Primitive Culture

Tylor's "Primitive Culture"

http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S207.htm

Excerpt from by a review by Alfred Russell Wallace, published in 'The Academy', 1872

It is perhaps inevitable that in the present chaotic state of our knowledge of man's mental nature and its relation to his visible organism, a work like the present should be unsatisfactory. The minute anatomy of the brain has been long ago exhaustively investigated, while the comparative study of its form and size in different races and individuals has been carried on by means of extensive collections of crania and casts; yet, although the brain is almost universally admitted to be the organ of the mind, by neither of these lines of research nor by any combination of them, have any definite conclusions been arrived at as to the relation of the brain to the various mental faculties. Up to the present day our physiologists dispute as to whether the forehead or the occiput is the seat of the intellect, yet they scout the idea of giving up their hitherto barren line of investigation, in favour of that experimental method of comparing function with development which, the much-abused phrenologists maintain, leads to complete success. Equally unsatisfactory is the practice of leaving out of view, in theories of mental development, the numerous well-established cases of abnormal mental phenomena which indicate latent powers in man beyond those usually recognised. These are looked upon as obscure diseases of the nervous system, and although their occurrence is very rare to individual experience, the records of them are now sufficiently voluminous to furnish comparable cases to almost all that occur. They can thus be grouped into classes, and this fact, of each one forming an item in a group of analogous cases, is supposed to preclude the necessity of any attempt at a rational explanation of them. This is the method very largely adopted by Mr. Tylor, who in treating of the beliefs, customs, or superstitions of mankind, seems often to be quite satisfied that he has done all that is required when he has shown that a similar or identical belief or custom exists elsewhere.

Animism

Belief in the existence of spirits separable from bodies. Such beliefs are traditionally identified with small-scale ("primitive") societies, though they also occur in major world religions. They were first competently surveyed by Edward Burnett Tylor in Primitive Culture (1871). Classic animism, according to Tylor, consists of attributing conscious life to natural objects or phenomena, a practice that eventually gave rise to the notion of a soul. See also shaman.

Paul Gaugins attempt to enter into the 'primitive' world

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://communitas.princeton.edu/blogs/wri152-3/altucker/GauTehura.jpg&imgrefurl=http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/altucker/archives/002058.html&usg=__RxUPd0_lC7yun7T5YHaVm_RAGMw=&h=285&w=384&sz=24&hl=en&start=10&sig2=gieOtE3tPpinxOdNl5U4KQ&um=1&tbnid=WqQlay9-6_C6QM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=123&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dprimitive%2Bculture%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1&ei=YM5mS9-2ItHK-QbNt4SyBw

Marcus Coates - Being Animal

Joseph Kosuth

One and Three Chairs, 1965, is a work by Joseph Kosuth. An example of conceptual art, the piece consists of a chair, a photograph of this chair, and an enlarged dictionary definition of the word "chair". The photograph depicts the chair as it is actually installed in the room, and thus the work changes each time it is installed in a new venue.

Two elements of the work remain constant: a copy of a dictionary definition of the word "chair" and a diagram with instructions for installation. Both bear Kosuth's signature. Under the instructions, the installer is to choose a chair, place it before a wall, and take a photograph of the chair. This photo is to be enlarged to the size of the actual chair and placed on the wall to the left of the chair. Finally, a blow-up of the copy of the dictionary definition is to be hung to the right of the chair, its upper edge aligned with that of the photograph.

Kosuth's concern with the difference between a concept and its mode of presentation was prefigured in the "event cards" of Fluxus-artists like George Brecht, Dick Higgins and Yoko Ono. These artists also tackled the problem of presenting "concepts" to an art audience. One and Three Chairs is, perhaps, a step towards a resolution of this problem. Rather than present the viewer with the bare written instructions for the work, or make a live event of the realization of the concept (in the manner of the Fluxus artists), Kosuth instead unifies concept and realization. One and Three Chairs demonstrates how an artwork can embody an idea that remains constant despite changes to its elements.

Kosuth stresses the difference between concept and presentation in his writings (e.g., "Art after Philosophy", 1969 and interviews (see the quotation below). He tries to intimately bind the conceptual nature of his work with the nature of art itself, thus raising his instructions for the presentation of an artwork to the level of a discourse on art. In 1963 Henry Flynt articulated these problems in the article "Concept Art". This was a forerunner to Kosuth's thematization of "Concept Art" in "Art after Philosophy", the text that made One and Three Chairs famous.

The work One and Three Chairs can be seen to highlight the relation between language, picture and referent. It problematizes relations between object, visual and verbal references (denotations) plus semantic fields of the term chosen for the verbal reference. The term of the dictionary includes connotations and possible denotations which are relevant in the context of the presentation of One and Three Chairs. The meanings of the three elements are congruent in certain semantic fields and incongruent in other semantic fields: A semantic congruity ("One") and a threefold incongruity ("One and Three"). Ironically, One and Three Chairs can be looked upon as simple but rather complex model, of the science of signs. A viewer may ask "what's real here?" and answer that "the definition is real"; Without a definition, one would never know what an actual chair is.

There exist different interpretations of these semantic and ontological aspects. Some refer to Plato´s Republic (Book X); others refer to Ludwig Wittgenstein´s Tractatus or to Charles Sanders Peirce's triad icon-index-symbol. Dreher discusses the semantic problems of One and Three Chairs as inclusions of circles which represent semantic fields.

The work tends to defy formal analysis because one chair can be substituted for another chair, rendering the photograph and the chair photographed elusive to description. Nevertheless the particular chair and its accompanying photograph lend themselves to formal analysis. There are many chairs in the world; thus only those actually used can be described. Those chairs not used would not be analyzed. The enlarged dictionary definition of the word chair is also open to formal analysis, as is the diagram containing instructions of the work.

Kosuth's thematization of semantic congruities and incongruities can be seen as a reflection of the problems which the relations between concept and presentation pose. Kosuth uses the related questions, "how meanings of signs are constituted" and "how signs refer to extra-lingual phenomena" as a fundament to discuss the relation between concept and presentation. Kosuth tries to identify or equate these philosophical problems with the theory of art. Kosuth changes the art practice from hand-made originals to notations with substitutable realizations, and tries to exemplify the relevance of this change for the theory of art.

In "Art after Philosophy," Kosuth provoked a confrontation with the formal criticism of Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried. Both exposed the concept of the art work as a non-substitutable instance realized by an artist who follows no other criteria than visual ones. They defined this concept as the core of modernism. In the sixties, Greenberg's and Fried's modernist doctrine dominated the American discussions on art; meanwhile, the artists Allan Kaprow, Dick Higgins, Henry Flynt, Mel Bochner, Robert Smithson and Joseph Kosuth wrote articles on art exemplifying a pluralistic anti- and post-modernist tendency which gained more influence at the end of the sixties. In 1968, Greenberg tried to disqualify the new tendencies as "'novelty' art": The different mediums are exploding...when everybody is a revolutionary the revolution is over. Sam Hunter offered a more positive view in 1972: "The situation of open possibilities which confronted artists in the first years of the seventies allowed a variety of means and many fertile idea systems to coexist, reconciling through the poetic imagination apparent contradictions."

Malevich - Black Circle

The Everyday in Art

The presence in contemporary art of everyday, domestic objects such as a bed is now a commonplace of contemporary art, even if contemporary critics rarely ask whose everyday domesticity might be re/presented. Many of life's key experiences and rites of passage — being born, sleeping, dreaming, having sex, giving birth, and dying — happen in bed.

Rachel Whiteread made numerous bed pieces which she placed on the floor, inviting yet denying rest, cots by Permindar Kaur or Mona Hatoum, Richard Hamilton's brutal Treatment Room of 1984 (Arts Council Collection, London, recently exhibited in Protest and Survive at the Whitechapel Art Gallery) or Bill Viola's Science of the Heart of 1983 (shown in Spectacular Bodies at the Hayward Gallery) play on, prey on, the oscillations between life and death, the body's presence and absence. None have the comforts usually associated with the bed in consumer culture of the 1980s and 1990s with its boom in home decoration and plethora of styles from the minimalist to the ornate. One of Sarah Lucas's most complex pieces about sexuality and sexual difference is Au Naturel of 1994 in which a sagging, stained mattress is propped up against a wall. Impossible to sleep or rest upon, its surface is interrupted the objects placed upon it: a bucket, melons and a cucumber. So long a stage for the performance of the female nude, upturned the mattress becomes the site for the play of fantasies and cultural representations as the artist's trades with her audiences the crude sexual stereotypes in circulation in contemporary culture.

A Country Refuge

The project was a collaboration born of a conversation about the mutual feelings of exposure and vulnerability Kirsten and I felt whilst on a drawing assignment to the rocky headland on the south coast of Skye a few weeks ago.

On facing the elements, unprotected and alone, we felt an overwhelming desire to find shelter, warmth and protection, and as there was none available, we decided to build our own safe haven, using the only materials we had available, those which existed naturally on the Island; branches, twigs, grass and rocks.

This work stems from a common interest in the theme of human vulnerability and the desire to protect, encase and self-preserve that comes instinctively to us. The built environment exists to give people places in which they can find shelter, thus in the natural environment we must, like animals, find a way to create shelter for ourselves.

Sadly we ran out of time so the shelter remains unfinished, however, for me, it has taken on a new character as a drawing in space, a natural curiosity that I hope future passers by will take a moment to ponder upon. Had the shelter been completed, our idea was that in it's very making, it would be unmade, the structure flowing from the lines of the rockface becoming an extension of the natural environment from which it arose from.

Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved.
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Thank you Bob Dylan