Art as Culture: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Art

The concept of art as being purely for aesthetic contemplation, that is typical of industrial civilization, is not a very useful one for cross-cultural studies.  The majority of the art forms that we see in museums and art books that have come from Native America or Africa or Oceania, are objects that were once part of a larger artistic whole from which they have been extracted.  We need to try to piece together and imagine the artistic context as well as the cultural one if we are to attain a deeper sense of the import than the piece available to use provides. Even then, it is almost impossible to define the artistic whole.  Perhaps we would do better to regard  these pieces as fragments from the lifestyle of a people.

Art As Culture: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Art

Arts & Photography

Hatcher, Evelyn Payne

History & Criticism

Univ Pr of Amer

In Visual Metaphors, Hatcher provides an objective means of analyzing, describing, and comparing art forms regardless of content, style, or medium. Methodologically, the rigorous descriptive vocabulary presented in this book is a valuable step in systematizing the vocabulary used by the different disciplines to describe and analyze art forms. As Hatcher asserts, "When we get into problems of interpretation, it becomes important to have objective description, and to at least conceptually separate the visible forms from the meanings we infer." Although examples of Navajo art comprise the majority of Hatcher's test case material, Visual Metaphors is chiefly a methodological work on visual communication rather than a book about sandpaintings per se. This study furthers our understanding of what aspects are culturally determined, and in what ways there are cross-cultural universals in visual communication. The need to test currently held ideas about the meaning of art forms (form qualities in Hatcher's terminology) continues to be important. Visual Metaphors addresses theoretical and methodological concerns of art and anthropology which are as relevant to anthropologists, archaeologist, and art historians today, as they were when the book was first published.

Visual Metaphors: A Methodological Study in Visual Communication

Univ of New Mexico Pr

Visual metaphors: A formal analysis of Navajo art (Monograph - The American Ethnological Society ; 58)

West Pub. Co.

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