Art makes society: an introductory visual essay

Abstract

In this visual essay that serves as an introduction to the set of articles presented in this issue, we illustrate four ways that art makes society. We adopt a stance informed by recent perspectives on material culture, moving away from thinking about art purely in aesthetic terms, instead asking how art objects have significance in particular cultural and social contexts. Arguing that art is participatory as well as visually affecting, we first suggest that art creates sites of activity for shared interaction. Second, we discuss the varied ways that people use art to create and assert representational models for social relations. Third, we consider the varied roles of art as cultural capital, marking out members of society through shared forms of knowledge or access to art. Finally, we document the ways that art serves as a medium of exclusion and as a means for resisting authority or challenging power relations. We highlight the layered meanings inherent in many artworks.

Keywords:

• art
• material culture
• performance
• social relations
• archaeology

Introduction: art is doing, not viewing!

Anthropological perspectives on art have changed radically in the last three decades. In the modern West, ‘art’ has traditionally been understood as a form of high culture, participated in through norms of connoisseurship, patronage, and individual expression. Images and objects have been primarily seen as things to view, set apart in museums, galleries, and other public places. Archaeologists and anthropologists have traditionally treated art in a parallel way, as symbolic expressions of meanings and values. In such an approach, scholars viewed art with the aim of interpreting (or decoding) an act of communication expressed in conventional symbolic forms.

Recently, however, scholars in both anthropology and the various disciplines focused on art studies have expressed scepticism that such a perspective can encompass the realities of art as it is experienced, thought about, and engaged with, both in Western settings and in the wider world. In art studies, a material turn has foregrounded the presence of objects more than their interpretation (Moxey 2008). Anthropologists argue that concepts of the uniqueness of artworks, for example, may be emphasised more in the West than elsewhere. In line with developments in material culture theory (Miller 2005; Tilley 1999; Tilley et al. 2006), art is now seen more in terms of its participation, engagement, and actions with people, rather than simply as objects and images to be passively viewed (Gell 1998; Morphy and Perkins 2006).

Dissanayake expresses this succinctly:

Regarding art as a behaviour – an instance of ‘making special’ – shifts the emphasis from the modernist's view of art as object or quality or the postmodernist's view of it as text or commodity to the activity itself (the making or doing and appreciating), which is what it is in many pre-modern societies where the object is essentially an occasion for or an accoutrement to ceremonial participation … (Dissanayake 1995, 223)

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Art makes society’, we explore the implications of this approach. We do not consider the theoretical arguments in depth, but instead illustrate with examples the range of ways that art helps to constitute social relations. Our aim is to provide a general context for the articles which make up this issue.

Writing as archaeologists and anthropologists exploring a topic which stands at the crossroads of many fields, we wish to position ourselves clearly. One goal of the contributors to this issue is simply to provoke archaeologists and anthropologists to think about art in relation to societal dynamics. In response to doubts about the relevance of a traditional, Western category of ‘art’ for the understanding of other cultures, many anthropologists have abandoned the term altogether in favour of a focus on material culture. Exceptions are anthropologists working at the interface of Western and non-Western cultures, who ask how the specifically Western conceptions of art are used in appropriating and commodifying indigenous creations (Küchler 1988; Marcus and Myers 1995; Thomas 1991). Archaeologists generally follow suit. As a consequence, art is left untheorised, except through a semiotic/representationalist paradigm that limits what we can do, beyond trying – often fruitlessly and usually contentiously – to interpret the content. If instead we acknowledge that art is material culture with specific properties and capacities, we can understand much more. Looking beyond the disciplinary boundaries of archaeology and anthropology, we also recognise important theoretical developments in fields such as art history and visual culture studies. The movement towards regarding the art object as influential through its presence and material qualities (Moxey 2008) is parallel to the material turn happening across the humanities and social sciences more broadly, an art-theory cognate to ‘thing theory’ in literature (Brown 2001) and approaches to materiality in anthropology (Miller 2005). Indeed, since these themes are already commonly explored in the archaeological literature, we see great potential for studies of art to open up a rich dialogue across disciplines.

Art as material culture

The shift in perspective described above is intertwined with broader transformations in anthropological approaches to art. Some of the impact of art certainly derives from its aesthetic properties; for example, in ritual, emotional impacts may derive in part from the beauty or tactility of the objects or aspects of performance, or from the virtuosity displayed by an artisan (DeMarrais 2013). In most cultures, some objects are fashioned with effort and skill to create a strong aesthetic impression (Coote 1992; Morphy and Perkins 2006); the natural world similarly has aesthetic qualities that inspire artists as well as viewers. At the same time, anthropologists have traditionally and rightly been cautious about imposing a high culture, aesthetic view of ‘art’ on non-Western peoples and, indeed, on European works before the Renaissance. The category of ‘art’ is often problematic, as ethnographers have repeatedly demonstrated (Gell 1998; Layton 1991; Myers 1991). As Appadurai (1986) pointed out over 25 years ago, an object's significance is as dependent on its cultural context and history as on its intrinsic properties. Indigenous ‘art’ often operated within completely different frames from those which Westerners habitually impose on things designated as art. An excellent example is Küchler's (1988) study of Malanggan statues, which were never intended to last. Although Western collectors treat the statues as art, purchasing them for display in museums, the statues were meant to decay, with the making of the statue serving to cement and to secure the memory of the deceased. Thus, the things archaeologists and anthropologists understand as ‘art’ include images and objects produced for uses that range well beyond what ‘art’ does in our own society. Further examples include numerous medieval paintings framing ritual settings (as altarpieces for example), the sculptures of Classical Antiquity that became objects of veneration, and much prehistoric and non-Western rock art executed as acts of participation with perhaps little concern for creating permanently visible or lasting designs (Fowles and Arterberry 2013).

A further excellent example of the interpretive problem emerges from Gell's (1992, 1998) insights concerning the Trobriand Islanders’ canoe prow-boards:

… These boards are richly carved and painted, and they are the first thing that the Trobrianders’ overseas exchange partners get to see when the Trobriand flotilla arrives on their shores, before exchange operations get under way. The purpose of these beautiful carvings is to demoralize the opposition … Neither the Trobrianders nor their exchange partners operate a category of ‘art’ as such; from their point of view the efficacy of these boards stems from the powerful magical associations they have … (Gell 1998, 69)

As both Gell (1998) and Dissanayake (1995) have argued, from different starting points, the visibility of the objects, their social effects, and their distinctiveness (often indicated by the time and effort put into their making) reveal that these objects were intended to have an impact.

In this collection of papers, in line with ongoing theoretical debate, contributors emphasise not aesthetic qualities per se, but the material realities of art (objects and images) in their social contexts. If art is seen as (visual) material culture, we need to look past approaches to art as meaning, as symbols and as representation (and beyond aesthetics) to consider how art – as material culture – has direct and lasting influences on human beings. Contributors explore how art mediates power relations, establishes ideational realms, as well as influencing the routine encounters and engagements of everyday life. Similarly, art – as material culture –has political significance, expressed in varied ways, often tied to the acquisition and circulation of desired objects by the powerful (Helms 1992). While art can be displayed or used in rituals to generate consensus (DeMarrais 2011), contributors to this collection also explore cases in which the shared act of making art may generate new social ties or reinforce sentiments of solidarity (Fowles and Arterberry 2013). Art can innovate, express cosmological themes, engage with a narrative, or re-work elements of an existing cultural tradition. All of these effects are elements of the way art facilitates social action and agency, rather than remaining a passive object of viewership.

In understanding art as action, the question we ask is: What does an (art) object do, and how? The interpretative movement involves recognising that what we call art is a form of material culture intended to have specific social effects. To examine its material and design characteristics is to begin to understand how it worked. In the following section, we consider the implications of an approach to art as action.

Art as action

To the extent that art grows out of performance and participation, it involves a sequence of gestures that may draw groups of people together. In this way, art may constitute a group of participants, involve them in making it or using it in ritual and other ways. These social activities will frame art for discussion or reaction as well as, in some cases, involve viewing by an audience. These approaches to art are distinct from recent conventions invoking a solitary artist producing work for the museum or gallery wall.

In modern society, art allows people to ‘remake themselves and their worlds, while commenting on their values and beliefs’ (from the World Art website, http://www.tandfonline.com/action/aboutThisJournal?show=aimsScope&journalCode=rwor20). Archaeologists, of course, rarely have access to thought processes; however, the range and diversity of art from past societies is, in our view, testament to the importance of this ongoing ‘commentary’ among human beings. The archaeological record contains not only the objects and images (‘art’) of past societies, but also the locations where they were made, displayed, or used. Further insights come from art that decorated buildings, was erected as monuments, or made visible in other settings in which fixed objects or images are found. The scale, visibility, and accessibility of these objects and images are further sources of information about their cultural significance.

In the rest of this essay, we present a range of examples to consider the varied ways in which art makes society. We consider: (1) the ways art can frame a setting; (2) art as participation; (3) art as representational models for social relations; and (4) art as a medium for exclusion or resistance.

Art creates sites of activity

Art establishes settings for action, framing architectural or open air spaces used for gatherings, public events, or collective action. Large-scale or monumental installations, such as memorials, create sites for the re-enactment of shared memories. Visual art can help to create a ritual setting by setting it apart, distinguishing ritual space from quotidian contexts; art may also help to set the scene through references to liturgical narratives. At a more intimate scale, a framed reproduction of an Impressionist painting in a doctor's waiting room can establish an unthreatening atmosphere of middle-of-the-road gentility to comfort anxious patients.

In acts of monumentalisation, people deploy large-scale artworks to create settings in which group memory is established and experienced. Often, as is the case with war memorials, these settings involve rites of commemoration (Figure 1). On other occasions, memories may actually be created or invented through the art, as in the African Burial Ground monument in New York City.

Figure 1.  Ypres, Belgium: memorial arch for British war dead of World War I. The walls are covered with the names of the dead, in a form of textual art; note space for ceremonial assembly within monument. Photo: J. Farr.

Large-scale art framing a ritual setting is visible in Figure 2, a rock art panel from the American Southwest. These murals were widely distributed and highly visible; this image of San Juan anthropomorphs was pecked into an outcrop in Butler Wash (south-eastern Utah) during the Basketmaker II Period (AD 50–500). It shows a central figure who is ‘life-size’ (about 5 feet tall) flanked by additional figures wearing ritual adornments and headdresses. Rock art panels were often created at open-air sites, near locations used for autumn gatherings for ‘… exchange of marriage partners, trading, gaming … and political maneuvering among shamans’ (Robins and Hays-Gilpin 2000, 234). Rock art was highly visible and public, created on alcove walls, cliffs or on boulders near water sources. Reuse of some locations is indicated by the crowding of images or superimposition, suggesting ongoing modification (Charles and Cole 2006, 194).

Figure 2.  Prehistoric rock art panel, Basketmaker II period, AD 50–500, Butler Wash, Utah. Photo: Robert Mark and Evelyn Billo of Rupestrian CyberServices.

‘Decorative’ rather than political or ritual art is far from unknown in the ancient world, as in the famous frescoes and mosaics from Roman Pompeii (Figure 3). While ancient people no doubt took aesthetic pleasure in such settings, we cannot simply regard them as ‘art for art's sake’ in the modern sense; much as in the example of paintings in a doctor's waiting room, the choice of content, style and placement for such imagery – whether theological and mythological, naturalistic or erotic, or geometrical – may have helped create appropriate spaces for particular activities or social relationships.

Figure 3.  Decorative frescos and mosaics in a bedroom from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor, Pompeii, Italy, first century AD. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1903 (03.14.13a-g), photographed by Schecter Lee. Image: © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Art is participatory

Art often invites participation, creating a focus or medium for relational action (Fowles and Arterberry 2013). Adornment of the body through use of masks, costumes, body paintings, or tattoos transforms the body temporarily or permanently, while drawing attention. Figure 4 shows a mask from the Torres Strait. Made from turtleshell, wood, feathers, coconut fibre, resin, shell, and paint, this mask not only demonstrates the skills with which ritual adornments were produced, but also reminds us of the dramatic impressions they likely generated when worn. Masks are quintessentially participatory art; they enrol people into temporary assemblages of people and artifice, or create composite, living moments of altered realities.

Figure 4.  Mask, Torres Strait, nineteenth century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Purchase, Nelson A. Rockefeller Gift, 1967 (1978.412.1510). Image: © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Beyond specific events, the wearing of badges, insignia, or regalia in daily life also generates shared identities, marking out individuals as members of groups. Figure 5 shows a pilgrim badge from England, worn to display the pilgrim's active participation in pilgrimage and his or her wider affiliation with Christianity. Such forms of dress not only allowed people to objectify and to categorise themselves; they also enmeshed others in political relations such as colonialism (Loren 2013).

Figure 5.  Pilgrim badge, England, fourteenth century. British Museum 1898,0720.1. Image: © The British Museum.

In addition, the making or using of art objects or images may involve multiple participants, who forge bonds of solidarity through shared activities. The making of the art may be as (or more) important as the final product, seen for example in the collective endeavour of sewing a handmade quilt. Handprints attesting presence and participation are among the oldest motifs in human art, occurring in Palaeolithic painted caves. Around the world, rock art often consists of repeated motifs, surprisingly inconspicuous and sometimes ephemeral, which may result from gestures that comprised parts of a performed narrative of some kind. In modern settings, graffiti can attest to a human wish to assert one's presence. Figure 6a shows a monument marking the location where Garibaldi, hero of the Italian Risorgimento, was wounded in a minor skirmish; Figure 6b shows graffiti applied by school children during a visit to the site. The epigraphs, all along the lines of ‘Peppe loves Maria’, convey anything but the patriotic sentiments that the monument is supposed to evoke, but they do attest participation in the spirit of a school trip.

Figure 6a.  Garibaldi monument, Aspromonte, Calabria, Italy: monument. Photo: J. Robb.

Figure 6b.  Garibaldi monument, Aspromonte, Calabria, Italy: school-child graffiti on base of monument. Photo: J. Robb.

In archaeological settings, decorated pottery was often used to distinguish feasts as special events. In northwest Argentina, libation vessels decorated with modelled figures of animals are common in sites of the Regional Developments Period (AD 950–1430). Figure 7 shows a libation bowl; adorned with a feline head at one end, the bowl has an opening on the opposite side to facilitate drinking of its contents. More generally, the sharing of food and drink in ritual settings helps to sustain social ties; in the south Andes, the use of animal depictions probably also referenced shamanic or cult activity.

Figure 7.  Prehispanic libation bowl with feline head, Regional Developments Period, AD 950–1430, northern Calchaquí Valley, Argentina. Photo: E. DeMarrais.

Finally, some art objects require considerable expertise or skill to make but are consumed or destroyed during their intended use. Malanggan objects, mentioned above, are excellent examples since they are implicated in forging memory. Other art objects whose appropriate use involves destruction include Mexican piñatas, elaborately decorated wedding cakes, ritually punctured Mimbres bowls of the American Southwest, and ‘Celtic’ metalwork deposited as votives in rivers and bogs. As a further archaeological example, the earliest clay figurines, made during the Palaeolithic of Central Europe, may have been ‘action art’ intended to explode dramatically when placed in a fire (Farbstein 2013).

Art creates representational models for social relations

Art frequently represents social relations. Over time, images are internalised as people absorb cues that guide behaviour and ensure conduct appropriate to a given social setting. Bourdieu's (1977) insightful analysis of habitus made clear that children and others learn by doing (and by observing others), rather than through direct instruction. Since art objects are often lasting, durable, and visible, they reinforce a vision of ‘the way things are’ that may be difficult to contest. This dynamic encompasses varied aspects of identity and social conduct as prescribed by gender, age, social position, or ritual status. Many images are ideologically loaded, such as the Greek red-figure drinking cup in Figure 8, which inculcates the privileged position of males, depicted here sharing drink in the ritualised male-only setting of a symposium.

Figure 8.  Greek red-figure cup with scene of male bonding in ritualised drinking at symposium, Vulci, Italy. British Museum 1836,0224.212. Image: © The British Museum.

Even more common is the commissioning of richly detailed and aesthetically pleasing art objects, made from rare materials by skilled artisans, to legitimate the privileged position of elites. Veblen's (1899) insightful comments about conspicuous consumption resonate particularly well with the crafts produced for elites in many archaic states, including those of coastal Peru before the Incas. Figure 9 shows an image in silver of a ruler seated on a throne, its iconographic theme of hierarchy meshing seamlessly with the use of privileged materials such as rare metals and the virtuosic skill of Chimu artisans.

Figure 9.  Silver ‘throne vessel’ depicting hierarchical group, fifteenth century, Chimu, Peru. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1969 (1978.412.170). Image: © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Art is also almost always concerned with the wider social group, promoting ideas about the nature of the collectivity through representation (temporary or lasting) or by inviting participation in an event (a rite, a moment of creative activity, or a shared experience of viewing and appreciating) (DeMarrais 2011). Figure 10 shows La Venta Offering 4 from pre-Hispanic lowland Mexico, shown here during its excavation, rightly famous for its revealing insight into Olmec social relations and ritual. Like many other works of art from around the world, it represents a moment when people are assembled to create a group, highlighting an idealised collectivity as a model for social participation. Spielmann (2013) devotes considerable attention to this potential role for art, as part of ritual, in generating cohesion among Hopewell villages and for bolstering the claims of ritual specialists.

Figure 10.  La Venta Offering 4, Mexico, showing a leader conducting a group ritual, Olmec, Formative Period. Photo: John Clark and Pierre Agrinier.

Art as cultural capital

Art also represents cultural capital – concentrated, privileged access to items of value. In this sense, art can be a vocabulary for the shared habitus of members of the same social class, a tangible yet dynamic means for relating or dividing groups. This may often be simply through shared styles or ways of doing things. Farbstein (2013), for example, shows how small prehistoric communities creatively formulated different artistic representations as part of creating local networks of shared identity.

In class-stratified societies or power-laden colonial relations, art has the capacity to unite, divide, or position people (Bourdieu 1984), since not all people are equally able to decode or to appreciate art and since art may be used to encode values privileging dominant groups. Herring (2013) eloquently traces the ways that Andean art has been appropriated, and misunderstood, in the unfolding discourses of Western Modernist art history. Architectural styles provide a particularly prominent way of asserting cultural capital; in recent European and American history, for example, there have been two architectures of power: the Classical and the Gothic. Both were deliberately revived and reworked to be widely used in public buildings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Figure 11), asserting institutional legitimacy by evoking the imagined splendours of a Classical or medieval past.

Figure 11.  Senate House, University of Cambridge (1730): as on many university campuses the Classical columns and façade proclaim the university's role as heir of ancient Greek civilisation, as well as partaking in a more general architectural aesthetic of power. Photo: J. Robb.

Maya art is similarly well-known for evoking a world of privilege and power surrounding elites and their entourages. Evidence increasingly suggests that Maya elites were in some cases also the artisans. Inomata argues that craft production by elites during the Classic Period ‘… was at once a highly political act closely tied to power and an expression of elites ascribing to cultural and aesthetic values’ (2007, 137). He suggests that the willingness of high-status individuals to engage in demanding craft production work is evidence of their commitment to cultural ideals. Figure 12 shows a relief panel depicting a ruler in full regalia. Both the personae represented and the creation, control and use of such objects tied high status people to a world of symbolic capital. Virtually all ancient civilisations, from the Egyptians through the Incas, engaged in a similar materialisation of the cultural capital of their rulers in large-scale or finely-worked art.

Figure 12.  Classic Maya relief with enthroned ruler. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.1047). Image: © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Art as a medium of exclusion, resistance, or layered meanings

Art does not simply present and reinforce dominant ideologies or assert social models; it may contain hidden, layered, or contested messages or meanings. Likewise, the knowledge asserted in (or by) an artwork may be contested. For example, Brumfiel (1996) provides a compelling case that healthy-looking, standing female figurines, produced by local communities in the Aztec hinterland, were intentional forms of alternative art, produced in response to negative depictions of women (often shown dismembered or kneeling in submission) promulgated as part of the Aztec imperial ideology.

Arts of protest and resistance are two manifestations of this phenomenon. Both may be expressed through unsanctioned, counter-authoritarian genres. The graffiti example above seems innocent of political critique, but graffiti and defacement often express political sentiments. The spray can may be an ubiquitous tool for contemporary dissent, and sometimes this contestation of meaning is intentionally foregrounded in art. In a recent article on the BBC website, the artist Antony Gormley described his experience of erecting an early sculpture of a life-size human figure in Londonderry, Northern Ireland in 1987, during the Troubles, a time of often violent political conflict (McCann 2011). Intending his work to be ‘a poultice, and a benign piece that related to the feelings of the people in that place and their situation’, he remembers the vigorous attack on the work as it was being placed in the ground. ‘They were throwing stones and sticks and then spitting on the sculpture. The sculpture came over the top dripping with saliva, the missiles kept coming.’ The work was eventually doused in petrol and set alight. Gormley continues, ‘This was excellent. This was the work as poultice throwing violence and evil onto itself that would otherwise be experienced in other ways.’

Moreover, art allows ambiguity, or layers of interpretation, that facilitate multiple understandings, as explored in Robinson's article (2013) on the significance of graffiti in Barcelona. Ambiguous or multi-layered imagery is common in the European medieval period, for instance, where images may express visual puns. An artist might playfully portray himself (or others) in mythological or Biblical scenes in a manner undetectable to those unfamiliar with his visage, giving the work both public and personal significance. Medieval manuscript illuminations and woodcarvings often show obscene or grotesque imagery in the margins of sacred texts or settings. For instance, underneath a carved church seat from King's Lynn, England, lurk two grylluses (Figure 13), imaginary creatures thought to embody humans’ baser instincts, a suggestion underlined by their ambiguously phallic noses and by their intended proximity to churchgoers’ backsides. Is this the illustration of an obscure theological text? Satire? Permissible playfulness? The answer may have been as ambiguous to medieval people as it remains to us.

Figure 13.  Hidden misericord imagery on the bottom of a carved wooden church seat, King's Lynn, England, fourteenth century. Victoria and Albert Museum W.7-1921. Image: © Victoria and Albert Museum.

Conclusions

We have argued, through examples from past and present, that art is deeply embedded in everyday life as well as integral to special occasions of ritual, political or biographical importance. As one would expect from a profoundly varied phenomenon, no single explanation can encompass the diverse ways that art establishes, sustains, or transforms social relations. Through its making, using, and display, art helps people share underlying understandings of the world, allows individuals and groups to create and express values, to assert social capital, and – finally – art creates venues and media for the performance of identities and social relations. In the collected articles of this issue, contributors illustrate these varied perspectives; the case studies range across world archaeology from Palaeolithic to historic periods.

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth DeMarrais and John Robb teach archaeology in the Division of Archaeology, University of Cambridge. Working in the Americas and Europe, respectively, they share broad interests in art, material culture, theory and social relations in the past. Two years ago, they established a Material Culture Laboratory to provide a setting for students and researchers interested in theory and material culture to meet and to exchange ideas in an interdisciplinary setting. The current collection of papers was initially presented as part of a symposium entitled ‘Art Makes Society’, organised for the Society for American Archaeology meeting in April 2012, in Memphis, TN, USA.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to John Clark and Pierre Agrinier for permission to use Figure 10, to Johanna Farr for the use of Figure 1, and to Robert Mark and Evelyn Billo of Rupestrian CyberServices for use of Figure 2. We thank The British Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Victoria and Albert Museum for use of varied images as noted in the captions, and the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments. We thank George Lau and Veronica Sekules for their editorial oversight and helpful comments.