequently all the rest relate and through which we can point them out.3 For the purposes of this book, we might add light and darkness or color and its absence to Merleau-Ponty’s list of elements of the world that structure our consciousness through style. Each person has their own style of relating their body to the perceptual field. Thus, communication involves bodily gesture; it is not a purely abstract activity. “These gestures of emphasis or understatement are the basis of style in perception.” 4 Working in a particular medium is a way of making the scattered meanings of perception exist in concrete form. Through a medium, perceptual style is consummated. One method that phenomenologists would use to understand the embodied nature of expressions of the self in art is bracketing. Bracketing involves a systematic “unpacking” of phenomena, in this case, artistic styles, such that one’s own perception of the phenomenon is the truest that it can be. Let us turn now to two traditions of the self as formulated in world art, the emergence of modern notions of subjectivity in seventeenth-century Europe and the mystical conception of the self in Zen.

An approach to the self through comparative analysis in art The traditional conception of the self in historical Western art is that of the soul. As I stated earlier in the chapter, the understanding of the self as soul has been challenged in modern times. But the fact that a view has been challenged does not necessarily mean that it has become obsolete. If it was a powerful mode of understanding in the past, it may continue to move modern viewers. True to Aquinas’s

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART 247 conception of the immanent, in Baroque interiors objects and figures functioned as physical manifestations of the spiritual and as a medium for gaining direct knowledge of spiritual truths. A painter of everyday scenes, such as Vermeer, through representations of figures, objects, curtains, windows, and the use of pictorial devices, called to mind corners of the soul. However, Vermeer also called our attention to the materiality of the real objects themselves. Vermeer’s ability to “spiritualize the real” continues to attract viewers today. At first sight the idea of the self, as expressed in paintings such as The Astronomer (1668) with its combined emphasis on mathematics, experimentation, and precise measurement, calls to mind the rationalism of Descartes. Through his choice of subject matter, Vermeer champions measurement, especially mapmaking, as a way to orient oneself spatially in the world. Astronomy, mapmaking, trade, and exploration all depend upon mathematics and techniques of precise measurement. Because each of these activities was becoming more prevalent in Holland during the Baroque period, measurement and exact observation of nature were entering more fully into the lives of the general population. The northern Baroque was characterized in the visual arts by the exact description of natural reality. Paintings such as The Astronomer could be taken as the expression of a mechanistic, laws-based view of reality, consistent with the rise of modern science. In this worldview there are general fixed

Figure 11.2 Jan Vermeer, The Astronomer, 1668. © Louvre, Paris, France/Lauros/ Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

248 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART principles that shape our relationship to the world; light from the window functions as a symbol of the learning and rational reflection that allows one to uncover these principles. In a quiet way Vermeer told us that the scientist was a hero in this new age. But Vermeer’s image also has a moral implication. The heavens had an association with the divine as the source of creation, and it was the astronomer who was investigating this divine order of the cosmos. Thus, the man depicted here is a philosopher, contemplating the creation of the divinely ordered cosmos as much as he is a scientist in the modern sense of the term. The modern conception of science was just in the beginning stages of its formation at the time the work was created. Modern thought about consciousness—the nature of self—also appeared in the Baroque, an age of dynamic intellectualism in which theories of the mind oscillated between emphasis upon the poles of the observing senses and the thinking mind. Epistemological debates (arguments about how we are able to gain knowledge of the world) centered on the question of whether abstract reasoning and mathematics are most important in our formation of knowledge or whether direct sensory observation (empiricism) is primary. For the rationalist, “self” refers to those aspects of an individual that constitute self-consciousness: the ability to reflect about the thoughts, actions, or intentions of oneself as evidenced by first-person reports. These kinds of statements do not require or necessarily make use of physical evidence. The focus upon a reasoning self, independent of sense experience, troubled the empiricists of the period. Descartes, the first to propose a rationalist notion of the human self, felt that the reality of the self is proved by the self-reflexive function of reason; the emphasis in rationalism is upon processes of the mind independent of the senses. However, Descartes’ conception of the self is not entirely mental because it supported the extension of rational thought into physical space. Cartesian rationalism yielded a unified continuity of space. Similarly, paintings of the Baroque construct a certain kind of viewer; they imply a single viewer in relation to a mathematically planned space. A unique quality of Vermeer’s paintings—the source of their “Vermeerness”—is his placement of the vanishing point, which is the point that determines the theoretical position of the viewer’s eye in linear-perspective painting. In his insightful book, Vermeer: Faith in Painting, Daniel Arasse explains that, over time, Vermeer developed a system of placing the vanishing point so that our view is below that of the figures depicted.5 This tends a priori to organize the representation of Vermeer’s subjects; it is part of the coherent structure of his paintings that makes them specifically Vermeerian. As Arasse notes, twenty of the twenty-four interiors painted by Vermeer imply that the viewer is slightly below the figure represented. Vermeer was able to evolve a system over time that created a particular effect, one that slightly monumentalizes his subjects while at the same time bringing us in closer to the space that they occupy. Vermeer makes deductive use of a principle of perspective in order to invite us into the particularity of domestic scenes. This parallels Descartes’ reliance on deductive reasoning—establishing general premises and then moving toward particular truths—as a way of supporting his claim of the independence of consciousness. Vermeer’s concept of self, both from his

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART 249

Figure 11.3 Jan Vermeer, Girl at a Window Reading a Letter, c. 1659. © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden/The Bridgeman Art Library International. Reproduced with permission.

self-perception as a creative artist and in the way that he positions the self of the viewer, reflects a Cartesian understanding of consciousness. However, even though Vermeer carefully controls the spatial arrangement of his paintings he introduces elements of mystery into them. As Arasse explains, Vermeer elaborates the foreground of his pictures so as to erect a visual barrier to the viewer’s

250 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART approach—the “passage to the interior is encumbered with objects”—and “one of the most common features of the ‘Vermeer structure’ is to obstruct access to interior space represented.”6 Devices such as the drawn-back curtain in Girl at a Window Reading a Letter (1659) reveal the central subject but also make us realize that there is something that we do not see, something inaccessible: In Girl Reading a Letter, Vermeer began the articulation of interior space that was his own. He sets aside an interior within the interior, an inner interior; he shows the privacy of the private, or, more exactly, an intimacy within privacy, which is, as a realm of reciprocal knowledge, inaccessible.7 In addition, Vermeer often uses oblique views; as with “the view from below” discussed earlier, this prevents us from seeing everything in the represented interior. He simultaneously invites us in but excludes us from sharing the view directly. This combination of mystery with the delight that we take in the precise planning of his paintings accounts for the particular expression of the “soul” that one discovers in Vermeer’s interiors. The combination of mystery and precise thought is also found in Vermeer’s handling of light and contour. The interior itself is a metaphor for the rich inner life of the artist; an interior with an open window allowing light symbolizes learning and spiritual faith. To reinforce this metaphor, Vermeer always conceals the outer world that the window opens upon. Instead, it is the light that comes into the room that is the focus of our attention. This is an animating light, one that makes visible, but also supplies life through the implication of movement. Vermeer achieves this animated, luminous effect through two means. Surprisingly for a realist, he does not crisply delineate the objects in his paintings in a linear fashion. In Vermeer’s paintings, the edges are softened, a painterly technique that was unusual at the time. This is Vermeer’s personal version of what Leonardo called sfumato, a softening of the edges of forms in a somewhat diffusely lit atmosphere in order to lend an effect of grace to the subject. It is significant in this regard that Vermeer chose the large open window as his most common source of light—a source that would create a more diffuse lighting condition than a smaller window or a specular artificial source such as a candle flame. The second technique that created the effect of animating light was a kind of pointillist scattering of beads of color across the surfaces of solid forms. These dots of light and color are especially found on brilliant, reflective surfaces. As Arasse explains, “Vermeer’s choice . . . was that of a colorist working with light” in contrast to his fellow artists who focused on form delineated in a draughtsman-like manner or based upon strong contrasts of light and dark.8 The latter, of course, is found in Rembrandt, an artist whose approach was much different than Vermeer’s. For Rembrandt, light expresses moral conflict in an expressively forceful manner; for Vermeer, light is a classical principle, an element that creates formal balance and

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART 251 serenity while at the same time yielding incredibly naturalistic results. Vermeer illuminates the private world of the self—his own, his subject’s, and the viewer’s— through his ability to synthesize precise observation and the rational ordering of space with animating mystery. In his art we discover an intellectual intensity in the midst of serenity. This synthesis of rationalism, empirical observation, and luminous mystery creates a whole that is organized and bounded by the artist’s intellect and imagination; his organizing consciousness is the source of a work that transcends a specific moment. But his ability to capture the reality of a specific moment draws us into the represented interior of the lives that he depicts. In this image, which centers upon a letter read by a young woman, the clear implication is that the element of interior life that we are witnessing is that of love; the letter probably represents a contemplation and reflection upon love. We are the witness to a specific, poignant moment of tenderness, but the representation of that tender moment depends upon a virtuosic mastery of the techniques of observation and representation in painting. Vermeer’s art represents a tour de force in the synthesis of inductive and deductive thought as it applies to painting. How does this talent relate to philosophical or religious notions of the self that were common at the time? Earlier, I described the relationship between Vermeer’s spatial arrangement and Descartes’ conceptualization of rational space as an extension of consciousness. However, an important aspect of the Baroque period is its complexity. It was not unlike our own time in that it contained widely divergent tendencies within the same period. As a result, Vermeer cannot be understood solely through the lens of rationalism. The Baroque contained the high public drama of the Counter-Reformation, a period of intense faith and renewed religious authority. Vermeer himself reflected the religious struggles of the time. He converted to Catholicism from Calvinism in his early twenties, probably in order to be allowed to marry his wife, but perhaps due in addition to the faith that Catholics have traditionally placed in the spiritual power of images. The use of images for purposes of inward representation is an idea that would have appealed to Vermeer in the formation of his own artistic identity.9 Vermeer’s life may have reflected a struggle to balance or even resolve religious and political contradictions as well as freedoms: how could he combine the Catholic visionary tradition with the personal drama of intuitive subjectivity and religiosity that developed in the Protestant north? The result in his art was a unique kind of spiritualized realism, and the domestic interior was the subject that served him best in developing a representation of the private, spiritual self in its everyday existence. One clue to the presence of the spiritual in everyday life in the seventeenth century is the representation of music in art. In the next image by Vermeer, overleaf, the lute itself is a key symbol; it stands for sensuality and love. Its rounded form is associated with femininity and fertility. As with Girl at a Window Reading a Letter, the young woman pictured here may be contemplating the arrival of her lover, with whom she will resume her musical courtship. But the lute, with its musical association, also symbolized a source of spiritual comfort. The harmony of music

252 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART

Figure 11.4 Jan Vermeer, Woman with a Lute, c. 1664. © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library. Reproduced with permission.

corresponds to a state of spiritual harmony and balance. About one-third of Vermeer’s paintings include a reference to music, and music was a common subject in the work of artists of the time. With its softness of contour and quality of light, the painting is consistent with Vermeer’s other interiors in its evocation of intimate interior spaces. Referencing music was another way of creating an art that expressed the interior self or consciousness. To paraphrase a philosopher of the period, John Locke, from his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), the concept of personal identity that Vermeer developed in his art is distinct from physical identity. (Indeed, we do not have a self-portrait of Vermeer himself, yet we feel we know him, at least to some degree.) The self is

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART 253 a result of the reflection by the mind on its own operations. According to Locke, personal identity is equivalent to the identity of self and is essentially a private identity. Likewise, it is Vermeer’s emphasis on the essentially private nature of identity that makes his art an important expression of self-concept in his time. Locke draws a clear distinction between the identity of the private self and public man, especially in cases where public conflict is involved. Though self-identity is essentially private, “the identity of a man and the actions he commits are public.”10 For example, somebody is punished for actions when he is drunk, even though he may have been a “different person” (in a different state of consciousness) at the time, because he is punished according to that which is public. As Catherine McCall explains, Locke has made it clear that it is “not the person which is accountable to human justice, but the man. The person or self is accountable to God.”11 Locke, then, locates self in the continuity of consciousness. In this view, no one else can have my consciousness: it is an individuating feature that is essentially private in nature. The visual devices that Vermeer employed embodied both the structuring nature of consciousness and its essential privacy. Not surprisingly, his quiet, smallscale interior scenes often depict the activities of writing, reading, or music making: activities of thought, reflection, and learning. This conceptualization of the self may seem at odds with the description of phenomenology earlier in this chapter, and, indeed, it is. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology emphasizes a greater role for the physical body in distinguishing identity. But we need to distinguish competing concepts of the self, rooted in the philosophies of different periods, from the methodological value of phenomenological analysis. One is able to enter into the world of Vermeer, not through detailed biographical analysis of the artist (not enough information exists to allow this), but through precise “bracketing” of the physical and formal features of his artwork as found in the scholarship of Arasse. Phenomenological analysis, which emphasizes this kind of bracketing, provides a framework for understanding changes in art, even though the concept of identity that emerges within phenomenological theory may contrast strongly with that of earlier conceptions of self.

Contrasting conceptions of the self in China and Japan To this point in the chapter, we have been considering Western philosophies of self and an extended example, the art of Vermeer, drawn from the history of Western art. This focus leads us to a question: Is the notion of the self or soul already an expression of a Western worldview? If so, how? One might argue that a concern for art as self-expression or self-representation grows out of the focus on personal will, subjectivity, and agency that is found in the West. Will and soul relate to spiritual conceptions of self; agency arises from a politicized understanding of self; subjectivity arises from psychological sources. All of these imply a strong focus on the individual and all of these have deep sources within Western cultures. Philosophers and, as a result, their philosophies, are the products of culture. In his

254 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART book, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . and Why (2004), the social psychologist Richard Nisbett explains that the cultural focus of ancient Greece was upon personal freedom, individuality, and philosophical objectivity. Ancient Greece was a maritime culture, and its maritime location made trading a lucrative activity. The wealth generated by trade allowed the Greeks the opportunity to value education for its own sake and not to see it solely as a route to greater fortune. Located at the heart of the world of trade, the Greeks had to learn to deal with the varied perspectives of their many trading partners. This environment fostered an appreciation of learning, argument, and discussion in political and philosophical contexts, and the prevalence of these activities meant that the Greeks had to develop cognitive strategies for dealing with opposing points of view. Eventually, argument came to be central to the politics of the day. Thus, the freedom of movement associated with trade allowed for the development of free inquiry and debate by individuals. By contrast to Greek maritime trade, one of the mother cultures of East Asia, China’s, favored agriculture, especially rice farming. Different ecologies will lead to differing economic, political, and social arrangements and, therefore, to different social constructions of selfhood. Rice farming led to communalism and associated collectivist values. It could be argued that in strongly collectivist cultures, the self is not perceived as an entity apart from its relationship to group, ancestor, and community. And most Asian cultures tend to be much more collectivist than those in the West. As we saw in Chapter 8, Confucianism as a social philosophy incorporated those values that emphasized the interests of the group over those of the individual self. Taoism as well de-emphasized the notion of the autonomous self by positing a mystical union of humans and nature. It seems, then, that East and West would display fundamentally contrasting attitudes regarding the presentation of self in art. This is exactly the argument that has been made by scholars who feel that the case for significant influence of Eastern art on modern Western art has been overstated. For instance, Washburn feels that traditional Asian art is marked by a “cool levitation of spirit,” a “weightlessness,” and a “focus on the transparent present” in which the element of time seems suspended.12 The concern of Eastern artists and thinkers is that “too much focus on self betrays nature.” By contrast, Western art, according to Washburn, involves an attempt to “uncover man’s tormented soul” that takes place in a “pilgrimage across time.” Art in the Western world involves a sense of striving or reaching for the unattainable that comes back to the question of will. Western artwork is too personal and emotional to be explained by the spirit of mu or emptiness that pervades Eastern thought. One might add that it is bound up with the individual problem of the ego in a way that is more pervasive than art found in a collectivist society. How, then, is the “self” constructed and negotiated in Eastern cultures? This is a difficult question to answer because most accounts of Eastern aesthetics and philosophy of self have reflected Western opinion more than Eastern reality. In addition, the encounter with Eastern worldviews is relatively recent: little effort was

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART 255 made to study Eastern art and philosophy until the nineteenth century. The initial attraction to the East was to Indian thought, not Chinese or Japanese, as is seen in Friedrich von Schlegel’s romantic writing and in the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In the United States the attraction to Indian thought was evident in the writing of the Transcendentalists during the 1840s. The early twentieth century saw the English language publication of the I Ching, which focuses on cosmic rhythms and the role of chance in nature, and the Tao Te Ching, which contained the central verses of Taoism; their publication coincided with the many idealistic and humanitarian movements that arose before World War I such as the peace movement, animal protectionism, vegetarianism, and the temperance movement. It was at this time as well—just before World War I—that Kandinsky made his experiments that led to the breakthrough to abstraction in art, his famous Improvisations. He painted thirty-five of these, and he saw them as primarily unconscious impressions of his “inner nature.” The improvisation, with its idea of “sudden expression,” was unusual in Western art and music at the time, but it reflects the Rinzai Zen concept of the “sudden attainment” of satori (the breakthrough to Enlightenment). It is notable, then, that improvisation has grown ever more central as an element of the arts throughout the last 100 years. Zen, with its implication of a role for chance, experienced as sudden insight, in artistic creativity, had become a major subject of interest for Western artists and theorists by the 1950s when there was a “Zenboom” in Western culture, and Zen remains of interest today. As one entry point into the idea of the “self” in the East, what might we gather about the conception of the “self” that is found within Zen? During the post-World War II period—from the 1940s through the 1960s— change occurred in attitudes about creative activity itself. These influences primarily came from Eastern philosophies or worldviews. A fundamental change took place in art as European and American artists of the forties and fifties tried to achieve a synthesis between the East and the West. While Kandinsky’s influences from earlier in the century were important, characteristics of Zen-influenced art and creativity such as abstractness, spontaneity, linearity, calligraphic and automatic qualities, simplicity, and directness in composition seemed to reinforce the importance of Kandinsky’s insights. An interest in the East represented an attempt to move away from the goal of the accurate representation of nature that had been central to Western art for centuries. From this perspective, the task of art is not illusion or the copying of nature; rather the artist should try to discover the underlying processes that nature uses in generating forms. At mid-century the process of creation was given more emphasis by Zen-influenced artists in both Japan and the West than the appearance or quality of the final art object. Eastern thought’s emphasis on “process rather than product” influenced John Cage, the American avant-garde composer who was one of the primary interpreters of Zen in the West. Cage cultivated chance methods of musical composition (aleatory methods) that he felt reflect an attitude toward nature rooted in Asian philosophy. Instead of restating surface appearances, art should reveal how the mind and nature operate.

256 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART Zen aesthetics involves less emphasis on the artist’s intent and individuality. Because of this, the impact of Zen challenged the view of the artist’s role that had lingered since the Romantic period, in which artists are seen as special kinds of people who are more passionate and emotionally sensitive to their surroundings than others and, therefore, more expressive than non-artists. Instead, art came to be seen as springing from a particular kind of heightened mental awareness or mindfulness that anyone can achieve. The creative process was viewed as analogous to meditation: the idea that art is produced in a special kind of conscious state, not the regular everyday level of awareness. Specific books were reshaping the thinking of artists: the Tao Te Ching was read by artists such as Mark Tobey, Bernard Leach, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Carl André, Isamu Noguchi, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the composer Cage. These are just a few of the artists influenced by Eastern art and philosophy during the twentieth century. (Zen Buddhism had grown out of a Chinese branch of Buddhism called Ch’an that blended Zen and Taoist practices.) Many books by D. T. Suzuki, a Japanese monk who became an interpreter of Zen for Western audiences, and Eugen Herrigel’s book, Zen in the Art of Archery (1953), which was immediately popular, exposed readers to the philosophy of Zen itself. Herrigel’s writing, in particular, showed how Zen could be integrated with an activity, archery. It is the doing of Zen in everyday practice that transforms the self. Another influential book was the Chinese “book of changes” or I Ching. The I Ching led to a new appreciation of randomness or synchronous events; cosmic rhythms superseded the imposed order of human plans. Processes involving chance methods were introduced into creative activity by artists who had read the book. What is the relationship of these key texts to the idea of the “self”? The problem of the self began to be seen as involving the release of the control of the ego. One source of Zen Buddhism is Taoism; there is a direct relationship between these traditions. Taoism began in China in about the fourth century BCE. Buddhism began in the sixth century BCE in India. By contrast, Zen Buddhism did not begin in Japan until the twelfth century CE. Thus, many centuries had passed since the origin of these spiritual paths, which had allowed for significant interaction between these traditions. Both the Taoists and Zen Buddhists tend to distrust intellectual theorization as part of the path toward enlightenment. For them, logical thought involves dualist thinking and dualistic thought is an obstacle to Enlightenment. Dualism involves exclusion and limitation: to define something is also to say what it is not. For Taoists and Zen Buddhists, thinking within the frame of exclusion and limitation limits human freedom. In their methods they value direct insight and a kind of “wordless teaching” that comes about through a relationship between a master teacher and a student or disciple. These are intended to move the Zen practitioner from the habit of dualist thought, inherent in Western rationalism, toward a more synthetic, even mystical, understanding of reality. In Zen, art is a skill or meditative practice that leads to direct insight. It is a practice, not an aspect of ritual within a religion based upon dogma or a way of illustrating

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART 257 Figure 11.5 Portrait of a Zen master (15th century). © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence. Reproduced with permission.

religious tales. Making art is an act of being; one learns and grows by doing it rather than through following rules written in texts. The same applies to Zen: there is no holy book in Zen, only a focus on concrete things in reality. Yes, there are some methods to Zen. For instance, an initiate will learn from a koan, which is given to her or him by a master. In Zen, the role of the master is limited; instead, the view is that we must each teach ourselves. Also common to Taoism and Zen is the view that humans are at one with nature: the same principle that informs all things in nature animates humans, so there is no separation between humankind and nature by virtue of reason or intellect as we often see in the West. This view is not primitivism, a kind of Eastern version of humans as “noble savages.” Rather, the realization of the oneness of humans and nature is an element of the freedom and emancipation that occurs with Enlightenment. An element of satori is the experience of wholeness, a sudden breakthrough to the realization of the interconnected nature of all that is. Again, the only way that this realization comes about is through intuitive realization—a sudden, dramatic shift in consciousness—and not from rational argumentation. Thus, we can see that Zen involves a view of the self as free, intuitive, and mystically integrated

258 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART Figure 11.6 Nakahara Nantembo, Bodhidharma (Daruma), 1911. © Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. Reproduced with permission.

This image by Nantembo is of Bodhidharma (Daruma), who is considered to be the first patriarch of Zen. Bodhidharma brought the branch of Buddhism that came to be known as Zen from India to China, probably in the fifth or early sixth century. This sect of Buddhism called Ch’an in China became the source of Zen Buddhism in Japan after Japanese Buddhist monks became acquainted with it in 1191. The inscription on the image reads from left to right and reads “A single flower opens to five petals / And bears fruit according to its own nature” (Ikka goyo wo hiraku / Kekka shizen ni kitaru). This is a variation on a couplet attributed to Bodhidharma. Zen painting was part of Nantembo’s daily spiritual practice. He was known for his intensity and energy, which is seen in the strength and spontaneity of his brushwork. Strong and active to the day of his death at the age of 87, Nantembo would discipline his students with a stout staff, a branch of the nanten tree. Thus, his nickname was Nantembo. He is believed to have created as many as 100,000 works of Zen art. In this painting, as in many Zen works, the rapidly executed brushstroke appears rough, irregular, and unfinished. Such qualities reflect the swiftness and directness of the experience of Enlightenment.

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART 259 with nature; however, in order to achieve this state, a fair amount of dedication to the practice of meditation (of which art can be one means of practicing) is needed. The overall goal of Zen is a unity or integration of the mind; in fact, “unity of the mind” is the meaning of the terms “Zen” (Japanese), “Ch’an” (Chinese), and “Dhyana” (Indian). As a result the hold of the ego, or the illusion of the self as separate, is transcended by an intuitive sense of the interconnectivity of all that is. The Zen monk and teacher, Nantembo, exemplifies the combination of freedom and dedication at the heart of Zen. His calligraphic art was created with sudden execution, a reflection of the sudden breakthrough that is one quality of satori. But, he had dedicated himself to the practice of Zen after the death of his mother, when he was only a boy of seven, and was raised in a series of temples known for their ascetic austerity. Later, as a teacher, he had a reputation for the strict standards that he applied to his personal practice of Zen. The attempt to depict nature realistically was never an important part of Zen art; early on painters realized that “realistic” painting could never do justice to nature. Painters should abandon this attempt and, instead, create living objects or scenes out of their own imaginations. The work of painting has merit apart from its level of fidelity in resemblance because the creative spirit moves in the brushstroke itself; painting involves entering into “brush mind,” not photographic rendering. Even the preference for black and white painting in Zen comes from an appreciation for abstraction; color reminds the viewer too much of nature itself. However, the process of painting in Zen is a reflection of nature. The world itself is constantly and dynamically changing. Only an art that is spontaneous and direct can incorporate the dynamism of life: to stop and analyze something in the midst of flow is to kill it. Thus, the Zen-influenced artist seeks to establish a unity with his or her materials rather than to strictly control them. Ironically, this spontaneity is attained only after a committed, disciplined learning process. One immerses oneself in spontaneous calligraphic painting after many hours spent practicing the formation of the kanji (Chinese-derived calligraphic characters). One goal of this extended period of learning and practice is the unity of the subject and object (of the self and the world); the artist achieves oneness with matter—and with the materials of his or her art. Thus, the spontaneity that is part of art is the spontaneity of Nature itself; rapidly executed line expresses the dynamism found in all of nature. Zen is not characterized by social “good works” or elaborate rituals; it is not even a religion in the formal sense of the term. Rather it is an attitude that carries over into all of life. The mindset at the heart of it means that many activities can be “art.” Some of the traditional favored activities include flower arrangement (ikebana), the tea ceremony, the rock garden (karensui), and achromatic ink painting (sumi-e). In these activities, as in meditation, the practitioner inhabits a state of being that allows for direct insight into spiritual reality: artistic process and meditative process are the same. In Zen, art liberates the self. But it is not a wallowing in the self—in the drama of the emotions or the ego.

260 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART Consistent with the idea of the liberation of the self, the Buddhist concept mu means “emptiness” as the foundation of being and thought. In practice, this is tied to an emphasis on an attitude of detachment: the mastery of the bow in archery or the brush in painting enables a lack of dependence upon it. Detachment leads to a gradual transcendence of every relationship. Emptiness is also a formal aspect of much Zen-influenced art; large empty spaces appear in sumi-e paintings and the appreciation of Zen gardens depends upon an awareness of intervals or spaces much as the rocks inhabit the garden. Emptiness is central to meditation: mushin means “no mind.” A mind that is not occupied by thought, emotion, or ego is a liberated mind; in such a state one acts directly and intuitively, without overt concern for goals, intentions, and techniques. Mushin relates to the state of egolessness. The concept of “self” at the heart of Zen is “no-self.” But this sense of no-self is not empty: it involves embodiment at the level of tacit consciousness. Actions in the flow of life, unencumbered by strategies, desires, and rationalizations, spring from the state of mushin. Mushin is self-awareness but without self-concept or self-judgment, because self-concept and judgment often involve the internalization of external judgments about oneself. The self is purely experiential rather than layered with self-judgments that we internalize, often based upon the judgments of others. On the other hand, mushin does not involve a private self separated from the community of others. To study the way of the Buddha is to study the self, and to study the self is to forget the self; and to forget the self is to be enlightened by others . . . The result of this forceful analysis of modem Japanese philosophy is the banishing of any notion of an isolated, skin-encapsulated, private self as the ultimate foundation of personal existence.13 Thus, one of the most important implications of mushin or no-self is the existence of a continuity of one’s being with the world. All other beings in the world are similar to us in their fundamental make-up. In Zen thought, there is no boundary between self and the world.

Conclusion We have seen that the question of the self in world art raises important philosophical questions. Because the notion of the “self” in a particular period or culture is socially constructed, it can vary widely. Phenomenology is one modern philosophical tradition that is concerned with the idea of the self; it approaches the self by giving personal intention a bodily basis. This concept of the “embodied self” is useful for understanding art because it also springs from physical processes that reflect the interaction of our bodily selves with a perceptual field. The construction of self in art can be analyzed by peeling back the layers of style, symbolism, and methods of pictorial construction used to create particular artworks

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF “SELF” IN ART 261 in order to reveal the concept of self. We considered two examples from world art in which the experience of selfhood is central to the work. Vermeer’s paintings were created at the time of the transition from an understanding of self as soul toward a more psychological view of the private subjective self. His paintings contain subject matter and pictorial devices that embody both of these concepts. By contrast, the Zen art of Nantembo reflects a long tradition of Japanese ink painting, drawn from Chinese sources, in which the concept of self is revealed through the action used to create an image. This action is not associated with personal self-expression, but with an emptying of the self—mushin—that allows one to transcend the limits of ego and “self-expression.” These examples could be multiplied infinitely in the consideration of world art, for the relationship of self to art is as varied as each individual. However, comparative analysis allows us to see that the self, like other aspects of our life, is, ultimately, cultural in nature. Like the other “frames” that we have considered in the course of these chapters, the “self” is a window onto a world of diversity and understanding.

GLOSSARY

analysis of style This is strongly associated with the research of the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin, who, in works including his Principles of Art History (1915), distinguished stylistic tendencies such as closed versus open forms and linear versus painterly techniques in painting. He applied these stylistic contrasts to various periods of Western art history, but also used them in order to comparatively analyze the differences between the arts of distinct cultures. the Baroque A period of stylistic experimentation and complexity. In the visual arts, it corresponds roughly to the seventeenth century (the flowering of the style in music occurs later). The southern Baroque originated in Italy and is characterized by exaggerated embellishment in architecture and strong chiaroscuro coupled with spatial illusionism in painting. This book, however, focuses on an artist of the northern Baroque, Vermeer, who mostly painted genre scenes of domestic interiors, one of the key subjects of Dutch painters during the period. bourgeoisie The capitalist class. It is the group in a capitalist society that owns the resources necessary for the production and distribution of goods. The bourgeoisie is associated with the rise of the upper middle class in contrast to the aristocracy, whose wealth and prestige are based upon title. While wealth is naturally concentrated in a capitalist society, bourgeois values can spread throughout society and, in that case, members of the broader middle class can be considered bourgeois. Because of their association with investment, business, and trade, the bourgeoisie are historically urban dwellers. In Marxist thought, the bourgeoisie are seen as in direct conflict with the proletariat, whose labor they control. chiaroscuro The full use of light and dark in an image, whether it is one that is drawn, painted, or photographed. The technique became popular during the Renaissance and was fully exploited during the Baroque. In general, the artist will

GLOSSARY 263 employ the darkest darks and lightest lights accompanied by a full range of intermediate values. This affords the artist the fullest potential for modeling the form (creating a convincing sense of three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional surface). Because the technique involves strong contrast between light and dark, there is often a symbolic meaning consistent with the metaphorical associations of light and dark that is associated with the image. Dada A term that “means nothing” in itself, but which is the name for an artistic movement that emerged simultaneously in New York and Zurich during World War I. The movement’s members rejected bourgeois notions of art and the artistic taste associated with the upper middle classes as well. Dadaists were the first to completely challenge the notion of art, leading, in the case of Marcel Duchamp, to a preference for “anti-art.” Duchamp himself stopped making art during the 1910s, preferring instead to exhibit readymades, everyday objects that were wrenched from their daily context into the space of the gallery. The only factor affecting the reception of these objects as art was the choice of the artist; readymades thus radically called the importance of artistic “skill” into question. The Dadaists’ nihilistic approach to art carried over into a broader revolutionary social agenda, especially in Germany after the end of the war. The artistic expressions of the Dadaists were often deliberately disorganized, playful, and irreverent. Dadaist approaches are now seen as forerunners of performance art, conceptual art, and the use of randomness and chance in the creative processes of twentieth-century artists who followed them. Dogon A tribe of people living in central Mali in an area of broad plains that includes a dramatic cliff escarpment. They have historically lived against the side of this escarpment, possibly as a defensive measure due to their rejection of Islam when it originally entered the area. Their traditional belief system is based upon ancestral worship and animism. These beliefs underlie the most important ceremonies of the Dogon, such as the Sigui ceremony, and clans, such as the Awa clan, discussed in the main text. femme fatale A fictional deadly woman who, through seduction, can lead her victim into danger and ruin. Because the path to ruination begins with seduction, her sexual charms and beauty are often emphasized in descriptions or images of women of this type. The fascination with the character at the end of the nineteenth century may have reflected a compensation for, or liberation from, the restrictive aspects of Victorian morality. It is significant that Beardsley’s illustrations appear in the last decade of that era. However, the femme fatale had flourished during the Romantic period of the early nineteenth century as well. She was common during the medieval period and appears often in the modern cinematic imagination. Thus, the femme fatale may have an archetypal quality for those who accept the validity of Jung’s concept. Formalism A set of related theories that emphasizes that the appreciation of art depends upon understanding aspects internal to the construction of artworks. In the

264 GLOSSARY visual arts, this includes elements of color, line, shape, volume, and so on. In formalism, the subject matter and context of art are considered of less importance than the underlying structure of art itself. Formalism can be contrasted with various instrumental and expressive theories of art, which emphasize an artwork’s role as a vehicle for delivering content. This content can be social or psychological in nature, but it is considered to have an import and a reality beyond the purely formal structure of the artwork. German Expressionism An art movement that consisted of two distinct branches. The first, Die Brücke (the Bridge), began in 1905 under the leadership of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938). He and his fellow artists, including Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Fritz Bleyl, were architecture students but were drawn to painting and printmaking. They were also heavily influenced by non-Western art and the work of Gauguin and Van Gogh. The group was dissolved in 1913, but the style overall was influential into the 1920s and was revived under the guise of Neoexpressionism during the 1970s and 1980s by artists such as Georg Baselitz. A second branch of the original German Expressionist movement, Der Blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider), was active from 1911 to 1914. The group formed around the leadership of the Russian Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. They published an almanac, now a famous document in the history of modernism, which included images of primitive, folk, and children’s art. Gestalt psychology A branch of German psychology from the early twentieth century, which asserted that the brain functions in a holistic manner. Theorists such as Kurt Koffka and Max Wertheimer noted that, when perceiving visually, the brain tends to perceive items in cohesive, integrated patterns. Innate principles, such as the tendency to group proximate objects, govern perception. The most fundamental of these principles is the law of prägnanz, which holds that through our processes of perception we tend to create order, regularity, continuity, and simplicity. Other laws govern closure, proximity, similarity, and symmetry. the Guerrilla Girls A group of radical women artists who have challenged the gender imbalance in the culture industry including galleries, museums, and in Hollywood. The group’s membership is anonymous; when they appear in public, they wear gorilla masks. They have used an array of media including posters, books, and appearances in order to present their anti-discriminatory feminist views. Beginning in the 1980s, they noticed that women comprise a small percentage of exhibiting artists but a large percentage of nudes represented in artworks. Their campaigns have been directed toward societal issues such as violence against women as well as the issue of gender imbalance in the art world. Homer’s Odyssey A work of epic poetry that was composed sometime between 800 and 600 BCE. Homer is believed to have been one of many traveling poets, or rhapsodoi, who entertained audiences with sung recitations of their tales. His poems chronicle the siege of Troy and the return home of the hero, Odysseus. This theme

GLOSSARY 265 of the return home—Nostos—was common in the tradition of sung epic poetry. Homer actually composed two long poems; the Iliad concerns war, courage, and honor, whereas the Odyssey focuses on the return of the hero. hybridity A specific concept within postcolonial theory, where its meanings extend beyond the simple idea of mixing associated with the creation of hybrids in nature. Hybridity occurred in the context of colonialism, and it also occurs through the processes of migration, displacement, and international economic activity that characterize modern globalization. By emphasizing multiple sources of cultural expression, the idea of hybridity counters the idea that any source or any one period of cultural production is necessarily more essential than another; it counters essentialism. Sometimes cultural hybridity is referred to as transculturation. Japonisme The fashion for Japanese decorative arts—ceramics, textiles, folding screens, clothing, accessories, and prints—that began in the 1860s and continued into the early twentieth century. Japan was opened to the West through the traderelated, and military-backed efforts of the United States during the 1850s. It had been closed to the Western world due to the policies of the Tokugawa Shogunate (military government) since the 1630s. When contact was renewed, England and other countries in Europe were in the midst of a revival of handcraft. Exposure to Japan and its rich tradition of craft strongly influenced this movement. In addition, the European avant-garde began in the 1860s partly under the influence of the visual strategies present in Japanese art that was being seen in Europe for the first time. Paris was a center of the trade in Japanese decorative arts and prints; the term Japonisme reflects this centrality since it is French in origin. koan A deliberately irrational question; meditation upon it is intended to aid the Zen Buddhist initiate in transcending their reliance upon rational experience. The student must rely upon a direct apprehension of meaning, similar to the Western idea of intuition, in order to realize the meaning of a koan. Such intuition is related to the way that awakening occurs during Enlightenment; a koan is thus an element of the training necessary to achieve Enlightenment. Manifest Destiny The nineteenth-century belief that the United States was destined to expand territorially across the North American continent. The idea was used to justify the war with Mexico (1846–1848), which resulted from the annexation of Texas in 1845. More generally, the doctrine is seen as evidence of the self-perception of the superiority of the “Anglo-Saxon race” during the nineteenth century. A sense of racial and moral superiority led to an assumption that Anglo-Americans had a “mission” to spread American institutions westward. Implicit in this belief was a rejection of the monarchical traditions of Europe in favor of “New World” principles of freedom, democracy, and republicanism. The idea was revived periodically throughout the century, especially in relation to conflicts arising over territorial expansion, and even served as part of President Wilson’s rationale for America’s entry into World War I. For leftist critics, the term is sometimes referenced today

266 GLOSSARY as part of the core belief system driving modern “American Imperialism.” The idea is closely related to cultural as well as political forms of expansionist and imperialistic behavior. material culture A concept that means different things to varied audiences. For archeologists it refers to the artifacts of the varied cultures that are being studied, but with an emphasis on the nature of the objects themselves. Whether shards of pottery or projectile points, considering the materiality (physical nature of an object) of the artifact is an important element of understanding it. For art historians, the term material culture refers not so much to the physical aspect of an object as its everyday use. A focus on the actual use of objects in everyday life has a leveling effect: breaking down the barriers between craft, design, folk art, and fine art reveals that all involve the experience of objects in everyday life. Thus, the conversion of an object from artifact or craft or design to art implies a shift in strategies related to its everyday usage. Display, then, is one kind of use or activity that contextualizes objects. mimesis Another word for imitation, this was the basis of classical Greek aesthetics. For the Greeks, though, imitation was not the mere imitation of appearances by artists. Plato, in particular, held that the highest artistic imitation is that of the creator who composed the universe as an imitation of unchanging forms. The creator modeled the world as a reflection of ultimate reality. He distinguished between divine art and human art: all created things are imitations of their eternal archetypes or “forms.” Thus, classical aesthetics contains a notion of ideal forms at the heart of the concept of mimesis. Some non-Western traditions such as that of the Yoruba also emphasize that representations express divinely ordered principles as much as they restate appearances. The concept of “mimesis at the midpoint,” therefore, is a form of representation that takes into account a level of idealization of that which is being represented. modernism An art movement that involved a set of related though competing styles. It began in Europe before World War I (around 1905) and included all of the isms of that time period: Fauvism, Futurism, Orphism, Expressionism, Cubism, Rayonism, and so on. Thus, modernism is an umbrella concept that includes many related styles under it; some writers conceive of modernism as an “Age” rather than a style per se. Though modernism mostly developed in Europe, its influence spread rapidly to Britain, the United States, South America, and Japan. The world wars brought about a powerful backlash against modernism in Europe, both from the right (Militarism, Fascism) and the left (Communism). However, modernism was firmly revived with the development of Abstract Expressionism in the United States during the 1940s. Most analysts would argue that we have left modernism behind; others continue to see elements of modernism in current art. Modernism, then, is a definable cultural Age with a beginning and an end. Modernism is not a synonym for modern. The move toward modernism in the visual arts involved a move toward

GLOSSARY 267 abstraction. Even though modernists did not usually create art about the events of the time when they were creating, their work still is part of the cultural context in which it was created. It is a response to its time. Along with being a response to its time, modernism implies a rejection of the past, or at least a detachment from the past. This detachment had religious, intellectual, and political sources. Moulin Rouge A cabaret built in the Paris neighborhood of Montmartre in 1889. It is close to a red light district. It was there that the can-can dance originated, a dance featuring seductive moves by the prostitutes who worked from the site. Striptease may have been performed there as well. The club was made famous by Toulouse-Lautrec’s images from the early 1890s and, more recently, by a film, Moulin Rouge!, directed by Baz Luhrmann in 2001. Myers-Briggs test: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) A psychometric test developed by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myer, that was designed to identify people with patterns of personality and the traits of thought, feeling, and perception associated with them. The personality theory upon which the test was developed was originated by Carl Jung and presented in his book, Psychological Types (English edition, 1923). The test has been used to help its takers with personal development, career choice, relationship, workplace, and other life challenges. outsider art or artist An outsider artist is one who is not trained by traditional means such as academies, art schools, or university art departments. In addition, the artist usually does not produce for a gallery setting. Often such artists begin producing art later in life, doing so based upon visions, religious beliefs, or other strong personal convictions and experiences. The mentally ill sometimes produce visionary works of art and are a subclassification of outsider artists. patriarchy(al) This refers in its origins to Biblical figures, including Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac, who are felt to be the fathers of the human race. A patriarchal social system, then, is characterized by male social authority but also by the veneration of figures that incorporate values associated with men and their power. This privileging of values associated with male power would occur at the level of the family, the clan, the state, and even at the level of cosmic understanding, as in religious thought. Since Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all “Abrahamic religions,” patriarchy has a long history and continues to be very powerful today. The standard Hebrew text places Abraham’s life in the early second millennium BCE (circa 1800 BCE); patriarchy has been a dominant feature of religious and social life for 4,000 years. postmodernism A broad critical concept that reflects the social crises of the late twentieth century. The last half of the century can be seen as the period of the “fall of colonialism,” a time when many former colonies engaged in campaigns of liberation that were cultural as well as political in nature. Assumed “centers” of cultural production, once strongly identified with key cities in industrially advanced

268 GLOSSARY Western Europe and North America, were now challenged by those who had been politically and culturally marginalized. There were similar liberation movements by women and racial and sexual minorities within those locations as well. Socially, postmodernism reflects increasing pluralism within society; this social pluralism is reflected by increasing stylistic pluralism in the arts. Boundaries of all kinds, whether the boundaries between nations or those between “high” and “low” aspects of culture, have been challenged as part of this inversion of the relationship between margin and center. In general, then, art has become much more social and much less formal in its concerns during the last thirty years. Though a resistance to definition and easy encapsulation is a part of postmodernism as a critical concept, postmodernist artists also often investigate the relationship between social issues and modern communication technologies. the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood A group of artists and poets, formed in 1848, who were drawn to the artistic tradition of the fifteenth century, the first century of the Renaissance. The group felt that Raphael and the “classical” tradition that emerged from his influence—represented in England by the influence of Joshua Reynolds—were too formulaic and devoid of feeling in their approach. By contrast, they sought to emphasize personal integrity and spirituality in art, which they felt had been more strongly emphasized in the medieval period than in more recent eras. Though the aesthetic underpinning of the movement was symbolic and spiritual, their technique was precise and involved detailed observation of nature. punk An underground musical style that originated in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia during the 1970s. Bands associated with the style in its origin include The Clash, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols. The style is “antimusical” in the sense that complex musical structures and traditional notions of skill in musicianship are downplayed in favor of a raw, hard, loud, and fast musical approach. In the visual arts, punk was expressed through the use of torn-edged paper pasted up in a ransom-note style, crude scribbles, and the do-it-yourself publication of underground pamphlets called “zines.” The style involved an overall resistance to corporate and mainstream as well as “hippy” countercultural expressions. In its violence, rawness, crudeness, and nihilistic disdain for structure and authority, punk can be regarded as a neo-Dadaist style. Rinzai Zen A form of Buddhism that focuses on the attaining of enlightenment, and, once enlightenment is obtained, the integration of the resulting wisdom into one’s daily thoughts and actions. It was probably transmitted from China to Japan in the twelfth century. Teaching in Rinzai often incorporates the koan, a story or riddle that cannot be entirely understood through rational thinking. This branch of Zen emphasizes discipline in its methods. second-wave feminism The activities and concerns of feminists during the 1960s and 1970s. Issues pertaining to the psychological formation of identity, sexuality, and women’s relationship to their own bodies, media representations of women,

GLOSSARY 269 the role of women in the family and the workplace, and reproductive rights came to the fore in comparison to the focus on legal issues such as the right to vote that occupied reformers earlier in the century. Authors such as Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir were influential. The formation of NOW (the National Organization for Women) was an important political facet of second-wave feminism. This phase of feminism came to a close in the early eighties with the failure of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) to be ratified and the conservative turn in American politics indicated by the election of Ronald Reagan as president in the United States. Internal debate among feminists about pornography and other divisive issues also led to a close of this phase of feminism. Social Darwinism This is associated with the ideas of Herbert Spencer (1820– 1903), an English philosopher and political theorist of the Victorian era. He felt that the strong and powerful should flourish within society, whereas the weak would naturally wither and die away. Spencer adapted Darwinian theories of “survival of the fittest,” a phrase that Spencer developed, to social contexts. He felt that it was proper for the strong to survive and flourish because they had best adapted to their social environment. Spencer was, therefore, actively applying the biological theory of evolution to social theory; to this end he conceived of society as a “social organism.” Socialist Realism An attitude toward the function of art motivated by Marxist ideology. Art serves the role of promoting socialist society by teaching audiences and exhorting them to goals aligned with socialist objectives. In countries where socialism took on a totalitarian character such as the USSR and China, Socialist Realism became associated with rigid, restrictive, state-control of the style and subject matter of artistic expressions in all media. Advocates of Socialist Realism are usually anti-modernist and suspicious of its innovations, including abstraction in the visual arts. In this sense Socialist Realism ironically shares traits with the styles of art advocated by extreme conservatives including mid-twentieth-century fascists and with propaganda art produced in capitalist, democratic countries during the war years. Taken together, these mid-twentieth-century styles that supported specific social agendas advocated by the state have sometimes been called Heroic Realism. sovereignty A sovereign government is one that is free to make laws and policies independent of the control of other states. Thus, a sovereign state is one that is autonomous. However, consider the fact of economic interdependence. Nations need one another in the sense of trading for labor, resources (both capital and natural), and goods. In addition, environmental issues affect all nations. Thus, the political ideal of autonomy is mitigated by economic and environmental interdependency. I propose a more limited model of sovereignty to take these interdependencies into account. symbolism A movement in poetry, literature, and the visual arts at the end of the nineteenth century. The poet Stephane Mallarmé developed the movement’s

270 GLOSSARY emphasis on psychological suggestion, ambiguity, and symbolism rather than the direct conveyance of meaning as found in earlier nineteenth-century styles such as Realism. Key practitioners in the visual arts included Odilon Redon, Paul Gauguin, Ferdinand Hodler, and Edvard Munch. The ideas of psychological complexity, ambiguity, and dream-like reverie associated with the movement continued to influence artists in the twentieth century such as Gustav Klimt, Giorgio de Chirico, and the early Picasso. The style can be seen as a late formation of Romanticism and, at the same time, as a forerunner of Surrealism. Taoism This derives from the word Tao, which means “the path” or “the way.” It is a system of ideas that looks to nature for inspiration as to ideals of human conduct. Traditional Taoists also engaged in a series of practices—herbalism, qigong (control of the breath), astrology, dietary habits, martial arts, and more—that put into practice the ideals of compassion, moderation, and harmony emphasized within the thought system. The concepts of yin and yang are fundamental to Taoism and express the principles of integration and balance. Taxco This was a Mexican center for silver mining and remains a site for the production and sale of silver jewelry today. Colonial exploitation of silver provided the source of wealth that allowed the Baroque style to flourish in Taxco and many Mexican cities such as Morelia, Queretaro, Puebla, Zacatecas, and Guanajuato as well as in other countries such as Bolivia. However, Spanish mismanagement of the wealth that it extracted led it to bankruptcy in the sixteenth century and continued financial problems during the seventeenth. techne The Greek term for craftsmanship, craft, or art. The emphasis of the term is upon the knowledge necessary for the skillful making or doing of something. Techne emphasizes the practical application of an art or skill. In this sense, the association of art with “disinterestedness” that became part of Western aesthetics during the Enlightenment and the related idea of “art for art’s sake” that followed in the late nineteenth century were not found in ancient Greece. Third World A term originally identified with nations bound together by their anti-colonial stance, but which now has a more general connotation of “developing nations.” The phrase has a clear economic meaning based upon the Third World’s relative poverty in comparison to the industrialized nations of Western Europe, North America, and areas of Asia and the Pacific. Victorian The Victorian era draws its name from the reign of Queen Victoria, which encompasses the period from the 1830s to the beginning of the twentieth century. Culturally, the period is associated with a Gothic Revival in architecture and design as well as the beginnings of a socially oriented, reformist design philosophy. With respect to gender, a major concern of the period was the prevalence of prostitution. Anti-prostitution was coupled with the emergence of feminism in Great Britain. Victorian morality, therefore, is associated with sexual restraint or even

GLOSSARY 271 repression, except that the large number of prostitutes indicates that there was demand for them. The name of the period, therefore, has come to stand for a sexual double standard of public strictness and more licentious, though repressed, private behavior. Homosexuality was punished severely. Volk A concept promoted by the Third Reich; it connoted the “soul” of the German people. It referred not just to the populace, but to the feelings that they shared of belonging to a common tradition and ancestry. Such feelings, nationalistic in character, could be evoked through traditional myths, legends, songs, dances, holidays, and celebrations. Though promoted by the Third Reich, the concept existed before its rise as a military and political power. The Nazis tied the idea to Aryan racial purity, but “Volk” can also imply the emotions that people of many races share in their common ties to a land and its traditions. It is this last sense that is consistent with the meaning of the English word “folk,” which has Germanic and Old English origins. the Way A common translation for the Tao. Though it is impossible to describe, it is the encompassing essence of the universe. It is that which precedes, permeates, and unifies all that is. The Tao is often associated with naturalness; to know it is to give up attempts to control it and, instead, to follow it just as nature follows its own course. xenophobia The fear of that which is foreign. Sometimes this fear can be expressed as contempt, distrust, or ridicule of foreign people and their beliefs, actions, and mannerisms. Yoruba One of the largest ethnic groups in Africa; the Yoruba are much larger in population than the Dogon. There are about thirty million Yoruba, living mostly in western Nigeria. The Yoruba believe in a supreme deity, Olodumare, who created the land. As a result of the practice of slavery, which led to the African diaspora, Yoruba religion has had a strong influence on various religions in the Western hemisphere including Santeria in Cuba and Condomblé in Brazil. Their government was traditionally monarchical and the polygamous Yoruba kings ruled independent city-states. Sculpture often serves the function of symbolizing an individual’s destiny (Ori). Most sculptures by the Yoruba serve the function of veneration and are not seen solely as decorative works of art.

NOTES

1 Art, culture, and hybridity 1 The relationship between art and design is itself a product of culture. At times, when art has been valued for its social and functional applications, the relationship of art to design has been close. In other contexts, art and design seem to be widely divergent areas of creative action. Whether the relationship between them is close or distant, it is true that both art and design can be understood more fully when viewed in relation to other cultural processes. 2 Ofili, quoted in Linda Weintraub, In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Art (New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2003): 168. 3 Christopher Rapp, “Dung Deal—Brooklyn Museum of Art’s ‘Sensation’ Exhibition,” National Review, October 25, 1999 (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_20_ 51/ai_56220691, accessed July 2007). 4 Gregor Paul, “Philosophical Theories of Beauty and Scientific Research on the Brain,” in Barbara Herzberger, Ingo Rentschler, and David Epstein, eds, Beauty and the Brain: Biological Aspects of Aesthetics (Basel: Birkhauser Verlag, 1988): 25. 5 David Wilson, quoted in “What is your opinion of the controversial art exhibit depicting the Virgin Mary in Elephant Dung at The Brooklyn Museum?” Celebrity Café (www. thecelebritycafe.com/contemplations/bklynmuseum.html). 6 Homi Bhabha, quoted in Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, eds., The Post-Colonial Reader (London: Routledge, 1995): 52. 7 Ram Adhar Mall, Intercultural Philosophy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000): 4. 8 Ram, Intercultural Philosophy, 5. 9 Samuel Huntington, “Reconsidering Immigration: Is Mexico a Special Case?” Center for Immigration Studies, November 2000 (www.cis.org/articles/2000/back1100.html). 10 Huntington, “Reconsidering Immigration.” 11 Critical Art Ensemble, “About CAE” (http://www.critical-art.net/home.html).

NOTES 273

2 Primitivism and Otherness 1 Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990): 24. 2 Kirk Varnedoe, “Gauguin,” in William Rubin, ed., “Primitivism” in 20th C. Art, Vol. 1 (Museum of Modern Art, 1984): 185. 3 Torgovnick, Gone Primitive, 8. 4 Torgovnick, Gone Primitive, 9. 5 Jimmie Durham, “Cowboys and . . .” from The Decade Show, reprinted in The State of Native America; Genocide, Colonization and Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1992). 6 Gilles Deleuze, “A Theory of the Other,” in Constantin V. Boundas, ed., The Deleuze Reader (New York: Columbia, 1993): 59. 7 Deleuze, “A Theory of the Other,” 60. 8 James Clifford, Virginia Dominguez, and Trin T. Minh Ha, “Beyond the Salvage Paradigm,” in Hal Foster, ed., Discussions in Contemporary Culture, Vol. 1 (1987): 139. 9 As Eric Michaels noted, handing the camera over to the subject doesn’t automatically restore the subject. “Aboriginal Content: Who’s Got It — Who Needs It?” Visual Anthropology, 4 (1991): 290. 10 Deleuze, “A Theory of the Other,” 66. 11 For a discussion of the role of the Other in Lacan’s philosophy, see Matthew Sharpe, “Desire is the Desire of the Other,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.iep. utm.edu/lacweb/#SH2b). 12 James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988): 4. 13 Michaels, “Aboriginal Content,” 296. 14 Deleuze, “A Theory of the Other,” 61.

3 Colonialism 1 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, translated by Paul Marlor Sweezy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964 [1933]). 2 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Communist Manifesto,” Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969 [1848]): 98–137 (http://www.marxists.org/ archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007). 3 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, translated and edited by James Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton, 1962 [c. 1961]). 4 Janet Berlo and Ruth Phillips, Native North American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 5 Brian W. Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1982). 6 C. Tsehloane Keto, “Intellectual Colonization,” The Talking Drum Collective, May 25, 2009 (http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/revolutionary-daily-thoughts/38353-intellectualcolonization-keto.html, accessed November 28, 2009). 7 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2000): 139. 8 Ward Churchill, Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1993): 291–357.

274 NOTES 9 Nelson Graburn, Ethnic and Tourist Arts: Cultural Expressions from the Fourth World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).

4 Nationalism 1 Allison Connolly, “Understanding Negritude,” Francophone Identities (http://www.unc. edu/depts/europe/francophone/negritude/eng/introduction.htm, accessed November 30, 2009). 2 Jonathan Kent, “Muslim Reaction to Mahathir Speech,” BBC News, October 18, 2003 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3203428.stm, accessed November 30, 2009). 3 “World begs Taliban not to ‘vandalize’ history,” CNN.com/World, March 2, 2001 (http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/03/01/afghan.statue/, accessed November 30, 2009). 4 The preceding argument follows from Brian Wallis, “Art and National Identity: A Critics’ Symposium,” Art in America, New York 79 (9), September 1991: 80–83, 142–143. 5 Though Kahlo probably did not coin this feminist slogan, her art embodied it. “Kahlo was living the feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’ long before it had been coined.” Alan Foljambe, “Sex and Lesbianism in the Art of Frida Kahlo,” Suite101: Sex and Lesbianism in the Art of Frida Kahlo (http://20thcenturyart.suite101.com/article. cfm/sex-and-lesbianism-in-the-art-of-frida-kahlo#ixzz0wmQeQMVq, accessed August 14, 2010). In the context of feminism, the phrase seems to have been coined by the second-wave feminist writer, Carol Hanisch, circa 1970, although a discussion of its origins places the phrase in the context of the “New Left” of the early 1960s (http:// userpages.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/pisp.html, accessed August 14, 2010). 6 David Barboza, “The Rise of Zhang Xiaogang,” A Chinese Contemporary Art Portal (http://www.artzinechina.com/display_vol_aid272_en.html, accessed December 4, 2009). 7 Barboza, “The Rise of Zhang Xiaogang.” 8 Roy Armes, Third World Filmmaking and the West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987): 11. 9 Armes, Third World Filmmaking, 13. 10 Armes, Third World Filmmaking, 27. 11 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1961): 209. 12 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 208. 13 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 212. 14 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 216. 15 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 221. 16 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 233. 17 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 247. 18 Jessica Lee, “Minuteman Project invades Southern Arizona, highlights complexity of border crisis,” IndyMedia, Tuesday, March 29, 2005 (http://arizona.indymedia.org/news/ 2005/03/25825.php, accessed December 1, 2009). 19 Geert Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2001).

NOTES 275

5 Art and religion in intercultural contexts 1 José Arguelles, The Transformative Vision (Berkeley: Shambhala, 1975), and Suzi Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991). 2 Michael Tucker, Dreaming with Open Eyes: The Shamanic Spirit in Twentieth Century Art and Culture (San Francisco: Aquarian/Harper, 1992). 3 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1915). 4 Carl G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Princeton: Bollingen Series, 1980 [1959]): 61. 5 See, for instance, Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), and Mary Douglas, “Pollution,” in William Lessa and Evon Vogt, eds., Reader in Comparative Religion, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1972). 6 Carl Gustav Jung, Psychological Types, Collected Works 6, translated by R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971): 474. 7 Carl Gustav Jung, Man and his Symbols (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976 [1964]): 47. 8 Jung, Man and his Symbols, 443. 9 Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. 10 Though I have only provided two examples here, a more complete analysis of the circle as a prevalent sacred and psychological symbol can be found in C. G. Jung, Mandala Symbolism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972). 11 This common element of aesthetic, religious, and political expression—the power to move people—has been noted by other scholars: “Art and politics and religion share the capacity to move people, through emotion and to action.” See Lucy Lippard, Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory (New York: Pantheon, 1983): 8. 12 Lippard, Overlay, 5. 13 The concept of “religious feeling” may, in itself, reflect the possibility of the evolution of the relationship between art and spirituality. We can turn to an unusual source in order to understand the evolutionary dimension of religious feeling: the physicist Albert Einstein. Writing in 1930, Einstein noted that the earliest religious impulses arose from the emotion of fear, the “fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death.” These emotions were augmented by religious feelings related to social impulses: “The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God.” A third set of emotions is aligned with “cosmic religious feeling . . . The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it.” Einstein shows us that religious feelings can be varied, depending upon their source. We would expect that the art expressive of these varied feelings and concepts would take a wide range of forms and express quite varied content. However, the underlying claim remains: an affinity between aesthetic and religious feeling has been the norm in the history of world art. Albert Einstein’s article “Religion and Science” appeared in the New York Times Magazine on November 9, 1930, 1–4. It was reprinted in Ideas and Opinions (Crown Publishers, Inc. 1954): 36–40. It also appeared in Einstein’s book The World as I See It (New York: Philosophical Library 1949): 24–28 (http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/einsci.htm, accessed May 7, 2010). 14 Jacques Barzun, The Use and Abuse of Art (Princeton: Bollingen Series, 1974): 26. 15 Crispin Sartwell, The Art of Living: Aesthetics of the Ordinary in World Spiritual Traditions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995): 8.

276 NOTES 16 Robert Plant Armstrong, The Powers of Presence: Consciousness, Myth, and Affecting Presence (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981). 17 Sartwell, The Art of Living, 31–32. 18 Ralph Coe, Sacred Circles: Two Thousand Years of American Indian Art (Kansas City: Nelson Gallery Foundation, 1977): 110. 19 Barzun, The Use and Abuse of Art, 49. 20 Tucker, Dreaming with Open Eyes, 292. 21 Science and technology have challenged religious explanations more fundamentally over time in two ways. First, a larger number of key assumptions about life are now explained in scientific terms. For instance the concept of the origins of the universe and of life, formerly understood to have occurred based upon divine creation, can now be explained according to modern theories in physics and biology. Cosmology is increasingly scientific rather than religious in nature. Secondly, the application of science to the improvement of life—technology—is now much more far-reaching than in the past. For most of us, our daily lives are devoted to our interaction with technologically complex machines rather than to religious devotion. 22 Suzi Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art (London: Thames and Hudson: 1991). 23 Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art, 57. 24 Suzi Gablik, “Altar-ed States,” Symposium presentation, Transforming Visions (Syracuse University, December 1, 1995). 25 Tucker, Dreaming with Open Eyes. 26 Norval Morrisseau, http://norvalmorrisseau.blogspot.com/2007/11/legends-of-mypeople-great-ojibway.html, accessed May 2, 2010. 27 Edmund Burke Feldman, The Artist: A Social History, 2nd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1995): 5. 28 Feldman, The Artist, 5–6. 29 A cultural tradition of females as shamans is found in Japan. In Japanese, the word miko or fujo refers to those women who possess the capability of conveying the messages of the kami (spirits or gods) that are venerated in Shintoism. Ceramic effigies of female shamans exist from as early as the Kofun period (third to seventh centuries). 30 Wendy Rose, “The Great Pretenders: Further Reflections on White Shamanism,” in The State of Native America; Genocide, Colonization and Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1992): 403–422. 31 Rose, “The Great Pretenders,” 404. 32 Victor Masayesva, Jr., “Producers’ Forum I: Uncovering the Lies.” Symposium participant (Two Rivers Native Film and Video Festival, October 10, 1991, Minneapolis).

6 Symbolism, meaning, and interpretation 1 Jane Duran, “The Nagaraja: Symbol and Symbolism in Hindu Art and Iconography,” The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 24 (Summer 1990): 37–47. 2 Duran, “The Nagaraja,” 41. 3 Duran, “The Nagaraja,” 42. 4 David Frawley, “The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India,” The Hindu Universe, HinduNet Inc. (http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_frawley.html, accessed July 15, 2008).

NOTES 277 5 Frawley, “The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India,” book cited on website. For further information refer to Frawley’s Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization, 1991. 6 Frawley, “The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India.” 7 R. Champakalakshmi, “Beyond the Erotic,” Frontline: India’s National Magazine 15, no. 1 (Jan. 1998): 10–23, a review of The Religious Imagery of Khajuraho by Dr. Devangana Desai, FrancoIndian Research Private Ltd., Mumbai: 1997 (www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1501/ 15010730.htm, accessed July 15, 2008). 8 Michael W. Meister, “De- and Re-constructing the Indian Temple,” Art Journal, 49 (Winter 1990): 395–400. 9 Meister, “De- and Re-constructing the Indian Temple,” 396. 10 Shobita Punja, “Khajuraho: A Metaphor for the Millennium,” Special Issue of The Sunday Magazine “The Hindu Millennium,” January 23, 2000 (www.hinduonnet.com/folio/ fo0001/00010610.htm, accessed July 15, 2008). 11 “Khajuraho Sculpture, Themes and Meanings,” Indianetzone (http://reference. indianetzone. com/1/sculpture_themes_meanings.htm, accessed July 15, 2008). 12 Devangana Desai, The Religious Imagery of Khajuraho (Mumbai: Project for Indian Cultural Studies, Publication IV, 1996): 8. 13 Desai, The Religious Imagery of Khajuraho, 5. 14 Richard Anderson, Calliope’s Sisters. A Comparative Study of Philosophies of Art (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990): 168. 15 Indianetzone, “Khajuraho Sculpture.” 16 Anderson, Calliope’s Sisters, 7. 17 Ashish Kaul, “Khajuraho and Erotic Art—A Perspective” (http://www.indiatravelogue. com/leis/heri/heri3.html, accessed July 16, 2008). 18 Kaul, “Khajuraho and Erotic Art.” 19 Champakalakshmi, “Beyond the Erotic.” 20 Ibid. 21 Indianetzone, “Khajuraho Sculpture.” 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Miranda Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 25 Julia Leslie, quoted in Sally Sutherland, “Review of ‘Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women’ edited by Julie Leslie,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 114, no. 2 (April 1994): 314. 26 Sutherland, “Review of ‘Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women,’” 315. 27 Indianetzone, “Khajuraho Sculpture.” 28 Ibid. 29 Champakalakshmi, “Beyond the Erotic.” The author here uses the alternate spelling, Siva, of Shiva, but the same deity is being referenced. 30 Champakalakshmi, “Beyond the Erotic.” 31 Huston Smith, India and the Infinite: The Soul of a People, produced by Elda Hartley (1979). 32 Ananda Coomaraswamy, “The Origin and Uses of Images in India,” in Art, Creativity and the Sacred, ed. by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona (New York: Crossroad, 1984): 129. 33 Coomaraswamy, “The Origin and Uses of Images in India,” 133. 34 Coomaraswamy, “The Origin and Uses of Images in India,” 134. 35 Coomaraswamy, “The Origin and Uses of Images in India,” 135.

278 NOTES

7 Style and ethnicity 1 J. Voss and R. Young, “Style and the Self,” in C. Carrand and J. Neitzel, eds., Style, Society, and Person (New York: Plenum Press, 1995): 77–99. 2 Meyer Schapiro, “Style,” in A.L. Kroeber, ed., Anthropology Today: An Encyclopedia Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953): 287. 3 Edward Lucie-Smith, Movements in Art since 1945 (London: Thames and Hudson, 2001). 4 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (Boston: Harvard, 1984). 5 Fredrik Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969). 6 For a discussion of the fluidity of the boundaries of identity in relation to one visual art form, architecture, see Peter A. Mark, “Portuguese” Style and Luso-African Identity: Precolonial Senegambia, Sixteenth–Nineteenth Centuries (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002). Mark shows how architecture was transformed based on trade and complex social relationships between ethnic groups. 7 Jack Forbes, “The Manipulation of Race, Caste and Identity: Classifying Afroamericans, Native Americans and Red-Black People,” The Journal of Ethnic Studies 17, no. 4 (1990): 1–51. 8 Robert Francesconi, “Free Jazz and Black Nationalism: A Rhetoric of Musical Style,” Critical Studies in Mass Communications 3, no. 1 (1986): 37. 9 Francesconi, “Free Jazz,” 38. 10 James Chopyak, “The Role of Music in Mass Media, Public Education and the Formation of a Malaysian National Culture,” Ethnomusicology 31, no. 2 (1987): 431–454, and Edward O Henry, “Institutions for the Promotion of Indigenous Music: The Case for Ireland’s Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eirann,” Ethnomusicology 33, no. 1 (Winter, 1989): 6–95. 11 For a discussion of the representation of the indigenous in relation to mestizo identity see Tace Hendrick, Mestizo Modern: Race, Nation, and Identity in Latin American Culture, 1900–1940 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003). 12 D. Rochfort, The Murals of Diego Rivera (London: Journeyman Press, 1987): 5–61. 13 K. Agovi, “The Political Relevance of Ghanaian Highlife Songs Since 1957,” Research in African Literature 20, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 194. 14 Agovi, “The Political Relevance of Ghanaian Highlife Songs,” 195. 15 Randall F. Grass, “FelaAnikulapo-Kuti: The Art of an Afrobeat Rebel.” TDR: The Drama Review 30, no. 1 (Spring, 1986): 131–149. 16 Peter du Preez, The Politics of Identity: Ideology and the Human Image (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980): 5. 17 Esther Pasztory, “Identity and Difference: The Uses and Meanings of Ethnic Styles,” Studies in the History of Art 27 (1989): 1–38. 18 Pasztory, “Identity and Difference.” 19 B. Rosenthal, “Iroquois False Face Masks: The Multiple Causes of Style,” in C. Carr and J. Neitzel, eds., Style, Society and Person (New York: Plenum Press, 1995): 345–367.

8 A sense of place 1 This is a time period that historians have labeled the Axial Age (800 BCE–200 BCE) in part because it was an era of great transformation in religious thought. See Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The World in the Time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah (London: Atlantic, 2007).

NOTES 279 2 Lao Tsu, The Tao Te Ching, translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English (New York: Vintage Books, 1972): 5. 3 François Cheng, Empty and Full: The Language of Chinese Painting, translated by Michael Kohn (Boston: Shambhala, 1994). 4 Cheng, Empty and Full, 12. 5 Isabelle Robinet, “Shangqing,” in Fabrizio Pregadio, ed., The Encyclopedia of Taoism, vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 2007): 858–866. 6 Cited in Michael Sullivan, Symbols of Eternity: The Art of Landscape Painting in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979): 64. 7 Ibid. 8 Li Zehou, The Path of Beauty: A Study of Chinese Aesthetics, translated by Song Lizeng (Hong Kong: Oxford, 1994): 186. 9 Zehou, The Path of Beauty, 186. 10 Miranda Shaw, “Buddhist and Taoist Influences on Chinese Landscape Painting,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 49, no. 2 (April–June 1988): 184. 11 Quoted in Sullivan, Symbols of Eternity, 99. 12 Tsu, The Tao Te Ching, 70. 13 Tsu, The Tao Te Ching, 37. 14 Shaw, “Buddhist and Taoist Influences,” 184. 15 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals, translated by Frans Golffing (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956). 16 Art criticism took the form of an essay on painting by the artist and musician, Tsung Ping (375–444 CE). His essay on landscape painting is considered to be the earliest and is identified with its birth as a genre. 17 Shaw, “Buddhist and Taoist Influences,” 191. 18 This contrast between Bellini and Fan Kuan is discussed in Robert Bersson’s Worlds of Art (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991). 19 Tsu, The Tao Te Ching, 29. 20 Tsu, The Tao Te Ching, 15. 21 Tsu, The Tao Te Ching, 10. 22 Huang Yong Ping, quoted in Phillipe Vergne and Doryun Chong, eds., “The House of Oracles,” in House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective, texts by Huang Yong Ping, translated by Yu Hsiao Hwei (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2005): 24. 23 For more information and a detailed analysis on Zen’s impact on modernist visual art in the mid-twentieth century see Helen Westgeest, Zen in the Fifties: Interaction in Art between East and West (London: Reaktion Books, 1998). To listen to a master poet interpret Zen teachings, Kazuaki Tanahashi, ed., The Teachings of Zen Master Dogen, abridged edition, audio CD, read by Gary Snyder (Santa Monica, CA: Phoenix Audio, 2008). Poets such as Snyder, di Prima, Ferlinghetti, and others are found in Andrew Schelling, ed., The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2005). 24 Lucy Lippard, Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory (New York: Pantheon, 1983): 41.

9 Art and social order: a systems view 1 Griault, quoted in Henry Pernet, “Spirit, Event, and World System,” Ritual Masks (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992), my emphasis.

280 NOTES 2 Pernet, “Spirit, Event, and World System,” 53. 3 Thompson’s ideas and other attempts at defining the aesthetic are discussed in Richard Anderson, Calliope’s Sisters. A Comparative Study of Philosophies of Art (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990): 7–9. 4 Germaine Dieterlen, “Masks and Mythology Among the Dogon,” African Arts 22 (May 1989): 41–42. 5 Pernet, “Spirit, Event, and World System,” 53. 6 BBC2, Late Review: review of Jackson Pollock exhibition at the Tate Gallery, London, 1999, cited at “Jackson Pollock,” Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock, accessed May 13, 2010). 7 Brachear, quoted in Douglas Fraser, ed., African Art as Philosophy (New York: Interbook, 1974): 76. 8 Brachear, quoted in African Art as Philosophy, 77. 9 Paul Lane, “Tourism and Social Change among the Dogon,” African Arts, 21, no. 4 (Aug., 1988): 66–69, 92. 10 Edmund Leach, quoted in Henry Kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988): 10. 11 Polly Richards, “Masques Dogons in a Changing World” (Emerging Scholarship in African Art), African Arts (Winter 2005): 46. 12 Innocent C. Onyewuenyi, “Traditional African Aesthetics: A Philosophical Perspective,” International Philosophy Quarterly, 24, no. 3 (September 1984): 237. 13 Onyewuenyi, “Traditional African Aesthetics,” 237. 14 Ibid. 15 John Miller Chernoff, African Rhythm and African Sensibility (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). 16 Anderson, Calliope’s Sisters, 127. 17 Henry Drewal, “Senses in Understandings of Art,” African Arts, 38, no. 2 (Summer 2005), accessed online at Academic One File, May 14, 2010. 18 Ibid. 19 Freyer in Douglas Fraser, ed., African Art as Philosophy (New York: Interbook, 1974): 5. 20 Onyewuenyi, “Traditional African Aesthetics,” 242. 21 Ibid.

10 Gender and Japonisme 1 John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, 1869 [1911] (http://books.google.com/books? id=lUraAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=&f=false). 2 Mill, The Subjection of Women. 3 John Berger, Ways of Seeing (New York: Viking Press, 1972). 4 Sut Jhally, Dreamworlds 3: desire, sex & power in music video, DVD (Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation, 2007). 5 Jean Kilbourne, Killing us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women, videocassette (Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation, 2000). 6 The Guerrilla Girls, The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to Western Art (New York: Penguin Books, 1998). 7 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, translated and edited by H.M. Parshley (New York: Vintage Books, 1989 [c. 1952, 1949]).

NOTES 281 8 Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” in Thomas B. Hess and Elizabeth C. Baker, eds., Art and Sexual Politics: Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (New York: Collier Books, 1974). 9 Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists, 1550–1950 (New York: Knopf, 1977). 10 H. W. Janson, History of Art, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977). 11 Penelope Mason, History of Japanese Art, revising author, Donald Dimwiddie (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005 [1993]). 12 Frima Fox Hofrichter, cited in Wayne Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004): 51. 13 Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting, 52. 14 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Amelia Jones, ed., The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader (London; New York: Routledge, 2003 [1975]). 15 Janet Berlo and Ruth Phillips, Native North American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998): 32–33. 16 Source: “Lady of the Bridge,” Tale of Genji Painting Scroll. Tokugawa Museum, Japan, c. 1120–1140 CE. In Ivan Morris, The Tale of Genji Scroll. Introduction by Yoshinobu Tokugawa (Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 1971) (http://chnm.gmu.edu/wwh/p/ 223.html, accessed December 6, 2009). 17 Amy Lowell, “Introduction,” Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan, translated by Annie Shepley Omori and Kochi Doi (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1920) (http://digital. library.upenn.edu/women/omori/court/court.html, accessed December 6, 2009). 18 Lowell, Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 See, for instance, “A Visit to the Yoshiwara,” detail, attributed to Hishikawa Moronobu (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/03/13/arts/0314-EDO_3.html, accessed December 6, 2009). 22 Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Yoshiwara: The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993): X. 23 Lesley Ball Higgins, The Modernist Cult of Ugliness: Aesthetic and Gender Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002): 54. 24 Higgins, The Modernist Cult of Ugliness, 53, 54. 25 Higgins, The Modernist Cult of Ugliness, 55. 26 Higgins, The Modernist Cult of Ugliness, 56. 27 Higgins, The Modernist Cult of Ugliness, 54. 28 Higgins, The Modernist Cult of Ugliness, 56. 29 Higgins, The Modernist Cult of Ugliness, 58. 30 Higgins, The Modernist Cult of Ugliness, 59. 31 Higgins, The Modernist Cult of Ugliness, 52. 32 Jan Hokenson, Japan, France, and East-West Aesthetics: French Literature, 1867–2000 (Cranbury, NJ: Farleigh Dickenson University Press, 2004): 25. 33 Mari Yoshihara, Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003): 10. 34 http://books.google.com/books?id=hj5TBF8Tnv8C&dq=gender+and+japonisme+ art&source=gbs_navlinks_s, accessed December 7, 2009. 35 Student contributor to course taught by Prof. Martin Irvine, Georgetown University,

282 NOTES

36 37 38 39

“Cultural Hybridity Discussion Fall 2008: Week 4,” Metapedia (http://www.metapedia. com/wiki/index.php?title=Cultural_Hybridity_Discussion_Fall_2008:_Week_4, accessed December 7, 2009). “Art Nouveau Resource Room,” Victoria and Albert Museum (http://www.vam.ac.uk/ images/image/40881-popup.html, accessed November 25, 2009). Peter Selz, Aubrey Beardsley (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987): 66. For further information, see Linda Gertner Zatlin, Beardsley, Japonisme, and the Perversion of the Victorian Ideal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). “Audio tour of selected Art Nouveau objects,” National Gallery of Art (http://www.nga. gov/feature/nouveau/lalique_a.htm, accessed December 8, 2009).

11 The phenomenology of “self ” in art 1 Richard Cohen, “Merleau-Ponty, The Flesh and Foucault,” Philosophy Today, 28 (1984): 332. 2 Cohen, “Merleau-Ponty,” 333. 3 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World, ed. Claude Lefort (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973): 61. 4 Paul Crowther, “Merleau-Ponty: Perception into Art,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 22, no. 2 (1982): 141. 5 Daniel Arasse, Vermeer: Faith in Painting, translated by Terry Grabar (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994): 59. 6 Arasse, Vermeer, 65. 7 Arasse, Vermeer, 67. 8 Arasse, Vermeer, 78. 9 Arasse, Vermeer, 82. 10 Catherine McCall, Concepts of Person: An Analysis of Concepts of Person, Self and Human Being (Brookfield: Avebury, 1990): 113. 11 McCall, Concepts of Person, 114. 12 Gordon Washburn, “Japanese Influence on Contemporary Art: A Dissenting View,” in Chisaburoh F. Yamada, ed., Dialogue on Art: Japan and the West (London: A. Zwemmer, 1976): 196–209. 13 Joseph Grange, book review of The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism by Steve Odin (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996): Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 24 (1997): 255–260 (http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-JOCP/grange.htm).

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1020 CE) is considered to be one of India’s most important philosophers. He wrote many works, the longest of which, Tantraloka, is an encyclopedic work in a philosophical tradition known today as Kashmir Shaivism, a branch of philosophy that recognizes no distinction between consciousness and matter. He was a follower of Kaula, a form of Hindu Tantrism. It may be that Abhinavagupta’s ideas helped inspire the temple architects of the time to incorporate Tantric principles into their designs. Avril, Jane (1868–1943) was a French can-can dancer who performed at the Moulin Rouge beginning in 1889. She was the child of a distant father and an alcoholic mother who beat her. But she began dancing professionally at an early age and had a very successful career for a period of time. Her style of dance was considered more refined than some of the more burlesque styles of the era. Avril was a featured subject in posters and paintings by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Barth, Thomas Fredrik Weybye (b. 1928) is a Norwegian-born anthropologist active in the United States. His theory of ethnicity emphasizes that the boundaries between various groups are negotiated on an ongoing basis rather than remaining fixed and static. The interdependency of ethnic groups is at the heart of Barth’s theory. Barzun, Jacques (b. 1907) is a French-born American cultural historian. He grew up in a household frequented by early modernists such as the art dealer and critic Guillaume Apollinaire, the artist Marcel Duchamp, and the composer Edgar Varèse. Barzun went on to have a varied career, writing and editing books on a wide variety of topics and establishing the discipline of cultural history at Columbia University. His summative work, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the

284 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Present, was published in 2001. As evidence of the trend toward decadence, Barzun criticizes modern amoral art that relies for its effect upon mere shock value. Beardsley, Aubrey (1872–1898) was an English illustrator known for his distinctively linear black-and-white style. Many of his images contain erotic content, which was considered decadent in the context of the late-Victorian period in Great Britain. He was a major contributor to the Art Nouveau style. His career was cut short due to his death from tuberculosis; most of his major output was created in only six years. Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–1986) was a French philosopher and feminist. Her work attacking the oppression of women is considered foundational to modern feminism. Like her lifelong lover, Jean Paul Sartre, she was an existentialist; the couple had an open relationship and this independence allowed de Beauvoir to pursue her own intellectual and amorous interests. In her writing, Beauvoir argued that men make women into the Other by infusing them with a sense of mystery; for her, this act of othering is a key ingredient of women’s oppression. The interpretation of The Second Sex in English may have been hampered by the poor quality of the original translation. Bhabha, Homi (b. 1949) Born in India, Homi Bhabha is a professor of English at Harvard University and an influential scholar in postcolonial studies. He is credited with developing some of the field’s key concepts, including the idea of hybridity. Boas, Franz (1858–1942) is credited with professionalizing the discipline of anthropology in the United States. The Mind of Primitive Man (1911) established the theoretical frameworks and comparative methodologies of the discipline. Boas began his career as a geographer, but decisively moved toward anthropology with his study of people of the Northwest Coast in British Columbia (1885). Moving to New York in 1887, he was the first American to receive a doctorate in anthropology. Bourdieu, Pierre (1930–2002) was a French sociologist and philosopher who analyzed the social origins of taste in an influential book titled Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Bourdieu argued that judgments of taste are related to social position, especially social class and level of education. As such, he demonstrated that taste reflects social dynamics of power. His theory played an important role in linking the subjective life of the individual to structural processes within society. Cage, John (1912–1992) was an American composer and philosopher who had a major impact on dance and the visual arts as well as music. In musical composition he is associated with a rhythmic approach; reflecting his Dadaist influence, he used found sounds in his compositions, which were the aural equivalent of Duchamp’s readymades. He also introduced the concept of the “prepared piano,” which involved physical manipulation of the instrument in order to modify its timbre. Cage immersed himself in Zen ideas in the late forties and early fifties, partly as a result of attending lectures by the main interpreter of Zen for Western audiences,

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 285 the Japanese monk, D. T. Suzuki. He went on to become an influential interpreter of Zen for fellow artists and intellectuals during the fifties. Chicago, Judy (b. 1939) is a feminist artist best known for the direction of a project called The Dinner Party (1979). The installation incorporated porcelain, embroidery, and other crafts traditionally associated with women in order to call awareness to and celebrate the contributions of important historical women. It is triangular in form and contains thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an individual woman. The design of the porcelain plates is based upon central core motifs that reference vulvas and butterflies. The work was a collaborative project. Churchill, Ward (b. 1947) is a political activist, writing on topics of social injustice related to the genocidal treatment of Native Americans. He has also criticized a larger set of actions by the United States government in a confrontational style. Churchill’s thinking became more radical following his military experience during the Vietnam War. Much later, he stated that the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 were a consequence of unlawful and unjust U.S. government actions. Churchill is also controversial in having claimed Native American ancestry, a claim that some Natives dispute. Churchill has been a part of internal schisms within the American Indian Movement (AIM). Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish (1877–1947) was a noted Orientalist and art historian. He joined the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1917, where he assembled one of the finest collections of Indian art outside of India. Coomaraswamy wrote over 350 works on art, literature, philosophy, politics, and religion. His best-known work in the area of comparative studies in art is The Transformation of Nature in Art (1934). Deleuze, Gilles (1925–1995) was an influential French philosopher who taught at the University of Paris, St Denis, for almost twenty years. His ideas have been influential in literary theory, especially in the contexts of poststructuralism and postmodernism. Deleuze actively wrote on art and artists and even viewed philosophy itself as an activity more akin to art than to scientific description. He saw philosophy as the creation of concepts. Douglas, Mary (1921–2007) was a British social anthropologist, active at University College, London, who made important contributions to symbolic anthropology and the anthropology of religion. In her important work Purity and Danger (1970) she engaged in a comparative analysis of the clean and the unclean in several cultural contexts. The book has become a key text in social anthropology. Durham, Jimmie (b. 1940) is an American Indian artist now living in Europe. Active in the American Indian Movement (AIM) during the 1970s, Durham turned to art at the end of that decade in order to challenge stereotypes of Native Americans. Durham has been active as a poet and essayist as well as a visual artist. His highly political writings and artworks are characteristic of the general social emphasis found within postmodernism.

286 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Foucault, Michel (1926–1984) was a French philosopher and historian who engaged in the historical analysis of major social institutions such as scientific, medical, and legal systems. He also began a multivolume history of sexuality toward the end of his career. His work on the connection between knowledge and power has become highly influential; Foucault is one of the most cited scholars in the humanities and social sciences today. Foucault’s political orientation was leftist and this informed his academic activities, especially during the period of the 1968 student revolts and their aftermath. More specifically in relation to the theory of art, Foucault’s The Order of Things (English edition, 1970) opened with an in-depth discussion of the Baroque masterwork, Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez. The analysis serves as an entry into the nature of discourse, which reflects, of course, the relationship between knowledge and power. Gauguin, Paul (1848–1903) was a French artist who emerged into prominence during the 1880s. He is closely aligned with the break away from Impressionism in art toward a more symbolic approach to subject matter and a flat, graphic visual style. On a personal level, he decided to travel to Tahiti on two occasions; he died there at the age of 54 in 1903. Gauguin’s attraction to Tahitian culture was primitivist in nature, as is discussed at length in this book. He is also known for flouting Western social and sexual taboos, exemplifying the “outsider” and avant-garde social role of the artist during the period of the move toward modernism. Gorman, R. C. (1931–2005) was a Navajo artist who specialized in colorful romanticized images of Native women. He studied for a while in Mexico City, where he was influenced by the art of Diego Rivera. Gorman opened an art gallery in Taos, NM, which was the first Native-owned art gallery. His style was readily identifiable, highly popular, and commercially successful. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831) was an influential German philosopher and professor who conceived of history as the dialectical progress of mind or spirit (geist). His theories impacted aesthetics in that he felt art, philosophy, and religion constituted the highest, clearest formulation of absolute spirit in any particular age. The term dialectical implies that there are oppositions between worldviews or styles (expressions of absolute spirit) that can, over time, become integrated. Dialectic is the pattern that thought and spirit must follow. Thus, history proceeds in a dialectical fashion of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This concept can be applied to the historical “progress” of styles in art as well as other dimensions of life. For instance, Marx applied the concept of the dialectic to economic life. Implicit in Hegel’s thought, then, is an assumption of progress toward an ever fuller and more integrated expression of absolute spirit. Husserl, Edmund (1859–1938) was the founder of phenomenology and is considered one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. As a student, he concentrated on mathematics, physics, psychology, and philosophy. His first phenomenological work, Logical Investigations, was published in 1900. He

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 287 continued to publish actively on a variety of topics through the 1930s and taught at the university in Freiburg, Germany. Husserl’s ideas have been influential in linguistics, sociology, and cognitive psychology, as well as philosophy. Kahlo, Frida (1907–1954) was a twentieth-century Mexican artist who embraced self-portraiture as her main genre. She was the wife of Diego Rivera and her art grew in part out of suffering related to their tumultuous relationship as well as her inability to bear a child due to massive injuries she sustained in an accident at the age of nineteen. She was influenced by Mexican folk arts including popular religious images called retablos. The autobiographical, political, and sometimes nationalist character of her art helped forge her iconic status in relation to feminist art history and theory during the 1980s. Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804) emerged from the Enlightenment as one of the period’s most influential philosophers. In aesthetics Kant focused upon the faculties of judgment and taste, which allow individuals to grasp both order and overwhelming magnitude (the Sublime) in nature. Kant emphasized that our experience of the Sublime emerged not so much from the facts of nature as from our imaginative response to it. Aesthetics emerged as an important category of philosophy in Kant’s writings: while his ideas about the Sublime had an important influence on the Romantics who soon followed, his ideas about form influenced the modernists more than a century later. Locke, John (1632–1704) was an English philosopher who made important contributions in political philosophy and the philosophy of mind. His idea of the social contract, in which people agree to be governed by others based upon consent, was at the heart of Enlightenment ideals that led to the forwarding of liberal democracy during the eighteenth century. His theory of the mind was based upon the role that sense experiences play in developing knowledge; once influenced by sensation, the mind has the capacity to reflect upon experience. Therefore, his theory of the mind includes the idea of consciousness as core to our experience of self. Manet, Edouard (1832–1883) wanted his paintings to focus on the immediacy of contemporary Parisian daily life. He was influenced both by Spanish painting, especially the art of Velázquez with its brilliant and free brushwork, and by Japanese prints, which he saw as magical containers of real life. In turn, he influenced the Impressionists, who also made the immediacy of their surroundings a central subject in their art. Manet’s painting technique was quite controversial due to its “unfinished” appearance. In the shocking effect that his technique and his subjects had on his audience, Manet can be considered one of the first avant-garde painters. His prints were just as innovative as his paintings. However, the artist saw himself as part of a lineage of figurative painters more than an outsider who intended to shock. Marx, Karl (1818–1883) earned a degree in philosophy at Berlin, then spent time in Paris, where he befriended Friedrich Engels in 1844. Together they published the

288 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Communist Manifesto in 1848; the short manifesto called for the liberation of the proletariat or working class. In the Manifesto Marx and Engels argued that capitalism concentrates wealth in the hands of a few, that it leads to the alienation of workers from their own efforts, and that it robs people of their basic humanity. Marx’s Das Kapital (1867) is his much more detailed analysis of capitalism in the context of economic and social history. There, he analyzed in detail capitalism’s exploitation of labor. Marx’s tombstone contains the phrase “Workers of all lands unite,” the last line of the Communist Manifesto. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908–1961) was a phenomenologist and Marxist philosopher who focused on the primary role that perception plays in engaging the world. He was an associate of fellow phenomenologists Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. He wrote widely on topics in art, linguistics, psychology, and the other sciences. In his major work The Phenomenology of Perception (1945) he located the experience of the subject (self) in the body, which was a contrast to the traditional Cartesian emphasis on thought as the basis of subjectivity. Mill, John Stuart (1806–1873) was a philosopher and social reformer. His essay Utilitarianism (1863) expanded the ideas of Jeremy Bentham; Mill attempted to show that people’s notions of social obligation could be compatible with their greatest happiness. His book On Liberty (1859) advocated the free expression of individuality, but weighed that against the risks of damaging the interests of others. Mill married Harriet Taylor after twenty-one years of friendship with her. It is felt that his advocacy of women’s rights was reinforced by his relationship with her. In 1866 he became the first person in the British Parliament to call for women’s right to vote. Morimura, Yasumasa (b. 1951) is a Japanese artist who focuses on the technique of appropriation: the borrowing and altering of an existing image, often for subversive purposes. However, Morimura views art in general and his own art as entertainment. His appropriations are in the spirit of fun. His art is created in part through digital manipulation so that it contains none of the “language of paint” that animates the surface of the original sources. While his images have the aura of a jokey one-liner about them, they do manage to effectively poke fun at the selfimportance of Western art. In this sense, Morimura’s images are an extension of Duchamp’s use of humor to remove Western art from its self-important pedestal. O’Keeffe, Georgia (1887–1986) was an American artist, originally from Wisconsin but strongly identified with New Mexico where she lived for several decades, who created landscapes, cityscapes, still-lifes, and pure abstractions inspired by modernist traits of simplification and abstraction. Most famous of her works are enlarged images of single flowers; these were often closely cropped by the artist, which increased their sense of scale. Her work is similar to that of her fellow early modernist, Arthur Dove, in its tendency toward nature mysticism. O’Keeffe married the noted photographer and promoter of modern art, Alfred Stieglitz. She was also his

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 289 model for a number of his photographs, which created a public stir when they were exhibited during the 1920s. Pane, Gina (1939–1990) was a French performance artist known for her bodily oriented art. Frequently, her art involved self-inflicted injury, as when she climbed a ladder with razor blades lining its rungs or created a video showing nails being driven into a woman’s bare arm. Her masochistic approach was an invitation for the viewer to experience empathy, based upon the reality of the situations that she placed herself in. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) was a major artist of the northern Baroque. He is best known for the psychologically penetrating quality of his portraits, especially his self-portraits, as well as his heartfelt illustrations of scenes from the Bible. Rembrandt was an important figure in the history of printmaking; he developed a highly individualized approach in the medium of etching. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828–1882) was an English painter and poet of Italian heritage who helped form the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. All of his life he was immersed in both poetry and painting and tended to see them as inseparable; he would add written annotations on the frames of his paintings to explain their symbolism. Rossetti was inspired by many historical and Romantic poets but, most fundamentally, by Dante. He was particularly drawn toward the subject of women, whom he suffused with mystery and sensuality. Rossetti collaborated with William Morris, the noted Arts and Crafts designer and reformer, to create designs for stained glass and book illustrations for Morris’s press. Rossetti’s work influenced both the later Aesthetic movement and the Symbolists. Said, Edward (1935–2005) was a Palestinian-born literary theorist who taught at Columbia University and is considered to be a pioneer figure in postcolonial theory. His book Orientalism (1978) argued that Western literary and scholarly representations of the Middle East support a colonialist mindset. Though his focus was literary theory, Said’s ideas touch a corresponding chord in the visual arts, which have long contained a romanticized Orientalist strain. Said held a pro-Palestinian political perspective and advocated the creation of a Palestinian state, which added to the controversy that surrounded his theories. Schneemann, Carolee (b. 1939) is a performance artist known for exploring issues of sexuality and gender in her art. Her earlier work was grounded in the “Happenings” of the late fifties, a form of event-based art developed by Alan Kaprow, whom she knew. Her bodily based art of the 1960s was considered by some critics to be pornographic, but her use of props such as snakes in her bodily performances has antecedents in art as old as the statuary of ancient Minoa. Schneemann’s work had the power to shock as it explored the boundaries and overlap between eroticism and gender politics. Her work tends to focus on sexual liberation rather than victimization, which, arguably, was the more dominant theme during second-wave feminism.

290 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of (1671–1713) was one of the first philosophers to propose and analyze the concept of the Sublime. Writing in the eighteenth century, his ideas laid the conceptual groundwork for Romanticism, which emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Sublime is associated with landscapes that inspire a sense of the all-encompassing magnitude of nature. In some ways, the Sublime is similar to the concept of the Way found in Taoism. Sherman, Cindy (b. 1954) is an American photographer who has created large series of conceptual images in the styles of film imagery, historical paintings, and popular imagery including fashion photography and soft-core pornography in order to call into question codes of representation. The images explore the relationship between the formation of individual identity and the construction of gender-based identity at a social level. Though she uses herself as a subject, the artist does not consider the images she creates to be self-portraits. Stieglitz, Alfred (1864–1946) was an American photographer who was instrumental in the development of photography as a form of fine art. He promoted the medium in the journal that he edited, Camera Work, through his own activity as a photographer, and through the exhibits that he organized. In addition, Stieglitz owned galleries that were among the first to present modernist art—both European and American—to the American public. He married the artist Georgia O’Keeffe in 1924, though much of the time in the years to follow they were apart from one another. Tarabotti, Arcangela (1604–1652) was a seventeenth-century Italian woman who was sent at the age of eleven to a convent by her parents. She wrote a book called Paternal Tyranny that criticized her parents and an entire social system that relied upon convents. The alternative to sending a girl away to a convent would be to pay an expensive dowry in order for her to be married; sending her to a convent also guarded against the chance of her giving birth to heirs who might challenge the sons in the family for a portion of the parents’ inheritance. The critique of such systematic inequalities between the treatment of men and women clearly anticipated later feminist theories. Trin, T. Minh Ha (b. 1952) Born in Hanoi, Vietnam, Trin T. Minh Ha is a filmmaker and postcolonial theorist. She studied musical composition and literature at the University of Illinois before launching a teaching career; she now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. In her films she has considered issues of identity including identity drawn from plural sources, space as a cultural form, and the effects of new technologies upon our experience of time. Her films have featured subjects in Africa and in Asian countries including Vietnam, China, and Japan. Wilde, Oscar (1854–1900) was an Irish poet and playwright known for his wit and his flamboyant persona. His novel The Picture of Dorian Grey became popular in its time and is still read today. The novel treats the themes of beauty, pleasure,

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 291 sensuality, and the price of debauchery. Wilde himself paid a price for his sexuality. He was imprisoned during the 1890s for acts of “indecency” with other men and his subsequent career suffered dramatically as a result. Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–1797) was a strong advocate of the rights of women. She attacked stereotypes of women as docile and domestic and felt men tried to keep women in a state of childhood. She argued for a more systematic education for women and condemned women for trying to please men. It was her passionate feelings about education that sparked her arguments for reform. At the time, she felt that the education of women was neglected, and that this was a source of misery for women themselves. It was through education, she felt, that women could gain independence and strength of mind and body. Woolf, Virginia (1882–1941) was an English author raised in a cultured household. However, her mother died when she was a young teen and her father when she was a young adult; their deaths precipitated nervous breakdowns for Woolf, an affliction that she struggled with throughout her life. She became involved in the Bloomsbury group of authors and experimented with stream-of-consciousness techniques in writing. Recent scholarship of her work has focused on its feminist themes, and her repute as an author was elevated with the rise of feminist criticism during the 1970s. Zola, Emile (1840–1902) was a French novelist who is considered to be the foremost practitioner of naturalism in French literature. He was a childhood friend of the noted painter Paul Cézanne. In his writing he focused on social problems such as alcoholism, prostitution, and violence, which accompanied advancing industrialism and urbanization in France during the late nineteenth century. His focus on the contemporary and his willingness to engage in social action led him to defend the controversial work of his friend, Manet.

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INDEX

Abhinavagupta, 6, 136, 283 acculturation, 47, 67, 84, 89, 95 action painting, 188 Actor in Female Role (Kunisada), 222 Adams, Ansel, 184 Adena culture, 120 aesthetics, xii–xiii, 1–2, 5, 7, 14–15, 42–42, 45, 88, 94–95, 115, 117, 122, 126, 135, 145–146, 154, 160, 164, 167–168, 170, 180–185, 187, 193–194, 196–198, 201–204, 236, 240–242, 244–245, 254, 256, 266, 270, 286–287 Aestheticism, 226–227, 236 Aesthetic movement, 289 aesthetic systems, 5, 7–8, 25, 45, 92, 99, 103–104, 178, 186–193, 201 Afghanistan, 48, 71, 74–75 Afghani crown, 75 Africa(n), 11, 13, 17, 21, 41, 45, 46–47, 54–55, 58, 83–84, 86, 101, 103–104, 153, 159, 186–204, 232, 271, 290 African-American, 152 Africanism, 67–69, 73, 87, 89 diaspora, 271 philosophy, 196 Age of Exploration, 47 Algeria, 84–85 America(n), see United States American Indian(s), 20, 34, 36, 117, 285 American Indian Movement (AIM), 285 Native American, 11, 37–38, 51, 98, 152, 178, 285

Among the Sierra Nevada, California (Bierstadt), 52 Anasazi, 98 Anderson, Laurie, 183 Anderson, Richard, 197 André, Carl, 182, 256 Anglo-American, 265 animistic belief systems, 109, 112, 178–179, 263 anthropology, 1–2, 11, 56–57, 95, 97, 284–285 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 31, 283 Apollonian, 172–173 appropriation, 23–24, 36, 38, 116–117, 122, 152, 288 Aquinas, 94, 246 Arasse, Daniel, 248–250, 253 archetype, 5, 95–97, 266 argillite casket (Edenshaw), 61 Arguelles, José, 111 Aristotle, 91, 164 Armes, Roy, 85 Armstrong, Robert Plant, 103–104 art history, 1–2, 6, 11, 23, 56–58, 88, 130, 148, 161, 188, 205, 209–210, 262, 287 Art Nouveau, 236–239, 284 The Art of Living, Sartwell, 102 Arts and Crafts movement, 112, 236, 289 Aryan, 5, 124–125, 129 asceticism, 124, 138 Asian aesthetics, 164–166, 253–261 Asian American, 164 assimilation, cultural, 20–21, 25, 43, 62, 84–85

302 INDEX The Astronomer (Vermeer), 247 Australia, 54, 60, 92, 268 authenticity, 37–38, 43, 60–61, 86, 111, 121, 138, 149, 150, 160 avant-garde, 31, 56, 105, 107, 109–110, 182, 187, 234, 255, 265, 286–287 Avril, Jane, 236, 283 Axial Age, 278 Aztec, 47–48, 155–158, 161 Aztec Codex Barbonicus depicting “Tonalamatl,” 156 Bacon, Francis, 109 Bamiyan Buddha statues, 71 Bangalore, 127 Barack Obama as “The Joker”, 37 Baroque style, 51, 110–111, 210, 247–248, 251, 262, 270, 286, 289 Barth, Fredrik, 151 Barzun, Jacques, 101, 107, 283–284 Baselitz, Georg, 264 Basho, 183 Bauhaus, 112 Beardsley, Aubrey, 237–238, 263, 284 Beata Beatrix (Rossetti), 243 Beat poets, 164 Beauty (Moronobu), 223 Bechet, Sidney, 68 Bellini, Giovanni, 173 Berger, John, 206, 227 Berkhofer, Robert, 36 Berlo, Janet, 56–57 Beuys, Joseph, 94, 108–110, 112, 115, 117 Bierstadt, Albert, 51–52 bijinga genre, 223, 225, 234 Bing, Samuel, 238 bin Laden, Osama, 36 Bhaba, Homi, 19, 284 Bhagavad Gita, 126, 146 Black Iris, (O’Keeffe), 214 Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon), 85 Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider), 264 Bleyl, Fritz, 264 Bloodline: Big Families Series No. 2 (Xiaogang), 81 Boas, Franz, 28, 284 Bodhidharma, 167, 258 Bodhidharma (Daruma) (Nantembo), 258 Bolivia, 78, 270 bracketing (phenomenology), 23, 246, 253 Bridge in the rain: after Hiroshige (Van Gogh), 180

Bourdieu, Pierre, 150, 284 bourgeoisie, 53, 83, 262 Boutadjine, Mustaphe, 84 The Bow, Noguchi, 183 Brahmanism, 137–138, 145 breath or pneuma, as a vital force, 176, 270 “cloud-breath” motif, 173 Briggs, Katharine Cook, 267 British Columbia, 284 Brittany, France, 32 Brown, Craig, 188 Buddhism, 100, 125, 167, 173, 181 Tantric, 141 Zen, 170–172, 256–261, 268 Burgess, Katrina, 20 Cage, John, 171, 182, 255–256, 284 Calliope’s Sisters (Anderson), 197 calligraphy, 69, 160, 215–217, 236 Camera Work (Stieglitz, ed.), 213, 290 Canada, 92, 106 Canon, male bias in art, 8, 209–211, 240 capitalism, 22, 53, 73, 89, 288 Caravaggio, 210 Caribbean, 67, 69, 85, 152 Cartesianism, 111, 244 Cassirer, Ernst, 15 Castenada, Carlos, 116, 118 Catholicism, 35, 51, 251 central core imagery, 214, 285 Césaire, Aimé, 67–69 Cézanne, Paul, 100, 291 Ch’an Buddhism, 170, 256, 258–259 Champakalakshmi, R., 127 Chandella, 132, 138, 141–143 Chandella queens, 141–142, 146 Che Guevara, “Tu ejemplo vive, tus ideas perduran,” 78 Chicago, Judy, 218, 285 chiaroscuro, 168, 262 China, 21, 24, 48, 110, 163, 220, 229–230, 253–256, 258–259, 261 aesthetics, 164–166, 178–179, 181–182 art, 7, 80, 91, 130, 166–172, 174–176, 182 chinoiserie, 164, 229 Cholula, 156 Christianity, 33, 100, 102, 137, 157, 159, 192, 198, 267 Churchill, Ward, 59, 285 Civilization and Its Discontents (Freud), 55 Clifford, James, 34, 43 The Climax, illustration from “Salome” by Oscar Wilde (Beardsley), 237

INDEX 303 Codex Borbonicus, “Tonalamatl”, 156 Codex Mendoza, Codex Florentino, 155 collecting, 19, 57, 102, 110 ethics of, 57 collective unconscious, 5, 95 colonialism, 2–4, 18, 45–65, 69, 84–86, 89–90, 159–160, 208, 228, 241, 265, 267 Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels), 288 comparative aesthetics, xii, 5, 15, 42, 185, 187 analysis, 5, 95, 150, 161, 163–164, 172, 246, 261–262, 285 frameworks, 2, 25, 82 methodology, 2, 16, 284 process, 14, 16, 154 and religion, 100 study, 1, 7, 16, 23, 94, 97 Comte, Auguste, 57 Condomblé, 271 Confucius, 164–166 Confucianism, 164–166, 254 The Conquest of Granada (Dryden), 29 Conquistadors, 155 consciousness, 39, 42, 111, 116, 145–146, 197, 244–246, 248–249, 251–253, 257, 260, 283, 287, 291 contextualism, 13 Coomeraswamy, Ananda, 127, 146 Cortes, Hernando, 37 cosmopolitanism, 65, 70 Counter-Reformation, 50, 66, 251 courtesans, Japanese, 181, 221–222, 224–225, 231, 234–235 Coyote: I like America and America likes me (Beuys), 108–109 Creolity movement, 69 Critical Art Ensemble, 22 crowns, beaded, 202–204 cultural differences, 11, 13, 25, 92, 157 cultural evolution, 29–30, 53, 57, 76, 152, 160–162 unilineal theory of, 57 cultural relativism, 3, 13–14, 16, 25 Cultural Revolution, 24, 81 Cunningham, Merce, 182 Dada, 150, 182, 218, 263, 268, 284 daimyo, 224 Damas, Léon, 67 dance, 47, 68, 96, 105, 113, 127, 134, 137, 142, 148, 151, 159, 186, 194–201, 204, 223–224, 234, 237, 267, 271, 283–284

Dante, 243 Das Kapital (Marx), 288 David (Michelangelo), 95 dealer-gallery system, 110 The Death of General Wolfe (West), 41 de Beauvoir, Simone, 209, 269, 284, 288 de Chirico, Giorgio, 270 de Kooning, Willem, 109 Degas, Edgar, 163, 180, 233–234, 238 Deleuze, Gilles, 39, 285 Desai, Devangana, 6, 127, 132, 135, 137–138, 143–144 Descartes, René, 244, 247–248, 251 di Prima, Diane, 183 diaspora, 56, 73, 271 Die Brücke (the Bridge), 264 Dieterlen, Germaine, 188 diffusion, cultural, 3, 19, 21–22, 25, 160, 162–164, 180–181 The Dinner Party (Chicago), 285 Dionysian, 172–173, 178 Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men (Rousseau), 29 display, 15, 17, 38–41, 56–57, 141–142, 160, 266 economics of, 160 politics of, 74, 76, 89 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Bourdieu), 284 diversity, xi, 28, 82, 261 spectacle of, 74–75, 89 Dogon, 187–196, 204, 263, 271 Dogon dancers wearing masks, 195 Douglas, Mary, 198, 285 Dove, Arthur, 288 Dragonfly woman corsage ornament (Lalique), 239 Dreaming with Open Eyes (Tucker), 115 Drewal, Henry, 197, 200 Dryden, John, 29 du Preez, Peter, 160 Duchamp, Marcel, 263, 283–284, 288 Duran, Jane, 123 Durham, Jimmie, 36–38, 40, 285 Early Spring (Kuo Hsi), 167 East Asia, 11, 55, 109, 125, 163, 254 economics(y), 3–4, 7, 10, 13–14, 18, 21–22, 23, 25–26, 34, 37–38, 45–46, 53–54, 56, 58–60, 65, 73, 75–77, 82–83, 86, 89, 100, 102–103, 109–110, 117, 122, 148, 150, 157, 160, 162, 184, 188, 191, 205, 207–209, 224,

304 INDEX 227, 229, 254, 265, 269–270, 286, 288 Edo Period, 8, 180, 183, 221–222, 224–225, 236, 240 education, 7, 19, 28, 47, 62, 77, 82–85, 92, 129, 139–140, 184, 197, 205, 207–209, 211, 254, 284, 291 eighteenth century, 58, 101, 166, 207, 210, 229, 234, 287, 290 Einstein, Albert, 275 elites, 75–76, 82, 84, 89, 104, 222 Ellington, Duke, 68 Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (Yoshihara), 229 “emic” perspective, 11 empiricism, 248 emptiness or mu, 166, 254, 260 Engels, Friedrich, 287–288 Enlightenment, Age of, 29, 58, 101, 104, 111, 166, 178, 206, 270, 287 enlightenment, spiritual, 5, 100–101, 122, 141, 170, 241, 244, 255–258, 265, 268 Ephebism, 197–198 epistemological systems, 56–57, 92 erotic imagery, 6, 133–135, 137–144, 147, 201, 228, 234, 236, 238, 284, 289 Eskimo, 101–102, 104–107, 115 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke), 252 essentialism, 76, 212, 265 ethics, xii, 7, 17, 45, 122, 126, 165, 193–194, 196–197, 201, 204 ethnic groups:interdependency of , 151–152 Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Barth), 151 ethnic identification, 6, 151, 153–155, 157–158 ethnic styles, 62, 83, 151–162 ethnicity and art, 151–155 ethnic art(ist), 38, 118, 159–160 ethno-aesthetics, 1, 43 ethnocentrism, 23, 54, 90 Euro-American, 20–21, 53, 88, 102, 116–118, 122, 160–161, 193 evolution, 127, 130, 161, 168–169, 172, 194, 269, 275 in biology, 57 cultural, 29–30, 53, 57, 76, 152, 160–162 Fan Kuan, 175–176 Fanon, Frantz Omar, 84–88, 93

fashion, 220–222, 224–225, 229, 265, 290 Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, 159 Feldman, Edmund, 113 female figures, sura sundaris, 134, 144, 147 feminism, 205–206, 208–209, 217, 268–270, 274, 284, 291 and art history, 207, 209–211, 213, 218, 226–231, 264, 285, 287, 289 art theory, 8, 118, 207, 212, 214, 240, 290 representation and gender, 8, 206–207, 212, 218, 220, 222, 225–226, 229, 231, 233, 239–240, 268, 290 femme fatale, 238–239, 263 fertility figures, cults or symbols, 133, 139–140, 142, 144, 236, 251 First World movement, 59–60 Flag of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, 69 Floating World, 180, 221–222 Forbes, Jack, 152 formalism, 65, 67, 70, 110, 226, 263–264 Fort Ancient culture, 120 Foster, Jodie, 28 Foucault, Michel, 57, 141, 286–287 Fourth World, 59 France, 32, 58, 68, 84, 181, 182, 231, 291 French, 29, 31, 39, 47, 67, 69, 83–84, 150, 191, 229, 238, 244, 265, 283–286, 289, 291 Franits, Wayne, 211 Frantz Fanon (Boutadjine), 84 Frawley, David, 124–125 Frazer, James, 41 Freud, Lucian, 109 Freud, Sigmund, 55, 97 From Dawn to Decadence (Barzun), 283 Frontier Thesis (Turner), 4, 55 Fuji in Clear Weather (Hokusai), 176 Gablik, Suzi, 111 Ganesh, 142 Gauguin, Paul, 28–33, 56, 105, 180, 264, 270, 286 geisha, 180, 223–224 Gelede society, 199–200 gender, 8, 10, 33, 55, 142, 147, 184, 192, 205–206, 241–242, 264, 270, 289–290 bodies and emotions, 218–225 feminism in art, 209–211 and interpretation of works, 211–212 and Japan, classical, 215–218

INDEX 305 and Japonisme, 225–241 and representation, 232 social critique of, 206–209 specialization, 212–214 Gentileschi, Artemisia, 210–211 The Geography of Thought (Nisbett), 254 German Expressionism, 264 Germany, 51, 58, 80, 263, 287 Gestalt psychologists, 15, 25, 264 Pragnanz, law of, 264 gesture as subject matter, 224, 233–234, 243, 246 Girl at a Window Reading a Letter (Vermeer), 249–251 A Girl Coming from Her Bath (Toyonobu), 234 Giuliani, Rudy, 14 Ghana, 85, 159 highlife songs, Ghanaian, 159 globalization, 18, 23, 25, 92, 265 goddesses, 134, 139, 200, 203, 207, 232–233 Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization (Frawley), 124 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 101 The Golden Bough (Frazer), 41 Goldsworthy, Andy, 119 Gorlia, Émile, 46 Gorman, R. C., 38, 286 Gottlieb, Adolph, 183 Graburn, Nelson, 61 Graves, Morris, 171, 181 The Great Criticism series (Guangyi), 24 Great Lakes, 114 Greece: ancient, 172, 254, 270 classical, 115, 125, 164–165 Hellenistic, 47 Great Britain, 12, 58, 92, 119, 129, 188, 193, 229, 266, 270, 284–285, 288 England, English, 179, 210, 236, 265, 268–269, 284, 287, 289, 291 Great Serpent Mound, 120 Griaule, Marcel, 191 Guangyi, Wang, 24, 81 Guatemala, 161 Guerrilla Girls, 207, 264 Guevara, Che, 78 habitus, 150–151 haiku, 183 Hamas, 36 “Happenings,” 289 Harlem Renaissance, 68

Harris, Ann Sutherland, 209 Harunobu, Suzuki, 223, 234, Heckel, Erich, 264 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 53, 101, 286 Heian period, 8, 215–216, 219–221, 224, 240 Heian woman in court dress, 283 Heidegger, Martin, 246 Hellenic culture, 100 Herrigel, Eugene, 183 Hiffernan, Joanna, 226 Higgins, Lesley Ball, 226–228, 230 high culture, 11 Hinduism, 96, 123, 125–127, 132–138, 139, 141–142, 145–147, 229, 283 Hiroshige, Ando, 180–181, 223, 233 History of Art, 2nd ed. (Janson), 211 History of Mexico (Rivera), 155, 158 History of Mexico showing the Aztec Eagle (Rivera), 158 Hodgson, Brian Houghton, 129 Hodler, Ferdinand, 270 Hofrichter, Frima Fox, 211 Hofstede, Geert, 91–92 Hokusai, Katsushika, 176–178, 180–181, 223, 233 Holy Virgin Mary (Ofili), 12 Homer, 28, 264 Homeward-bound Fisherman Covered in Snow (Liang Kai), 169 homogenization, cultural, 18, 20, 26 Westernization, 18, 26 Americanization, 18, 26 McDonaldization, 18, 26 Hong Kong, 81 The House of Oracles (Yong Ping) 182 Huang Kung-Wang, 171 Hughes, Langston, 68 Hui-yuan, 172, 178 Hussein, Saddam, 36, 72–73 Husserl, Edmund, 244–245, 286–287 I Ching, 182, 255–256 idealism, philosophical, 39 ideology, 51–52, 70, 72–73, 77, 79, 90, 125, 141, 154, 160, 269 Iliad, 265 I Like America and America Likes Me (Beuys), 108 imaginative realism, 168 imperialism, 4, 47–50, 53, 63–63, 79, 116–117, 125, 155, 159, 228–30 Impressionists, 233, 286–287 Improvisations (Kandinsky), 255

306 INDEX in-betweenness, cultural, 67, 88 Incan empire, 48 India, 5–6, 21, 48, 55, 75, 96–97, 123–147, 164, 167, 229, 255–256, 258–259, 283–285 India and the Infinite (Smith), 145 Indian dancers perform at Tagore birth anniversary, 127 Indigenismo, 159 indigenous peoples, 40, 42–44, 45, 47, 59–60, 69–70, 76, 87, 89, 105, 107, 110, 112–113, 116–122, 178, 211 in Africa, 196 in India, 124–125, 146 indigenous styles in Mexico, 155–159 individualism, 20, 177, 193 industrialism, 41, 291 Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique, 228, 233 integration, cultural, 2, 21, 25, 105, 11, 204 intellectual colonization, 58 intentionality, 245 internet, 22, 207 inua, 106 Iran, 49, 164 Islam, 49, 67, 89, 100, 102, 137, 159, 191–192, 229, 263, 267, Islamicism, 69–73, 86–87 Muslim, 36, 50, 70 Islamic nationalism, 70 Islamicism, 69–73, 86–87 Ivins, William, 112 Iwa, 198 Jamal, Qudratullah, 72 Janson, H. W., 211 Japan(ese), 8, 22, 41, 110, 163, 166, 170, 172, 175–176, 178–181, 183, 206, 211–212, 215–226, 229–240, 253, 255–261 Japanese-American, 183 “Jap Trap,” propaganda poster, 35 Japonisme, 164, 205, 225–241, 265 jazz, 17, 68, 115 Jhally, Sut, 206 Joker (Obama as), 36 Judaism, 70–71, 267 Judith Beheading Holofernes (Gentileschi), 211 Jung, Carl, 5, 95–97, 263, 267 Kabuki theater, 181, 221–222 Kahlo, Frida, 77, 212–213, 274, 287

Kakemono, 234 Kama Sutra, 139 kami, 178, 276 kanaga mask, 195 Kandariyâ Mahâdeva Temple, 132–134 figurative frieze, 133 Kandinsky, Wassily, 94, 110, 242, 255, 264 kanji, calligraphy, 259 Kant, Immanuel, 94, 101, 178, 287 Kantian, 65 Kaprow, Alan, 289 karma, 96, 125 Kashmir Shaivism, 283 Kauffman, Angelica, 210 Khajuraho temple complex map, 131 Khajuraho temples: View of Devi Jagadambi and Chitragupta temples, 131 Khajuraho sculptural scene, “Symbol of Love,” 135 Khajuraho sculptural scene depicting sexual acts, 136 Khajuraho temples, 6, 127, 130–147 Khan, Genghis, 72 Kiefer, Anselm, 115 Kilburne, Jean, 206 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 264 Kiyonaga, Torii, 223, 233 Klee, Paul, 94 Klimt, Gustav, 270 Kline, Franz, 183 knowledge, production of, 1, 4, 22, 32, 39, 40, 42–44, 56, 58, 62, 64, 88, 95, 112, 115, 117, 139–140, 146, 156–157, 179, 183, 189–190, 192, 197, 218, 244–245, 247–248, 250, 270, 287 and collecting, 57 and power, Foucault, 57, 84, 286 koan, 257 Koffka, Kurt, 264 Kublai Khan, 171 Kuo Hsi, 167–168 Lacan, Jacques, 42 Lalique, René, 238–239 landscape painting, 7, 21, 101, 163–185, 223, 288, 290, and American national identity, 51–52 The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks (Whistler), 226–227 Las Meninas (Velázquez), 286 Lao Tsu, 165–166, 171, 178–179, 182

INDEX 307 Leach, Edmund, 193–194 Legends of my People, the Great Ojibwa (Morrisseau), 114 Lennon, John, 66 lesbian themes, 235 Leslie, Julia, 141 Leyster, Judith, 210–211 Liang Kai, 169 liberation, aesthetic of, 4, 70, 87–88, 217, 225, 230, 236, 238–241, 263, 267, 289 liberation movements, 70, 85–86, 89–90, 93, 206–207, 209, 213, 268, 288 Libya, 48 Lingam, 133, 138, 139, 140 Lippard, Lucy, 99, 118 Locke, John, 244, 252–253, 287 Lofty Messages of the Forests and Streams (Kuo Hsi), 167 Logical Investigations (Husserl), 286 love, 90, 135, 139, 141–142, 219, 230, 235, 237, 243, 251, 284 Lowell, Amy, 220, 230 Lowenthal, Abe, 20 Luhrmann, Baz, 267 lute as symbol, 251 Madame Butterfly, 230 Mahathir Mohamad, Dr. 70 La Maison de l’Art Nouveau, 238 Malaysia, 70–71 male gaze, 212, 226 Mali, 7, 187, 189, 263 Malinche (Durham), 37 Malinche, 38 Mallarmé, Stephane, 269 mandala, 97, 127–130, 143–144, 146 Manet, Edouard, 163, 231–233, 238, 287, 291 Manifest Destiny, 117, 265 Mao, 81 Maoist, 24 Maori, 40 Marc, Franz, 274 marginalization, 59, 153 Martinique, 85 Marx, Karl, 38, 53–54, 286–288 Marxist, 24, 28, 164, 242, 262, 269 material culture, 38, 266 materialism, 41, 105, 109–110, 112 Mayans, 100, 156, 161 McCall, Catherine, 253 Meister, Michael, 130, 132, 145 Mercantile Age, 47

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 244–246, 253, 288 Mesoamerican, 139, 161 mestizo, 157–159 Mexico, xii, 20–21, 37–38, 48, 50–51, 54, 75, 90, 99–100, 118, 155–159, 161–162, 265, 270, 286–287 Michelangelo, 95 Middle East, 49, 55, 164, 289 Midiwiwin society, 114 Mill, John Stuart, 206, 225, 288 Mimbres, 98 mindfulness, 102, 104, 136, 256 The Mind of Primitive Man (Boas), 284 mind, philosophy of, 29, 33, 39, 95, 102, 104, 107, 164, 168, 178–179, 183, 198, 206, 218, 244–245, 248, 253, 255–256, 259–260, 284, 286–287 Minh Ha, Trin T., 39, 290 missionaries, 19, 49, 51, 79, 102, 124–125 Mississippian mounds, 118–120 mithunas or couples, 134, 141 Mogollon Bowl, 98 Morimura, Yasumasa, 231–233, 288 Moronobu, Hishakawa, 223 Morris, William, 289 Morrisseau, Norval, 114 Moulin Rouge, 236, 267 Moulin Rouge! (Luhrmann), 267 Mount Williamson, the Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California (Adams) 184 Mt. Fuji, 178 Mughal rulers, 48, 50 Munch, Edvard, 270 mu or emptiness, 254, 260 Murasaki, Shikibu, 215, 220 Museum of Modern Art, 29 museums, 32, 40, 57, 59, 66, 99, 110, 264 and collecting mushin, no-self, 260 Muslim, 36, 70, empires, 50 Islam, 49, 67, 89, 100, 102, 137, 159, 191–192, 229, 263, 267 Islamicism, 69–73, 86–87 Muttawakil, Wakil Ahmad, 72 Mycenaean Civilization, 172 Myer, Isabel Briggs, 267 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), 91, 267

308 INDEX naga symbols, 123, 127, 142, 146 Nantembo, 258–259, 261 nationalism, 4, 22, 50, 59, 63–65, 159, 241 arguments against, 65–77 arguments for, 77–82 artist’s role in, 82–93 National Palace, Mexico City, 155, 157–158 National Socialist Party, 51 Native American, 11, 37–38, 51, 98, 152, 178, 285 American Indian(s), 20, 34, 36, 117, 285 Native visual arts: Calumet ceremony, 52 Catlinite, 52 Nazi, 271 Negritude, 67–69, 73, 86–87, 89 Nell, 28 neocolonialism, 45, 59–60, 62, 64, 75–76, 85–86, 89 Neo-expressionism, 82, 264 New Zealand, 60 Maori, 40 Newman, Barnet, 94 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 94, 107, 172, 255 Niger River, 55, 189, 191 Nigeria, 8, 68, 159, 196, 271 Yoruba, 197–204 Nigerian tribal dancing, 68 Nisbett, Richard, 254 Noble Savage, 29–30, 41, 257 Nochlin, Linda, 209, 217, 227, 228 Noguchi, Isamu, 164, 182–183, 256 North America 20, 22, 36–37, 47–48, 60, 109, 114, 119, 151, 153, 155, 159, 192, 209, 265, 268, 270 Northern Sung, 167–168, 175 Northwest Coast Native cultures, 56, 62, 284 nostos, 265 nyama (or vital force), 191, 195 Oba Ademuwagun Adesida II, the Deji of Akure, on Throne in courtyard of Akure palace. Yoruba peoples, Nigeria, 203 Obama, Barack, 36 Odysseus, 264 Odyssey, Homer, 28, 264–265 Ofili, Chris, 12–13, 17 Ojibwa, 114 O’Keeffe, Georgia, 212–214, 218, 288, 290

Olodumare, 271 Olympia (Manet), 231 onna-e, or women’s pictures, 216–217 Onnagata, 222 Ono, Yoko, 66 Onyewuenyi, Innocent, 196 The Order of Things (Foucault), 286 Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), 69 Orientalism, 228–230, 289 Other(ness), xii, 3–4, 15–17, 25–47, 39, 60, 98, 107, 117, 149, 151–155, 160, 162, 181, 226, 230, 233, 240, 284 otoko-e or men’s pictures, 216–217 Ottoman empire, 49–50 Outline of a Mandala plan, (Hodgson), 129 Overlay (Lippard), 118 Pagan nature religions, 102, 153, 198 Pakistan, 70 pan-Islamic, 69 Pane, Gina, 218 Parvati, 142–143 Paternal Tyranny, Tarabotti, 290 The Path of Beauty (Li Zehou), 168 patronage, 7, 83, 110, 141 Pechstein, Max, 33 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 130 Performance Art, 183, 218, 263, 289 Pernet, Henri, 187–188, 193 phenomenology, 8, 244–245, 253, 260, 286, 288 The Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty), 244, 288 Phillips, Ruth, 56–57 The Picture of Dorian Grey (Wilde), 290 Picasso, Pablo, 270 place attachment, 7, 185 Plato, 5, 91, 94, 145, 164–166, 196, 266 Plotinus, 5, 94, 145 political art, 7, 65–66, 77–78, 109 Polke, Sigmar, 115 Pollock, Jackson, 164, 182, 188–189, 256 Polynesia, 60 Portrait (Futago) (Morimura), 232 Portrait of a Zen master, 257 Portrait of Frantz Fanon (Boutadjine), 84 postcolonial theory, 1, 2, 18, 59–60, 62, 84–85, 87, 265, 284, 289 postmodern(ism), 19, 60, 65, 67, 73, 83, 101, 115–116, 121, 149, 150, 232, 241, 267–268, 285

INDEX 309 Potlatch, 56 power-knowledge, 57 Pragnanz, law of, 264 praise songs, 200 Pre-Columbian, 155, 157–159, 161 Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 243–244, 268, 289 primitivism, 3–4, 16, 27–44, 170, 257, La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine (The Princess from the Land of Porcelain) (Whistler), 227 Principles of Art History (Wölfflin), 262 printmaking, 264, 289 Prints and Visual Communication (Ivins), 112 Prisoners working, Belgian Congo (Gorlia), 46 private property, 20, 79 progress, 11, 14, 16, 18, 21, 27, 29–30, 32, 46, 51, 53, 57, 64, 76, 104–105, 107, 121–122, 126, 160, 174, 228, 286 Proletariat, 24, 262, 288 The Proposition (Leyster), 211 The Prose of the World (Merleau-Ponty), 246 Protestant, 20, 35, 51, 251 psychology, 80, 85, 95, 97, 115, 145, 152, 244, 264, 286–288 psychoanalytical, 116 Psychological Types (Jung), 267 punk, 150, 268 purchasing power, national rankings, 54 Puritan, 36 al-Qaddafi, Muammar, 48 Quetzalcoatl, 156–157 racism, 68, 76, 85, 90, 153, 184 rasa, 6, 126, 135–137, 145–146 rationalism, 247–248, 251, 256 readymades, 263, 284 realist, realism, 67, 168, 174, 217, 259, 270 and otherness, 34 psychological, 197 Socialist, 91, 269 in Vermeer, 250–251 Redon, Odilon, 270 The Reenchantment of Art (Gablik), 111 reflexivity, xii, 17, 25, 27–29, 42–43, 60, 80, 82, 148, 155, 157, 160, 162, 181, 188, 205, 242, 248 Reformation, 50, 66 Reinhardt, Ad, 164, 182, 256 relativism, 3, 13–14, 16–17, 25 religion and art, 5–8, 14, 19, 22, 41, 50,

69, 85, 94, 95, 159, 163, 172, 178, 181, 183, 185–188, 191, 196, 199, 202, 241, 256, 259, 267, 271, 285–286 appearance of belief, 118–122 collective representations, 99–100 freedom of art from, 107–110 increasing secularity, 110–112 in India, 123–147 shamanism, 112–118 spiritual, sacred, 100–107 symbolism and collective meaning, 95–98 Rembrandt van Rijn, 250, 289 Renaissance, 103, 109–110, 112, 150, 210, 262, 268 representation, 4, 6, 8, 27, 32–33, 45, 77, 134, 137, 139–140, 144, 158–160, 166, 185, 191, 193, 197–198, 243–245, 248, 251, 255, 266, 289 collective, 95, 99–100 and gender, 212, 218, 220, 222, 226, 229, 231, 233, 239–240, 268, 290 and nationalism, 82–92 of the other, 34–35, 38–39, 42–43 self-representation, 47, 59–61, 154, 241–242, 253 representational systems, 206–207 Retablos, 287 Reynolds, Joshua, 268 Rhapsodoi, 264 Rhodes, Cecil, 55 Richards, Polly, 196 Richter, Gerhard, 80 Rigvedic period, 124 Riegl, Alois, 56 Rinzai Zen, 255, 268 Rivera, Diego, 6, 148, 155–162, 286–287 Rivers, Larry, 109 Rococo, 229 Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women (Sutherland), 141 Romantic(s), 32, 43, 51, 99, 107, 109–110, 115, 177–179, 185, 255–256, 263, 287, 289 Romanticism, 105, 270, 290 Romanticize(d), 62, 157, 286, 289 Rome, 47, 42 Rose, Wendy, 116–118 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 243, 289 Rothko, Mark, 94, 192 Rousseau, Henri, 31

310 INDEX Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 29, 42 Saar, Betye, 94 Saddam Hussein statue being toppled, 72 Said, Edward, 34, 228–229, 289 Salle, David, 109 Salomé (Wilde, illustration Beardsley), 237–239 Sanctum Sanctorum, Shiva temple, 128 Santeria, 271 Sartre, Jean Paul, 244, 269, 284, 288 Sartwell, Crispin, 104–105 satori, 257 Savage Poems (Gauguin), 30 Savage(s), 29–30, 35–36, 38, 41, 52–53, 257 Schiller, Friedrich 101 Schlegel, Friedrich von, 255 Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl, 264 Schneemann, Carolee, 218, 289 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 255 Scotland, 119 The Second Sex (de Beauvoir), 209, 284 second-wave feminism, 212, 268–269, 289 self-determination, 59 self-orientalizing, 75 self-representation, 47, 59–61, 154, 241–243, 253 Senegal, 83–84 Senghor, Léopold, 67–69, 84 Serpent Mound, 120 Sesshu, Toyo, 178 sfumato, 250 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 178, 290 shaman(ism), 5, 102–103, 109, 112–118, 121–122, 156 shaman’s scrolls, Wiigwaasabak, 114 Shaman with Many Fishes (Morrisseau), 114 Shan, Li, 81 shan-shui or nature poetry, 167 Shaw, Miranda, 141, 172 Sherman, Cindy, 212, 290 Shimomura, Roger, 164 Shintoism, 198 Ship in a Storm (Turner), 177 sigui ceremony, 190–192, 263 Six Dynasties 220–618 CE, 167 Sistine Ceiling (Michelangelo), 95, 192 Siva, Shiva, 96, 127–128, 133, 139, 140, 142–144, 146 “Shiva and Parvati”, Khajuraho sculptural scene, 143

Shiva Nataraja, 96 Shiva Stone (lingam), 140 Slingblade, 28 small-scale cultures, 76, 89 Smith, Huston, 145 Snake Garden relief sculpture, 124 Snyder, Gary, 116, 183 social contract, 76, 166, 191, 287 Social Darwinism, 53, 269 Socialist Realism, 91, 269 Socrates, 164, 196 The Sofa (Toulouse-Lautrec), 235 Song Offerings (Tagore), 126 Sotheby’s, 81 South America, 55, 60 Southern Sung, 167–170 sovereignty, 59, 62, 70, 82, 86, 269 Spain, 51, 155 Spencer, Herbert, 57, 269 Spiral Leafwork (Goldsworthy), 119 Spirit of the Dead (Gauguin), 32 St. Francis in the Desert (Bellini), 173 Stieglitz, Alfred, 213–214, 288, 290 structuralist paradigm, 196, 242 The Studio, art magazine, 237 style, national, 155–161 subculture, 64, 111, 157 Sublime, 177–178, 287, 290 subjectivity, psychological, 244–246, 251, 253, 288 Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake (Hiroshige), 180 Suleiman the Magnificent, 49 sumi-e paintings, 259-260 Sung period, 960–1127 CE, 167 See Northern Sung and Southern Sung Surrealism, 270 survival of the fittest, 53, 269 Susannah and the Elders (Gentileschi), 210 Sutherland, Sally, 141 Suzuki, D. T., 256, 285 Symbolists, 107, 236, 289 symbols, 5, 61, 89, 110, 120, 188–190, 199–200, 224 collective, 34, 95 ethnic, 154–155, 157–158, key, 70, 117 national, 91 religious, 69, 94–98, 114–115, 121, 123–147 Symphonies in White (Whistler), 226 Tagore, Rabindranath, 126–127, 136, 138, 146, 147

INDEX 311 Tahiti, 32, 105, 286 Taj Mahal, 130 The Tale of Genji (Murasaki), 215–216, 218–219, 221 Tale of Genji illustrative scroll (Fujiwara), 216 Taliban, 71–73, 75 Tamerlane, 72 Tantra, Tantrism, 128, 137–141, 147, 283 Tao te Ching (Lao Tsu), 165–166, 171, 182, 255–256 Taoism, 28, 164–167, 170–173, 175, 254–257, 270, 290 Taos, NM, 286 Tarabotti, Arcangela, 205, 290 Tassi, Agostini, 211 taste, judgments of, 11, 56–57, 135–136, 141–146, 148, 150, 164, 215–216, 221–222, 229, 263, 284, 287 tattoo, 40 Taxco, Mexico, façade of Cathedral, 50 technology, 20, 28, 30, 94, 111–112, 181, 276 Tenochtitlan, 48, 158 Teotihuacan, 156 Tezcatlipoca, 156 Third Reich, 271 Third World, 59–60, 82, 85, 270 third-wave feminists, 218 Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji (Hokusai), 176 Thompson, Robert Farris, 188, 197 Thoreau, Henry David, 51 Thornton, Billy Bob, 28 Three Nudes (Pechstein), 33 Tobey, Mark, 163, 171, 181–182, 256 toguna, Dogon men’s house, 189–190 Toguna building in Ende Village, 189 tokenism, 60, 83 Tolstoy, Leo, 94, 242 Torgovnick, Marianna, 28 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 180, 234–236, 238, 267, 283 Tourism, xii, 19, 23, 75, 102, 191 Toyonobu, Ishikawa, 234 tradition(s), xii, 2, 5, 7–8, 10–11, 13–14, 17–19, 21, 23, 25, 33, 39, 47, 54, 56, 64, 68, 77, 79–80, 83, 85–88, 94, 99–102, 105, 107, 110, 112–113, 116–118, 121–123, 183, 263, 266–268, 270–271, 283 in gender, 205, 207–211, 214–215, 218, 224, 226, 228, 230–233, 235–236, 285,

in India, 125–127, 133–134, 136, 142, 146–147 landscape, 163–166, 170–173, 175, 178, 180–182 and Rivera, 155, 159 and the self, 243–246, 251, 254, 256, 260, 288 and social order, 187–189, 193–194, 196–198, traditional arts, 40, 59, 61–62, 84, 104, 114, 259, 261, 265 Transcendentalists, 255 The Transformation of Nature in Art (Coomeraswamy), 285 transnational, 22, 26, 69–70, 73–75, 82–83, 86, 89, 92 transnational corporations, 75 Travellers amid Mountains and Streams (Fan Kuan), 174 tribal-style tattoo, 40 Tropical Forest: Battling Tiger and Buffalo (Rousseau), 31 Tucker, Michael, 115 Tugra (Imperial Monogram) of Sulayman the Magnificent, 49 Tungusian Shaman, 113 Turkic dynasties, 48 Turkey, 49, 75 Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 177 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 55 ukiyo-e, 180, 221–226, 231, 234–235, 240 United States (USA), 18, 20–22, 54, 57, 59, 68, 75, 79, 92, 99, 151–153, 155, 157–158, 255, 265–266, 268–269, 283–285 America(n) 4, 20–22, 28, 35–37, 40–41, 47, 51–53, 88, 90, 102, 108–109, 115–118, 122, 152–153, 160, 181–182, 213, 225, 229–230, 255, 265–266, 269, 283–284, 288, 290, Americanization, 18, 25 universal(s), 10, 16, 25, 67 aesthetics, 10, 14, 25, 65 art as, 15, 102 beauty, 231 biological basis, 15 cultural patterns, 62 and Eurocentrism, 117 form, 14, 65 formalism, 70 and identity, 80 -ism, 25

312 INDEX knowledge structures, 4, 29, 39, 117 and liberation, 78 and nation, 90 and Négritude, 68 and order, 165 and peace, 66 perception, 16 and progress, 122 and quality, 217 and shamanism, 117 spirituality, 5 statements, 2 style as, 150–151, 161 symbolic expression as, 15, 95, 97 themes, xiii values, 2, 64, 67 Upanishads, 124 U.S. Government, 75, 285 USSR, 58, 269 Utamaru, Kitagawa, 223 value(s), aesthetic, 8, 10, 14, 104 and archetypes, 97 and art, 15, 17, 72–73, 107, 110 and assimilation, 20 bodily, 244 bourgeois, 262 capitalist, 109 Chinese, 172, 254 and colonialism, 54, 88 commercial or commodity, 38, 61, 75, 110 communal, 165 Confucian, 254 cosmopolitanism as, 67 cultural, 177, 187 in cultural relativism, 13, 25 and display, 39 Dogon, 192, 194–5 European, 235 emic, 11 ethnic, 153 exotic, 163 and gender, 211 and India, 142 indigenous, 70 innovation as, 160 and intellectual colonization, 58 judgment, 11–14, 16, 149, 196 and language, 85 local, 18 material, 105 methodological, 253

and nationalism, 69, 73, 76–78, 82, 90, 92 and nature, 52 normative, 16, 25 and Ofili, 12, 13, 17 Otherness, 34 and patriarchy, 237 and patronage, 110 “place” as, 163 in postmodernism; 101 and primitivism, 29, 30, 32 progress as, 57, 64, 105 and proportion, 5 reflexive, 17, 25, 28, 119, 242 religious, 121 secular, 101, 121 shamanic, 115 shock, 232, 254 and social class, 11 spiritual, 101, 104, 122, 177 and stereotyping, 34 structures, 6, 263 and style, 149–150, 161, 246 and symbols, 15, 95, 130 systems, 72, 150, 194 and Tagore, 127 Taoist, 171–172 transvaluation, 109 universal, 10, 25, 64 Western, 67, 89, 193 and women, 206, 231 Yoruba, 196–199, 201, 204 Zen, 170–171, 256 Van Gogh, Vincent, 22, 56, 163, 180–181, 264 vanishing Americans, 57 Varèse, Edgar, 283 Varnedoe, Kirk, 29, 32 Vastu Shastra, 129, 134 Vedas, 123–125, 133, 146 Velázquez, Diego, 188, 286–287 Vermeer: Faith in Painting (Arasse), 248 Vermeer, Johannes, 8, 100, 247–253, 261–262 Victorian, 56, 226, 236, 263, 269–270, 284 Victorian morality, 263, 270 Vishnu, 127, 133, 139, 143 visual metaphor, 169, 189, 236, 243–244 visual structures and gender, 212–213 Volk, 91, 271 “War is Over” (Lennon, Ono), 66 Warhol, Andy, 81

INDEX 313 Washburn, Gordon, 254 Watts, Alan, 171 Wertheimer, Max, 264 West, Benjamin, 41 Whiplash line, 236–237 Whistler, James McNeil, 180, 225–231, 238 white man’s burden, 53 whiteshamanism, 116–118 Wilde, Oscar, 237, 290–291 Wölfflin, Heinrich, 56, 262 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 206, 291 Woman with a Lute (Vermeer), 252 women and their bodies, 207, 209, 218–225, 233, 268 Women Artists, 1550–1950 (Harris and Nochlin), 209 Woodlands cultures, 120 Woodlands School, Anishinaabe painting, 114 Woolf, Virginia, 208, 291 worldview, 10–11, 22, 44, 63, 92, 95, 109, 111, 147, 153, 159, 163, 166, 181, 185, 193, 200, 247, 253–255, 286

The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon), 85–88 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 182–183, 256 Wright, Richard, 68 Wu Xing, or five elements, 165, Xiaogang, Zhang, 80–81 xenophobia, 76, 90, 271 yin and yang, 98, 270 Yong Ping, Huang, 182 Yoruba, 5, 187, 196–204, 266, 271 Yoruba crown, 202 Yoruba Gelede mask, 199 Yoshihara, Mari, 229–230 Yuan Dynasty, 171–172 Yup’ik, 102, 106 Yup’ik mask, 106 Zapotec, 159 Zehou, Li, 168 Zen, 8, 164, 166, 170–171, 178, 183, 246, 255–261, 265, 268, 284–285 Zen in the Art of Archery, Herrigel, 183, 256 Zola, Emile, 231, 291