The Trouble with (the Term) Art – Comprehensive Notes

Overview & Central Thesis

• Author: Carolyn Dean; article: “The Trouble with (the Term) Art,” Art Journal, Vol. $65$, No. $2$, Summer $2006$, pp.$24–32$.
• Core argument: The category "art," especially when applied to non-Western material culture, is historically contingent, Euro-centric, and often works as an intellectual technology that normalizes colonial attitudes and hierarchies.
• Aim: Shift critical attention from the problematic adjectives (primitive, exotic, tribal, etc.) to the noun “art” itself; expose the risks of universalizing a culturally bounded concept.

Background: 20th-Century Debate on “Primitive Art”

• Since mid-$20^{th}$-century, art historians & anthropologists have critiqued the label “primitive art.”
  • Adrian Gerbrands ( $1957$ ) first flagged “the problem of the name”; offered “non-European art,” promptly critiqued.
  • Alternative labels proposed & challenged: exotic, traditional, tribal, folk, ethnic, ethnological, indigenous, pre-urban, pre-industrial, non-Western, “the indigenous arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (AOA).”
• Despite decades of discussion (e.g., MoMA’s $1984$ “Primitivism” show, William Rubin), the field usually debates the adjective, not the noun.

Ambiguity & Non-Universality of “Art”

• No globally acceptable definition; the “elephant in the disciplinary living-room.”
• “Art” as a discrete realm—objects valued for autonomous aesthetic qualities—emerges in Europe only c.$18^{th}$–$19^{th}$ c. (Kristeller, Shiner, Fraser).
• Assumption of art as a human universal permeates art history yet lacks evidence in many cultures.

Example 1: The Lega “Heavy Things” (Elisabeth L. Cameron)

• Lega, D.R. Congo: designate powerful Bwami objects as masenao (“heavy things”).
• If Western art history had developed from Lega premises, scholars might be “Historians of Heavy Things,” demonstrating the contingency of our categories.

Example 2: Maya Eccentric Flint – “This is Art!”

• Archaeologist on video (Classic Maya Copán): hails newly excavated eccentric flint as art to raise its perceived value.
• Naming it art reveals the speaker’s valuation, not intrinsic qualities of the object or ancient Maya intentions → imposition of Western reading that supersedes indigenous terms/values.

Example 3: Inca Material Culture

• Commonly shown in Dean’s classes: silver llama figurine (c.$1400$–$1530$) & “Funerary Rock,” Machu Picchu.
• Figurines long accepted as art; large carved/modified outcrops only recently so. Meyer Schapiro ($1953$) & Esther Pasztory ( $1997$ ) link mid-$20^{th}$-century Western abstraction to reevaluation of Andean abstraction.
• Earlier view (J. Alden Mason, $1957$): “stone sculpture was entirely missing” from Inca culture.

Iconicity & the Western Eye (Shelly Errington)

• Distinction: “art by intention” vs. “art by appropriation.”
• Criteria behind appropriation (often repressed): portability, durability, ritual aura, and above all iconicity (recognizable images).
  • African masks stripped of fibers & re-presented as “sculpture.”
  • Andean rocks read as puma, condor, cosmic bird—often speculative, satisfying Western need for images.
• Example: “Puma Rock” at K’enko Grande; claim that Cuzco city-plan shaped like a puma (Rowe $1967$) questioned (Zuidema $1983$; Barnes & Slive $1993$) but persists in tourism & popular writing (Elorrieta Salazar bros., $2001$).

Theoretical Frame: Disciplinary Power (Michel Foucault)

• Disciplines order, separate, rank, normalize → art history does same through its categories.
• “Normalization” naturalizes arbitrary distinctions; European aesthetic hierarchy appears evolutionary (“evolutive time”).
• Extending Western sub-categories (e.g., “sculpture” now covers Maori mokō skin carving) both stretches and imposes classificatory grids.

Inca Rocks & Metonymic Embodiment

• Inca valued both carved & uncarved stones framed architecturally; significance lay in metonymy rather than mimicry.
  • Terminology:
    • huanca – embodies an entire valley.
    • hirauqui – “brother” stone of a ruler.
    • sayhua – boundary marker (e.g., Saywite monolith).
    • chacrayoq – owner of a field.
    • puruauca – petrified warrior guarding territory.
    • saykuska – “tired stone,” left at quarry after building project.
• Western label “sculpture” obscures these roles; invites judgments by alien standards where objects inevitably “fail.”

Aesthetic Standards as Instruments of Power

• Preziosi: standards are conventional, serve institutions & ideologies → colonizing function.
• Historically, possession of art, writing, wheel, monotheism measured “civilizational level.”

Decolonizing Questions: From “What is Art?” to “When is Art?”

• Nelson Goodman (via Preziosi): better to ask situational question → foregrounds contexts, moments, power relations of naming.

Indigenous Epistemologies & Translation Dilemmas

• Nahuátl toltecayotl – translated by Felipe Solís as “artistic sensitivity”; Beatriz de la Fuente: harmony of dualities, “dialogue between head and heart”; practitioner = toltecatl → but “artist” is an imperfect equivalence.
• Quechua quillca (quilca/quillca): colonial dictionaries gloss as painting, drawing, engraving, embroidery, writing. Indicates “surface-marking” rather than elite visual category. Restricting study to quillca would omit many sacred stones.
• Translation not mere substitution; must interrogate what is lost/added/misrepresented.

Visual-Culture Approach & Its Limits

• Some scholars adopt “visual culture” to escape art history’s value hierarchy. Dean counters: deeper issue is unreflective reproduction of Euro-centric disciplinary machinery.

Current Pedagogical / Textbook Concerns

• “Global” survey texts often retain Hegelian progress narrative; non-European chapters become exotic digressions (Errington “Death of Authentic Primitive Art”).
• Scholars working outside Western canon must guard against serving as explorers feeding new “resources” to art markets & museums.

Ethical, Philosophical, Practical Implications

• Naming art where the term never existed can:
  • Recreate cultures in Western image, yet always “not quite” (Bhabha’s mimicry → reinforces inferiority).
  • Displace indigenous systems; elevate Western values; facilitate commodification.
• Scholars must scrutinize their own roles as agents/subjects of disciplinary power; consider abandoning “art” where linguistically/theoretically unhelpful.

Recommendations / Methodological Shifts

• Employ indigenous categories where possible, with critical awareness of translation pitfalls.
• Maintain reflexivity: always ask who calls it art, when, why, and with what consequences.
• Foster interdisciplinary dialogue (anthropology, history, post-colonial studies) to decentre Euro-American epistemic dominance.

Chronology & Key References (chronological bullets)

• $1942$ Leonhard Adam – flags European attitudes in “Primitive Art.”
• $1953$ Meyer Schapiro – modern values foster sympathy for abstraction.
• $1957$ Gerbrands – “non-European art” label; Mason: Inca “stone sculpture missing.”
• $1965$ Current Anthropology debate on term “primitive art.”
• $1984$ MoMA “Primitivism” exhibition; Homi Bhabha on mimicry.
• $1994$ Errington coins “art by appropriation.”
• $1997$ Pasztory on Andean aesthetics; Dean’s CAA paper forms basis of article.

Take-Away Formula (thought experiment)

$\text{Object} + \text{Western Valuation} \rightarrow \text{Art by Appropriation}$
Conversely,
$\text{Object} + \text{Indigenous Frame} \rightarrow \text{Culturally Specific Category (e.g., huanca, quillca, toltecayotl)}$

Conclusion

• The discipline must confront its colonial lineage and the normalizing force of the term “art.”
• Scholars should cultivate context-sensitive vocabularies, ask “when is art?” and remain vigilant against re-centring the West in studies of global visual culture.