Rock art aesthetics and cultural appropriation

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 61, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 37-46

  Heyd, Thomas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 49149096576     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1540-6245.00090     Document Type: Review

References (54)

1. One result of such appreciation is that these marks generally are known under the rubric "rock art," even when there is some debate regarding the question whether they properly should be called "art." Here, I will follow convention by making reference to these marks as "rock art," but see Thomas Heyd, "Rock Art Aesthetics: Trace on Rock, Mark of Spirit, Window on Land," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57 (1999): 451-458, for an argument that supports it
2. See Tim Ingold, The Appropriation of Nature: Essays on Human Ecology and Social Relations (University of Iowa Press, 1987). The exclusive attribution of the capacity for appropriation to human beings is not quite correct, though, since we know of diverse other species (certain birds and apes) that also appropriate nature, even with the use of tools
3. See John Locke, Two Treatises on Government (1689)
4. On cultural appropriation, see Bruce Ziff and Pratima V. Rao, eds., Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation (Rutgers University Press, 1997)
5. Richard Fung, "Working Through Cultural Appropriation," Fuse 16 (1993): 16-24
6. James O. Young, "Should White Men Play the Blues?" Journal of Value Inquiry 28 (1994): 415-424
7. Joel Rudinow, "Race, Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White People Play the Blues?" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52 (1994): 127-137
8. We may add here the physical appropriation of culturally significant items, such as the Parthenon frieze (the so-called Elgin Marbles) or, more recently, the acquisition of masks and pottery from looted sites by collectors and museums. These concerns have been discussed in the context of the repatriation of cultural property. See, for example, J. H. Merryman, "The Retention of Cultural Property," U.C. Davis Law Review 21 (1988): 477-513
9. and John Moustakas, "Group Rights in Cultural Property: Justifying Strict Inalienability," Cornell Law Review 74 (1989): 1179-1227
10. For a careful, introductory discussion of various forms of authenticity and inauthenticity, see Elizabeth Burns Coleman, "Aboriginal Painting: Identity and Authenticity," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59 (2001): 385-402
11. For a critique of authenticity as a form of ideology, see Larry Shiner, "'Primitive Fakes,' 'Tourist Art,' and the Ideology of Authenticity," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52 (1994): 228-230
12. For a critique of the way in which the concept of authenticity has been applied to constitute the art of small-scale non-European societies as "traditional" or "primitive," see James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Harvard University Press, 1988), esp. pp. 196-200
13. "Cultural appropriation" is sometimes equated with "voice appropriation," tout court, but it seems more apropos to specifically reserve the latter expression for those cases in which legitimate forms of self-assertion or -expression are thwarted
14. This is Coleman's argument with regard to the unauthorized use of Aboriginal art designs by non-Aboriginal people. (See p. 396 for the quoted words.)
15. For objections such as those listed, especially see Young, "Should White Men Play the Blues?"; Rudinow, "Race, Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White People Play the Blues?" and James O. Young, "Against Aesthetic Apartheid," Rendezvous: Idaho State University Journal of Arts and Letters 30 (1995): 67-77
16. It is relevant to note here that, with regard to the morality of cultural appropriation, it is not simply a matter of toting up local harms and lining them up with global benefits in a consequentialist manner, since, at least in some cases, there also are issues of cultural property rights and cross-cultural etiquette involved
17. This is a point argued implicitly by Kendall Walton, "Categories of Art," Philosophical Review 79 (1979): 334-367
18. and explicitly, in different contexts, by Paul Ziff, "Reasons in Art Criticism," Philosophical Turnings, Essays in Conceptual Appreciation (Cornell University Press, 1966)
19. and Allen Carlson, "Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature," and passim, in his Aesthetics and Environment (New York: Routledge, 2000)
20. Stephen Davies, "Non-Western Art and Art's Definition," in Theories of Art Today, ed. Noël Carroll (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), pp. 199-216
21. Howard Morphy, "From Dull to Brilliant: The Aesthetics of Spiritual Power among the Yolngu," in Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, ed. Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 182-208
22. There are also marks on rocks, some of which are appreciated for their aesthetic values and some of which are considered graffiti, made by European peoples in the historical period. Even though, to my knowledge, such marks are seldom made the subject of serious study, they fall into the category "rock art," and their study might generate valuable understanding of the phenomenon in question. See Sven Ouzman, "'Koeka kakie, hents op bokkor of ik schiet!' Introducing the Rock Art of the South African Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902," The Digging Stick 16 (1999): 1-5. Throughout the paper, I use terms such as "the cultures of people of European descent" to make reference to the mainstream cultures commonly called "Western," which ultimately have their roots in Europe but are now expressed on diverse continents. I choose not to use the term "Western," since it is geographically ambiguous. (Notably, Europe is West of Jerusalem and Mecca, but so is all of Africa, whereas Australia more properly is east of both Europe and Jerusalem and Mecca.)
23. But see Heyd, "Rock Art Aesthetics," for discussion
24. This is not to say that art is the prerogative of contemporary people of European cultural descent; for discussion see, for example, Howard Morphy, "Aesthetics in a Cross-Cultural Perspective: Some Reflections on Native American Basketry," Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 23 (1992): 1-15
25. Also see John Halverson, "Art for Art's Sake in the Paleolithic," Current Anthropology 28 (1987): 63-89, for an account of the origins of art that precisely appeals to Paleolithic rock art as its first instance. See also the references to the discussion in the philosophical context, below
26. Pippa Skotnes, "The Visual as a Site of Meaning: San Parietal Painting and the Experience of Modern Art," in Contested Images: Diversity in Southern African Rock Art Research, ed. Thomas A. Dowson and David Lewis-Williams (Witwatersrand University Press, 1994)
27. See Joanna Overing, "Aesthetics as a Cross-Cultural Category: Against the Motion" in Key Debates in Anthropology, ed. Tim Ingold (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 260-266
28. see also Alfred Gell, "The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology," Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, pp. 40-63
29. Shiner, "'Primitive Fakes.'"
30. Notably, some sites were meant to be seen only by initiated individuals, or by members of one particular gender, for example
31. See, for example, Thomas Dowson, "Off the Rocks, Onto T-Shirts, Canvasses, etc.," and Peter Welsh, "Commodification of Rock Art: An Inalienable Paradox," both in Rock Art Ethics: A Dialogue, ed. William D. Hyder (Tucson: American Rock Art Research Association, 2000)
32. See, for example, Adrienne Tanner, "B.C. Natives Put Stop to Commercial Use of Ancient Artwork: Trademark Petroglyphs," The National Post (Canada) February 14, 2000
33. See, for example, Jeremy Coote, "Aesthetics as a Cross-Cultural Category: For the Motion," in Key Debates in Anthropology, pp. 266-271
34. Morphy, "Aesthetics"; Howard Morphy, "Anthropology of Art," in Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology, ed. Tim Ingold (New York: Routledge, 1994), 648-685
35. Morphy, "From Dull to Brilliant"; Anthony Shelton, "Predicates of Aesthetic Judgment: Ontology and Value in Huichol Material Presentations"; and Jeremy Coote, "'Marvels of Everyday Vision': The Anthropology of Aesthetics and the Cattle-Keeping Nilotes," in Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, respectively, pp. 181-208, 209-244, and 245-273
36. Evelyn Payne Hatcher, Art as Culture: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Art (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1999), pp. 197-207, provides a useful discussion on the issue of the universality versus the particularity of aesthetic values
37. F. D. McCarthy, "Theoretical Considerations of Australian Aboriginal Art," Journal of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 91 (1957): 3-22, moreover, comments on the aesthetic values in Australian Aboriginal art
38. See Davies, who argues for a transcultural aesthetic based on a universal human interest in certain properties of things. See also Denis Dutton, "But They Don't Have Our Concept of Art," also in Theories of Art Today, pp. 217-238, who furthermore argues that the differences between the aesthetic manifestations of European and other peoples generally have been exaggerated
39. Also relevant in this context is Denis Dutton, "Tribal Art and Artifact," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51 (1993): 13-22
40. where he argues against Arthur Danto, "Artifact and Art," in the catalogue ART/artifact (New York: Center for African Art, 1988), pp. 19-32, by claiming that, outside of the twentieth-century artworld of European peoples, items considered "art" do show perceptible differences from those not so considered
41. See, for example, Overing; also see Silvia Tomásková, "Places of Art: Art and Archaeology in Context," in Beyond Art: Pleistocene Image and Symbol, ed. Margaret W. Conkey et al. (California Academy of Sciences/University of California Press, 1997), pp. 265-287, who rejects the aesthetic point of view on rock art
42. On this point, also see Morphy, "Aesthetics."
43. Christopher Chippindale, The Archaeology of Rock-Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), emphasizes the importance of combining "informed" and "formal" methods in rock art interpretation, when possible. Informed methods rely on information gathered ethnographically, whereas formal methods rely on what is given in the representations themselves
44. I want to emphasize that rock art, insofar as art made by particular people for their own purposes, in principle, is not a free good like the light of the sun. There may be good reasons from the perspective of intellectual and cultural property rights, and for reasons of cross-cultural etiquette, not to visit or photograph or describe certain sites if they are not offered as such by their makers or guardians
45. Especially see Morphy, "Anthropology of Art."
46. Diverse authors in the rock art and cultural appropriation literatures comment on the significance of cross-cultural aesthetic influences for the enrichment of aesthetic perspectives. See, for example, Skotnes, and also Ronald DeWitt Mills, "Acculturated Art Forms of Three Central American Indigenous Groups and Observations Concerning Research Methodology in the Study of Contemporary Art," Rendezvous: Idaho State University Journal of Arts and Letters 30 (1995): 35-49
47. See Morphy, "Aesthetics"; S. Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places (University of Chicago Press, 1989)
48. Although, as Sven Ouzman (personal communication, 2000), notes, rock paintings often depend on paint materials that may have been mined at locations distant from the painted sites: "In southern Africa, the majority of San rock-paintings are made from exotic ferric oxide that was mined 20km-400km from where the rock-painting occurs."
49. For fürther details on the uniqueness of and perspectives offered by rock art, see Heyd, "Rock Art Aesthetics"; also see Thomas Heyd, "Aesthetics and Rock Art: Art, Mobile Peoples, and Aesthetic Appreciation in Australia," Arqueologia 25 (2000): 9-18
50. "Rock Art and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Natural Landscapes," News95 International Rock Art (Pinerolo, It.: Centro Studi e Museo d'Arte Preistorica, 1999)
51. and "Northern Plains Boulder Structures: Art and Foucauldian Heterotopias," in Foucault and the Environment, ed. Éric Darier (New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 152-162
52. Concerning the importance of cross-cultural aesthetics in potentially countering the aesthetization of the everyday, see James F. Weiner, "Introduction," in Key Debates in Anthropology, pp. 251-254
53. On general strategies of resistance to commodification in contemporary society, see, for example, Hal Foster, "Readings in Cultural Resistance," in his Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (Seattle: Bay Press, 1985), pp. 157-179
54. I am indebted to Sven Ouzman and John Clegg for careful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, as well as to an anonymous referee of the JAAC