ANTH 1002 Chapter Notes - Chapter 15: Blombos Cave, Playground Games, Tribal Art
Chapter 15: Art and Media
I. What is art?
A. Art:all ideas, forms, techniques, and strategies that humans employ to express themselves
creatively and to communicate their creativity and inspiration to others
B. The anthropology of art
B.1. Fine art: creative expression and communication often associated with cultural
elites
B.2. Popular art: creative expression and communication often associated with the
general population
B.3. Considering aesthetics across cultures
B.4. Universal gaze: an intrinsic way of perceiving art - thought by many in the
Western art world to be found across cultures - that informs what people consider to be
art or not art
C. Beyond “primitive art”
D. Art in human history
D.1. Blombos cave, South Africa
D.2. Paleolithic cave paintings in Europe
II. What is unique about how anthropologists study art?
A. The ethnography of art
A.1. The trade in West African Art
A.1.a) Authenticity: the perception of an object’s antiquity, uniqueness, and
originally within a local culture
A.2. Transforming West African “wood” and “mud” into global art
III. What is the relationship between art and power?
A. Art exhibitions and displays of power: playing the humanity game
B. Black girls’ playground games and the construction of gender identity
B.1. Ethnomusicology: the study of music in cultural context
B.2. Kinetic orality: a musical genre combining body movement and voice
IV. How do art and media intersect?
A. Global mediascape: global cultural flows of media and visual images that enable linkages and
communication across boundaries in ways unimaginable a century ago
B. Media worlds: an ethnographic and theoretical approach to media studies that focuses on the
tensions that may exist when visual worlds collide in the context of contemporary globalization
C. Social media: new forms of communication based on computer- and internet-based technologies
that facilitate social engagement, work, and pleasure
D. Visual images and cultural identity
D.1. Visual anthropology: a field of anthropology that explores the production,
circulation, and consumption of visual images, focusing on the power of visual
representation to influence culture and cultural identity
D.2. National geographic’s photographic gaze
D.3. Photographic gaze: the presumed neutral viewpoint of the camera that in fact
projects the perspective of the person behind the camera onto human nature, the natural
world, and history
E. Ethnographic film and indigenous media
E.1. Indigenous media: the use of media by people who have experienced massive
economic, political, and geographic disruption to build alternative strategies for
communication, survival, and empowerment
F. Chinese villagers stay connected through festival videos
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Document Summary
Chapter 15: art and media: what is art, art:all ideas, forms, techniques, and strategies that humans employ to express themselves creatively and to communicate their creativity and inspiration to others, the anthropology of art. Fine art: creative expression and communication often associated with cultural. Popular art: creative expression and communication often associated with the general population. Universal gaze: an intrinsic way of perceiving art - thought by many in the. Western art world to be found across cultures - that informs what people consider to be art or not art: beyond primitive art , art in human history. What is unique about how anthropologists study art: the ethnography of art. Authenticity: the perception of an object"s antiquity, uniqueness, and. Transforming west african wood and mud into global art. What is the relationship between art and power: art exhibitions and displays of power: playing the humanity game, black girls" playground games and the construction of gender identity.
