NOTES // SEEING ABORIGINAL ART IN THE GALLERY (HOWARD MORPHY)
Inclusion in the gallery involves 3 factors:
“the critique of the concept of ‘primitive art’
an associated change in conceptions of what can be called ‘art’
an increased understanding of art as a commodity
“the anthropological myth that classifying works as ‘art’ imposed a Western categorisation upon them”
the desire to be on the right side of the post-colonial/colonial divide - perhaps an anxiety of taking it out of an ethnographic discourse and placing it into an industry in which it is seen as a commodity. are these concerns justified given the quasi-religious status of the art and the practice of creation to the indigenous people?
placing the pieces in the ethnographic discourse and keeping them there “often motived by a desire to increase the understanding of the significance to the producers of the objects” - I agree with this statement, and sympathise with the issue of its inclusion into the western Art industry
however, it provided a great source of income for local indigenous populations.
gave them a voice and perhaps urged a deeper global understanding as to their rights in reclaiming aborigine land.
“viewed as… a license for misinterpretation, through the imposition of universalistic aesthetic concepts”
(8) - inclusion in gallery
Inclusion of the 14 Tiwi artist poles from Arnhem Land “shattering the anthropological paradigm” (40)
the error is in the polarisation of ART/ETHNORGAPHY - post-colonialism un-necessary dived - links perhaps well to bhabha’s HYBRIDITY? (28) quote from Luke Taylor.
Howard talks about kant's theory of universal aesthetic and viewing being hand in hand and you cannot separate one from the other.
Howard argues that when viewers come into an art gallery they already have an understanding of the narrow western art discourse that they are exposed to (in films, tv books etc) and their viewing is not purely an “universal appreciation of aesethicis” but has some basis in a predisposed notion of what art is. Where as their encounters with aboriginal art is different from this and that they “must also have access to its history and significance.” (43)
“That is why the inclusion of non-european art continues to generate such opposition: it insists on a different kind of art history that threatens to disrupt pre-existing values” (44)
A short history of inclusion:
Didn’t enter too quickly as most of it was TEMPORAL
“much aboriginal art could however more easily find its place in the later slots created by conceptual art, minimalism, performance art and even abstract expressionism” (44)
BARK PAINTINGS Maloon describes as “most analogous” to western art forms in their “pectoral representation.”
TUCKSON —> the aesthetics of aboriginal art (book)
Ruth Philips writing on Native American Art:
“the scholarly apparatus that inscribers the inauthenticity of commoditised wares [is] a central problem in the way that art history has addressed Native art. The authenticity paradigm marginalises not only the objects but the makers, making of them a ghostly presence in the modern world rather than acknowledging their vigorous interventions in it” (30)
(31) —> the collection of bark paintings viewed suspiciously in 50’s-60’s by ethnographers.
Between 1940-80’s aboriginal art moved from non-art to the art category without passing through the stage of being considered as primitive art (pg. 45) “Aboriginal art became art partly through the process of its commercialisation.”
“clearly produced products whose form was influenced by interaction with the market” (pg.46)
Aboriginals used art as “a means of persuading outsides of the value of their way of life as well as a means of earning a living in the post-colonial context” (pg.46)
MISSED THE PRIMITIVE SHIP - notions of Primitive art were being challenged in the 70’s-80’s saw a “breakdown of categories within Western at in general as the hegemony of the Western canon has come increasingly under challenge from non-western and indigenous arts”
“Contemporary aboriginal art emerged as a category in Aus during 70’s and 80’s (32)”
overtly political art that challenged western notions of “representational spaces” (chapter 8, empires of vision)
Western Desert paintings - newly developed art that employed european materials - became “unproblematically avant-garde” and BARK PAINTINGS which used techniques and materials the were “independent of European art” were accepted into the category of “primitive art.” Yet the two occupied the same space. Thus “simultaneously” avant gaurde and primitive.
“An anthropologically informed art history is needed to provide the historical, art historical, social and cultural information, not only for those artistic traditions where background cannot be taken for granted but, it could be argued, for the Western art tradition as well.” ( pg. 49)
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