The Arts

1. The Arts

2. What is art? • Art is an integral part of religious, social and political life • It expresses and evokes both feelings and ideas in a variety of different ways—drawing, painting, carving, weaving, body decoration, music, dance, and story. • Art excites the senses and produces feelings of pleasure, awe, repulsion, and sometimes fear. It communicates to the observer.

3. Body Decoration and Adornment • Decorations can be both temporary (paint, feathers, jewelry) and permanent (scars, tattoos, changes in the shape of a body part) • Forms of decoration depend on cultural traditions. • Pierced noses of women in India • Elongated necks of the Mangebetu in Central Africa • Tattooing of men and women in North America • Body painting of the Caduveo of South America

4. Body Decoration and Adornment…cont’d • Decorations can sometimes be used to delineate social position, rank, sex, occupation, identity, religion within a society, and social declaration. • Symbolic halo on king’s head, scarlet hunting jacket of the English gentlemen, eagle feathers of Native Americans, gold-embroidered jacket of the Indian rajah—represents high status.

5. Top: Karo families in Africa Bottom left: Karo man ready for ceremony Bottom right: african man’s headpiece

6. Also called Labrets • Found in tribes in Africa and South America (ex: Sara People & Mursi People) • Used to show either economical or social importance to the tribes and their members • Some are used as desired Lip Plate Before Lip Plate After

7. Visual Arts • Materials can be limited in a cultural society. Some used include stone, wood, bones, clay, sand, shells, horns, tusks, gold, and copper. • Artistic differences… Egalitarian society- repetition of simple elements, more empty space, symmetrical design, unenclosed figures. Stratified societies- integration of unlike elements, little empty space, asymmetrical design, enclosed figures. Kalamkari cloth from India (Stratified society) Lakota skin bag from N. America (Egalitarian Society)

8. Music • Music and instruments vary widely in style from society to society • Studies made by music theorists • Alan Lomax and co-researchers—theory that music styles vary with cultural complexity and discovery of a relationship between polyphony • Barbara Ayres—suggested that the importance of regular rhythm in the music of a culture is related to the rhythm’s acquired reward value (feelings of security or relaxation).

9. Dance • Similar to art and song, dance styles also seem to reflect social complexity. • Ex: less complex societies—everyone participates in dances in the same way, as in the Huli of New Guinea. More complex societies—leading and minor roles in dances, as in a Japanese Geisha show.

10. Folklore • Broad category compromising all the myths, legends, folktales, ballads, riddles, proverbs, and superstitions of a cultural group. • Transmitted orally and also written. It is constantly created by an social group that has shared experiences. • Folklore contains various themes…some anthropologists have identified basic themes, including Clyde Kluckhohn—five themes suggested: catastrophe, monster slaying, incest, sibling rivalry, and castration. • Reflects the feelings, needs, and conflicts that people acquire as a result of growing up in the culture.

11. Art today... • Art is constantly changing and effecting today’s world. • With the decline of many indigenous groups, many areas have lost some of their artistic traditions. • The selling of arts and crafts has become large in today’s society