Style, Cultural Values and Appropriation: Three Paradigms in the History of the Anthropology of Art in the West
Wilfried Van Damme
Taking Fang sculpture of West Equatorial Africa as a case study, this paper discusses three approaches or paradigms in the Western anthropology of art during the last half century. The first of these consists of stylistic analysis, emphasizing the sculptural object and its morphological properties. This quantitative approach aimed at distinguishing sculptural styles and substyles in order to map the art production of the Fang geographically. It has been suggested that such a classificatory approach has colonial roots in that it would serve the purposes of surveillance and control. The second, qualitative approach focused not on form but on meaning. On the basis of local research, anthropologists presented Fang anthropomorphic sculpture as the embodiment of the Fang sociocultural value system. This approach, based on fieldwork and higlighting a culture's unique values and ways of thinking, may be considered classical cultural anthropology along the lines of the school that developed out of Franz Boas's teachings in the US, in itself rooted in nineteenth-century Germany. Finally, attention is paid to an approach that might be termed postcolonial. Here researchers investigated the way in which Western artists, collectors, and museums have dealt with Fang sculptures as these arrived in Europe from the end of the nineteenth-century onwards. Emphasis is placed on the so-called appropriation of these objects, which included their relabelling as “works of art” and their commodification in the international art market.
Key words: Western anthropology of art, history, Fang sculpture in Africa
[2] 对世界艺术研究的介绍，参见World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches （《世界艺术研究：概念与方法探讨》），ed. Kitty Zijlmans and Wilfried van Damme（Amsterdam: Valiz, 2008）。The Anthropology of Art: A Reader（《艺术人类学读本》）ed. Howard Morphy and Morgan Perkins（London: Blackwell,2006）对二十世纪西方艺术人类学的研究提供了概观。当代西方艺术人类学的更多研究（注意，像西方人类学传统上所研究的当代艺术的文化生产等此类话题在国际艺术界很是流行），参见Exploring World Art（《探索世界艺术》）， ed. Eric Venbrux, Pambrux Rosi, and Robert Welsch （Long Grove,IL: Waveland Press,2006）。
[3] 对第一种范式的讨论基于路易斯？佩鲁瓦的著作 La statuaire fa?, （Gabon Paris :ORSTOM, 1972）以及他最近出版的Visions of Africa: Fang（《非洲景观：芳族》）（Milan: 5 Continents Press, 2006）。对第二种范式的分析主要依据费尔南德斯的论文“Principles of Opposition and Vitality in Fang”《芳族美学中的相对原则与生命活力》，Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism （《美学与艺术批评月刊》）25.1（1966）：53-64,以及他的著作Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa（《Bwiti:非洲宗教想像的民族志》）（Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982）。第三种范式关注电影Fang: An Epic Journey（《芳族：一次史诗性的旅行》），苏珊·M.沃格尔编剧、导演，（Prince Street Pictures Inc., New York, 2002）。更多细节及参考文献，参见Wilfried van Damme, Cultural Encounters: Western Scholarship and Fang Statuary from Equatorial Africa （《文化遭遇：西方学者与赤道非洲的芳族雕像》）（Tilburg: Tilburg University, 2011），本文即基于此书写成。
