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Becoming Art: Exploring Cross-CulturalCategoriesElizabeth Burns Coleman aa Schools of English, Communications and Performance Studiesand Philosophy and Bioethics, Monash University,Published online: 12 Mar 2009.

To cite this article: Elizabeth Burns Coleman (2009): Becoming Art: Exploring Cross-CulturalCategories, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 10:1, 50-52

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Book Reviews

Becoming Art: Exploring Cross-Cultural Categories

HOWARD MORPHY

Sydney, University of New South Wales Press, 2008

xv�233 pp., ill., bibliography, index, ISBN: 978-1-92141-012-3, $44.95 (paper)

Howard Morphy is indisputably an intellectual leader in the anthropology of art. For

over 40 years he has been engaged in debates about aesthetics as a cross-cultural

concept against others in his own discipline, as well as in the promotion of Aboriginal

art as ‘art’. And he has ‘won’ (along with others). Major galleries now hold extensive

collections of Aboriginal art and exhibit Aboriginal artists. Yet, to some extent, this

win has been pragmatic rather than conceptual as a result of dogmas about the

‘otherness’ of Indigenous societies and the sense that their art is not ‘art in the sense

we understand it’. Although accepted as art, the history of Aboriginal paintings

remains largely absent from ‘Australian art history’. This book addresses questions

about how anthropologists and other theorists should conceptualise a cross-cultural

theory of art, how we should understand the historical process of Aboriginal art’s

acceptance as art and how we may move beyond a Western essentialised appreciation

of Aboriginal art as ‘timeless ethnographic artefact’ through the inclusion of it within

discourses of art history.

The book begins by discussing the limitations of the frameworks used within art

history and anthropology, both as explanation of why they have failed to recognise

Aboriginal art as art and as a way of opening up questions about what kind of

conceptual tools are required to overcome these limitations. Morphy is an aesthetic

realist; he thinks a ‘family resemblance concept’ of art should be accepted within

anthropological debates and argues that the institutional account of fine art can only

be a subset of a broader cross-cultural account. While denying that art has an essence,

Morphy argues that some objects properly belong in an art gallery rather than being

‘metamorphosed’ or deemed to be art from within the arts institution. This sets his

theory apart from other recent accounts of Aboriginal fine art (such as Fred Myer’s

2002 Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal Fine Art, which is based on an

institutional account of art’s place within the gallery). In one respect, the book is ill-

named because an Aboriginal artwork is not an object that has become art through a

process of institutional acceptance; the institutional acceptance is, Morphy thinks,

ISSN 1444-2213 (print)/ISSN 1740-9314 (online)/09/010050-17

DOI: 10.1080/14442210802644817

The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology

Vol. 10, No. 1, March 2009, pp. 50�66

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rightfully made on the basis of the aesthetic properties of the objects. What is called

‘fine art’ in a gallery context overlaps with the recognition that certain objects are

aesthetic exemplars.

Although not a new account, this is a genuine contribution to debates about the

question of how art may be understood cross-culturally because there is an important

difference between family resemblance theories, the highly influential institutional

theories and anthropological positions that deny that Aboriginal art, or ‘primitive art’,

is art. Both institutional theories and anthropological positions that deny primitive

art this status in effect argue (or assume) that art has an essence. Within an

institutional account, what makes all art ‘art’ is not a quality that can be observed, or

an effect (such as symbolic communication or aesthetic properties), but a process of

acceptance by the institution. Moreover, the Indigenous producer is not seen as an

agent on this account; their work is deemed to be art by others. The anthropological

position that primitive art cannot be ‘art’ relies on turning one or more features or

characteristics of art into necessary conditions for its definition. Both accounts raise

ethical concerns about whether the display of Indigenous art in a gallery is a form of

cultural appropriation that changes the meaning or status of the object. The ‘family

resemblance’ theorist is not obliged to say that there are no criteria for something to

be art, but that these criteria are generally not understood as necessary conditions.

The criteria Morphy uses to establish his case are based largely on the agency of

Yolngu people and the complex relationship between form and iconicity in

Aboriginal art.

Section one of the book presents a two-edged sword; it forms part of an argument

that Aboriginal art is properly called art on its own terms by stressing Yolngu people’s

approaches to their art. However, it is also an answer to debates over whether the

inclusion of Indigenous art in a gallery constitutes appropriation. Morphy’s answer is

‘no*it is not’, at least not from a Yolngu perspective. One purpose of art for the

Yolngu has been a means of opening up cross-cultural dialogue and understanding;

first with the Macassans and then with Europeans. That new works may be intended

for exhibition in a gallery does not change the nature of the art.

The second section addresses Morphy’s claim that the form of Yolngu painting is

expressive of an intellectual picture of the world that concerns the relationship

between the visible and invisible, as well as condensing complex relationships

between things such as social groups, the seasonal cycle and fresh and salt water. This

form involves not only how they interpret their art, but the art of other groups, such

as Abelam art from Papua New Guinea. Morphy then explores what art history may

look like from a Yolngu perspective. The absence of Aboriginal art from art history,

Morphy suggests, is because art history is, in part, informed by an ideological concern

with ‘the artist and their work’. A Yolngu art history, in contrast, would efface this

emphasis on individual creativity, but introduce a new ideology because of the kind

of role art plays in Yolngu society. Yet, there are areas of similarity in which these

projects may also overlap.

The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 51

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This is a book with many agendas and, correspondingly, it is a book that is difficult

to read. In it we can see Morphy drawing together numerous debates within

anthropology and art history, reflecting on the nature of the disciplines at a meta-

level, providing a history of Yolngu uses for their art and engaging in the analysis of

form and expressive meaning. At times Morphy struggles with managing these

various narrative strands and, as a result, his argument loses clarity. At times,

perhaps, he assumes too much knowledge of his reader. Throughout, we also see him

reflecting on 40 years of experience in this realm. This is not an easily accessible or

introductory text, but it is a text that richly rewards rereading.

Reference

Myers, Fred R. (2002) Painting culture: the making of an aboriginal high art, Duke University Press,

Durbam and London.

ELIZABETH BURNS COLEMAN

Schools of English, Communications and Performance Studies

and Philosophy and Bioethics

Monash University

# 2009 Elizabeth Burns Coleman

Multiculturalism in the New Japan: Crossing the Boundaries WithinNELSON H. GRABURN, JOHN ERTL and R. KENJI TIERNEY (Eds)

New York and Oxford, Berghahn, 2008

ix�252 pp., ISBN: 978-1-84545-226-1, $85.00 (hardback)

‘For many readers the notion of ‘‘Japanese multiculturalism’’ may ring as an

oxymoron,’ states this book’s introduction (p. 3). This was certainly true in the 1970s

and 1980s, when in almost all the anthropological literature ‘Japan’ was assumed to

comprise only those of Japanese ethnicity born in Japan. However, this is clearly no

longer the case, with a bookshelf of volumes published over the past 10 years on

different aspects of Japanese multiculturalism and, indeed, at least two new edited

volumes on this topic published this year alone. Multiculturalism rivals popular

culture as one of the major themes in the anthropology of Japan today.

The different chapters of this volume are noteworthy for their breadth in

portraying the diverse character of contemporary multiculturalism in Japan.

Takezawa, in Chapter 1, depicts how the Hanshin earthquake of 1995 ushered in

an era of multiculturalism in Kobe as Japanese and foreigners became newly aware of

one another. Hamada, in Chapter 2, focuses on foreign executives, particularly

Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn, and how these individuals helped change Japanese

corporate governance and also alter the language of business, which in some large

corporations has shifted to English. Burgess, in Chapter 3, writes of international

52 Book Reviews

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