431169"primitive fakes," "tourist art," and the ideology of authenticity

"Primitive Fakes," "Tourist Art," and the Ideology of AuthenticityAuthor(s): Larry ShinerSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Spring, 1994), pp. 225-234Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/431169 .Accessed: 22/02/2014 07:18

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LARRY SHINER

"Primitive Fakes," "Tourist Art," and the Ideology of Authenticity

Over the last decades, a number of writers have exposed the complex ideology behind our construction of a largely imaginary Primitive Other upon whom we have projected either our fanta- sies of savagery and sexual license or an ideal- ized vision of an unspoiled humanity.' Tradi- tional treatments of Primitive Art have always been a part of this ambivalent discourse of the "primitive," and the best recent discussions of the concept of Primitive Art (Clifford, Price, Torgovnick) are acutely critical of it.2

But if recent writers have mercilessly at- tacked the concept of the "primitive" in "Prim- itive Art," some of these same writers have hedged when it comes to "Art." Wolfgang Haberland puts it bluntly: "Our main obliga- tion ... is to convince art historians that the art of aboriginal North American peoples is 'Art with a capital A.'"3 Sally Price complains that it should not be only the Westerner's eye by which "an ethnographic object is elevated to the status of art."4 Even Mariana Torgovnick, who is more aware of the problematic character of the modern concept of Art, insists that "any challenge to the designation of 'art' for African, Oceanic, and Native American pieces ... flirts dangerously with modes of thought that made the appropriation of land from primitive peoples possible."5

What seems to be going on in this recent literature is a play on two levels of meaning for terms like "art," "artist," and "aesthetic." On one level, which we might call the generic and which reflects European usage up to the eighteenth century, "art" means any skilled hand- icraft, "artist" means any skilled maker of an artifact, and "taste" means any set of values for ranking artifacts. On another level, that of modem aesthetic discourse, "Art" suggests a distinct

realm of works or performances of elevated status, "Artist" implies innovation, individualism, and a devotion to Art as a vocation, and "Aes- thetic" suggests disinterested appreciation. Of course, this modern discourse which opposes Fine Art to craft, the Artist to the artisan, and Aesthetic to theoretical and practical knowl- edge has not displaced the older concept of art as a "craft skill." As a result, contemporary writers can play on the ambiguity of the term "art," emphasizing now the one concept, now the other, in order to persuade us that there is such a thing as "Primitive Art" (or "Traditional Art," as some call it in an effort to be more politically correct).

Richard Anderson's Calliope's Sisters: A Comparative Study of Philosophies of Art is a particularly telling example of the exploitation of this ambiguity. He claims to be inductively constructing an "open definition" of art by accepting as art anything that a people values for either its skill or its beauty or its non- utility.6 Such a procedure obviously allows him to lump a selection of artifacts of small-scale "traditional" societies together with canonical genres of Euro-American Art and call both of them "art." It also allows him to by-pass what others have seen as a crucial conceptual problem with the idea of "Primitive Art": few of these small-scale societies have grouped artifacts or activities on the basis of non-utility and given them special status as objects for disinterested appreciation. In fact, Anderson, like most other philosophers, art historians, and anthropologists tends to select those artifacts or practices in such societies which match our set of things included within "Art" even though no such division exists within those cultures. A State Arts Council representative in Alaska, for

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52:2 Spring 1994


226 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

example, must constantly explain to Alaskan Natives that ivory carving and beadwork can be supported "as art," but kayak or harpoon making cannot. What seems a natural division between art and non-art to Europeans or Amer- icans appears merely arbitrary to those not suf- ficiently acculturated.7 Anderson freely admits that he applies either the older sense of art as craft skill or the modern aesthetic sense of art, depending on which will help him to maximize the number of societies that, in his words, "have art." Anderson at least has the virtue of being explicit about his double tracking strat- egy; other writers simply exploit the ambiguity without acknowledgement. The effect of this double tracking is to allow them to describe the practices of small-scale "traditional" societies according to the generic concept of art while telegraphing to the reader the spiritual and status connotations that go with the modern aesthetic conception.

Although motivated by a desire to be compli- mentary, I believe this attempt to have it both ways is intellectually confused and politically dubious. Whereas many of these writers have been mercilessly critical of the concept of the "primitive," most seem in thrall to the modern discourse of Art. Since the selection of which artifacts and activities in small-scale societies to "elevate" to the status of Art seldom corre- sponds to any similar classification in those societies, writers who accept the modern discourse of Art seem to be stuck with the following alternative: either they must force the arts of other societies into an alien mold of high Art or appear to denigrate them as mere crafts. In order to avoid the negative ethnocentrism of relegating these arts to the status of craft, such writers embrace the positive ethnocentrism of offering these arts the supposed compliment of integration into the Euro-American idea of Fine Art. But to cut African or Polynesian masks from their costumes, wrench them out of their living context, and enshrine them in Plexiglas cases for our Sunday contemplation does not strike me as necessarily an "elevation," even if we tardily paste up photographs of someone "dancing" them and a big notice explaining their "tribal" meanings.

Nowhere is the failure to criticize the concept of "Art" in Primitive Art more revealing than in the alarm over "fake" Primitive Art and dis-

dain for what are called "Tourist" arts. In this preoccupation with protecting the authentically traditional, the double tracking discourse exam- ined above is put in the service of a kind of aesthetic triage performed on the artifacts of small-scale societies. According to the reigning idea of authenticity, only those artifacts from small-scale societies which are made to serve some ritual or other traditional purpose within the society may be classified as Art, whereas artifacts which members of small-scale societies make to be sold for purposes of primarily visual appreciation are scorned as either fakes or tourist art. Ironically, it has been the success of the European and American elevation of ritual artifacts to the status of Art that has created the heavy demand and rise in prices which led to the inevitable incidence of "fakes," particularly on the booming African sculpture market. The Euro-American ideas of "primitive fakes" and "tourist art" show the special chem- istry which occurs when the modern concepts of the "primitive" and "art" are put together.

What dealers, collectors, and art historians call "authentic" Primitive or Traditional Art is a piece 1) made by a member of a small-scale society, 2) in the society's traditional style, and 3) intended for a traditional social or religious function.8 In African Art galleries in the U.S., for example, one sometimes finds penciled onto the price tag of a mask not only a designation of tribe and function but also the phrase, "has been danced." The pieces deemed "inauthentic" Primitive Art and therefore demoted to the status of fakes or tourist art are those made in a traditional style but intended to be sold on the world art market. These works are usually bought by African "runners" who sell them in turn to dealers in the larger cities of Africa or the United States. Since collectors and art historians usually define "authentic" as "made for ritual use"-and give preference to older pieces-the carvers and/or runners will sometimes try to add a patina of use or otherwise "age" the piece.9 What is conceptually interesting about this situation is that carvings not intended to be Art in our sense but made primarily as functional objects are considered "authentic" Primitive or Traditional Art, whereas carvings intended to be Art in our sense, i.e., made to be appreciated solely for their appearance, are called "fakes" and are reduced to the status of mere commer-


Shiner "Primitive Fakes," "Tourist Art," and the Ideology of Authenticity 227

cial craft. Thus, in the context of the Primitive Art market, the Art vs. craft distinction under- goes a paradoxical reversal. The utilitarian artifacts are elevated to the status of Art, and the non-utilitarian artifacts are relegated to the category of craft.

Yet it is not clear that Euro-American notions of forgery and fakery apply to these works. Certainly, the runners and dealers, well aware of the enormous price differentials between an "authentic" piece and a "fake," often deliber- ately deceive buyers. But anthropologists who have studied the contemporary workshops that carve for the market have found that the carvers themselves will openly and proudly tell you, "we can make it old." The carvers simply see themselves as in the business of carving traditional forms on demand, and since Europeans prefer the look of age and use, the carvers give it to them. I do not see much difference here from what the so-called "traditional" carvers did or still do when they make something on demand for ritual use by one of their own community. Sidney Kasfir has succinctly summed up the difference between general Euro-American and African attitudes toward making artifacts:

Typically the carving profession or any other that results in the construction of artifacts (brasscasting, weaving, pottery-making, etc.) is seen as a form of work, not qualitatively very different from farming, repairing radios, or driving a taxi. This does not mean that it is not "serious" ... but that it is viewed matter-of-factly as aiming to satisfy the requirements set down by patrons. One does whatever is necessary to become a successful practitioners

A similar matter-of-factness exists, or at least once did, in some Native American commu- nities. I am reminded of the story that when Maria Montoya's pots began to be sought by Anglo collectors of Southwest Art, her co- workers, with her blessing, cheerfully signed her name to their own pots until the dealer stopped them. In cultures which do not share our particular fetish for "originality," the notion that a reproduction is a "fake" seems out of place. When a carver (more often it is a runner or dealer) passes something off as older than it is or as having been used in ritual, there is business fraud, but the piece itself is not a "fake" piece of African or Native American

Art in the way a marble carving made in a contemporary Milan workshop and passed off as an Etruscan tomb sculpture is a "fake" piece of Etruscan Art. For the African carvers are simply making the kind of thing for the Euro- pean collector that their parents or grandparents or they themselves have made for local use.

If runners and dealers do not lie about the age and use of these reproductions, the pieces are not usually called "fakes" but are still likely to be dismissed as "inauthentic." Although many dealers, historians, and anthropologists tend to blur the two categories, "fake" and "inauthentic" are logically different. As Joseph Margolis has pointed out, the Euro-American concept of faking or forgery involves an intention to deceive; inauthenticity does not. The question of authenticity/inauthenticity is always historical and contextual, a matter of decision and not of discovery." If a dealer claims that an African carving is a hundred years old and was used in rituals, we can employ various techniques to discover if this is really the case. Should it turn out to have been carved six months ago for sale on the art market, we can say that its age and use have been "faked," but we have not thereby decided that the piece itself is inauthentic.

Nevertheless, it is common practice to attack the authenticity of reproductions or even of original works simply on the basis that they are made for sale. Such works then fall into the category of either "ethnic art" or "tourist art." Ethnic art may be defined as artifacts made in traditional style, materials, and technique but intended for a market which is primarily made up of outsiders (Pueblo pottery, Navajo blan- kets). Thus, although ethnic art may be stylisti- cally authentic (traditional) because it is produced to be sold outside the society of origin, its authenticity is always suspect, especially since materials, techniques, or even style may be modified to save time or cost or to please purchasers. Although many critics, historians, and anthropologists have serious reservations about the authenticity of ethnic arts, they have nothing but scorn for so-called "tourist art," which may be defined as artifacts not only made for sale to outsiders but made in a style adapted to outsiders (sentimental "Plains Indian" paint- ings, naturalistic animal carvings from Alaska or Africa).12 Since the line between ethnic art and tourist art is easily crossed in practice, many



people lump everything made to be sold to outsiders under the pejorative, "tourist art." Typi- cal of the negative attitudes toward ethnic and tourist arts is Edmund Carpenter's rejection of Inuit carvings done since 1948 when a Cana- dian government agent encouraged the Inuit to carve naturalistic Polar animals and native subjects. Such art "is now a thing, an object, no longer an act, a ritual."113 He compares it to Michelangelo deciding to mass produce "de- based Christian altar pieces, suitably modified to meet Arab taste, to peddle on the wharfs of Venice."'14 Although such attacks on ethnic and tourist arts superficially look like criticism of the colonialist debasement of authentic native traditions, these European and American critics are themselves caught in a colonialist mind set. Their idea of authenticity is not merely an ethnocentric reflection of the modern discourse of Fine Art; it is also a piece of ideology, an unin- tended justification of a continuing exploitative power relation. So-called "primitive fakes," along with "tourist art," after all, are actually products made in response both to the Euro- American idea of Art and to the Euro-American (and Japanese) Art markets. It is no accident that Europeans did not discover that what they had called "primitive idols" were really "Primi- tive Art" until after European political and economic control were well established and the process of modernization and exploitation was irreversibly in place. As one traditional cultural practice after another has disappeared from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas under the powerful economic and cultural forces emanat- ing from the so-called "developed" world, Europeans and Americans have become more and more nostalgic for what they imagine was an "authentic" pre-conquest culture. This ideology of authenticity is based on three assumptions: 1) a false view of the nature of authenticity as tradition, 2) the myth of an unspoiled, pre-contact "primitive" or "traditional" culture, 3) the Art/craft distinction and its allied notions of the spirituality of the artistic vocation and the integrity of stylistic traditions.

1) The closer we look at the assumptions behind the Euro-American idea of authenticity as "tradition," the more suspect it becomes. At the heart of it are three notions: the notion of an unchanging traditional society, and based on that notion, the idea of "traditional origin" and

"traditional use." The notion that "traditional societies" are or were self-contained and unchanging ("without history" in Hegel's term) is simply false, as recent work on African, Pacific, and Native American history has shown. Sub- Saharan Africa, for example, was an area of enormous cultural diversity where there was constant exchange of goods and stylistic bor- rowing among indigenous peoples, especially after Islamic penetration following the eighth century and the arrival of Portuguese traders in the sixteenth. Today's carvers who make reproductions which incorporate stylistic features from various African groups or even from European Art traditions are not violating the practices of some mythical self-contained "traditional society" but are carrying on a process of continual cultural exchange.

The idea of "traditional origin" as a criterion of authenticity is that the maker works strictly within an inherited local style and technique and for strictly local ritual consumption. This image of "traditional origin" is not only false due to the constant cultural exchange just mentioned, but also because some artisans to whom it would be hard to deny the epithet "traditional" also made works for sale to outsiders, including Europeans, as the salt cellars and forks and spoons in Portuguese collections from as early as the seventeenth century attest. The anthropologist Paula Ben-Amos has argued for a direct line of descent leading from the ancient Benin carvers who worked in the Kings' compounds to the present day "tourist" carving workshops in Nigeria.15 Bennetta Jules-Rosette has described how the women potters of Lusaka learned their art during initiation and made ves- sels for ceremonial as well as domestic use, but when forced to migrate began making pots for sale.16 Moreover, the typical contemporary workshop turning out so-called "fakes" in Ghana is often run by carvers from a common rural background, some of whom have either been, or been trained by, so-called "traditional" carvers who worked all their lives within a village setting.

If the authenticity criterion of "traditional origin" is vitiated by ethnocentric prejudices, the criterion of "traditional use" is equally confused since there are carvers who have worked on both "tribal" commissions and on commissions for dealers, anthropologists, art historians, and mu-



seum curators. The anthropologist Adrian Ger- brands, for example, describes how, after much effort, he finally convinced a Pacific island carver named Talania to overcome his hesi- tancy to make a ceremonial mask for an out- sider. Talania was reluctant not only because the mask was a sacred ritual element, but also because the design and carving technique were a family secret. When the local Chief, who had been paying Talania in kind whenever a new carving was needed, heard about the anthropologist's success, he ordered Talania to carve two more masks which the Chief then sold to the anthropologist.'7 As you might expect, anthropologists and art historians who succeed in commissioning such masks or other ritual objects seldom call them "fakes" or "inauthentic," even though they pay for them and the objects have never been used in ritual!18 But the criterion of "traditional use" breaks down com- pletely when we learn that some indigenous groups have actually come to the same contemporary carving workshops that turn out so- called "fakes" to commission carving for use in local rituals.19

But surely, you may be saying, it is one thing to claim that skillfully carved "primitive fakes" may be considered authentic reproductions or variations, 'but it is quite another to claim authenticity for the kind of ethnic or tourist works sold in curio shops, airports, and now showing up in American shopping malls. I believe many of these items deserve the epithet "authentic" just as surely as other products of small-scale societies and so-called "emerging nations." As Bennetta Jules-Rosette has shown in her careful study of contemporary African workshops, "tourist art" is a crucial element in a complex system of symbolic and economic exchange. The fact that the European and Amer- ican consumers and middlemen participate with African traders and artists in setting the aesthetic standards of tourist art is no different from what goes on in the European and American Art world where critics, dealers, collectors, and curators play a similar role. Moreover, the artisans from small-scale societies who produce this art have their own aesthetic standards and take pride in their skill and innovation.

Tourist art contains a special form of expressive symbolism. It is at once a statement about the iden-

tity of the artists and a commentary on the audience for which it is produced. Through the use of visual metaphors, tourist art represents the emotions of its makers, the group identity of the artists, and a bridge between cultures. It possesses both decorative motifs and an undertone of social commentary.20

The error of many art historians and critics is to see these works purely in terms of their devia- tion from traditional stylistic norms and uses, rather than seeing them as a creative response to the realities of the present cultural and economic situation of these societies.21 As Graburn has said about contemporary Inuit carving, "this is tradition; it is as real to the people now as the spirits of skulls and amulets were to their ancestors one hundred years ago."22

2) The second assumption behind the ideology of authenticity that dominates the Primitive Art market is the idea that authentic artifacts should come from a world of the unspoiled, pre-contact "natives" who live in another time than our own.23 Perhaps the most vivid emblem of this Euro-American yearning for the pre-contact traditional society are the famous doctored photographs of American Indians by Edward Curtis, who not only traveled about with Indian costumes and wigs in his trunk but scratched out any telegraph poles or automobiles that strayed onto his negatives.24 Curtis's doctored photographs foreshadowed the late twentieth- century ethnographic films of native dance art and music whose subjects were asked to take off their Jimmy Cliff tee-shirts and Timex watches before the cameras started to roll. The same practice is followed in the typical contemporary museum display of traditional arts in which a Senufo mask or Tlingit hat, for example, is separated from its costume and context and isolated against a plain background. Even the more enlightened art museums, which now put up photographs of a mask being danced in a ritual, seldom show that these rituals occur in villages where the inhabitants wear Nikes, lis- ten to radios, learn English from a Peace Corps volunteer, and ride a bus to the regional clinic. Moreover, many art museums have de-histor- icized Primitive Art in another fashion, since it has been usual to exhibit it either in the same hall or adjacent to prehistoric, Egyptian, and pre-Columbian Arts, even though nearly everything from Africa and Oceania in American col-



lections dates from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If African carvers have been faking "danced Art," European intellectuals have been doing some faking of their own. But doctored photographs and ahistorical "Jewelry case" ex- hibits are minor instances of fakery compared to the concept of the unspoiled "primitives" whose cultures have been systematically reprocessed by anthropologists and art historians to exclude any signs of cultural mixing. As James Clifford puts it, the contemporary reality "of these cultures and artists is suppressed in the process of either constituting authentic, 'traditional' worlds or appreciating their products in the timeless category of 'Art.' "25

3) But the ideology of authenticity requires more than the idea of the unspoiled, pre- contact native; it requires the basic assumptions of the modem discourse of Fine Art. Obviously, the modern distinction between Art and craft is crucial to the elevation of ritual objects to high Art and the demotion of intentionally produced artifacts to the status of fakes or craft kitsch. Even the current Euro-American widening of the boundaries of Art to include many things formerly ranked as crafts, such as weaving or quilt making, has merely allowed the appropriation of parallel native textile arts into the Fine Art canon, along with their entry into the museum and the world of coffee table books.26 But there are two other assumptions of modern aesthetic discourse which specifically under- write the authenticity criterion of "tribal origin/ tribal use." These are: the idea of the artist's spiritual vocation and the idea of style as an integral tradition. According to this pair of ideas, true artists cannot express their vision or the spirit of their people if their work is con- taminated by either non-artistic motives or by foreign stylistic impulses. As soon as impure motives or foreign influences enter in, according to this view, the integrity of the stylistic tradition is broken, and the artist is no longer bringing to expression the pure Spirit of his/her people but is now working heteronomously.

Of course, there is a double standard present in these assumptions. First, it is assumed that Western artists have a primarily spiritual moti- vation and do not work for the market, or when they do, it is an aberration. In Europe and America, artists are taught early on that ideally they should serve only Art, and they are social-

ized to constantly negotiate an ambiguous relation to fame and money. In most small-scale societies, only a few artists who have migrated to the cities have learned this delicate European balancing which allows one to appear to oneself and others as motivated primarily by devotion to Art. As a result, the small workshops and cooperatives in Africa and elsewhere are more open and direct about their dependence on the market, and these become easy targets for American and European critics.

The second aspect of the double standard for judging the artisans of small-scale societies is that whereas "foreign" influences on European artists are not only admitted but celebrated, the acceptance of foreign influences by the artisans of "traditional" societies is taken as a sign that their works are inauthentic. The European artists' incorporation of the stylistic features of Japanese prints or of African sculpture, on the other hand, has been considered a mark of their imaginative openness and creative freedom. In the controversial MOMA exhibit of 1984 on "Primitivism in Modem Art," for example, modernists like Picasso were given credit for "discovering" Primitive Art and incorporating its expressive non-objectivity into their own work.27 The outstanding European or American artist is viewed as assimilating these outside ele- ments into an original and organically unified work of Art. But the African carver who experi- ments with mixing tribal styles in reproductions or who borrows from Western naturalism in so- called tourist art is dismissed as a mere crafts- man pandering to the commercial market.

Even the most sophisticated use of the assumptions of the modern discourse of Fine Art in an effort to salvage the "Art" in "Primitive Art" can fall into the ideological trap of positive ethnocentrism. This is, unfortunately, the case of Arthur Danto's argument in "Artifact and Art": that there is an absolute distinction between Art and artifact (or craft), which exists in so-called primitive societies whether they have the terminology for Art or not.28 Through an elaborate thought experiment contrasting two imaginary primitive societies which make baskets and pots that are virtually identical, Danto argues that what makes the baskets of the "Basket Folk" and the pots of the "Pot People" Art is the spiritual meaning invested in them, whereas the pots of the Basket Folk and



the baskets of the Pot People are merely useful and thus are artifacts. If the Basket Folk "had the word," Danto writes,

they would describe baskets as artworks, and their pots as artifacts. The baskets in any case belong to what Hegel has called Absolute Spirit: a realm of being which is that of art, religion and philosophy. The pots are merely part of what, with his genius for phrase, he spoke of as the Prose of the world.29

Danto's differentiation of Art and artifact or craft in terms of spiritual meaning vs. mere utility is no more adequate to the real practice of the arts in small-scale societies than the ideology of authenticity and, in fact, has a good deal in common with it. One of the reasons that the kinds of works which now fill the Primitive Art cases of our art museums used to be seen only in eth- nography museums was that anthropologists interpreted them primarily in terms of their religious and political functions. In a wonderful sleight of hand, Danto now derives the grounds for their being Art from this very religious/ political functioning, arguing that "their meta- phorical meanings may spring from their uses, absorbed into a system of beliefs and symbols that constitute a kind of philosophy."30 But isn't the point precisely that "beliefs and symbols that constitute a kind of philosophy" are the sort of thing we refer to as a religion or world view, and that in small-scale societies such beliefs are usually integrated with beliefs and symbols of political order and social structure? Since part of the problem with applying our concept of Art to small-scale societies is that they do not make the kinds of differentiations among Art, Religion, Politics, and Economics that we do, it is not clear why the kinds of meaning Danto discusses should be called Art meanings rather than religious or political meanings.31

There is also some rather specific empirical evidence that goes against Danto's claim that higher order meanings are the signs of an Art vs. craft distinction. In many small-scale societies, artifacts of the kind Danto describes as laden with symbolic meaning lose all interest and power outside their ritual functioning. If carvings were themselves the repositories of spirit, they would not need to be danced to have their power, nor would they so often be put in storage or even abandoned after use. For an

instance where native peoples themselves have understood the difference between what they regard as sacred meaning and power and what we regard as Art meanings, consider the case of the Zuni war gods, called Ahauuta. As James Clifford points out, the Zuni "vehemently object to the display of these figures (terrifying and of great sacred force) as 'art.'"32 So vehemently, in fact, that under the Native American Free- dom of Religion Act the Zuni blocked the sale of an Ahauuta at a prestigious auction house and have forced the Denver Art Museum to return its Ahauutas.

The spirituality which characterizes Art in the modem aesthetic discourse deriving from Ro- manticism and Idealism is of a different kind than the spirituality which clings to certain works by virtue of their religious function. In modem aesthetic discourse since the eighteenth century it is the artist-genius who generates meaning and power through the inspired cre- ation of a work which is a self-contained whole. Abrams has recently traced the beginnings of this sacralization of the creative act in which traditional theological terms were transferred di- rectly from God to Art, and he has also noted the rapidity with which Art became invested with a quasi-religious aura in the nineteenth century.33

Far from being a universal differentiating mark of Art from artifact or craft, this particular spiritualizing of Art could be seen as part of a more general process of secularization and spiritual reinvestment-a process in which Hegel no doubt played a role. With respect to small- scale societies, this has meant, in George Stock- ing's words, that "objects of 'material cultures- which in traditional contexts often had spiritual value-are respiritualized ... as aesthetic objects, at the same time that they are subjected to the processes of the world art market."34 In some ways the nineteenth-century missionaries who heaped up "primitive idols" and burned them showed greater respect for the integrity of the cultures they were attacking than the twentieth- century anthropologists, curators, and philosophers who think they are paying these same cultures a compliment by calling certain of their artifacts "Art."

My final objection to Danto's distinction between Art and artifact returns more specifically to the question of primitive "fakes" and the disparagement of ethnic and tourist arts. If



Danto were right about the distinction between Art and artifact and Art and craft, then the usual objections to primitive "fakes" and to ethnic and tourist arts would not only be justi- fied, they would be immeasurably strengthened. For Danto's conception picks up the notion of the artist as expressing the spirit of a people and intensifies it. Indeed, he has some very eloquent things to say about the power of Prim- itive Art. And he is certainly right in suggesting that the power of these works is not primarily in their 'visuality, and for that reason they may not really belong in our European and American Art museums which are devoted to a distancing visuality.35 Unfortunately, the other side of his view of the uniqueness of African Art (which he contrasts to Greek Art) comes close to reviv- ing the discredited discourse of "primitive vital- ity." Greek Art is said to find power in reason and embody it in the human form, but primitive art is described in terms of "the powers central to human life" which are embodied in "natural metaphors" like breasts and therefore do not need resemblance. "It is the powers that define the forms, and the gift of the artist is to grasp what the powers require in order to be given sensuous expression in a way that we humans can know them."34 This strikes me as a Hegel- ianized version of the idea of the unspoiled primitive who is in touch with the "powers" of sex and the spirit that rationalized Westerners have lost. Moreover, Danto's description of Art making in small-scale societies is more appro- priate to the modern idea of individual inspira- tion than to the kind of matter-of-fact making under communal constraints which has typified artifactual production in small-scale societies. Although motivated by more general theoretical claims than the collectors and art historians, Danto's position ends up supporting the nos- talgia for the unspoiled primitive who made Art without intending to and the denigration of the actual producers in today's small-scale societies who must negotiate their traditions in an inter- tribal and inter-cultural world as they struggle for economic survival.

The varied arts of small-scale societies have all the status and dignity that their own peoples have accorded them without needing us to "elevate" a selection of them to the level of "Art" and bestow the epithet "Artist" on those who make them while denigrating the majority of

their art production as "fakes" or "tourist art" and their makers as mere artisans. In the past, most small-scale societies regarded their material culture as neither Art nor craft in the modern European meaning of those terms. Yet these are also societies in transition, part of modem nation states. Since achieving independence, many of those nation states have given a quasi- official recognition to the Euro-American idea of Art and have continued to fund Art schools or museums patterned on European models even as they have tried to preserve their cultural heritage from disappearing into an insatiable world Art market. The European distinction between Art and craft and the spiritualization of Art as a high status consumer commodity has penetrated most of these states and inspired a number of artists to compete successfully in the international Art market. The presence of the Euro-American idea of Art and has also spawned the intense production of "fakes" and "tourist art. "37 Contrary to the widespread com- plaint that such "inauthentic" work is driving out genuine "Primitive Art" and drawing off the most talented producers, it is rather the processes of modernization, urbanization, and secularization which are rapidly destroying the context in which the traditional artifacts were produced. Some kinds of African carving, for example, are already becoming collectors' items for well-to-do Africans. African govern- ments are seeking carvers to reproduce them for national museums, and the curators of these museums often lament the disappearance of "traditional" works as if what were disappearing were not a religious-political material culture, but Art in the European sense. A good example are the Mbari houses of the Igbo, which only a few decades ago were made as religious gestures to redress a spiritual imbal- ance. They were not made by artists in the European sense, but by ordinary members of the community who underwent rituals of puri- fication and isolation. Constructed of mud, the houses contained rather naturalistic statues of gods and mortals of near life size, often brightly painted; but once finished, the houses and their statues were left to decay in the forest as sacri- fices. Today, they are hardly made anymore, except by government commission to profes- sional artists who come to the area and con- struct them of cement so that they will last! In a



book on Igbo arts, an African curator joins an American anthropologist in opining that

Perhaps building a permanent mban foresees the day when religious practices, including cyclical sacrifice, are no longer observed. At least a pale shadow of these formerly great artistic monuments will remain.38

Like the Medieval cathedrals of Europe, the Mbari houses have, for the urbanized African, already ceased to be part of the material culture of religious practice and become Art. Mean- while, I find it hard not to cheer on the enter- prising carvers of so-called "fakes" or "tourist art" who are simply responding to one set of Western prejudices about the "primitive" or "traditional" (exotic rites of blood and sex, timelessness, communalism) and another set about Art (romantic-idealist spirituality, uniqueness, stylistic integrity).

It would be interesting to compare the attitudes of Europeans and Americans toward "primitive fakes" and "tourist art" to the changing view of things that have traditionally been treated as "craft" or "folk art." The migration of quilts from the craft or folk art category to that of Fine Art, for example, owes much to feminism, but also reflects the general breakdown of the division between materials or techniques considered to belong to "craft" as opposed to Fine Art. The boom in the folk art market, on the other hand, has generated a series of conceptual problems not unlike those pertaining to "primitive fakes." The curator of a recent show of Latin American folk art ex- plained in a radio interview that he stays away from people who are considered or consider themselves folk artists and tries to find purely utilitarian objects which he can elevate to the status of Art. Thus, his prize discovery was brightly painted shoe shine boxes from Bogota where the shoe shine boys decorate genenc wooden shoe shine boxes to attract customers. Here again the European or American Art con- noisseur scorns the intentional effort to meet our art market demand, in order to bestow (and remain in control of) "authenticity." LARRY SHINER Philosophy Program Sangamon State University Springfield, Illinois 62794

1. These revisionist critics have also demonstrated that even anthropologists who spurned the myth of the "primitive" have employed a framework of objectification which allows the Other to speak only on our terms. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (Columbia University Press, 1983). James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century: Ethnogra- phy, Literature, and Art (Harvard University Press, 1988). Mariana Torgovnick has also shown important parallels between the myth of the primitive and the patriarchal idea of woman. Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (University of Chicago Press, 1990).

2. In addition to Clifford and Torgovnick mentioned above, see Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places (University of Chicago Press, 1989)7 Richard Anderson, Calliope's Sisters: A Comparative Study of Philosophies of Art (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1990).

3. Wolfgang Haberland, "Aesthetics in Native American Art," in Edwin L. Wade, ed., The Arts of the North Ameri- can Indian: Native Traditions in Evolution (New York: Hud- son Hills Press, 1986), p. 131.

4. Price, Primitive Art, p. 68. 5. Torgovnick, Gone Primitive, p. 83. Later, however, she

calls for "using African aesthetics to rethink the West's system of art production and circulation," p. 246.

6. Anderson, Calliope's Sisters, pp. 4-7 and 21-25. 7. Suzi Jones, "Art by Fiat: Dilemmas of Cross-cultural

Collecting," in John Michael Vlach and Simon J. Bronner, Folk Art and Artworlds (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1986), p. 244.

8. Henri Kamer's statement is typical: "an authentic sculpture is by definition one executed by an artist belonging to a traditional village and made for a ritual or other function and not for money." Cited in Michael Greenhalgh & Vincent Megaw, eds., Art in Society: Studies in Style, Culture and Aesthetics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), p. 67. This definition has become standard with many African traders as well as among European and American anthropologists and art collectors. As Christopher B. Stiener, who has studied the Art market in the Cote d'lvoire, says, "Influenced largely by a Western taxonomy of African art, traders classify the objects they sell into two broad categories: replicas (copie) and authentic (ancien). The first class of objects refers to contemporary workshop pieces carved for the export trade. The second class of objects refers to those that have been used or that are owned by people in villages." "The Trade in West African Art," African Arts 24:1 (1991): 40.

9. Among the best discussions of an actual reproduction workshop is Doran H. Ross and Raphael X. Reichert, "Modem Antiquities: A Study of a Kumase Workshop," in Doran H. Ross and Timothy F. Garrard, Akan Transforma- tions: Problems in Ghanian Art History (Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, U.C.L.A.), pp. 82-91. On the runners see Nicholas Leman, "Fake Masks," The Atlantic 260:5 (1987): 26-38.

10. Sidney Kasfir, "African Art and Authenticity: A Text With a Shadow," African Arts 25:2 (1992): 45.

11. Joseph Margolis, "Art, Forgery, and Authenticity," in Denis Dutton, ed., The Forger's Art: Forgely and the Philoso- phy of Art (University of California Press, 1983), pp. 153-171. See also J.C.H. King, "Tradition in Native American Art," in Wade, The Arts of the North American Indian, pp. 65-92.

12. Grabum's actually distinguishes six varieties of art



production in small-scale societies. One of the reasons it is so difficult to come up with a distinction between authentic and inauthentic Primitive Art is that the conditions of production are so varied as to defeat any large scale generaliza- tion. Nelson H.H. Graburn, "Introduction," in Ethnic and Tourist Arts: Cultural Expressions from the Fourth World (University of California Press, 1976).

13. Edmund Carpenter, "The Eskimo Artist," in Char- lotte M. Otten, ed., Anthropology and Art: Readings in Cross-Cultural Aesthetics, (University of Texas Press, 1971), p. 166.

14. Edmund Carpenter, "Introduction," in Stephen Guion Williams, In the Middle: The Eskimo Today (Boston: David R. Godine) unpaginated.

15. Paula Ben-Amos, "'A la Recherche du Temps Perdu': On Being an Ebony-Carver in Benin," in Graburn, Ethnic and Tourist Arts, pp. 320-333.

16. Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Messages of Tourist Art: An African Semiotic System in Comparative Perspective (New York: Plenum, 1984), pp. 45-46.

17. Gerbrands also tells of another workshop carving for outsiders run by the son of a deceased famous master carver. Adrian A. Gerbrands, "Talania and Nake, Master Carver and Apprentice: Two Woodcarvers from the Kilenge (Vestern New Britain)," in Michael Greenhalgh and Vin- cent Megaw, eds., Art in Society: Studies in Style, Culture and Aesthetics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), pp. 193-206.

18. As Graburn remarks, "Collectors or museum curators who reject items as too new or mere junk, often pay high prices for the same items later on." Ethnic and Tourist Arts, p. 14.

19. Jules-Rosette, Messages of Tourist Art, p. 38. 20. Jules-Rosette, Messages of Tourist Art, pp. 229-230. 21. Jules-Rosette, Messages of Tourist Art, p. 233. 22. Graburn, Ethnic and Tourist Arts, p. 13. The disdain

for ethnic and tourist arts is, of course, shared by many African or Native American artists who have become active participants in what is now an increasingly global Art world. Although some Native American artists eschew Indian themes and images altogether, others such as Fritz Scholder or Richard Glazer Danay use these images ironically and critically. Danay in particular has produced a marvelous series of works which does not attempt to por- tray some pristine state of Mohawk existence but grows out of his real experience as a Mohawk high girder steel worker, e.g., Mohawk Headdress, 1982. Understandably, Danay and other "Indian Modernists," as they are sometimes called, do not want to be relegated to an Art world ghetto as "Indian Artists." But their work along with ethnic and tourist arts forms a continuum. To bestow the honorific "Art" on some and dismiss the other as craft or kitsch is simply to buy into an ideology of the "Primitive" and of "Art" that it is time to dismantle.

23. Fabian, Time and the Other Fabian's point is that we have persistently treated so-called "primitives" as if they were not our contemporaries but dwelt in some primal time, as if they had no voices except when answering question-

naires we have designed to find out how things were before "contact." Even if such "unspoiled primitives" ever exis- ted, intercultural contact brings almost immediate changes, including systematic attempts to mislead the invader, and the appropriation of the invader's tools, materials, and forms.

24. Christopher Lyman, The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions: Photographs of Indians by Edward Curtis (New York: Pantheon, 1982).

25. Clifford, Predicament of Culture, p. 200. Of course, Europeans perform similar operations on the Middle Ages.

26. The arbitrariness of the shifting European boundaries for what is and is pot "Art" in small-scale societies or "developing" countries is tellingly illustrated by Christo- pher Steiner's study of the promotion of Baule slingshots to the status of Art by an Italian collector and a dealer in the late 1980s. Christopher B. Steiner, "The Trade in West Afri- can Art," African Arts 24 (1991): 41-42.

27. There was a lot of other ideological baggage carried by this exposition. See James Clifford, Predicament of Cul- ture, pp. 189-214 and Hal Foster, "The 'Primitive' Uncon- scious of Modem Art, or White Skin Black Masks," in his Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (Seattle: Bay Press, 1985).

28. Arthur C. Danto, "Artifact and Art," ART/artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections (New York: Center for African Art, 1989), p. 23.

29. Danto, "Artifact and'Art," p. 23. 30. Danto, "Artifact and Art," p. 28. 31. Although it would be an exaggeration to say that all

the artifacts from small-scale societies which we typically classify as Art have had religious functions, a great many of them do, and the European appropriation of them as Art has caused considerable pain and anger within the societies that view them religiously. See Edwin L. Wade's discussion of the problems created by the incursion of our Art category on some of the Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest in "Straddling the Cultural Fence," Ethnic and Tourist Arts, pp. 245-246.

32. Clifford, Predicament of Culture, p. 209. 33. M.H. Abrams, Doing Things with Texts: Essays in

Criticism and Critical Theory (New York: WW Norton, 1989).

34. George W Stocking, ed., Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 6.

35. Danto, "Artifact and Art," p. 32. 36. Danto, "Artifact and Art," p. 32. 37. For a discussion of the successful "international

artists" and the many varieties of "popular" or "urban" art see Susan Vogel, Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art (New York: Center for African Art, 1991). In some areas of Africa, small craft production employs up to 20% of the male population. Jules-Rosette, Messages of Tourist Art, p. 24.

38. Herbert M. Cole and Chike C. Anikor, Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos (Los Angeles: Museum of Cul- tural History, 1984), p. 106.


Article Contentsp. [225]p. 226p. 227p. 228p. 229p. 230p. 231p. 232p. 233p. 234

Issue Table of ContentsThe Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Spring, 1994), pp. 155-273Front MatterSeeing Double [pp. 155-167]Errata: Volume 50:1 [p. 167]Rethinking Hume's Standard of Taste [pp. 169-182]Objectivity and Expression in Thomas Reid's Aesthetics [pp. 183-191]Art Interpretation [pp. 193-206]Make-Believe and Fictional Reference [pp. 207-214]On Listening to Music [pp. 215-223]"Primitive Fakes," "Tourist Art," and the Ideology of Authenticity [pp. 225-234]DiscussionKivy on Auditors' Emotions [pp. 235-236]Armistice, but No Surrender: Davies on Kivy [pp. 236-237]The Persistence of Dogma in Aesthetics [pp. 237-239]Beyond the Aesthetic [pp. 239-241]

Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 243-245]Review: untitled [pp. 245-247]Review: untitled [pp. 247-249]Review: untitled [pp. 249-250]Review: untitled [pp. 250-252]Review: untitled [pp. 252-254]Review: untitled [pp. 254-255]Review: untitled [pp. 255-257]Review: untitled [pp. 257-259]Review: untitled [pp. 259-260]

Book NotesReview: untitled [pp. 261-262]Review: untitled [pp. 262-263]Review: untitled [pp. 263-264]Review: untitled [pp. 264-265]Review: untitled [pp. 265-266]Review: untitled [pp. 266-267]Book Note Authors [p. 267]

Books Received [pp. 269-271]Back Matter [pp. 273-273]

431169"primitive fakes," "tourist art," and the ideology of authenticity

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