ARTS

Date: March 24
Readings – Chapter 13

Anthropologists analyze art within its cultural context.
Consideration of diverse products, practices, and processes acknowledged as art.
Examination of:
  - The artist and their societal role.
  - The social status of artists, who may be:
    - Revered and economically well-off
    - Stigmatized and economically marginalized
  - The specialization of art and performance in state-level societies.
  - Connections between art, cultural variation, inequality, and power.
  - Cross-cultural selections of art for museum displays.

Art is defined as:
- All ideas, forms, techniques, and strategies adopted by humans for creative expression and communication.
Human interaction with art involves:
  - Aesthetic Experience:
    - Involves sensory perception alongside intellect.
  - Western Euro-American art traditions tend to emphasize aesthetic values, often overlooking social, political, and economic functions.

Anthropological study of art considers variations and cultural constructions of artistic traditions.
Categories of Art:
  - Eras: Paleolithic, Modern
  - Mediums of Expression:
    - Graphic Arts
    - Plastic Arts
    - Graffiti
    - Body Art (e.g., Tattoos)
    - Decorative Arts
    - Performance Arts (includes music, dance, theatre)
      - Emphasis on ethnomusicology, media, and culture.
    - Verbal Arts

Transformation-representation is:
- The process where experiences are symbolically represented in different mediums (e.g., transforming a three-dimensional human form into a two-dimensional painting).
- Extends to forms like poems and dance, utilizing metaphors.

Emotional Gratification:
- Offers pleasure, providing a temporary respite from life stresses; artists can express emotional energy concretely.
Social Integration:
- Art conveys cultural values and ideologies, reflecting major themes and strengthening group identity (e.g., music's role in community resilience).
Social Control:
- Art can reinforce normative sociocultural systems and serve as a mechanism for instilling obedience, maintaining the status quo, and wielding power (e.g., reflecting the authority of gods and rulers).
- The accumulation of art indicates social prestige and can challenge or preserve the status quo (e.g., art as protest during the Arab Spring).

Characteristics:
  - Art is portable.
  - Aesthetic standards are implicitly understood rather than explicitly defined.
  - Art is egalitarian rather than hierarchically organized.

Fine Art:
  - A western-centric classification denoting rare, expensive art typically produced by trained artists within a classical Western tradition.
  - Characteristics:
    - Often regarded as 'art for art’s sake.'
Folk Art:
- Encompasses all other types of art, sometimes labeled as ethnic, primitive, or craft art.
- Challenges the notion that art can only be defined by Western experts.
Intention vs Appropriation:
- By Intention: Objects created to be appreciated for aesthetic effects.
- By Appropriation: Objects originally made for practical purposes but later exhibited or sold for aesthetic appreciation.

Definition of Play:
  - Consciously adopted by players.
  - Pleasurable, transcending the utilitarian realm, transforming roles, objects, and activities.
  - Limited in duration and governed by implicit rules.
Questions for Anthropologists:
  - What cultural expectations and gender roles do children learn through play?
  - How do play activities connect or divide various societal groups?
  - What relationship does play have to group identity?

Play allows children to experiment with adult roles, marking a shift from everyday to play reality.
Communicative Aspects of Play:
- Uses metacommunication: communication about communication, clarifying relationships among communicators.
Two key forms:
  - Framing:
    - Marks behaviors as play vs. ordinary life.
  - Reflexivity:
    - Suggests multiple interpretations of ordinary life, proposing what can be rather than what is or should be.

Allows adults to explore diverse roles and experiences, fostering creativity and cultural identity.
Examples:
- Halloween, Mardi Gras, and Carnival
- SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), Gaming, RPGs, LARP (Live Action Role Playing)

Games and sports mirror social relationships and cultural ideals.
Defined as:
- A physically demanding activity characterized by competition, adhering to rules, functioning as a cultural component that combines elements of play, work, and leisure.
Acts as personal and social identification for fans, drawing them into a fictional context.

The institutionalization of sport within states aids societal cohesion in complex modern societies.
Shared symbols and behaviors enhance collective identity.
  - Example:
    - University sports support conceptual unity within the institution (e.g., Huskies teams).
    - Hockey in Canada as a key aspect of national identity.
Media improves national interest and highlights success in sports.

Case Study: Cricket in the Trobriand Islands:
- Introduced by British colonialists to replace warfare.
- Over time, the Trobrianders adapted cricket, integrating it into local culture, resulting in a syncretic sport characterized by status competition and intergroup feasting.
For further information, refer to the video "Trobriand Cricket: An Indigenous Response to Colonialism" by Jerry Leach and Gary Kildea.