Anthropologists View the Distinction Between Fine Art and Popular Art a
Art and Anthropology: Dissimilar Practices and Common Fields of Intersection
Thomas Fillitz
For several decades, practices of artists from all around the world accept diversified in media, techniques and ideas. Fine art institutions have diversified in a like way in relationship to their organizational format, to their specializations and objectives. Virtually importantly, by professional specializations and boundaries both of artists and cultural institutions have extended and blurred. Artists ofttimes human action as curators, curators as researchers beyond art, and art institutions develop programs which aggrandize into social fields. Cross-disciplinary practices are now core activities within art worlds[1]. As Irit Rogoff writes, "We work in an expanded field, in which all definitions of practices, their supports and their institutional frameworks have shifted and blurred."[2]
Instead of an exclusivist field of art theory, contemporary art practices, activities of exhibiting, and of scholarly investigation nowadays call for the cooperation of the many disciplines dealing in one manner or another with the theme. This relates as much to regionally specific fine art creations, a new globe gild of antinomies betwixt a plurality of art worlds,[three] or art's central struggle betwixt autonomy and heteronomy.[4]
Regarding the relationship of art and anthropology, debates focus largely on what anthropology could learn from (occidental) art history and vice versa, or what are fundamental methodological differences between both disciplines.[v] Intensified collaborations betwixt art practices and anthropology developed within the framework of participatory art,[half dozen] insofar as artists are concerned with small, on-site projects which focus on images of everyday life, and claim the collaboration with and participation of some (constructed) local communities. From an art historical perspective, Claire Bishop further elaborates methodological requirements for documentation which are close to anthropological fieldwork, the need to collect on-site data likewise as to engage with notions from social sciences – such equally community, empowerment, democracy, or agency.[7]
Nicolas Bourriaud'due south Relational Aesthetics(2002) was seminal as it brought relational/participatory art to core reflections within art worlds.[viii] Superstar curators, such every bit Bourriaud himself, Catherine David, Okwui Enwezor, Charles Esche, Hou Hanru, or Adam Szymczyk are major art earth players for promoting this art form.[9] In contrast to documenta14 (2017), which emphasized its socio-political focus with the title 'Learning from Athens,' a review of the Biennale di Veneziaof 2017 precisely highlights the missing of such a perspective, and implicitly criticizes the curatorial vision of fine art's autonomy. Under the title 'Venice Biennale Lacks Relevance' critic Kingdom of the netherlands Cotter comments:
If the banal, soft-power 2017 Venice Biennale, called "Arte Viva," had arrived a few years ago, information technology might accept fabricated sense. But coming mail service-Brexit and mail service-Trump, it feels out of sync with the political moment, and non strong plenty to ascertain a moment of its own.[10]
My introductory remarks so far highlight ii aspects, (a) the blurring of former disciplinary boundaries regarding art practices and fine art institutions, and the concomitant intensification of cantankerous-disciplinary activities, and (b) the importance of curating and writing in the field of contemporary art for promoting specific art forms, and views of world-making.
Considering the importance attributed to writers (critics, theorists), and curators in the field of contemporary art, I intend to discuss the following aspects regarding my anthropological researching and writing in this field. I debate against the split betwixt working with artists and working on artists. In my work with artists and on mega-exhibitions during my ethnographic enquiry in West Africa, I consider a unity betwixt processes of researching and writing. However, I clearly differentiate betwixt practices of artists, curators, and anthropologists. On these grounds, I further argue against writing as activeness of representation, translation, or estimation. Regarding the interaction with artists and exhibits, I rather assume the product of a common infinite of reflection equally central, out of which emerge the particularities of practices on the gimmicky. As Beninese artist Romuald Hazoumè one time expressed during a conversation: "Our topic is not the ethnographic knowledge of the social phenomenon I am working on. I am exchanging with yous regarding my thoughts nearly it, how I am dealing artistically with it."
In the following first part I shall discuss 2 examples of my investigations on art in West Africa. I shall bargain with the interaction between Ivoirian creative person Mathilde Moro and me equally researcher. I thereby intend to elaborate the emergence of a common field of reflection which stretches out beyond the creative person's creations into other cultural themes. My other example deals with curatorial activities regarding the central venue of the Biennale of Dakar, Dak'Art, the Exposition Internationale, and critical debates each edition generates. I shall specifically elaborate on the two near successful events of 2006 and 2016. Yet, the curators' objectives contrasted and enhanced different discourses on fine art, for the 2006 edition in relationship to the field of art's autonomy – considerations on the history of modern and gimmicky African art, while the 2016 venue expanded into the field of fine art'south heteronomy – encouraging the visitors' imagination for the process of contemporary world-making.
The second office expands the question of anthropological researching/writing in reflecting the empirical examples in the context of concepts. I have up Viktorin's thesis of the 'advent,'[11] against reproduction or translation, as starting point of the interaction between creative person and anthropologist. With the concept of 'appearance' Viktorin conceives the artwork as a specific fashion of deconstructing socio-cultural spaces, thus bringing to the surface particular facets of them. Yet, Viktorin's 'appearance' is closely related to Canclini's concept of art's 'imminence.'[12] This latter notion refers to fine art'southward ability to claiming accepted social orders without proposing solutions, to plough reflections towards images of want and dissent. In an overall perspective, I connect both these concepts to Appadurai'south conceptualization of the 'capacity of aspiration' (preferences, hopes, choices, etc.)[13] as a major attribute of culture, aspirations constituting a dialogical relationship with "sedimented traditions."[14] Hence, both the concepts of 'appearance' and 'imminence' constitute two levels of how artworks orient the work of imagination, and call for a multiplicity of discourses effectually the possibilities of contemporary fine art practices and of envisioning opportunities for social life.
Finally, as the examples of the Biennale of Dakar show, and as Papastergiadis[fifteen] points out, engaging with art forms also requires "a critical exam of the active role – not just mediating part – of writers, curators, and technical producers."[16] These thoughts will be extended to methodological concepts of 'the curatorial,' how curators assemble artists and works of arts in gild to produce within a common space images of alternative perceptions of the world.[17] Going far beyond the sheer brandish of a multitude of works of art from various regions of the world, 'the curatorial' encompasses a plurality of methods of exhibiting which as well can exist investigated within the framework of 'appearance' and 'imminence,' raising debates about the cultural chapters of aspiration – within the field of art, and/or stretching out to other socio-cultural ones.
Two Ethnographic Examples
Interactions with Artist Mathilde Moro
I am sitting in front of Mathilde Moro in her living room in Abidjan. An artist friend had established the contact between u.s. – he was convinced I had to see her later on having seen some of her artworks in a gallery of the city. Of course she had asked me virtually my research project on artists of the Abidjan art world, and I too had to explain to her why I wanted to collaborate with her.[18]
The situation is relaxed, we are having tea, and eating peanuts. Surrounded past many artworks – she had no studio at the time – Mathilde quickly engages in talking virtually herself. When she was a schoolchild, she e'er had a wistful heart. "I was writing poems at the fourth dimension with much melancholy, words which could brand me cry." Without looking at me, she starts reciting … Afterward her school years she found painting every bit a new medium, and entered the school of fine arts of Abidjan. "For long my colors were dark, I mainly used black and night blue." In the early times, in the 1980s, she tells me that viewers found the intensity of her works aggressive and depressive: "It was my dedication to art, the expression of what I felt!" Only in the mid-1990s did Mathilde start using lite colors every bit well, white for instance. But for her information technology was the same, she only understood she could limited herself in these colors too. "These colors flow out of myself, it is always the same business organization, only with a niggling distance, I tin express myself differently."
I wanted to know more about this visualization of the artist's inner images. During one of our discussions we concretely talked about two works, the cycle études de figurines (1997), and pan de mur (1996, wall panel). The old are small paintings of the famous Baule figurines, labelled akw'abain ethnographic museums. In an overall perspective, Mathilde applies pieces of bark-cloth or jute on the canvas, grounds it in yellow, and draws in dark colour the contours and iconic elements of the figurines. The cycle études de figurines is a questioning about the future, Mathilde tells me. "These are not portraits, in each of them is this shade which passes by. I try to catch the mysterious side, and it is e'er this veiled emotion. I want to instill life into them, create an ambiance." The act of creating form is like excavating the figurine, "to copy the figurine is to tell that these forms are not indifferent!"
The wall panel is large in size, the support is produced of heavy wood, thus creating a raw texture. The artwork is non-representational, variations of white largely dominate, and are combined to smaller fields of different brown colors. While driving one day in a region of Abidjan, the artist recounts, she saw ruins of small houses. "Places without dazzler … are the source of my inspiration. There is life in them, people have lived in there, take synthetic these walls, even the ruins comport traces of men'southward activities." Mathilde expands her reflection:
In these days we come across in Goggle box the inundations in Europe. Inundations are all around the globe, today in Europe, another day in Africa, or in Asia … When I come across such images, I question about the feelings of the people who are concerned, their grievances, what they may say – the miracle itself is uninteresting, the suffering of people, their histories, their losses, these are the emotions I am talking almost.
Mathilde'southward creative practise, using various materials (like bawl-fabric, jute or things from the environment), and her taking-upwards of various forms and themes – the well-known akw'abafigurine, the reference to ritual trip the light fantastic, merely also everyday traces of people's life – was quickly connected in Abidjan's fine art world to the prominent vohou-vohoumove. As Théodore Koudougnon, the movement's leading artist, explained to me, vohou's characteristics consist in reflecting all elements of the gimmicky artistic exercise in human relationship to African (specifically Ivoirian) cultural traditions, exist information technology materials, grade-giving, or themes.[nineteen]
Mathilde Moro, Pan de mur (wall wrinkle, 1996). Photograph: Thomas Fillitz.
Moro, withal, did non care near such a categorization, because it besides narrow. She does non view her practise as a re-actualization of traditions in Côte d'Ivoire's contemporaneity. Her aims are the inner emotional images that abound out of experiences of everyday life: the traces of lived histories of people and the longing for justice. In all her artworks, Mathilde strives for harmony, "in the world I am constructing with my pictures, I want harmony, a righteous life which I express with the various elements I am combining."
Lost traditions, houses in ruins, or catastrophes, they all are catalysts for the artist's visions regarding local, vernacular contemporaneity, and specifically individuals' everyday life destinies. The artist articulates with her artworks less cultural retention and tradition, cardinal to the vohou-vohoumotion, but rather aspiration for a righteous life. As Appadurai puts it: "culture is a dialogue between aspirations and sedimented traditions,"[20] and thereby highlights aspiration equally a cultural capacity. Yet, Moro does not transfer images of everyday life into her artistic expressions, a practise applied for instance in installation fine art, but largely operates by means of abstract painting. Proceeding in this fashion, emotions are paramount for her endeavor at connecting and sensitizing collectors and the art interested public to socio-cultural inequalities and losses due to cultural modify. If on the one hand Moro's work needs to exist related to local fine art discourses around the vohou-vohou, information technology connects to social reality on the other every bit mediator between the creative person'south inner images of indifference and righteous life – both at an private and cultural level – and their generation of emotions corresponds to the cultural capacity of aspiration.
Ancient Palace of Justice, venue of Exposition Internationale, twelfth Biennale de l'art africain contemporain, Dak'Art 2016. Photo: Thomas Fillitz.
The Curatorial: Dakar's Biennale of Contemporary African Art, Dak'Art
Ane idiosyncrasy of the Biennale'southward central venue, the Exposition Internationale, is the institutionalization of a selection committee. Between 1996 and 2008 selection committees were big in numbers, up to 16, and half of their members were African experts, half of them European and North American ones. From 2010 on, these committees were much smaller in number (iii to four), and only African experts would exist considered. Exceptions to this model were the 2006 edition, in which an African expert was nominated for the commencement fourth dimension equally general curator who was complimentary to plant his curatorial team, and in 2016, the Biennale shifted to a sole artistic managing director. Another idiosyncrasy concerns selections: commencement, only artists with citizenship of an African state and/or from Africa's diaspora are eligible in this venue; 2d, artists have to utilise with a portfolio, and this policy is still in place, and selection committees are required to choose from among applications. Curatorial teams, however, expressed difficulties to structure a venue according to their objectives and ideas on the unique basis of these applications. Hence, this system was expanded for the 2006 edition, insofar every bit the general curator was accorded the right to invite some internationally renowned artists. This two-tiered strategy – generally applications complemented past some invitations – became systematic from 2012 on.
These adaptations of the structure of selection committees and their processes of option were reactions on the part of the Biennale's secretariat to ongoing critiques from local artists and art-earth specialists. For the present purpose, I would like to cite the 2 following ones. Firstly, these European and Northward American experts past and large lacked the knowledge of the history of modern and contemporary African art, and therefore adopted criteria of occidental art history (for all editions between 1998 and 2004, and for 2008). The shift to rely exclusively on African experts was a consequence, which also shows a ascension confidence both in regional expertise and in the Biennale'southward performance. Second, non-Senegalese, internationally renowned African artists were at first largely absent from the events, as they would not surrender to an application procedure. In lodge to get them in, the Biennale after institutionalized its invitation policy.
Invitation was paramount for the edition of 2006 which was widely agreed to take been exceptionally successful. General curator Yacouba Konaté from Côte d'Ivoire and his team had placed the Exposition Internationale under the chief theme of 'Africa: Agreements, Allusions and Misunderstandings.' The team opted for a historical perspective, combining artworks from the times of independence upwards to the contemporary. For example, on display were works by Souleymane Keïta, an outstanding representative of the so-called École de Dakarwhich was devoted to Senghor'south credo of Négritudein the arts (brilliant colors, rhythm, traditional symbols) and by Bruce Onobrakpeya, who started his career as a member of the Zaria Art Lodge. Founded in 1958, and lasting until 1961-2, it united a group of Nigerian art students who positioned their fine art practices first against colonial power, and 2nd in the context of a ascent national culture. In these times, Onobrakpeya's guiding principle was 'unity in diversity'[21] – that is, the mixing of traditional cultural symbols of Nigerian ethnic groups in the artwork. From the early 1960s I would further mention Valente Malangatana Ngwenya, a cocky-taught artist from Mozambique whose artistic practice was influenced past the violence of colonial power.
The exhibit, however, as well included artists and works which were and are subject area to debate within the complex of modern and gimmicky African art, like the ones of Marcel Goten or Chéri Chérin. Goten'southward practice grew out of the Poto-Potoworkshop school (Brazzaville) which had been founded by Pierre Lods.[22] Workshop schools, a miracle betwixt the late 1940s to the early 1960s, were critically viewed insofar equally they were founded by colonial Europeans with idealized (European) visions of Africa – the beauty of nature, the richness of myths, and the mysterious powers of magic and witchcraft. They picked upward local youth, largely unaffected from European teaching, and furthered their practices by rejecting European art influence (techniques, concepts, and art history), while aiming to construct a straight connection to pre-colonial cultural traditions. Vivid colors, the filling of the canvas, and the absence of perspective were common characteristics of all these paintings.
Chéri Chérin works in what is known as popular painting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its beginnings also are the early 1960s, during the development of a postcolonial urban lifestyle, and at the fourth dimension these works were well-nigh exclusively produced and sold in street stalls for local buyers. Centers were starting time Lubumbashi, and later Kinshasa. According to Fabian, pop art in Congo was an fine art of memory that activates reflection and fence.[23] Themes of popular art in the Democratic Commonwealth of Congo moved between traditional village life, urban society, Zaïre'south history, or the icons Colonie Belgeand Mami Wata. The latter, a most prominent theme, depicts a siren and mixes aspects of magic behavior with socio-economical success, and Christianity – cultural elements which are key for living vernacular modernity. Again, while acknowledging pop art'southward quality as art, its inclusion within discourses of modern African art are highly debated amid artists and art specialists in other African art worlds, who question whether this is not another European perception of Africa.
However, the exhibit largely focused on contemporary works of African artists and artists of Africa'due south diaspora without any preferential art medium – in contrast to previous venues which favored installation arts. It included, among others, works of El Loko, who had been trained by Joseph Beuys, prominent Senegalese sculpture Ndary Lo, internationally renowned El Anatsui, material artist Abdoulaye Konaté, video and installation artist Mounir Fatmi, and artists of the younger generation whose works were so non as validated.
The Biennale'southward showroom may be understood as a reflection on the history of mod and contemporary African art, and on how artworks by artists from diverse art worlds may be related to each other. This is indeed a cardinal business organization for Konaté, equally he observed during discussion platforms at afterwards editions: there still is no satisfactory written history of modern and contemporary African art. For the 2006 showroom, the general curator emphasized that his team sought to configure "a formal dialogue betwixt the artworks."[24] In other words, their objective was to visualize "the complication of the notion of African-ness"[25] against related (idealized, distorted) imaginaries, largely produced past European and North American curators and art experts.
In 2016, renowned international curator Simon Njami was creative director of the Biennale's twelfth edition. He titled the chief venue "Re-enchantments. The City in the Blueish Daylight," thereby referring to ideas expressed by Senegal's President-poet Léopold Sédar Senghor in the poem Army camp 1940 . Au Guélowâr (1984), envisions liberty from the chains of oppression, and the building of a new and ameliorate socio-cultural social club: "Your vox tells us the Commonwealth, that nosotros shall build the Customs in the blue day in the equality of the fraternal peoples. And we, we reply: 'Nowadays, ô Guélowâr!'"[26]
Njami clearly stresses contemporary art's mission as "a place of experimentation and discovery, thus necessarily free of the certitudes that dominate reason and reasoning."[27] Experimentation, liberty of cosmos, re-enchanting the globe, and want are key notions the artistic manager shared with the artists in creating the exhibition – to put the human being dorsum every bit a central agenda of contemporary globe-making.
Youssef Limoud, Maqam 2016 (particular). Photo: Thomas Fillitz. Courtesy: La Biennale de l'art africain contemporain, Dak'Art.
Njami'southward making of the exhibit connects various thematic trajectories. Amidst those I discussed with the artists and art earth professionals I befriended, I would like to mention the following ones. It stretches out between the installations of Youssef Limoud's Maqam(2016) and Billy Bidjoka's Ceci n'est pas mon corps, vous ne pouvez pas le consommer(2016).[28] Limoud'southward work is a construction of assembled materials from a neighbourhood in Dakar, thus referring to the power of imagination and of social interaction as place-making. Bidjoka's installation is a rebellion against the nowadays-day cribbing of one's work, thus the anything of the individual. Some other strain is more personal and relates to the effigy of the woman. Dalila Dalleas Bouzar's series Princesses(2015), an assemblage of portrait photographs from colonial times of unveiled Algerian women with golden ornaments, pays homage to the women of her country and thereby reasserts their dignity, while Fatima Mazmouz's Super Oum(2009), are photographs of fictional female figures that first contest worldwide male domination, and, 2d, refuse the prototype of Mother-Africa as a powerful social divide of groups and individuals, and rather claims for envisioning a Female parent-Patria of inclusiveness for all forms of socio-cultural diversity. Finally, Nabil Boutros' A Dream(2016), a cloud hanging in space which is traversing a circumvolve of barbed wire, is intended as the procedure of becoming (not belonging) which requires the freeing from causeless, indisputable socio-cultural structures and constraints, while Ndoye Douts' Encyclopedia(2011-15), consisting of innumerable modest square paintings, each with a theme of socio-political ugliness/scandal on a heaven-blue primer coat, encourages to feel and imagine social life across ongoing everyday horrors.
Ndoye Douts, Encyclopedia, 2011-15 (item). Photo: Thomas Fillitz. Courtesy: La Biennale de l'art africain contemporain, Dak'Art.
Simon Njami'southward conceptualization of the Exposition Internationaleclearly was driven past a thematic consideration. The creative director sought artworks and artists who would sensitize and encourage beholders to imagine social relations beyond what is soon given, dissented, or assumed equally united nations-contestable. The contemporary thereby is not positioned as a universal of human life, based clearly on experiences of quotidian life in various African places. Limoud, who was awarded the grand prize of the jury, worked with local materials for his installation. Dalila Dallea Bouzar honors women in re-appropriating their photographs from the times of the Algerian war, for which they had been forced to unveil. Yet they stretch out to more than global visions – a perspective which is near conspicuously expressed in Bidjocka'south installation. Furthermore, none of the works in the exhibit proposed whatsoever utopia, or solution. As El Anatsui stated in a conversation with Olu Oguibe: "He [the artist] could be more than sensitive, could be a visionary, but he is, different a messiah, essentially a member of his community who suffers the same fate every bit whatever other."[29] In this context, the paintings of Mbaye Babacar Diouf, exhibited at Dak'Fine art2016, are a revealing instance. In Activeness(2015) references the importance of social relations confronting capitalism's neoliberal individualization, while Khaatim Africa(1 and two, 2015)[thirty] picks out the talisman as cultural object of aspiration and hope.
Different Practices and the Production of a Common Field of Interaction
In my get-go example, I selected on purpose the interaction with Mathilde Moro, because her artistic practice has no straight visible connectedness to everyday life, and she rather emphasizes the materialization of inner emotional images. Such a making visible is besides the major aspect for Mattias Viktorin[31] regarding the intersection between artists' and anthropologists' works. In his reflections almost other anthropological genres of writing, he argues against reproduction, and instead highlights the respective notions of 'emergence' and 'appearance.'[32] In researching contemporaneity, both fine art and anthropology are focusing "on the trouble of innovative form-giving."[33] Relying on examples from literature and visual arts, Viktorin suggests that "'advent' does not necessarily imply a construction that veils or conceals reality, but rather an actualizationthat brings distinct facets of the real into view."[34] Interestingly, Viktorin uses the examples of the Impressionists and German Expressionists, two stylistic art forms located well within art'due south autonomy. The former left the studio to paint in the surround and to create pictures of reality in different shapes and colors, whereas the latter's objective was to radically picture individual emotional states. Expressionism "abandoned the thought of mimesis and focused instead on what appeared in the procedure of creating art" – the result being "new means of seeing."[35] Viktorin concludes from these comparisons that "what arguably makes anthropological concepts analytically productive, then, is precisely the way in which they make things appear."[36]
Viktorin's accent on emergence/appearance, against reproduction and/or translation, is a primary attribute for my enquiry and writing in the field of art. For my purpose, advent, too, does not have much to do with interpreting artworks. The notion fundamentally relates to the discursive cosmos of a common field of reflection with an artist. In my interaction with Moro, this was her readiness to engage with me regarding her emotions and the production of pictures. This related to several contexts: the fine art media in all their aspects; art forms she reflects upon; and the search for unravelling private histories that are inscribed in our environs– be they more historically oriented with the serial Études de figurines, or more nowadays-day focused with Pan de mur– houses in ruins or other traces of human intervention in the urban landscape of Abidjan; and internal images created past the global media flow of images.
Dealing with both imaginaries and places in his writing nearly art, Nikos Papastergiadis developed what he calls a topographical method.[37] "The aim of topography is not to recount stories of previous adventures; information technology is more concerned with the tracks and traces that are still visible and portable."[38] He too argues for a "new cantankerous-disciplinary mode of analysis"[39] for gimmicky fine art, i that does no more restrict itself to representation or translation:
My methodology is not based on an art historical survey of new tendencies in gimmicky art, nor am I upholding a definitive sociological perspective that reveals geopolitical characteristics of art. Information technology requires that the writer does not simply describe and analyze the composition of the artwork … It does not narrate the genesis of the piece of work according to the stock-still coordinates that are either stated in the artist'due south intentions or defined by prior sociological debates on the context of art … my goal is instead to articulate the fashion artistic do is creating new levels of engagement with the bachelor spaces of contemporary art and is expressing ideas that are part of everyday life.[twoscore]
Of course Papastergiadis' 'topography' is by and big concerned with participatory art. Although I would not call my researching and writing of gimmicky fine art in Abidjan or Dakar topographic, my interactions with artists e'er draw on multiple topics, but are in no way focusing on producing a local or regional survey. As briefly shown in my discussions with Mathilde Moro, her inclusion or not within the vohou-vohoumove was random. More prominent was the detachment from occidental fine art history'southward modernism, and the valuing of the artistic creation from inside the detail Abidjan fine art world. Notwithstanding, the period of images of the contemporary occupied another primal space of reflection. It was, nonetheless, revealing how the artist made such images an issue of her own. Not as global phenomena, but she situates them from the vantage of the anonymously conceived local social actor, how s/he might have influenced her/his everyday life. In this framework, Mathilde'due south thoughts and emotions are articulated in connection to (historical, colonial) loss, to catastrophes, to present-day traces of human activities in the urban landscape, to social inequalities.
Collaborative enquiry betwixt art and anthropology – equally common fields and unlike practices – are farther related to the curatorial practices such every bit the ones of Dak'Art. Very generically, curating is "a gamut of professional activities that had to do with setting upwardly exhibitions and other modes of brandish."[41] The biennial format, notwithstanding, is specific insofar as it does not have to rely on a historically grown (museum) collection, and as it generally brings within a common space works of art from different art worlds– that is, from diverse regional art histories and discourses. The positioning of Dak'Fine artevery bit the Biennale of gimmicky African art and its selection regulations indeed imply articulate overall constraints to the curatorial piece of work. Insofar every bit exclusively African artists and artists of its diaspora may be on display in the Exposition Internationale, information technology could end up in a sheer display of multitude, that is choosing artists from as many African fine art worlds every bit possible. General themes, introduced in 2006, should re-focus decision-making, but selection procedures are setting some boundaries to the curators' visions. Some members of curatorial teams actually argued that information technology was but a framework at large for them, and could not be applied strictly since they were confined to the torso of applications.
The two examples I presented above were most successful in respect to the intentions of the curators. Yacouba Konaté's objective was to re-think and re-adjust the history of modern and gimmicky fine art of Africa from the vantage point of African expertise, whereas Simon Njami opted to highlight the artistic and visionary powers of African and African diaspora creative practices equally a means to re-enchant contemporary earth-making.
Both curatorial approaches are connected to Viktorin'due south concept of 'advent.' In the case of general curator Yacouba Konaté, it reflects the possibility of narrating the history of modern and contemporary African fine art freed from the criteria of occidental fine art history and other strange visions of Africa. Furthermore, I view Simon Njami's practice in the context of two other concepts: outset Canclini's conceptualization of art as the place of imminence,[42] and second the recent differentiation between 'curating' and 'the curatorial.'[43] For Canclini, art "gains its attraction in part from the fact that it proclaims something that could happen, promising pregnant or modifying meaning through insinuation."[44] Canclini actually defines fine art as 'postautonomous' insofar as participatory/relational fine art is divers as the dominant art practise, and as art has shifted into various socio-cultural fields beyond classic art institutions such equally museums or galleries. Above all, with art'southward 'imminence' Canclini emphasizes the reflexive space of artworks as "pathways and enigmas for cognition,"[45] instead of being solely viewed as materializations of artists' inner images.
Njami's curatorial work emphasizes 'imminence' from the commencement with Senghor's poem and the related cardinal notion of creative 're-enchantment.' The objective is not the expression of utopias. The exhibit develops strains of contemporary bug, documentations of social life in dissimilar African places, and 're-enchants' in as far as it operates equally catalyst for imagining culling possibilities of social life. With this curatorial approach, Appadurai'south concept of the capacity of aspiration as cultural fact reappears. It incites beholders to clear desires, preferences, choices, to reflect cultural norms – to experience the exhibition as "a place of experimentation and discovery, thus necessarily free of the certitudes that dominate reason and reasoning."[46]
In this dimension, the 2016 edition connects to the present methodology of the 'curatorial,' that takes the artwork as a starting signal in order to question various contexts – art practices, ideas regarding social, cultural, or political issues. It is an invitation for new ways of seeing, for the imagination of the realm of the possible. According to Martinon 'the curatorial,' however, encompasses a huge variety of meanings:
The curatorial is a jailbreak from pre-existing frames, a gift enabling i to come across the globe differently, a strategy for inventing new points of departure, … a fashion of caring for humanity, … a political tool outside of politics, … an invitation for reflexivity, … a way of fighting confronting corporate civilisation, etc.[47]
Among the many methods presented in Martinon, I would like to mention every bit objectives the questioning of hegemonic power structures and the focus on other, more marginalized art forms (Milevska), the conceptualization of social encounters (Graziano), or 'curating context' (Szyłak).[48] In detail 'curating context' intends to use artworks for engaging with particular contexts and their meanings, with various noesis discourses that are brought into relationship.[49] Whichever frame the curatorial is conceived within, art's imminence re-appears in each of them in the grade of exhibition making. All these approaches have up present-day cantankerous-disciplinary strategies of creative practices, deal with topics of the multitude of gimmicky art in the world, or engage with challenges raised in present-solar day postcolonial constellations.
Hence, these conceptualizations of the curatorial extend intersections between art and anthropology. From the vantage indicate of the latter, art's qualities of appearance and imminence become clearer when understood in relation to the capacity for aspiration. It is non a matter of learning from artists or curators, these concepts constitute the field to engage with in anthropological research on art and writing. Both the singular piece of work of art as well as exhibition-making may be viewed as archives of experiences of socio-cultural life, and the investigation of how appearance or imminence are derived from them unravel trajectories of reflection, of how the orientation of imagination is created. The contextual trajectories are multiple: be it art media; the production of transcultural art connections; specific art world discourses; or issues of localized contemporary quotidian life.
Conclusion
I started my statement with the articulate stardom between artistic practices, curatorial methods, and anthropological investigation/writing in the field of art. This assertion is paramount when considering from an anthropological vantage signal the global multitude of contemporary creative practices, of curating, and the heterogeneity of fine art institutions. Instead of giving preference to a detail art medium – for instance, installation art or participatory art because they are territorialized inside specific social fields – these diversities of art, this 'epistemological disorientation,'[fifty] or Canclini's 'postautonomous' condition of fine art are at stake. However i designates these nowadays-mean solar day developments of art, they all refer to various, dissenting ways of experiencing social life, and call for entangled discourses about these art-related phenomena.
Hence, the central task for investigation is the production of a common field of reflection with artistic and curatorial practices, including the debates they generate inside the art world. The singular work of fine art and the exhibit per seconstitute athenaeum – of the experiences of quotidian life of the artist, of the concerns of contemporary issues of the curator/curatorial team. Both, however, are the grounds upon which aspirations go enacted, what Simon Njami nicely expressed with art'due south re-enchanting powers for Dak'Art2016, and Mathilde Moro with her striving for harmony and righteous social lives.
Within this dialogical framework of picture and vision (cultural memory and aspiration) I position the ii other concepts, Viktorin'southward emphasis of emergence/appearance and Canclini'due south imminence of art. While the onetime'south objective, 'innovative class-giving'[52] may well be conceived within art's autonomous discourses, as exemplified with Konaté's exhibition-making of Dak'Fine art2006, the latter views the art phenomenon as stretching out into other socio-cultural fields with the telescopic to imagine and/or to actuate dissent. It is worth noting that both these concepts divert the anthropological research/writing on art away from the work's reproduction and/or translation, to engage with different knowledges and their tensions.
The role of curators and their exhibition making indeed is ambiguous, insofar as internationally praised ones – for gimmicky African fine art (amongst others), Simon Njami, Okwui Enwezor, or André Magnin – are likewise favoring specific art media and views of this art, and thus contribute in one fashion or another to power discourses in the field of art. In this contribution, yet, I have focused on curators' works in the context of art's capacity to aspiration. Methods of 'the curatorial,' although far from having a singular meaning, circumscribe exhibition making and suggest transgressing the field of art. Practices of curating are of involvement for anthropological reflections on art, insofar as these new methods would "insist on a new set of relations between those knowledges"[53] which are visualized with the selection of artists and their artworks.
My consideration of the intersection between art and anthropology is grounded on these concepts. The production of a common field of discursive interaction acknowledges different practices, and reaches beyond the artwork as materialization of the artist'south inner images, or the exhibition as representation of the curator's contemporary concerns. Viktorin's 'appearance' and Canclini's 'imminence' open up many possibilities for reflecting on a specific art world and its transcultural connections regarding contemporary art and/or gimmicky visions for world-making.
Thomas Fillitzis a professor at the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna. His research, educational activity and publications in visual anthropology focus on Biennial arts festivals, Global and local art and art markets, and Postcolonial theories.
Notes:
[ane] In this article I consider art world equally the creative achievements that are locally negotiated every bit contemporary fine art betwixt artists, art theorists/historians/critics, and curators.
[2] Irit Rogoff, "The Expanding Field," in Jean-Paul Martinon (ed.), The Curatorial. A Philosophy of Curating(London et al.: Bloomsbury, [2013] 2015), p. 41.
[3] Okwui Enwezor, "The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art in a Country of Permanent Transition," in Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor, and Nancy Condee (eds), Antinomies in Art and Culture. Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 207–34; Hans Belting, "The Plurality of Art Worlds and the New Museum," in Hans Belting, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel (eds), The Global Contemporary and the Ascent of New Art Worlds(Cambridge, MA and Karlsruhe: The MIT Press and ZKM/Center for Fine art and Media, 2013), pp. 246–54.
[4] Jacques Rancière, Malaise dans fifty'esthétique(Paris: Éditions Galilée, 2004).
[5] Ruth B. Phillips, "The Value of Disciplinary Difference: Reflections on Art History and Anthropology at the Start of the Twenty-Commencement Century," in Mariet Westermann (ed.), Anthropologies of Art, Sterling and Francine Clark Institute (Williamstown, MA., New Haven and London: Yale University Printing, 2005), pp. 242–59.
[6] Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright (eds), Between Art and Anthropology. Contemporary Ethnographic Exercise(Oxford and New York: Berg, 2010); Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright (eds), Anthropology and Art Exercise(London et al.: Bloomsbury, 2013).
[seven] Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells. Participatory Fine art and the Politics of Spectatorship(London and New York: Verso, 2012), p. 7.
[viii] ibid., p. 2.
[nine] Cf. Grant Kester,The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context(Durham and London: Duke Academy Printing, 2011), p. 9.
[ten] The netherlands Cotter, "Venice Biennale Lacks Relevance," The New York Times International Weekly, (Der Standard, half-dozen June, 2017), p. iv.
|11] Mattias Viktorin, "On Timely Appearances. Literature, Fine art, Anthropology," in Helena Wulff (ed.), The Anthropologist every bit Writer. Genres and Contexts in the Twenty-First Century(New York and London: Berghahn, 2016), pp. 230–42.
[12] Néstor García Canclini, Art Across Itself: Anthropology for Society without a Storyline(Durham and London: Knuckles Academy Press, 2014).
[13] Arjun Appadurai, "The Chapters to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recognition," in Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton (eds), Culture and Public Activeness(Stanford:Stanford University Printing, 2004), pp. 59–84. Available online: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/243991468762305188/pdf/ (accessed November 23, 2017).
[14] ibid., p. 84.
[15] Nikos Papastergiadis, "Spatial Aesthetics: Rethinking Contemporary Art," in Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor, and Nancy Condee (eds), Antinomies in Art and Civilization. Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 363–81.
[16] ibid., p. 376.
[17] Jean-Paul Martinon, "Introduction," in Jean-Paul Martinon (ed.), The Curatorial, pp. 1–thirteen.
[eighteen] See Thomas Fillitz, Zeitgenösssische Kunst aus Afrika. Vierzehn Künstler aus Côte d'Ivoire und Bénin(Vienna: Böhlau, 2002), pp. 108–xix. Although the inquiry was in 1997 on contemporary art of Africa, it was non an overall local survey. I instead focused on item artists who were locally best-selling every bit contemporary ones.
[nineteen] ibid., pp. 46–8. Vohou-vohouwas the nearly acknowledged avant-garde art movement in Côte d'Ivoire in the 1990s, then also labelled as École d'Abidjan[Thomas Fillitz, Zeitgenösssische Kunst aus Afrika; Yacouba Konaté, "Fine art and Social Dynamics in Côte d'Ivoire: The Position of Vohou-Vohou," in Gitti Salami and Monica Blackmun Visonà (eds), A Companion to Mod African Art (Malden, MA. and Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), pp. 371–88].
[20] Arjun Appadurai, "The Capacity to Aspire: Civilization and the Terms of Recognition," p. 84.
[21] Kojo Fosu, 20thCentury Art of Africa(Accra: Artists Brotherhood, [1986] 1993), pp. 64–70; Chika Okeke, "The Quest for a Nigerian Fine art: Or a Story of Art from Zaria to Nuskka," in Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor (eds.), Reading the Contemporary. African Art from Theory to the Marketplace(London: inIVA, 1999), p. 150.
[22] Pierre Lods founded the Poto-Potoschoolhouse in 1951. Senghor appointed him in 1961 every bit teacher at the school of fine arts of Dakar.
[23] Johannes Fabian, Moments of Freedom. Anthropology and Popular Culture(Charlottesville and London: The University of Virginia Press, 1998), p. 51.
[24] Yacouba Konaté, "7 Past 12," in Secrétariat général (ed.), Dak'Fine art 2006, catalogue (Bresson, France: Les Deux-Ponts, 2006), p. 32.
[25] ibid.
[26]"Ta voix nous dit la République, que nous
Dresserons la Cité dans le jour bleu
Dans l'égalité des peuples fraternels. Et nous
nous répondons : « Présents, ô Guélowâr ! »."
(a part of the verse form'due south citation at the entrance to the exhibition, trans. by the author). The poem was starting time published in the drove Hosties Noires(1948). Historically, Guélowârwas a noble dynasty at the top of the social bureaucracy of the Serer society.
[27] Simon Njami, "La puissance voyante / The Seeing Power," in Simon Njami (ed.), Réenchantements. La Cité dans le jour bleu / Reenchantments. The City in the Blue Daylight, Dak'Art 12, catalogue (Bielefeld and New York: Kerber Verlag, 2016), p. 38.
[28] Maqam: settlement, the shrine of a holy place, or the different Eye Eastern musical elements that are combined; Bidjocka'south title: 'this is not my trunk, yous cannot consume it.'
[29] El Anatsui, "Sankofa: Go Back an' Selection': Iii Studio Notes and a Conversation,"Third Text, 23 (vii), 1993, p. 44.
[30] Khaatim(Wolof): talisman.
[31] Mattias Viktorin, "On Timely Appearances. Literature, Fine art, Anthropology."
[32] ibid., p. 231.
[33] ibid.
[34] ibid., pp. 231–2, italics by the author.
[35] ibid., p. 237.
[36] ibid., p. 239.
[37]Nikos Papastergiadis, "Spatial Aesthetics: Rethinking Contemporary Art."
[38] ibid., p. 373.
[39] ibid., p. 375.
[40] ibid.
[41] Jean-Paul Martinon and Irit Rogoff, "Preface," in Jean-Paul Martinon (ed.), The Curatorial, p. 9.
[42] Néstor García Canclini, Art Across Itself.
[43] Jean-Paul Martinon (ed.), The Curatorial.
[44] Néstor García Canclini, Art Beyond Itself, p. xiii.
[45] ibid., p. 28.
[46] Simon Njami, "La puissance voyante / The Seeing Power," p. 38.
[47] Jean-Paul Martinon, "Introduction," p. 4.
[48] Suzana Milevska, "Becoming-Curator," in Jean-Paul Martinon (ed.), The Curatorial, pp. 65–71; Valeria Graziano, "The Politics of Residual Fun," in Jean-Paul Martinon (ed.), The Curatorial, pp. 151–60; Aneta Szyłak, "Curating Context," in Jean-Paul Martinon (ed.), The Curatorial, pp. 215–23.
[49] Irit Rogoff, "The Expanding Field," p. 44.
[50] ibid.
[51] See Nikos Papastergiadis, "Spatial Aesthetics: Rethinking Contemporary Fine art."
[52] Mattias Viktorin, "On Timely Appearances. Literature, Art, Anthropology," p. 231.
[53] Irit Rogoff, "The Expanding Field," p. 45.
Source: http://field-journal.com/issue-11/art-and-anthropology-different-practices-and-common-fields-of-intersection
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