Plattner, S.

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1 Anthropology of artStuart PlattnerHow do anthropologists study art differently from other social scientists?The differences lie in both form (the reliance on ethnographic method) andcontent (the focus on marginalized and exotic societies). Anthropologistsalmost invariably use ethnography as a research methodology. This meansthey generate much of their primary data through direct, personal, in-depth observations of normal life and interaction with respondents whoinform them about the mundane details of their everyday life. When the dis-cipline developed in the first part of the twentieth century, anthropologistsstudied poor, exotic, non-Western cultures, often as the result of a coloni-alist encounter. Much of the discipline’s current identity derives from thearchetypical experience of being the first Westerner to study in these distantplaces. The anthropologist was necessarily a generalist, recording informa-tion about language, environment, economy, religion, family life, govern-ance and so on, since this information was simply non-existent in theWestern literature (in contrast to studies based in Europe and Americawhere an economist, for example, could rely on easily available backgroundand contextual information on non-economic variables).This experience produced the anthropological research paradigm ofholism, that the life of an individual must be understood through study ofthe person’s entire life situation and activity. Art, religion, politics, agricul-ture, commerce and so on cannot be assumed to be separate institutions inan exotic culture just because we understand them as separate in our ownculture. This open-minded approach to exotic ways of life has been produc-tive of valuable understanding. For example, only an anthropologist couldhave solved the problem of understanding Balinese irrigated rice produc-tion by seeking answers in Balinese religious temples (Lansing, 1991).Anthropologists1 think that artistic production, even in the West, shouldbe looked upon, not simply as applied aesthetics, but as an activity embed-ded in an art world, a complex set of social relationships (Becker, 1982, is theseminal statement of this position). It is wrong to focus on the unique artobject, and ignore the complex set of human relationships which contributedto its creation. Thus the typical middle-aged artist in the USA needs to livein a household where someone – not necessarily the artist – has access tohealth insurance (Plattner, 1996). The comparable artist in Italy needs accessto housing, and normally obtains it through family relations (Plattner, n.d.).This focus on a person’s whole life experience means that the people observed15and interviewed by anthropologists – their informants – are by definitionexperts on their own lives and local culture, no matter how low they may rankin their social or economic structure.2The typical anthropological research site is thus a local community in anon-Western country (for example, Australian aborigines) or a marginal-ized community in a first-world country (for example, American Indians).Anthropologists in these circumstances have had a long-standing interestin three sorts of topics: studies of the art of third-world or exotic cultures,3where the study shows the cultural meanings of art objects; studies ofmuseum exhibitions and policies, which attempt to bridge the cultural gapbetween marginalized, non-Western and Western cultures; and studies ofcontemporary art worlds.Early studies of the art of small-scale, tribal communities focused onestablishing the cultural provenance of the objects in order to establish typo-logical taxonomies, and served the needs of the Western museum curatorswho directed the objects into the primitive art or the ethnographic sectionsof the museums. When such things were displayed simply as art objects,without any explication of their cultural meaning, anthropologists havebeen severely critical. This deculturing of the object seemed also somewhatdehumanizing, as usually no attempt was made to identify the individualnative artist, as would have been the case with Western art objects. It seemedto anthropologists to be held over from the bad old days of unrepentantcolonialism (Price, 1989). Other more historical studies have analysedmuseum collections as portraits of exotic societies at the point in historywhen the objects were collected, as well as depictions of the anthropologyand Western mind-set of the time when dealing with third-world cultures.More recent studies of third-world art are interested in showing how theart expresses local or national culture. Heider (1991) for example, shows howIndonesian film expresses unique aspects of Indonesian culture. Manystudies focus on the interaction of dominant capitalist societies with subser-vient local art worlds, in the context of tourism or of Western commodifica-tion and distribution through a gallery–museum system (Coote and Shelton,1992; Karp and Lavine, 1991, provide a good survey of work). The issues inthis literature include the tensions introduced into local communities byWestern art market values, which stress individual creativity and competitionas well as personal freedom. Non-Western ‘traditional’ (for example,Australian Aboriginal) communities tend to be structured to repress individ-ual identity in favour of group welfare. The amazing success of Aboriginalcommunities in creating a unique art that has succeeded in generating aworldwide market has had its costs (Myers, 2001). While non-Western com-munities want and need the income derived from selling local products tonon-local markets, they resent the cultural baggage of commodification and(in their view) Western-style hyperindividualization that seems inexorably to16 A handbook of cultural economicscome along with the cash. This literature also tends to focus on the sourcesand effects of inequality in the holy trinity of class, race and gender, showingin most cases that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the powerlessremain so, and that this is unfair (for example, Dubin, 2001; Mullin, 2001).An enduring interest of anthropology is to show how particular socialbehaviours encode local meaning and defend local culture from externalforces (for example, Morphy, 1991, for Australian Aboriginal bark paint-ings; Glassie, 1997, for Bangladeshi potters). An interesting line of workuses concepts of globalization theory to show that African artists and artvendors create productive lives across two continents through trade in artobjects (Steiner, 1994; Stoller, 1996; 1999).Another stream of research looks at art worlds in the West and asks howart as a commodity and means of self-expression fits into modern capitalistsociety. Halle’s unique study (1993) reports on the art objects in 160 homes inthe New York City area. He reports on the personal meaning of the art to thelives of this sample of wealthy, middle- and working-class families. The studychallenges the influential cultural capital theory of Bourdieu (1984) andBourdieu and Darbel (1990). The theory holds that high art is a piece of cul-tural capital that the elite use to mark their status and limit access by the non-elite. Halle’s meticulous empirical work shows that high art (for example, ataste for abstract art) is pretty rare among the elite as well as the lower classes,so it is difficult to explain its function as being that of status marker.Plattner (1996) examines an art world in an average, non-elite city of theUSA. This ethnographic study shows how artists, dealers and collectors ina local art market in St Louis, Missouri make economic decisions aboutthese strange objects that are both personal expression and commodity. Thebook illustrates the lived reality of abstract concepts such as the social con-struction of value and the impact of asymmetric information. Another pub-lication offers a generalizable model of local art markets as existing whereproducers of psychic value operate in markets with asymmetric informa-tion, and highlights the paradoxical nature of art markets (Plattner, 1998).Other anthropologists define art very broadly, stressing the importanceof the expressive aspects of behaviour. Anderson (2000, p.8) chooses tolook at behaviour which involves (in his schema):● artifacts of human creation,● created through the exercise of exceptional skill,● produced in a public medium,● intended to affect the senses, and● seen to share stylistic conventions with other works.Anderson devotes his book to the ethnography of 64 artists identified bythese criteria, including a body tattoo specialist, a car repair man, a gar-dener, a preacher, as well as a painter, a silversmith and others. His pointis that art, by his definition, is widespread, embedded and significant inAnthropology of art 17American society. His attempt to define an American vernacular aestheticis consistent with traditional anthropology’s focus on the mundane, every-day lives of plain folk rather than the lives of the core elite. In his own wayhe is bringing anthropology back home. Just as early anthropologists foundart in everyday objects such as the carved canoe prows of Melanesia, theshields from Africa, or the bark cloth from South America, this modernanthropologist finds art in the everyday lives of Kansas City residents. Itexemplifies a long-standing anthropological value of finding high art in lowplaces, using anthropology to dignify the lives of people by illustrating theartistry in daily life (for example, Sherzer, 1990, for verbal performance dis-course in Central America; McNaughton, 1988, for African blacksmiths;Scoditti, 1990, for Melanesian canoe carvers; for a general evolutionary ap-proach, see Dissanayake, 1988).Where is the field of anthropological studies of art going? Anthropologyhas a great deal to contribute to the study of art markets with the type ofin-depth, thick description that the field has defined itself by. The primarychallenge is to penetrate the mystery of value attribution in art sales. Giventhe social creation of value in art, how do the personal relations betweendealers and collectors work to legitimize prices? Economics is incapable ofresolving this problem; insight will come from finely grained ethnographicstudies showing how the deal is done in a variety of contexts. The otherarena where the anthropology has a unique contribution to make is instudies of the globalization of art. Anthropologists are uniquely positionedto advance our understanding of the general processes underlying the cul-tural clash when non-Western art becomes successful in Western markets.We look forward to new insights in the way this foreign art will affect ourmarkets and how our commercialization and individualization will affectlife ‘back home’ in the village, now that technology permits actors, infor-mation and commodities to flow back and forth cheaply and easily.Notes1. And other like-minded social scientists in sociology, political science and psychology, butrarely economics.2. Many modern anthropologists elevate their respect for local knowledge into a claim ofmoral authority to represent the lowly to the powerful in the subject society (typically apoor, developing country or marginalized sector of a wealthy country). By combatinginequality through ‘speaking truth to power’, these anthropologists hope to make theworld a better place. The goal is to counter the moral stain of colonialism which they feelunderlies the discipline’s twentieth-century history.3. The term ‘primitive art’ is politically incorrect as there is nothing primitive about the aes-thetic conception and execution of the work (Price, 1989).See also:Chapter 24: Dealers in art; Chapter 30: Gift economy; Chapter 60: Visual arts.18 A handbook of cultural economicsReferencesAnderson, Richard L. (2000), American Muse: Anthropological Excursions into Art andAesthetics, Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Becker, Howard S. (1982), Art Worlds, Berkeley: University of California Press.Bourdieu, Pierre (1984), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Cambridge:Harvard University Press (originally published in French in 1979).Bourdieu, Pierre and Alain Darbel (1990), The Love of Art: European Art Museums and theirPublic, Stanford: Stanford University Press (originally published in French in 1969).Coote, Jeremy and Anthony Shelton (eds) (1992), Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, Oxford:Clarendon Press.Dissanayake, Ellen (1988),What is Art For?, Seattle: University of Washington Press.Dubin, Margaret D. (2001), Native America Collected: The Culture of an Art World,Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Glassie, Henry (1997), Art and Life in Bangladesh, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Halle, David (1993), Inside Culture: Art and Class in the American Home, Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.Heider, Karl (1991), Indonesian Cinema: National Culture on Screen, Honolulu: University ofHawaii Press.Karp, Ivan and Steven Lavine (eds) (1991), Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics ofMuseum Display, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press.Lansing, J. Stephen (1991), Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the EngineeredLandscape of Bali, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.McNaughton, Patrick (1988), The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, Power, and Art in WestAfrica, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Morphy, Howard (1991), Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge,Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Mullin, Molly (2001), Culture in the Marketplace: Gender, Art and Value in the AmericanSouthwest, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Myers, Fred R. (2001), ‘The Wizards of Oz: Nation, State, and the Production of AboriginalFine Art’, in Fred R. Myers (ed.), The Empire of Things, Santa Fe, NM: School of AmericanResearch Press.Plattner, Stuart (n.d.), ‘Contemporary Art in a Renaissance Setting: The Local Art System inFlorence, Italy’, manuscript obtainable from the author.Plattner, Stuart (1996), High Art Down Home: An Economic Ethnography of a Local ArtMarket, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Plattner, Stuart (1998), ‘A Most Ingenious Paradox, The Market for Contemporary Fine Art’,American Anthropologist, 100 (2), 482–93.Price, Sally (1989), Primitive Art in Civilized Places, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Scoditti, Giancarlo (1990), Kitawa: A Linguistic and Aesthetic Analysis of Visual Art inMelanesis, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Sherzer, Joel (1990), Verbal Art in San Blas: Kuna Culture through its Discourse, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.Steiner, Chris (1994), African Art in Transit, New York: Cambridge University Press.Stoller, Paul (1996), ‘Spaces, Places, and Fields: Politics of West African Trading in NewYork’s Informal Economy’, American Anthropologist, 98 (4), 776–89.Stoller, Paul (1999), Jaguar: A Story of Africans in America, Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.Anthropology of art 19

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