Reflections 7 - The art of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas

The works in these galleries seem more foreign, less familiar to me than just about anything else I've seen so far, and I am trying to figure out why.  At first I think that it's because I know so little about the spiritual beliefs underpinning so many of the objects. But on further reflection, some of these beliefs and traditions are not so different from those with which I'm better acquainted: the presence of the divine in figures and objects (think of bread and wine at the Mass!), the creation myths, etc. More likely, it's the different mode of representation of the human figure, so remote from the way that it is depicted in the classical and Western European traditions, as well as in Asian art. That said, I've seen enough of the abstracting quality of figural representations in 20th century sculpture and painting, which I know were heavily influenced by African art, that I should be used to it by now. Perhaps yet another reason is that I'm more accustomed to seeing these kinds of objects in anthropological exhibits, so that seeing them at the Met feels unusual in and of itself.

In any case, I am coming more and more to understand my own aesthetic sensibilities -- in particular, the pleasure I take in the repetition of geometric forms in which there are slight asymmetries to keep things interesting.

One enduring question is the relationship between art and social status. I suppose the simplest answer is that the production of art requires at least some leisure -- time not devoted to hunting, gathering, agriculture, eating, sleeping, raising children --  that can then be spent on the "imagination" and "planning" that the production of art (to quote my young schoolchildren) calls for.  Beyond that, it's clear that art enhances status: It's a marker of wealth (it takes wealth to commission art), and sometimes of spiritual power as well.  Perhaps the creation of art is not a basic human instinct after all.

Finally, the works I've seen make it clear that we should not romanticize the peoples who produced the art in these galleries. They made war, they killed each other, sometimes they sacrificed other people to the gods. It's not that European culture was necessarily better - but it wasn't necessarily worse, either.