Cultural Art
See also:  [Art Periods]
           [Flying Gallop] (prance image)
           [Meso American Art]
           [South American Art]
           [Pacific Islands Art] 
          
              [Art Periods]
              [Art Movements]
              [(art) concepts]
              [Time Line]

Cultural Art

We take as read "personal art", "personal art style", etc.

What is in a culture that leads to trends, styles, and the
common practices associated with it? When we look at something
like "Chinese" vs "Korean" art, we are struck by the use of
line, texture, and of course the subject, content, techniques
of the associated *culture* from which the work comes.

When is art not art? This is pretty much the first half of the
equation that Mary Anne Staniszewski asks in her book "Believing 
Is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art.". That is, as she points
out the Mona Lisa (among other works) is NOT art, but Marcel
Duchamp's "Mona Lisa with a Moustache", IS. That is, we must
understand what we mean by art in the first place. We (in general)
would not say that the family picture taken at the local WalMart
is NOT art, but a portrait of Napolean (eg, "Napolean Crossing the
Alps", by Jacques Louis David) is that? Compare our answers by 
what the "common man in the streets" might say in response to 
being shown one of Frank Stella's "protractor" paintings. 

And this doesn't even begin to address the work (art, craft, icon)
in its place within the society. As Cynthia Freeland puts it in 
"But is it art?" 

      For example, my direct experience of African 
      nkissi nkondi fetish statues from Loango, 
      [shaped like animals or a person, about 30” 
      max in any dimension] in the Kongo region, 
      which are bristling with nails, is that 
      they look quite fierce – like the 
      horror-movie Pinhead from the "Hellraiser" 
      series. The initial perception is modified when 
      I learn 'external facts' [ie, facts outside of 
      the art object itself - but, internal to the 
      culture within which the work was produced]: 
      That nails were driven in over time by people 
      to register agreements or seal dispute 
      resolutions. The participants were asking for 
      support for their agreement (with an expectation 
      of punishment if it is violated). Such fetish 
      objects were considered so powerful they were 
      sometimes kept outside of the village. ... 
      [The original] users would find it very odd 
      for a small group of them to be exhibited 
      together in the African Art section of a museum. 
      [Freeland, Pp. 64-66]

That we as outsiders have no more idea as to what the *meaning* 
of a work of art is a chasm of ignorance that can not be overcome 
without direct knowledge of the social, environmental and cultural 
markers of the society within which it was produced is clear; or 
as the philosopher Douglas Adams often put it "[we] no more 
understand this than a tea leaf knows the history of the 
East India Company". None-the-less, we must proceed. And the 
key to bridging the gap is through the formal study of the 
anthropological approach, rather than our intuitive approach 
as artists.

If we put on the hat of the anthropologist and try to figure
out what the "art" *means* in that culture. Then, we find that
we can't. We can no more put on the hat of a culture, than can
an anthropologist can understand a culture by sitting in a 
chair at a college a world away from the living culture into
which those symbols are embeded, into a culture in which the
ideas, way of life, the very way of being/seeing/knowing/understanding
are as alien as for a dolphin to understand a baseball game.
(Not that anyone (as far as i know)a has taken it upon
themselves to explain baseball to dolphins.)

But. We (as artists, as practicioners of *craft*, of *technique*,
of *history*) can see how a work is done. We can explain how we
do our art. But, as with the case of ??name??  "We respect each
other, even though we do not for a moment understand for a 
moment, the others 'art'. ,,, not an exact quote.

And of the "whyness" of the art?

For the Navajo shaman using sand drawing/painting to re,,,balance
the forces of the universe, the whyness is more probably clear than
most of the work that we do as artists. At times of course, we are
driven (as with "Guernika") where the reason/purpose, and hence
the whyness are more clear than most of the time. So, because we
(mostly) lack the focus and directness that (apparently) with which
the shaman draws what they are guided to do. But, in one sense, 
i would say that the same "howness" by which the shaman, the artist,
or for that matter any "other seer" of things comes to grips to 
with that which we feel we must do ,,, are driven to do. But, still
the whyness does elude us so; doesn't it?


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