Art/Aesthetics
- LAST REVIEWED: 23 April 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 June 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0031
- LAST REVIEWED: 23 April 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 June 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0031
Introduction
The anthropology of art includes within its ambit the anthropological study of any aspect of artistic production, very broadly understood. It is primarily concerned with the diverse social dimensions of visual phenomena, as opposed to musical or literary ones: it is about visual art in particular, rather than the arts in general. However, its borders are never sharply scored, because the definition of “art,” deeply contested within Western society, remains forever open to continual reexamination when understood cross-culturally, especially in a world of accelerating change. Specific foci for the anthropology of art have developed and broadened, since the first writings on it in Victorian times: from grand evolutionary surveys to formalist analysis, to the integrative roles of art in maintaining social structure, to decorated artifacts as complex modes of communication to be decoded, and to present-day scenarios where the increasing spread of global forces pushes anthropologists of art into studying border-crossing interactions and transcultural processes. The idea of studying the artistic production of a single, isolable group of people is barely tenable today. Instead, anthropologists of art may study the collection, selling, and exhibition of ethnographica; the recontextualization of these objects in museums; or the cultural constitution of art markets, anywhere in the world. This widening of the anthropology of art has moved it much closer to the center stage of the discipline than at any period since the early 20th century. At the same time, once-clear distinctions between the anthropology of art and the history of art have become much more blurred in certain, common domains of study, such as the analysis of traditionally produced objects and the nature of a cross-cultural aesthetics. Some academics working within this general area wish to subsume the subject within the recently emerging field of visual studies. Furthermore, though productive engagements between working artists and the anthropology of art have occurred since the late 19th century, their rate has risen markedly since the 1980s, with an increasing number of contemporary artists wishing to exploit and comment on anthropological procedures. These anthropologically informed artists may be termed curators of their own anthropological museums or ethnographers of their own society. Similarly, some anthropologists in the early 21st century experiment with elements of artistic practice in their own work.
Textbooks
Until recently, the anthropology of art was a relatively small section of the discipline, and thus without sufficient market to justify a plethora of introductions. In the early 21st century there are relatively few textbooks in the anthropology of art that are not badly outdated for current readers. Layton 1991, originally published 1981, is an exception. Svašek 2007 is the leading more recent example.
Layton, Robert. 1991. The anthropology of art. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
NNNThough a little long in the tooth (e.g., there is nothing on globalization), still a very useful, rounded introduction, especially its critical section on structuralism and its discussion of dimensions of artistic creativity. First published in 1981 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press).
Svašek, Maruška. 2007. Anthropology, art and cultural production. Anthropology, Culture, and Society. London: Pluto.
NNNA well-balanced, critical survey that defines art as social process. Svašek links the production and consumption of artifacts to political, religious, and cultural dynamics. She also examines the sociopolitical reasons why the boundaries between art and allied categories (e.g., craft, kitsch, pornography) are so often contested.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Africa, Anthropology of
- Aging
- Agriculture
- Animal Ritual
- Animal Sanctuaries
- Anorexia Nervosa
- Anthropocene, The
- Anthropological Activism and Visual Ethnography
- Anthropology and Education
- Anthropology and Theology
- Anthropology of Islam
- Anthropology of Kurdistan
- Anthropology of the Senses
- Anthrozoology
- Antiquity, Ethnography in
- Applied Anthropology
- Archaeobotany
- Archaeological Education
- Archaeology
- Archaeology and Museums
- Archaeology and Political Evolution
- Archaeology and Race
- Archaeology and the Body
- Archaeology, Gender and
- Archaeology, Global
- Archaeology, Historical
- Archaeology, Indigenous
- Archaeology of Childhood
- Archaeology of the Senses
- Archives
- Art Museums
- Art/Aesthetics
- Autoethnography
- Bakhtin, Mikhail
- Bass, William M.
- Beauty
- Belief
- Benedict, Ruth
- Binford, Lewis
- Bioarchaeology
- Biocultural Anthropology
- Bioethics
- Biological and Physical Anthropology
- Biological Citizenship
- Boas, Franz
- Bone Histology
- Bureaucracy
- Business Anthropology
- Capitalism
- Cargo Cults
- Caribbean
- Caste
- Charles Sanders Peirce and Anthropological Theory
- Childhood Studies
- Christianity, Anthropology of
- Citizenship
- Clinical Trials
- Cobb, William Montague
- Code-switching and Multilingualism
- Cognitive Anthropology
- Cole, Johnnetta
- Colonialism
- Commodities
- Consumerism
- Cultural Heritage Presentation and Interpretation
- Cultural Heritage, Race and
- Cultural Materialism
- Cultural Relativism
- Cultural Resource Management
- Culture
- Culture and Personality
- Culture, Popular
- Curatorship
- Cyber-Archaeology
- Dalit Studies
- Dance Ethnography
- de Heusch, Luc
- Deaccessioning
- Design
- Design, Anthropology and
- Diaspora
- Digital Anthropology
- Disability and Deaf Studies and Anthropology
- Douglas, Mary
- Drake, St. Clair
- Dreaming
- Durkheim and the Anthropology of Religion
- Economic Anthropology
- Embodied/Virtual Environments
- Embodiment
- Emotion, Anthropology of
- Environmental Anthropology
- Environmental Justice and Indigeneity
- Ethics
- Ethnoarchaeology
- Ethnocentrism
- Ethnographic Documentary Production
- Ethnographic Films from Iran
- Ethnography
- Ethnography Apps and Games
- Ethnohistory and Historical Ethnography
- Ethnomusicology
- Ethnoscience
- Europe
- Evans-Pritchard, E. E.
- Evolution, Cultural
- Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology
- Evolutionary Theory
- Experimental Archaeology
- Federal Indian Law
- Feminist Anthropology
- Film, Ethnographic
- Folklore
- Food
- Forensic Anthropology
- Francophonie
- Frazer, Sir James George
- Geertz, Clifford
- Gender
- Gender and Religion
- Gene Flow
- Genetics
- Genocide
- GIS and Archaeology
- Global Health
- Globalization
- Gluckman, Max
- Graphic Anthropology
- Grass
- Healing and Religion
- Health and Social Stratification
- Health Policy, Anthropology of
- Heritage Language
- HIV/AIDS
- House Museums
- Human Adaptability
- Human Evolution
- Human Rights
- Human Rights Films
- Humanistic Anthropology
- Hurston, Zora Neale
- Identity
- Identity Politics
- Indigeneity
- Indigenous Economic Development
- Industrial Archaeology
- Institutions
- Interpretive Anthropology
- Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity
- Kinship
- Laboratories
- Language and Emotion
- Language and Law
- Language and Media
- Language and Race
- Language and Urban Place
- Language Contact and its Sociocultural Contexts, Anthropol...
- Language Ideology
- Language Socialization
- Leakey, Louis
- Legal Anthropology
- Legal Pluralism
- Liberalism, Anthropology of
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistics, Historical
- Literacy
- Literary Anthropology
- Lévi-Strauss, Claude
- Magic
- Malinowski, Bronisław
- Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Visual Anthropology
- Maritime Archaeology
- Marriage
- Material Culture
- Materiality
- Mathematical Anthropology
- Matriarchal Studies
- Mead, Margaret
- Media Anthropology
- Medical Anthropology
- Medical Technology and Technique
- Mediterranean
- Memory
- Mendel, Gregor
- Mental Health and Illness
- Mesoamerican Archaeology
- Mexican Migration to the United States
- Migration
- Militarism, Anthropology and
- Missionization
- Mobility
- Modernity
- Morgan, Lewis Henry
- Multispecies Ethnography
- Museum Anthropology
- Museum Education
- Museum Studies
- Myth
- NAGPRA and Repatriation of Native American Human Remains a...
- Narrative in Sociocultural Studies of Language
- Nationalism
- Needham, Rodney
- Neoliberalism
- NGOs, Anthropology of
- Niche Construction
- Northwest Coast, The
- Oceania, Archaeology of
- Paleolithic Art
- Paleontology
- Performance Studies
- Performativity
- Personhood
- Perspectivism
- Philosophy of Museums
- Pilgrimage
- Plantations
- Political Anthropology
- Postprocessual Archaeology
- Postsocialism
- Poverty, Culture of
- Primatology
- Primitivism and Race in Ethnographic Film: A Decolonial Re...
- Processual Archaeology
- Psycholinguistics
- Psychological Anthropology
- Public Archaeology
- Public Sociocultural Anthropologies
- Race
- Religion
- Religion and Post-Socialism
- Religious Conversion
- Repatriation
- Reproductive and Maternal Health in Anthropology
- Reproductive Technologies
- Rhetoric Culture Theory
- Rural Anthropology
- Sahlins, Marshall
- Sapir, Edward
- Scandinavia
- Science Studies
- Secularization
- Semiotics
- Settler Colonialism
- Sex Estimation
- Sexuality
- Shamanism
- Skeletal Age Estimation
- Social Anthropology (British Tradition)
- Social Movements
- Socialization
- Society for Visual Anthropology, History of
- Socio-Cultural Approaches to the Anthropology of Reproduct...
- Sociolinguistics
- Sound Ethnography
- Space and Place
- Stable Isotopes
- Stan Brakhage and Ethnographic Praxis
- Structuralism
- Sub-Saharan Africa, Democracy in
- Surrealism and Anthropology
- Technological Organization
- Tourism
- Trans Studies in Anthroplogy
- Transnationalism
- Tree-Ring Dating
- Turner, Edith L. B.
- Turner, Victor
- Urban Anthropology
- Value
- Violence
- Virtual Ethnography
- Visual Anthropology
- Whorfian Hypothesis
- Willey, Gordon
- Witchcraft
- Wolf, Eric R.
- Writing Culture
- Youth Culture
- Zora Neale Hurston and Visual Anthropology