ART

WHAT IS ART?
After their survival needs are met, people in all cultures, even technologically simple ones, decorate their storage containers, paint their houses, embroider their clothing, compose songs, tell riddles, dance creatively, paint pictures etc. etc. These manifestation of human activity are sometimes called EXPRESSIVE CULTURE - dance, music, song, painting, sculpture, pottery, cloth, story telling, verse, prose, drama, and comedy. Artistic expression is one of the most distinctive human characteristics.

Many cultures lacked a word for art but people everywhere do associate an aesthetic experience - a sense of beauty, appreciation, harmony, pleasure with objects and events having certain qualities. For centuries, people from a wide range of perspectives have debated and proposed but failed to produce a universally agreed-upon definition of art. One definition says that ART is the application of imagination, skill, and style to matter, movement, and sound that goes beyond the purely practical. Another refers to art as the quality, production, expression, or realm of what is beautiful or of more than ordinary significance; the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria.

Others define art more broadly to include things that can be smelled (scents, fragrances), tasted (recipes), or touched (cloth texture). Definitions vary with the purpose of the definers. Despite the diverse definitions, any definition of art, if it is to have any cross-cultural applicability, must include five (5) basic elements. 1. The artistic process should be creative, playful, and enjoyable and need not be concerned with the practicality or usefulness of the object being produced. 2. From the perspective of the consumer, art should produce some type of emotional response, either positive or negative.

3. Art should be TRANSFORMATIONAL. An event from nature, such as cheetah running at full speed, may be aesthetically pleasing in that it evokes a strong emotional response, but it is not art. It becomes art only when someone transforms the image into a painting, dance, song or poem. 4. Art should communicate information by being representational. In other words, once the object of art is transformed, it should make a symbolic statement about what is being portrayed.

5. Art implies that the artist has developed a certain level of technical skill not shared equally by all people in a society. Based on the 5 elements, art, then, is both the process and the products of applying certain skills to any activity that transforms matter, sound, or motion into a form that is deemed aesthetically meaningful to people in a society. Every society has a set of standards that distinguish between good art and bad art or between more or less satisfying aesthetic experiences.

DIFFERENCES IN ART FORMS

Differences in art forms between small-scale (primitive) and complex societies stem from 3 major factors. 1. General Lifestyles and Settlement Patterns - art found in small-scale societies are highly portable; not expected to develop an art tradition comprising largescale works; limited to forms that they can take with them easily, such as performing arts (song, dance, and story telling); body decoration, such as jewelry, body-painting, tattooing, and scarification; and artistic decorations on weapons, clothing, and food containers.

2. Different Levels of Social Differentiation (i.e. labor specialization) As societies developed more specialized roles, some segments of the population were freed from the daily pursuits of food getting; the subsequent rise of civilizations saw the emergence of full-time specialists whose energies were directed at distinguishing between good and bad art; the standards of aesthetic judgement became more explicit and elaborately defined by specialists in more complex societies; aesthetic standards exist in smallscale societies, but they are less elaborate, more implicit, and more widely diffused throughout the entire population.

3. Differences in the Division of Labor Specialized societies are highly stratified into classes with different levels of power, prestige, and wealth; the aesthetic critics responsible for establishing artistic standards in complex societies are members of the upper classes or are employed by them; art in complex societies are associated with the elite; art in complex societies is often owned, controlled, glorifies, and serves the upper classes; in egalitarian small-scale societies art tends to be more democratic and embedded to a greater degree in other aspects of culture such as religion.

THE FUNCTIONS OF ART

Navajo sand paintings are created as part of a ceremony that brings into harmony with the universal order one who finds himself in discord with it. When the ceremony is over, the painting is over too; it is destroyed; it has fulfilled its function. The very fact that artistic expression is found in every known society suggests that it functions in some important ways in human lives. What is the function of art?

Emotional Gratification for the Individual

Art is a source of personal gratification for both the artist and the viewer. All people derive enjoyment from art because it provides at least a temporary break from those practical and often stressful pursuits of food getting. After crop harvest, the African horticulturists dance, tell stories, and derive pleasure from working or viewing pieces of art. Westerners seek gratification by attending a play, a concert, or a museum.

The psychologically beneficial functions of art can be examined from the perspective of the artist and the beholder. For the artist, the expression of art permits the release of emotional energy in a concrete or visible way through painting, sculpting, writing a play, or performing an interpretive dance. The release of creative energy brings pleasure to the artist to the extent that she or he derives satisfaction from both the mastery of techniques and the product itself. Art can evoke pleasurable emotional responses in several important ways for the viewer.

Works of art can portray events, people, or deities that can conjure up positive emotions. These pleasurable responses can contribute to the mental well-being of art viewers by providing a necessary balance with the stresses in their everyday lives. But, it is also possible for art to have the opposite effect by eliciting negative emotions. Any art form is capable of eliciting disturbing or even painful emotions that can lead to psychological discomfort for the viewer.

Art as a Contribution to Social Integration

Art functions to help sustain the longevity of the society in which it is found. Through various symbols, art, in whatever form it may take, communicates a good deal about the values, beliefs, and ideologies of the culture of which it is a part. The art forms found in any given society reflect the major cultural themes and concerns of the society e.g. prominent breasts on female figures are a major theme in much of the wood sculpture from West Africa - the important social value of having children.

Certain graphic arts integrate the society by making the dominant cultural themes, values, and beliefs more visible. Art functions to strengthen the existing culture by reinforcing those cultural themes. Music strengthen and reinforce social bonds and cultural themes - values are passed on from generation to generation using song and dance. Music as a mechanism of education is shown by Sesame Street characters who sing about good societal values. Music can also be used to solidify a group of people e.g. warfare.

ART and RELIGION

Much art has been done in association with religion. Many of the high points of Western art and music had religious inspirations or were done in the service of religion. Bach and Handel are well known for their church music as Michelangelo is for his religious painting and sculpture. The buildings (churches and cathedrals) in which religious music is played and in which art is displayed may themselves be works of art.

Art may be created, performed, or displayed outdoors in public, or in special indoor settings, such as a theatre, concert hall, or museum. In tribal performances, the arts and religion often mix. Masked and costumed performers may imitate spirits. Rites of passage often feature special music, dance, song, bodily adornment, and other manifestations of expressive culture.

LOCATING ART
Aesthetic value is one way of distinguishing art. Another way is to consider placement - museums, concert halls, opera houses, and theatres. Decisions about what to admit as a work of art may be political and controversial. Although tribal societies typically lack museums, they may maintain special areas where artistic expression takes place. The boundary between whats art and whats not is blurred.

If something is mass produced or industrially modified, can it be art? How does one know if a film is art? Star Wars? Pearl Harbor, Bujang Lapok? To be culturally relativistic, we must to avoid using our own standards about what art is to the products of other cultures. Sculpture is art, right? Not necessarily - the Kalabari of Nigeria use wooden sculptures as houses for spirits and not for aesthetic reasons. Hija poetry is useful for interpreting political relations between states e.g. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait during the Kuwaiti invasion in 1991.

ART, SOCIETY, and CULTURE

Art goes back at least 30,000 years ago through cave paintings, portable art objects carved in bone and ivory, along with musical whistles and flutes. Art is more public than cave paintings - it is exhibited, evaluated, performed, and appreciated in society. Art has spectators and audience - not just the artist. Music, often performed in groups, is among the most social of the arts. First coined for European peasants, folk art and music refer to the arts of the common people, as contrasted with the high or classic art of the elite.

Art say something about continuity and change - art can stand for tradition, even when traditional art is removed from its original (rural) context. The creative products and images of folk, rural, and non-Western cultures are spread and commercialized by the media and tourism. Westerners often thought of culture in terms of colorful customs, music, dancing, and adornments. Art is also a form of communication between artist and community or audience. Sometimes there are intermediaries between the artist and the audience - actors, musicians, choreographers.

How does art communicate? Need to know what the artist intends to communicate and how the audience react - audience often communicates right back to the artist. Certain segments of the population are more likely to appreciate certain forms of art. Art transmit many kinds of messages - a moral lesson or a cautionary tale. Anxiety, the tension and resolution of drama can lead to CATHARSIS, intense emotional release, in the audience. Art can move emotions, make us laugh, cry, feel up or down and also appeals to the intellect.

Art can be self-consciously pro-social - it can express community sentiment, with political goals, used to call attention to social issues. Art may serve a mnemonic function, making people remember - AIDS etc. Art has entered the political arena - no museum director can mount an exhibit without worrying that it will offend some political segment of society. Artists have been criticized as aloof from society, as creating only for themselves and for elites, as out of touch with conventional and traditional aesthetic values, even as mocking the values of ordinary people.

The Cultural Transmission of the Arts

Appreciation of the arts depends on cultural background because art is part of culture. Watch Japanese tourists in a Western art museum trying to interpret what they are seeing. The form and meaning of a Japanese tea ceremony, or a demonstration of origami will be alien to a foreign observer. Appreciation of the arts must be learned - it is part of enculturation. What is aesthetically pleasing depends to some extent on culture.

Based on familiarity, music with certain tonalities and rhythm patterns will please some people and alienate others. People learn to listen to certain kinds of music and to appreciate particular art forms, just as they learn to hear and decipher a foreign language. Unlike Londoners and new Yorkers, Parisians dont flock to musicals - even Les Miserables, a huge hit in London, New York and other cities world-wide, bombed in Paris. Humor, a form of verbal art, depends on cultural background and setting - whats funny in one culture may not be in another.

Jokes, like aesthetic judgements, depends on context. Certain artistic traditions may be transmitted in families - in Bali, there are families of carvers, musicians, dancers, and mask makers. Myths, legends, tales, and the art of story telling play important roles in the transmission of culture and the preservation of tradition. At what age do children start learning the arts? In some cultures they start early - Korean and Turkmenistan school kids. Sometimes childrens participation in arts or performance, including sports, exemplifies forced enculturation.

CONTINUITY and CHANGE

The arts go on changing, although certain art forms have survived for thousands of years. Upper Paleolithic cave art that has survived 30,000 years was itself a highly developed manifestation of human creativity and symbolism, with an undoubtedly long evolutionary history. Monumental architecture along with sculpture, reliefs, ornamental pottery, and written music, literature, and drama have survived from early civilizations.

Countries and cultures are known for particular contributions, includes art. The Balinese are known for dance, the Navajo for sand painting, jewelry, and weaving, and the French for making cuisine an art form. Classical Greek theatre survives throughout the world. In todays world, the dramatic arts are part of a huge art and leisure industry, which links western and nonWestern art forms in an international network that has both aesthetic and commercial dimensions.

MUSIC
Music is the universal language. although all people do have the same physiological mechanisms for hearing, what a person actually hears is influenced by his or her culture. Westerners tend to miss much of the richness of Javanese or Sri Lankan music because they have not been conditioned to hear it. The cross-cultural study of music is known as ethnomusicology, a new field involving the cooperative efforts of both anthropologists and musicologists.

Ethnomusicology deals with 4 major concerns 1. Ideas about music - how does a culture distinguish between music and non-music? What functions does music play for the society? What constitutes beautiful music? On what occasion should music be played? 2. Social structure of music - what are the social relationships between musicians? How does a society distinguish between various musicians on the basis of such criteria as age, gender, race, ethnicity, or education?

3. Characteristics of the music itself - how does the style of music in different cultures vary (scale, melody, harmony, timing)? What different music genres are found in a society? How is music composed? How is music learned and transmitted? 4. Material culture of music - what is the nature of the musical instruments found in a culture? Who makes musical instruments and how are they distributed? How are the musical tastes reflected in the instruments used? All ethnomusicologists - whether their background is in music or cultural anthropology - are interested in the study of music in its cultural context.

DANCE
Dance is defined as purposely and intentionally rhythmical non-verbal body movements that are culturally patterned and have aesthetic value. Although dance is found in all known societies, the forms and meanings attached to it vary from society to society. In some societies, dance involves enormous energy and body movement, whereas in other societies it is much more restrained and subtle. Dancing alone is the expected form in some societies, but in others it is customary to dance in circles, lines, or other formations.

Functions of dance can include: 1. Psychologically by helping people cope more effectively with tensions and aggressive feelings. 2. Politically by expressing political views and attitudes, showing allegiance to political leaders, and controlling behavior. 3. Religiously by various methods of communicating with supernatural forces. 4. Socially by articulating and reinforcing relationships between members of the society; and 5. Educationally by passing on the cultural traditions, values, and beliefs from one generation to the next.

VERBAL ARTS
Creative forms of expression using words are found in all societies of the world - both written and unwritten (folklore) verbal arts. Alan Dundes (1965) noted that folklores include the following. Myths, legends, folktales, jokes, proverbs, riddles, chants, charms, teases, toasts, tongue-twisters, and greeting and leave-taking formulas (e.g., see you later alligator).

It also includes folk custom, folk dance, folk drama (and mime), folk art, folk belief (or superstition), folk medicine, folk instrumental music (e.g., fiddle tunes), folksongs (lullabies, ballads), folk speech (e.g., slang), folk similes (e.g., blind as a bat), folk metaphors (e.g., paint the town red), and names (e.g., nicknames and place names). Folk poetry ranges from oral epics to autograph-book verse, epitaphs, latrinalia (writing on the walls of public bathrooms), limericks, ball-bouncing rhymes, finger and toe rhymes, dandling rhymes (to bounce the children on the knee), counting out rhymes (to determine who will be it in games), and nursery rhymes.

The list of folklore forms also contains games: gestures; symbols; prayers (e.g., graces); practical jokes; folk etymologies; food recipes; quilt and embroidery designs; street vendor cries; and even the traditional conventional sounds used to summon animals or to give them commands. The greatest amount of attention to myths and folktales.

MYTHS
Myths are narratives involving supernatural beings designed to explain the issues of human existence. (where we came from, why we are here, and how we account for the things in our world). Myths are stories of our search for significance, meaning, and truth. Myths of creation among Yanomami - one for men (fierceness) and the other for women (sexuality). The sexual account of the creation of women is consistent with their life where humor, insulting, fighting, and storytelling revolve around sexual themes.

FOLKTALES
In contrast to myths, folktales (or legends) are more secular in nature, have no particular basis in history, and exist largely for the purposes of entertainment. Most folktales have a moral and they play an important role in socialization. In societies without writing, folktales can be significant in revealing socially appropriate behavior. The heroes and heroines who triumph in folktales do so because of their admirable behavior and character traits.