Aloha...

Alright... wow, end of the semester. Damn. It was lovely to meet you all and hear about your artistic interests this semester. I really enjoyed hearing everyone's presentations, and it actually was fun to do our own research and create a blog, etc. Awesome way to bring creativity back to the classroom!

Thank you and have a lovely Christmas break!

-Emma

Art in Public Education

My presentation explored the past, present, and future roles of art in modern education. It focused on the current tragedy that art is disappearing from public schools and propose a solution through reintroducing creative thinking in the classroom. I was drawn to this subject initially because I am taking Dan Faulk's Political Science class, which pretty much says it all. His whole class is modeled on the fact that our education system is broken and needs to be fixed. In the T.A. session, we watched a number of TED talks and videos that discussed the role of art in public education and I decided to start looking into the matter further. It was really interesting to see how arts education started and how it got to where it is now, not to mention this all tied in with what we were reading in Ellen D. about a "new aestheticism." All the cards were kind of pointing in the same direction and I didn't feel like I wanted to do a presentation about an art form, but rather something relevant to our everyday lives as students and human beings in the modern world. 


Like I said, I began with these videos and the book the Element, recommended to me by a friend of mine. The Element, written by Sir Ken Robinson, is all about arts education and finding your element in which you excel. I found it extremely inspiring and began to look into journal articles about federal policy, creativity, imagination, art, and public schools. I had originally intended to interview artists and a couple of school teachers, as well as one of my peers, but I had difficulty getting ahold of people and confirming an interview time. I ended up being able to conduct an interview with one teacher, an HSU alum, through email for which I have great gratitude. My research didn't contradict my thesis that schools  are killing creativity and arts education is disappearing, but it did surprise me that there are a number of people trying to bring the arts back. At this point, I found a lot of evidence for after school programs and supplemental activities, which is all great. But art still isn't integrated fully into the classroom yet at the level it should be. 


If I were going to do a follow up research question, I would be interested in looking at specifically what people are doing to bring the arts back into schools. While I did come across a few great examples, I think this would be a nice way to follow up the problem with solutions. Another interesting thing would be to look at how the "new aestheticism" has affected the global culture rather than just that within the United Stated. What is the role globally of arts education? Or are there certain countries who have an education model that we can emulate? Maybe this would propose yet another group of solutions for fixing this broken education system. 

Pilobolus Performance

I saw Pilobolus when they came to HSU in October. They performed in the evening at Van Duzer which is a small intimate theatre. We got the last two seats on the floor and I was expecting the view to be crappy since we were in the very last row. Quite to my surprise, these are great seats and I had a perfect view unobstructed by heads! It used to surprise me that I rarely saw young people at dance performances, but I'm used to it by now.  The audience consisted of a majority of middle-aged to older folks although a few students were present.

I was not familiar with the dance company outside the colorful fliers of men and women doing incredible weight-sharing acrobatics that I'd seen around campus. Their show consisted of five very different pieces. The first was a story piece about a traveller: a man carrying a suitcase and his journey. There were props in this piece, mainly chairs, which the company manipulated throughout to create different geometric shapes and patterns on the stage. My favorite part was when the man fell asleep and two of the dancers held up a white sheet with their toes where we watched the man dream. I found this piece very moving, especially at the end where the man was being carried.
 (You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=PilobolusDance&annotation_id=annotation_427660&feature=iv&src_vid=Trvj984a2ds#p/a/u/2/gOO5FT35Ubs)

Their second piece was a solo performance for a young man in a red unitard. Throughout he demonstrated a mastery of muscle control and fluidity almost unbelievable. It seemed like he was gliding across the stage at times. He had mastered his body to be able to move between levels seamlessly.
(You can watch here: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=PilobolusDance&annotation_id=annotation_427660&feature=iv&src_vid=Trvj984a2ds#p/u/7/eO8GK0DE6ZM)

The third piece is my favorite work of dance I've seen to this day (and I'm a dancer so I've seen a lot of dance performances)! It was a black man and a  white woman, wearing nude costuming, telling the story of, what I perceived to be, humanity. They appeared to grow out of the floor...I actually had to blink a few times to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. Neither of them stood up until about 1/2 way through the piece, and we didn't see the woman's face (which she kept covered by her hair) until almost the end. This use of space was really phenomenal. Eventually they came together in an extremely sensual manner, even sexual, I thought. Everyone in the audience was totally enrapt. No one was even blinking. What made this piece even more moving was the live flutist which I didn't notice until I heard her take a breath over the speakers. It was raw and organic and absolutely beautiful.

There was an intermission after this piece and I saw people looking around at each other with wide eyes, "Wow" written on their faces.

The fourth piece after the intermission was radically different from the first two. They had built a big metal box with a glass sheet on top which they would dance on. A camera underneath the contraption would project their bodies onto a huge screen. I have never seen anything like this! The program told us that this piece had been choreographed in collaboration with band OK Go. (Here is an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur-y7oOto14). The dancers created geometric shapes and patterns with their bodies which we saw on the screen. It was a fun piece and very innovative.

I must precede my description of the last piece by saying that I really disliked it. It was performed to Radiohead and Primus. The costuming was garish and the movement was the antithesis of the second and third pieces. It was spastic and choppy. Don't get me wrong it showed incredible muscle control and strength, but I did not find it aesthetically pleasing. I'm not sure it was meant to be as aesthetically pleasing as disturbing anyway.
(You can watch here: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=PilobolusDance&annotation_id=annotation_427660&feature=iv&src_vid=Trvj984a2ds#p/u/4/hBPafUYYJe4).

The venue itself is great. It's small enough to make you feel close to the stage even when you're in the last row and the acoustics are wonderful. One dramatic difference is the style of choreography in the pieces choreographed in the 70s (the second and third pieces) compared to the pieces choreographed in 2011 (the final two). I personally am more engaged by the more fluid style of choreography that was popular during the 70s as opposed to the very choppy and disconnected movements often found in contemporary pieces. The music also played a large part in my experience because I have a hard time listening to Primus and Radiohead: it's obnoxious noise. Considering the first half of the show, the ending left me feeling jarred as I walked out of Van Duzer. This was definitely an example of making special to the point that I've never seen anything like it before in the one sense. It was also a reminder that even dance culture changes over time as evidenced by the change of choreographic styles while still maintaing that thing which we recognize as "dance".

The show wasn't what I expected at all. I had seen brightly colored costumes on all the fliers and expected levity. We got none of that. Instead we got a show with serious undertones. Although I am primarily a ballet dancer, I occasionally dapple in modern dance. When I see such talented dancers performing pieces like they did in the first half, it makes me want to take modern class. But then I inevitably see where modern choreography is today and I am so happy I'm sticking with ballet.

Objects Talk: The Social Life of Objects

Arjun Appadurai's concept of the social life of objects addresses the relationship between people (culture) and the objects within their culture. It is easy to understand how people affect objects: we interact with and manipulate existing objects, we create new objects, and destroy old ones. In this sense we create a material culture imbued with value. But we also exist within it. Think about the house you live in or the clothes you wear. These things shape your identity and your experience as a human being. You might choose your clothing but your experience is defined by the way you interact with others based on their perceptions of you.

The same thing can be said about art objects as well. For example, we see an example of ethno-aesthetics in Fast Runner being represented through the social life of film. We see traditional methods of hunting, transportation, ceremonies, dress, gender interaction, etc. in the film. The film attempts to convey social messages and the identity of this tribe to viewers per the tribe. We could say that the objects in the film themselves have a social life since they define the way these people live. Using dogs and sleds allows for certain hunting practices and it makes carrying burdens far distances easier. Using igloos as shelter grants protection against the climate, a place to stay warm, or prepare food. Larger igloos can be used for ceremonial feasting, etc. Without these igloos the daily life of these people would look quite different. They serve a utilitarian as well as a social use. The film as an object itself also has a social life on a more global scale since it is widely distributed around the world as an example of this tribe. The film determines the way we see these people and our understanding of their culture. It is a medium through which a global conversation is taking place.

The concept of the social life of things is very important in the modern era of globalization and hybridization since cultures must be able to  converse with other cultures. It also applies to cultural elements and events. This relates back to the article we read about Amalia Mesa-Bains who said that in designing her museum exhibit their goal was to maintain the integrity of Mexican culture but to look at spiritual traditions across cultures. Like we talked about with HIV/AIDS art, in order to understand the AIDS issue in South Africa you have to look at the issue on a global scale.

Dance Dance Dance!

The article, An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance, was particularly interesting to me because I am a ballerina. I have to admit that I'm not sure I have ever thought of ballet as ethnic dance, but after reading the article I would wholeheartedly agree with Joann Kealiinohomoku.

The first thing she wisely does it to clarify that ethnic dances do not imply primitive dances. In fact, there are no such thing as primitive dances but rather dances performed by primitives and these dances she says "are too varied to fit any stereotype" (34). Nevertheless there is a primitive dance stereotype (disorganized, frenzied, no technique, resembling apes and birds!, lots of stomping) which is one of the reasons that Westerners rarely think of ballet as ethnic dance. She spends a good portion of her argument advocating the idea that there "is no such thing as a 'primitive dance' form" (37).

She then goes on to define key terms in order to help dispel the false idea. She begins at the beginning by defining the term dance itself: "a transient mode of expression, performed in a given form and style by the human body moving in space. Dance occurs through purposefully selected and controlled rhythmic movements; the resulting phenomenon is recognized as a dance by both the performer and the observing members of a given group" (38). One distinguishing factor of her definition is the aspect of intent. Other key terms are folk dance and primitive dance. Primitive culture and hence primitive dance tends to be self-contained and autonomous where peasant cultures are not autonomous and folk dances tend to reflect the smaller peasant culture within a larger culture. Finally Joanna defines ethnic dance and concludes that "every dance form must be an ethnic form" (39).

Ballet is a perfect reflection of ethno-aesthetics of the Western and particularly European worlds for all the reasons Joann writes about in the section the Ethnicity of Ballet. I recently went to see both Pilobolus and the Trey McIntyre Project at Van Duzer. While both groups performed contemporary works the movement reflects the current dance aesthetic in the west. Pilobolus opened with three pieces two of which were choreographed in the 70s and were very sensual reflective of American culture in the early 70s. They reflected a focus on the human body and the earth. We see incredible lines, extended legs, stretched arms, and pointed toes per the classical aesthetic. The latter half of the show contained pieces choreographed in 2011 which were much more spastic and jerky (I'm not sure what this is reflective of...a feeling of disconnection maybe?..., but this seems to be the way dance is moving these days). Trey McIntyre was a perfect example of the spastic jerky style of movement as well. The dancers also wore red, white, and blue costumes in their first piece and we frequently saw female-male partnering sequences which is typical of classical ballet. Of course there was an intermission, a curtain call, applause, etc. I will be performing in a classical ballet in March where you will see village scenes and traditional wedding scenes using sets that invoke scenic familiarity to ballet-goers, mannerisms, pink tights, pointe shoes, etc. that define the ethno-aesthetics of classical ballet.

Trey McIntyre Project

Pilobolus

Local vs. Global: An Epic Battle

Ethnoaesthetics defines the anthropology of art. It essentially refers to the study of beauty through the eyes of a particular culture. It demands a cultural context. In turn ethnoaesthetic analysis demands (the anthropologist's two favorite words) cultural relativism. It demands that we understand something about a people before we can understand their art. This is certainly true of the Australian tribe in Waiting for Harry as well as for Mexican artist Jose Posada. If I didn't understand the funerary ritual being performed in Waiting for Harry or the political and social turmoil during the time of Posada, the art would carry little to no meaning. Looking at Posada's work within its context, it is easy to understand.

This piece is titled Happy Street Sweepers. The skeletons make perfect sense once we find out that this representation of death-- the calavera-- coincides with the Day of the Dead celebrations. Images such as this are a common way to celebrate the lives of ancestors, to celebrate tradition and the past. Posada's work frequently portrays common people doing everyday work, as he might have seen on the streets of Mexico in the early 1900s. His art "critiqued injustices of the time," such as the poverty we see in this picture. This is an example of ethnoaesthetic analysis: a sense of aesthetics through the eyes of a culture.

It seems to me that it is fairly obvious to see the strengths of ethnoaesthetics, but its weaknesses have only become apparent in the modern age of hybridization and globalization. Traditionally, anthropologists studied small scale societies on a local scale, but very rarely anymore do events take place on such a small and isolated scale. Ethnoaesthetics doesn't take into account the extent to which cultures today are hybridized, that is, mixed together. Even indigenous art has radically been altered in many cases by tourism or relocation. Tomas Ybarra-Frausto explains that hybridization, the ability to adapt to the modern world, is what saved many indigenous cultures from extinction. Yet now we are threatened by the idea of a global hybrid mono-culture where ethnoaesthetics don't really exist. Artist Amalia Mesa-Bains addresses the question of how to celebrate (and on an even more basic note, maintain) a cultural aesthetic while still appealing to/surviving in a global community. In other words, what is the role of ethnoaesthetics in the modern world? Her answer is that you will find "the same elements in all groups." We absolutely must celebrate diversity to avoid a "monolithic sense of culture and community" and yet there is the possibility of connection among groups, of establishing a common ground, of ethnoaesthetic appreciation. While globalism is the reality, underneath it all, there is still the seed of local tradition and it must be cultivated.

The Art of Language

After reading chapter two of Anthropology of Art and watching Waiting for Harry, we got a pretty good idea of the relation between art and social life in certain "primitive" societies. The next chapter we read was about art and visual communication and one of the most interesting sections was about art and language. Layton shows the relationship between the two and we can see that in a sense art functions the same way that language does.

Layton quotes Durkheim on symbolism: "...without symbols, social sentiments could only have a precarious existence...social life, in all its aspects and at every period of its history, is made possible by a vast symbolism" (93). He goes on to discuss the example of the totem in Australian religion where "objects selected as totems are frequently insignificant...so it is not the intrinsic nature of the thing whose name the clan bears that marks it out to become the object of the cult" (97). Instead, it is the value placed on it as a symbol, as something representative of something else. This tangible representative symbolism is what gives the totem its sanctity and power.

He then compares the creation of language which has two components:
" a) the division of experience into an ordered set of mental constructs,
  b) the convention association of each such construct with a specific set of verbal sounds" (99).

In other words, the combination of the tangible/ physical thing itself (the lines and dots that make up letters and words) and then the abstract association of sounds that follows makes up the symbolic construction of language. The signifiers and the signified.

After rambling on a bit more, Layton touches on something truly significant. "The arbitrary association between the signifiers of spoken language and the objects they may denote apparently distinguishes language from art, tempting us to assume that while we could not understand African speech without learning the appropriate language, we might be able to understand the art of that language's speaker" (100). As anthropologists, maybe this is the most important lesson we can get out of the anthropology of art. Art, just like language, contains cultural grammar rules and different words have different meaning in different cultures.

I never thought of it before, but Layton points out that speech is a ritual, perhaps, in fact,  the most universal ritual practice of all. One interesting difference is that language exists through the collective (it serves the purpose of allowing for dialogue) whereas art may or may not rely on the collective. Layton doesn't go into detail, but I think there are both collective and individual experiences of art which goes back to our discussions of Ellen D's aesthetic experience and making sense.

Obvious example of artists using text, rather than images, as a means of (visual) communication. 

Wait for it...wait for it...

In the movie Waiting for Harry we see art as a ritual as well as an essential part of social life and visual communication. The first part of the ritual painting of the coffin and bones for the funeral rites is building the private shade area where the men work. The shade area separates the men who are concerned with the ceremonial duties and the women who collect the food. The shade is important because each ritual has its own special area where it takes place. (The painting, the dancing, the placing of the coffin, etc. Even the tribal land they're camping on is sacred.) It is an area designated for making a certain kind of special. Next, the men begin planning what they're going to paint on the coffin and where to place the auspicious signs. Each person is assigned what to paint. This is not the time for "careless art, " as Robert Layton might call it, but instead highly specific art. In fact, the art for this ritual is representative; the pictures have meaning. They're meant to be visually communicative. It's not even enough to paint the symbols on the coffin if they're not done well. Paintings done correctly brings honor to the deceased man. We're told that the last time Les Hiatt attended one of these ceremonies the other group took one look at the coffin, proclaimed it unfit, and walked away. There is some criticism around a few of the pictures but luckily the men are satisfied. I thought it was interesting that this ritual ceremony unites people largely through the experience of art who don't even speak the same language. This whole interaction itself is quite a ritual expression of art, the way the coffin and then the bones are painted, the carving of the sand sculpture. The Anbarra people further incorporate art into their ritual and social life by painting their bodies for the funeral ceremony. This is something everyone partakes in from men to women and even children. The art that is being done is a way of passing on cultural tradition since Frank says "we build it now like they did in the old days before the Europeans." While many of the Anbarra people were dressed like Europeans, their art is one thing that continually distinguishes them from Western culture.

As far as the relationship between the anthropologists/ filmers and the people they're studying, it seems like the Anbarra people have accepted Les Hiatt. Frank refers to him as a brother and says that he will be responsible for his and Harry's burials one day. He seems to want to tell his story through the film which I think is really great. But I am surprised that Harry allowed the ceremony to occur in the daytime so that it could be filmed. For something so serious as the burial of a beloved uncle and the crossing of his spirit into the afterlife I would have thought that a little more tradition would be observed. It's great that we're able to learn about the culture of these people but it's rather sad that they have to be changed so that we can learn about them.

Stop Making Sense

My favorite Talking Heads album is called Stop Making Sense. Besides being an awesome dance party playlist, I think David Byrne is really onto something. While it is a naturally human thing to do, the problem with making sense is that we take the liberty to change things, to manipulate them, and I think in that we sometimes lose something. In terms of prehistoric art, instead of just enjoying it we apply an aesthetic. Ellen D writes that "for posttraditional humans whose thinking--and even fantasy and daydreams--is largely occupied with instrumental, pragmatic concerns, it is perhaps difficult to appreciate the more embedded, enactive, and symbolic type of thinking that is characteristic of nonliterates. Such persons may forget after they leave childhood that there are ways of knowing other than the rational, and that the world can be well and deeply experienced without being dissected and analyzed" (178). In other words, we, as the posttraditional humans she's talking about, apply our own modern logic to the cave paintings and this is how we "make sense" of them. We categorize and analyze and at some point there is an "AH-HAH!" moment when all the arrows point in the same direction or there is some magical ratios of bulls to horses. We think, "Now we understand!"...now that we have "dissected" and analyzed to a pulp. Maybe this is what the Paleolithic artists, all prehistoric artists, intended but they conceived of it in a holistic and symbolic way.  It's a paradox really. If modern people apply a strictly scientific understanding (as our culture would encourage) the art loses its cultural value, but if we only stand in awe we similarly lose an element of cultural value.  I think the real value comes not in understanding the art itself but understanding its relation to ourselves.  

In the modern world I think we conceptualize of art in a different way than our ancestors. We analyze and make sense in order to gather up experiences: we becomes experience mongers in a sense. What I mean is that we make sense of what we experience and then we spit back up bits and pieces as inspiration for a poem or  song or a painting, whatever. We are not "embedded" in the experience and we are absolutely not comfortable with things not making sense, even if our experience itself was elusive. We do not readily accept "ideas without exact reference which nevertheless have a compelling force of truth" (179).

This form of making sense is perhaps best represented in our quest to bring literacy around the world. This is the absolute be all and end all of making sense: we're making sense of the human mind, of the very thing that for a long time defined what it meant to be human: language. We break it down, assign discrete arbitrary symbols to represent words or ideas and associate them with specific meanings. In the end we fill up dictionaries full of these things and yet we seem to realize that many words mean different things to different people, words like love, beauty, fear, etc. They don't always make sense.

The reality is that at some point we have to stop making sense. To tell you a very personal story, at one point in the recent past I was completely in love with two different people. You might not understand this (you probably really can't just because you don't know me well enough and you don't know who I was in love with...but what I mean is that you might not be able to conceptualize how someone could be in love with two people). I kept trying to explain it other people and to myself, but I couldn't ever seem to really grasp the heart of how I felt. I couldn't put it in words. David Byrne's album title kept running across my brain. I realized that sometimes life doesn't make sense. You know the cliche sometimes bad things happen to good people... and when we try to impose a category or force an explanation it doesn't always fit. The human experience of life does not always make sense. Period.

Coming back to prehistoric art, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to make sense of it. In fact, I think there is something inherently valuable in the act of interpretation itself. But what we should realize is that these artists are past incarnations of ourselves, we are not isolated from them. There is no us and them...As Krisnamurti says, time is illusory. We are them.

Like a Rock: Paleolithic Sex...or lack thereof...

I've been trying to come up with a research topic for our final presentation. I thought I had a pretty interesting idea, that is what is the origin of erotic art? But in the Cave Painters Curtis writes, "it's also surprising that the caves are very chaste. There are pictures of vulvas, penises that are occasionally erect, pregnant women, and a variety of geometric shapes that suggest male or female genitals. but the animals are never actually mating and neither are the humans...one small, flat rock has an engraving of a man and woman having sex, but that is the only such representation ever found from these prehistoric times" (17).
In an attempt at humor, Curtis later quotes Leroi-Gourhan  saying that "'there are no scenes of copulation in Paleolithic art'... about ten years later the archaeologist Jean Clottes showed Leroi-Gourhan the engraving on a flat stone of a Paleolithic couple having sex. Leroi-Gourhan looked at the engraving for a moment and said, 'Well, I have written that there are no sexual scenes in Paleolithic art. Now there is at least that one'" (162).

La Marche, France

So already the chips are stacked against me. I start looking into my topic this week and I'm becoming more and more dismayed. Despite a wealth of newspaper articles and media reports on this kind of erotic art, there is very little scholarly writing. I don't particularly understand this. If there were Venus figurines and fertility carvings coming from this time period, why no erotic cave paintings? Furthermore, there is almost no analytical writing on the few images that have been found. Frustrated with JSTOR and a few other search engines, I started to read the google articles just for fun.

WHAT A RIDICULOUS BUNCH OF CRAP!

I found out first hand the dangers of extrapolating the story way beyond archaeological evidence (method 1 from last weeks blog)...pure sensationalism. Basing his conclusions on a few phallic symbols, images of spears, and the abundance of animals, one archaeologist claims that the cave paintings were just ancient expressions of teenage graffiti wrought with gore and sex!

"'In the graffiti, there is a lot of below-the-belt-art,' Guthrie said. 'The people in the art are predominantly women, and not a single one has any clothes on.' But these weren't just any women, they were Pleistocene Pamela Andersons adorned with ludicrously huge breasts and hips. The walls were also decorated with graphic depictions of genitalia."  (http://www.livescience.com/7028-ancient-cave-art-full-teenage-graffiti.html) 

Pleistocene Pamela Andersons!!! The truth is, despite some phallic and vulvic cave art images very little is known about Paleolithic sexuality. It could all be about some kind of human-animal-sexual-magic, but we don't know why the images were put there so at this point these are just wild guesses in an attempt to attract media attention. Way to objectify female sexuality! Maybe this is why scholarly research on the subject has been lacking: we just don't know enough to postulate something without sounding ridiculous. Better to err on the quiet side I guess. 

Vulva Engraving

Chauvet, France
Image of a feline and a bull combining to form a vulva shape

Three Women: 

                                              'Angles sur l'Anglin', France                                    

Reclining Woman Engraving (top) and Interpretation (bottom) from the Dordogne, France (12, 000 BC)

Reclining Woman Engraving (top) and Interpretation (bottom) from the Magdelaine Cave, France (15, 000-10,000 BC)

*Images courtesy of Ancient Wisdom. http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/caveart.htm

Fact versus Fiction and The Art of Storytelling

After dividing the state of prehistoric research into two opposite fields, Laming-Emperaire was not satisfied. She felt that on the one hand that the systematically scientific characterization of artifacts takes on an all too rigid function, but the other method "leaves science  behind and creates fiction set in prehistory instead" (141). I find both of these methods lacking and somewhat dangerous to the interpretation of prehistory so I would have to take the same route as Laming-Emperaire: to find "a way forward that avoided both extremes"(141). Like her, I would start with the science--with what had been given to us through the archaeological record-- to see if any stories could be pulled out of it. The danger of applying theories and ethnographies to prehistoric cultures is the inherent ethnocentrism, the mortal sin of the anthropologist. Following this line of thought, we're essentially implying that there cannot have been diversity among early people (which we know cannot possibly be true) and that we aren't really interested in understanding these peoples for who they were. Works of art exist as tools of instruction, structure, and solidarity among cultures and it would be completely ignorant of us to assume that the implementation of art is universal. Our book uses the example of masks. If we apply the modern meaning of masks (which vary from people to people anyhow) to prehistoric images of masks, we aren't going to be able to learn anything about the prehistoric people. Instead, we've imposed our knowledge onto something, slapped the label "primitive" on it, and lumped them altogether under the same heading "primitive masks."  

                    

Different Faces, Different Places: not a universal symbol

(Northwest Coast Indian mask, Australian Aboriginal mask, Inuit mask)

While I am a storyteller at heart, I have to say that I think Laming-Emperaire goes about her research in the correct way, that is, she starts with the cold hard facts. She realized that the cave paintings besides being art, were archaeological artifacts...and so they should be analyzed as such rather than abstract phenomena. The benefit of approaching the caves this way is that the "conclusion would be valid because it is derived entirely from archaeology, not from ethnography" (144). In a way I think this gives the paintings a deeper meaning since we're now on the trail of the truth. After extracting every bit of information from the archaeological record (i.e how the paintings were made and their location), we can begin to piece together the science to create a story based on reality (real-life science fiction). I think if one stops at the end of their archaeological study and doesn't proceed to flesh it out, then the point of anthropology has been missed. I feel that it is vitally important to relate artifacts to their relevance within a culture, otherwise they become nothing more than interesting old chachcas without any real significance destined to sit in a museum and collect dust. It is our duty as anthropologists to listen first and analyze later. No one would write a valid ethnography in modern times without conducting an intense ethnographic study...so why would it make sense for someone to write a historical treatise on prehistoric people without doing an intense archaeological study of "places, dates, sizes, and shapes?" The resulting story, however, must have its roots in science. While perhaps not as magical or interesting as approaching the caves from the more speculative ethnographic side, in the end I think we benefit more from the scientific approach, but most importantly we do justice to the great cultures of the past. 

Pollock!!

Contemporary art in relation to aesthetic experience.

The birth of contemporary art affected not only the art world at the time, but also changed the entire purpose of art up through the present. Up until this point, I think I would agree with Ellen D. that there are "two kinds of appreciation...the ecstatic response to sensual, psychophysiological properties in the artwork, and the aesthetic response to the manipulations of the code..." (What is Art For, 164). But contemporary art pulls away from aesthetic tradition. While contemporary artists would have studied the codes and patterns of history, the art itself doesn't reflect this. In fact, it is a reaction against traditional aesthetic experience. 

Jackson Pollock, Full Fathom Five

Ellen D. suggests that art serves a useful tool for people "not only to 'understand' the mysteries of life but to 'control' their world as best they could" (151). Pollock, perhaps one of the more famous contemporary artists, describes his technique as a controlled accident. It would seem to me that artists such as himself are trying to shy away from the more "cognitive or intellectual element[s] in aesthetic response" (165) as they desire to capitalize on said mysteries of life--that uncontrollable element of the universe--perhaps even chaos itself. These artists are after the point that art doesn't have to be modeled on reality, it doesn't have to have some kind of universal meaning or symbolism. Instead, aesthetic experience can simply be rooted in the feeling that the universe is full of randomness and things that we don't understand, which is exactly the feeling I get when I look at Pollock's work.

Contemporary art bypasses all the codes and is symbolic in that it represents the essential essence of something. It is an experiential art, the development of which "consists in the deepening [of] one's feelings through experience...and through experience in interpersonal relationships so that one can better appreciate embodiments of specific aspects and modes" (164). For example:

Jackson Pollock, Shimmering Substance

"Shimmering Substance glows with the brilliant light of midday sun on a thick meadow. Alive with arcs and orbs of heat-saturated colors, the painting is a testimony to the importance of the Long Island landscape as a motivating force of Pollock's work in the late 1940s" (http://www.nga.gov/feature/pollock/artist15.shtm). While the painting's subject matter is a summery landscape, I don't necessary see that with my eye. This is a great example of what I'm getting at simply because the name of the painting is Shimmering Substance... Pollock is representing the substance of sunshine (one of these somewhat elusive concepts) on a grassy meadow...not necessarily the thing itself (sun, grass, flowers, etc.) which would require the viewer to understand certain aspects of perspective, depth, motion...codes. What is most important in terms of understanding contemporary art is a "wide acquaintance with human relationships and ranges of emotional and imaginative thought...[which] will enrich one's experience of art in a way that may not be strictly necessary for emotional experience of nature, sexual love, religion, and so forth, where acquaintance with complex traditional 'code' is less involved in receptivity and response" (165).

Aesthetic Ecstasy

Ellen D spends an entire 10 pages talking about the importance of ecstasy in terms of aesthetic experiences.  She defines this term as "a range of experience characterized by being joyful, transitory, unexpected, rare, valued, and extraordinary to the point of often seeming as if derived from a praeternatural source" (157). I think to really understand the aesthetic experience in all its intensity, ecstatic experience is essential, but I don't think I really grasped this idea until recently.

I live in Maui and there's a lot of hippies who hang out there so naturally there's a lot of "hippie festivals," if you will. I just mean festivals with vegan food, a lot of yoga, crystal alchemy, sound healing...and in particular ecstatic dance. This seems to be a really common thing in certain circles these days: ecstatic dance. What the heck does this mean?

I didn't understand ecstatic dance (and thus I couldn't fully comprehend the depth of aesthetic experience) until I attended the Mystic Island Festival in January. Ellen D says that "music was the most frequently named art ecstasy trigger" (158) and these festivals are all about the celebration of music! I remember one night sitting around this huge fire someone had built. There was a man playing his hand drum and chanting songs that he learned from his village in Africa; another man was playing a didgeridoo. Unlike many of the people there, I was not on any substances. Nevertheless, I found the whole thing so entrancing. Even intoxicating. It was like your whole body would just vibrate with the didg and your heart was beating along with the drum. My body was in tune with the music. What's more, so was everyone else's. Ellen D talks about a kind of ecstasy where "there is a sense of union, a complete or almost complete loss of sensibility coupled with a feeling afterward that any contact that was made was complete" (158). This was exactly what I was feeling and my feelings manifested themselves in the form of dance: it was literally impossible not to move my limbs. Hence my first experience with ecstatic dance and the community therein.

I always smile to myself when I go to concerts now and I see people our own age bobbing their heads but otherwise unmoving.  I think this generation is afraid of dancing. They're afraid of connecting with others around them in any kind of union because they're afraid of being judged to the point that they become immobilized. They cannot know ecstasy or aesthetic experience. In fact, without an kind of "intense emotions [that] make us feel we are living" (134), they are more like zombies than anything else. They cannot really grasp what art--maybe even the human condition itself-- is all about without this integral piece.

But there's always one or two people at the edge of the crowd who are spinning and waving their arms. You might think they're crazy because they're so into the music! But I know those are the people who understand, or at least have the capability to understand, ecstatic experience; they appreciate, as Ellen D says, the "importance of feeling" in aesthetic experience. These are the true artists and this is what art is for.

I don't have any sound bites of the drumming and didgeridoo because no one was video taping or on their phones (obviously)...but here is a clip from another incredible artist, Freedom, who played that night. His voice hauntingly touches your soul.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wNr7pSLFNA

Making Special on a Friday afternoon

 I feel like I could have blogged about making my personal space special because it is actually very special to me. I've moved maybe 10 times in the last two years between houses and even back and forth across the country a few times. I've really come to realize that home is where the heart is so I tend to take as much of my heart with me every time I move and my space has become something like a bunch of little shrines, if you will, to things that inspire me. For example, I've dragged my books all over the place (thank god for media mail!) and I've taken a lot of time to arrange them on my bookshelves in each new place I've lived. Then there is my alter with my shells and my little Buddhas. I also like to paint (an act of making special in itself) so I hang up my paintings in particular places on my walls. I'm in love with the ocean so I bring it with me in my artwork.

Emma Zawacki, 2010

But what I really wanted to blog about was the act of making special through movement. Dance has always been a part of my life. I remember getting dressed up in my favorite hot pink tutu, the one with the silver sequins, and putting on my very own living room production for my private audience made up of my stuffed animals and my mom. I have since grown out of the hot pink tutu but my passion for dance has only increased.

Entering the ballet studio (which I did Thursday after a little summer hiatus) is a breath of fresh air. It is a place where awareness of the world outside, with all its trials and stresses, melts away and is replaced by focus and inner awareness. It has cultivated inner strength in me that helps me overcome the challenges of everyday life, and also a sense of humility by forcing me to recognize the limits of the human body. I continue to dance because it is a very personal challenge. Ballet is rigorous and demanding, both physically and emotionally. Yet, like all hard work there is something beautiful and deeply satisfying about it. It is my way of telling stories without words; It is my way of "making special." Every time I put on my ballet slippers I have to challenge myself to jump higher or turn faster, to dance as if no one is watching. This translates into the desire to grow within myself, to perfect my art, to be willing to try new things, and to continue to make grace and beauty an integral part of what I do and who I am. Ballet is no longer simply a hobby; it is a way of life. Dancing has taught me to sit up straight and move gracefully. But most importantly the very act of dancing has made me a stronger person. 

For some reason I don't have any recent photos of me dancing...but here's a few older ones.

A piece choreographed by yours truly, 2008.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmakMyy0xvE

Nutcracker 2008, Canyon Concert Ballet

An Anthropologist's Lesson in Cultural Relativism

Robert Layton asserts that, while there is no “universal application,” “there are two approaches to the definition of art which are applicable across cultural boundaries…” (Layton, 5).  After talking last week we decided that trying to define art was futile, and yet it seems that Layton is onto something. He says “one deals in terms of aesthetics, the other treats art as communication distinguished by a particularly apt use of images” (Layton, 5). In other words, we study the anthropology of art so that we can begin to understand art in a culturally relative context— that is, in relation to other forms of traditional expression within said culture. Layton cries out “What right do we have to assume that our criteria of harmony, rhythm, and proportion are those of other people?” (Layton, 13). WE CANNOT!  In order to understand art, we need to understand the culture’s traditions, the artist’s experience of life within their culture, and perhaps even the culture of the audience they’re addressing.  The beauty that we perceive may or may not be what the artist intended so the only way to understand the reality of the artist is to listen to his or her voice.

It was incredible to watch the clip about Faith47 and also the movie about graffiti in L.A. Graffiti is such an interesting art form since it’s sort of an anti-aesthetic. (It’s even been labeled “art crime,” a term used by the general public in a negative way but embraced by graffiti artists themselves!) One expert, Jeff Ferrell, writes in his book Crimes of Style:

"Graffiti writing breaks the hegemonic hold of corporate/governmental style over the urban environment and the situations of daily life. As a form of aesthetic sabotage, it interrupts the pleasant, efficient uniformity of "planned" urban space and predictable urban living. For the writers, graffiti disrupts the lived experience of mass culture, the passivity of mediated consumption." (The cool website where I found this: http://www.graffiti.org/faq/werwath/werwath.html .)

Aesthetic sabotage, hm…paradoxically, this is what the anthropologist must grasp in order to understand the aesthetic of graffiti art. It’s like using art against itself. (Nietzsche would love this!) It takes the traditional Western idea of form (harmony, beauty, balance, etc) and turns it on its head by exposing the artist’s reality. Too many people don’t respect the medium (to the point of calling it vandalism), and obviously they don’t appreciate the art form…probably because they don’t understand the culture from which it comes. But this is the entire point of anthropology: to understand another reality. Graffiti comes out of hip-hop. It comes from the streets, from struggle and hardship, from oppressed souls, from opinionated men and women who want to be heard above the deafening roar of the masses. To understand this reality, the anthropologist has to get out of his plush velvet armchair, open his eyes to the world, and his heart to human struggle.

(Check out these realities....This website is incredible!) http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/14/tribute-to-graffiti-50-beautiful-graffiti-artworks/

OMEN

                                                                                 

Josepalencia

Perhaps an ancient form of graffiti?

(http://sweetsweetlife.typepad.com/sweet_sweet_life/2010/02/im-sure-that-cave-paintings-are-not-on-your-list-of-fascinating-subjectsnor-were-they-on-mine-but-olivia-had-to-do-a-unit.html) 

        

 I saw these canvas graffiti paintings at Outside Lands a few weeks ago. They weren't made to reflect the  artist's culture in particular (although I'm sure this was an influence), but rather to reflect the culture of the festival inspired by the music. Kind of a neat sensory experience for a peek into festival sub-culture. It wasn't solely the graffiti artist's voice that was heard, but rather the voices of the musicians expressed through the painter's interpretation. 

What Is Art?

Aloha! My name is Emma and I am a transfer student, new to Humboldt. I graduated high school in 2009 and started school on the East Coast, but I missed home too much. I took last year off to work and learn about myself. It was the most incredible year of meditation. I was born in Colorado but have been living on Maui for the last few years. I love the ocean. I’ve always been drawn to water and I find the ocean so beautiful and inspiring.

I’ve been a dancer since I was 3—ballet is my passion—but living on Maui encouraged me to experiment with painting and spoken word poetry as well. There’s a lot of awesome energy there. The history of the islands also makes them an incredibly interesting place to study culture. I started school thinking I would study biology, but became interested in anthropology after taking a class on Buddhism. Since moving to Maui I began studying under Llama Gyaltsen at the Maui Dharma Center. So, now I’m back at school and really excited to be here majoring in anthropology!

So, what is art? I think this is kind of like trying to define a color, say, orange. Well, it’s a bright color. But it can be dark too. A lot of things can be orange, like clothing and flowers and foods. It can mean hot or serve as a warning sign. We can associate it with a million different things; we can even eat a fruit of the same name and yet we are no closer to understanding the nature of the color orange. Nevertheless, it is obviously not impossible to have some kind of general conceptual understanding either of the color orange or of art since we recognize them both when we see them.

Art is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I also think there’s simple art and fine art (not necessarily good and bad art) that have very different qualities, and yet must share some common ground to be considered Art. For example, I’m sitting in the apartment that I moved into last week, and I’m staring at the strand of these thin shiny pieces of mica tied together with fishing line that I hung up in front of my window. They came all packaged up in a plastic wrapper for $12. In my opinion they were made to be pretty in the window light, but they weren’t necessarily made to be art. Maybe in a different context…like if I became so inspired to acquire huge pieces of mica and carve them, string them together and hang them from the Empire State Building, maybe it would be art. Behind them propped on the wall is a Monet print, Child In A Garden, in a wooden frame. 

What makes this particular painting Art is that it was created with some expression, emotion, and feeling so that when I see it I feel some expression, emotion, or feeling. We (Monet and myself) have created interpersonal communication; we have created a dialogue. Whether we’re talking about poets, writers, painters, dancers, etc, the goal of the artist as an Artist is to establish this relationship, to convey a message (sometimes) without words such that the audience can respond. Think of the ballerina. (C’mon, how many of you saw Black Swan?) She has to be able to express real emotion and feeling in her steps, to really make you feel something. Otherwise it’s boring. Her dancing becomes only skilled movement without any feeling. It cannot be a dialogue without a visceral reaction from the audience and so it is no longer Art. It is important to remember, like someone said in class the other day, Art can be disgusting. It can make you uncomfortable (check out Carolee Schneemann http://www.caroleeschneemann.com/works.html ). Art can be ugly, and not all pretty things are art.

Perhaps this begs the question, what isn’t art?  One of my favorite authors, Leo Tolstoy, actually writes a whole essay on Art in which he says,

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.

Kind of abstract…I know. But, I think really, anything can be art as long as it not only expresses a feeling or emotion but also creates at least the possibility of a dialogue or as Tolstoy says, a union. I don’t even think it has to provoke the same shared feeling between artist and audience, as Tolstoy says, but just some meaningful feeling, even disgust or horror. Cave paintings, African masks and baskets, Native American rugs, sculpture, painting, tattoos, graffiti, food, etc… everything is not inherently art but it has the potential to be.

Often we think of language as the fundamental, defining characteristic of humanity; but I think the most interesting thing about art (in this case music and song) is that is might even have preceded human speech! Obviously this makes art a major form of communication between cultures, times, and individuals themselves, but I think art also defines human existence as we understand it. Ultimately, art is tied into every aspect of human life meaning that to understand people or culture, we have to learn about art within those cultures. I am so excited to be studying the anthropology of art!