The Role of The 'Ethnic Crafts' and Products in Aesthetic Interchange - Essay Example

Cultural appropriation by the Western world of the styles and artefacts of other communities is not new. Infact, since the oldest times Western Art has tried to represent the voices of the other cultures through its own cultural narratives. The consequences may have been different in various cases, but it was for a common target: to induce greater variety or exoticism to the present idea of aesthetics and amplify appreciation or criticism through a contrived alienation of something utterly unfamiliar or full of newer imaginative possibilities. Say for instance the African Period of Picasso (between 1907-1909) when he was heavily influenced by African Sculptures that was also engendered by an interest in the present interest in Africa (French colonial exposure of Africa brought forth “exotic” news of African animals, tribes, cannibalism and overall primitivism) gave his work a historical as well as commercial value. Hence, I shall explore why and how cultural appropriation (if at all we can call it that) is actually a philistine way of assuming that ethnic craft representation to a Western audience shall always be somewhat mysterious, unknown, open to manipulation by Western thoughts and practices and is also somewhat full of “untouched” variety. These assumptions are almost always taken into account when representing ethnic art and thus represent another idea of the “white man’s burden” still on the run and notions of “Orientalism” isn’t over as yet, even in the age of Globalization. It is not so much an aesthetic interchange as much a thirst for giving the art a new dimension unknown to most western eye. When the question of appropriation comes into the picture, the questions of artistic intentions too follow. With it comes the speculation of the vanguard of exchange – where and how it happens. Does it follow any trend or does it depend on a single artists quest for something beyond the discipline of Western Aesthetics? Or is it just another form of responding to current socio-historical or political trends? I guess it is all of the above and more! Let us explore why and how. Previously the influence in art forms at least before the beginning and formation of the Imperialistic Discourse, was somewhat beyond the scope of this “Self” and the “Other” demarcation. With new discovery during the Renaissance, the Islamic tin-glazed pottery and lusterware became the most dominant form of ceramics in Spain. It continued from a period of 13th Century till the very beginning of 16th century, while Tin-glazed ware were popularly made in Europe until the beginning of the Victorian 19th century. The use and dialogical appropriation of Oriental motifs into a Renaissance aesthetic of ceramics (for example, use of floral and vegetal ornament from geometry, and their combination with oriental figures) does induce a kind of exoticism in the art form that runs still today. Ming porcelain became another dominant form of craft that remained in Europe from the early 17th century, (it also included the golden age of delftware from 1630-1700) till the very later part of 18th century. These are indeed examples of appropriation of better techniques that gave art forms their finer looks. The English Arts and Crafts movement of the 1860s were another wave that brought forth schools of potters among who were names like William De Morgan. The 19th century use of salt-glazed stoneware of the Doulton factories in Lambeth are among the notable examples of ethnic influences comfortably appropriated by western art form out of admiration, the feeling of being “central” to world history which was recording their achievement and thus accountable to the future generation through the eye of a white, male Eurocentric world where the peripheral ethnic art survived in their “discovery” and proper representation. There was this sense of revival, recovery and almost a sense of exploration into the far east for influence and newer depths of art, which to the West artist belonged in Europe, the “centre” of all consciousness, the “centre” of history and the” subject against whom they were pitching their art. As long as it was new to the West it was worth the work. In the United States the Rookwood factory (1880, Cincinnati, Ohio), the Grueby Faience Company (1897, Boston), and the Pewabic Pottery Works (1900, Detroit) became prestigious centres for the artist-potter to show off their skill and talent. They explored many ethnic themes that the “mainstream” society was often unaware of. Again, the international reputation of the English potters like Bernard Leach who was born and trained in Japan and explored artforms inspired largely by Japanese aesthetics. The English folk potters like Michael Ambrose Cardew who is the reputed leader of the 20th-century revival of ethnic art influenced pottery all helped to bring about a great interest in the contemporary tradition of the ethnic art. Venetian Gothic architecture also had oriental elements that were again influenced by the Byzantine and Islamic sources during the 18th century. How eastern models, motifs, and techniques weave in and out of Western aesthetics almost in a pattern of political and social complexity. Vasari was influenced by Islamic metalwork and acknowledged its influence on his Italian productions partly due to historical influence of the Byzantine empire on almost all European countries since the middle ages and since then and added a familiarity with eastern history that helped in initially making the art reach out to its audiences but also added greater touches to increase its supernaturalism or mysticism that is connected to the Orient. Ethnic Art thus popularly represent something beyond what is considered mainstream and canonical and that is always a fleeting theme in western art but never a part of its mainstream concepts of aesthetics. Let us delve into the concept of ethical pot by Bernard Leach that ironically (stressing simplicity through oriental arts as compared to the rich complexity of Western art) expounded in his book “A Potters Book” published in 1940.1 His strong point was simplicity, utility, and folk art that were strongly grounded in Mingei, the Japanese cultural and folk art movement of his time. The use of cultural diversity has now been used in many ways from ethnic influences to the use of kitsch and the simplicity of the Studio Pot. Lennie Lee and his series of masks influenced by tribal masks again reiterate Picasso’s interest in something abstruse to the Western eye but with newer convictions of something decadent, yet revolutionary in its iconoclasm to current aesthetics that run in all his works2. Contrarily the British Studio Pottery movement brought forth an endlessly reviving cultural diversity of potters (that would give way to postmodernism by raising issues of metanarratives and histories by excluding the west as the dominant centre) and thereby using ethnic traditions of making pot and using that in a radically different way to achieve a modern yet ethnic effect. The concept behind them were mainly different since they were valuable not just by their new addition of forms and making techniques, but by virtue of what they represented and by being part of a new discourse. Ironically Ethnic influences have always been mediated in the West through their own representatives who thought and found it worthwhile to be included, like, Michael Cardew’s influences of African culture and art, and Bernard Leach’s influences of Japanese artworks. All of these only manage to show ananglisized view of the Orient still preserving the treatment of something exotic and untouched within the Western mind. Neither Africa nor Japan is ever truly represented there. Takeshi Yasuda (1943-) has also been such an powerful and existing force for studio pottery with the use of clay experimenting with Japanese pastiche Japanese-style of art forms that explicitly determine how the idea of Japan and the reality of Japan seem to diverge from each other in his work. It chooses to show the participation that goes into pottery and the production of knowledge through informant’s information. These forms of pottery actually problematize the translation from one cultural experience to another, that serve to problematize the desired effect in understanding the idea of the East. Faithfulness to observation of another culture cannot ever be beyond bias. Thus, ethnic influences in such art as described above only serve to further Western knowledge of the “Other”, through its inadequate interplay of sign used only to further “experimental” western art forms. Here comes the concept of cultural contact zone as the site of personal struggle as per Mary Louis Pratt (2000), in her essay “Arts of the Contact Zone”3. Although ones perceived identity may be defined by a particular societys standards, true identity can only be obtained through a self-analysis, such as the personal struggle characteristic of transculturation. In the intersection of two cultures, the process of transculturation defines one’s identity. Colonized countries have been deprived of their histories. The documented milestones of the European “gaze” in art forms as well as in other discourses makes Said point out that the study of Oriental knowledge and culture was a “political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar…and the strange (Orient, the East, ‘them’)…” (1978),4 thereby polarizing and essentializing the natives’ multitudinous nuances of cultural evolution and complexity into a system of unilinear and simple and savage portrait held against the notion of European progression and modernism. Thus Said says: “The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europes greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other…[it] has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. Yet none of this Orient is merely imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles. . . . the phenomenon of Orientalism as I study it here deals principally, not with a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient . . despite or beyond any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a "real" Orient. (Said, 1978 1-3,5)5 This understanding is crucial in understanding the constant fantasy and escapism that ceramic art use while portraying ethnic influences. In the work of Magdalene Odundo (1950-), the use of a particular African tradition of hand made pots are used that are burnished, but, with a Modernist approach that reflect the era of interest in ethnic art as part of an elitist artistic response. He explores ceramic conventions of African vessels and also makes them a part of the expressionistic ideals of the era. He distorts traditional perceptions about African Art and brings them or rather appropriates them to reflect European reality of disillusionment and fractured reality. Thus all these pottery and ceramic crafts reflect a socio-economic history itself: they remind or speak of changes in artistic taste and in a globalised consumer taste that takes delight in broader cultural impressions in artwork (especially Western Art since that elevates ethnic art into a level of certified value). The work of studio potters show major influences of ethnic art namely, the medieval jug shape (especially reflected in the enthusiastic use and reinterpretation of it in Jim Malone (1946-) and Phil Rogers work), the use of the Chinese celadon and tenmoku glazes used extensively in David Leach’s work (use of glazed bowls etc) reflect the individual voice of the maker, that struggle against the anonymity of the industrial process. Sung Dynasty pots namely attracted the modern artist for its apparent verisimilitude to modern art movement and avant-garde in its aesthetics of representation. The use of muted and minimalist colours seemed both modern in their simplicity but also maintained their ever-lasting attraction of being strange and exotic to the Western eye. Full of rounded and uneven simplicity at places these pots seemed original and natural with such unfinished touches like, unglazed bottoms and bases and giving them a contrived clay look and feel in the eye of the onlooker thereby maintaining their primitivity and yet reaching out in their avant-garde stance of their almost surrealistic unconscious motive behind them. Thus their expressions work fitted into an Oriental context best with the Western interpretation of the Oriental, it was not that troublesome to represent the unconscious fearful workings of the Freudian mind with the images of the “Others” world that already is a misfit into the masters narrative and so were the avant-garde artists. Ethnic art has failed by far in asserting or rather gaining the stamp of “modernity” on the international art scene. Therefore cultural exchanges and cross-influences, and appropriation gather force everytime the aesthetic debate culminate into an experimental cry for something unheard and unseen to the western eye, which calls for a return to tradition, or something untamed and still natural-something the west has long lost. Thus one may ask whether in the present stage of globalised influence even over art, does the notion of art and crafts as a peculiarly Western sensibility with an aesthetic centre having its roots in the European Enlightenment is still an acceptable standard? Art critics outside Europe were largely unacceptable of modern arts being produced outside the West and within the cultural realms of the East or the Third World but were highly encouraging of ethnic influences of Western Art just to maintain a status quo of West/East binary. Yet take into account the Paris exhibition Les Magiciens de la terre (Magicians of the Earth), organized by the Centre Georges Pompidou and La Villette in 1989 that brought forth a new wave of paradigms in relation to art forms and intercultural exchanges between the East and West that appreciated each others movement and experiments within a separate vanguard of art history (ies).6 But another genre of evolution had followed since the emergence of globalization since the 1990s, which has produced a world of elite artists who come from different places in the world. They express the same thing but through various mediums of cultural experiences that negotiate the politics of their cultural identity between local and global almost always and in dialogical dimensions. Works Cited 1. Leach, Bernard. A Potter’s Book, Faber and Faber, 1988. ISBN 0-5710-4927-3 2. Les Magiciens de la terre, Exhibition catalogue, Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1989. 3. Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone”. Academic Discourse: Readings for Argument and Analysis. Ed. Gail Stygall. Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000. 575-587 4. Said, Edward. “Orientalism”, New York: Vintage, 1979, 1, 3-5, 90-98 Read More