HUMANITY'S TRYST IN DECIPHERING MARRIAGES FROM MYTHOLOGY: BRAIDING LITERATURE AND ART

Studying Anthropology of Art has been a matter of long-term qualitative research studied under Cultural Anthropology. Understanding Anthropology of Art is therefore something which involves transcending over the regimented boundaries of culture and art. Entering this complex process of interpreting anthropological aspects, we delved deep into the context and examination of Indian art and iconography. Our heritage has evidently focused very strongly on the meaningfulness of art to society, interpreting human cognition into a concrete order. The depiction of the divine union of Shiva-Parvati, is thematically represented extensively in Indian sculpture art. Regrettably, this very fascinating matter did not receive a very comprehensive consideration so far. Our purpose for undertaking this analysis is to reckon wisdom of the extant of incorporating mythological culture and rituals into present human society, diverse expressions of art, associated with different age and time period, all with a single awe-inspiring theme- The Marriage of Shiva and Parvati. Thereafter, keeping in mind the textual references available, we have kept ourselves restricted to the study, strictly coinciding with the theme depicted in Indian sculpture. Indian art has an immense affinity towards mythology and depiction of the events in a cosmic scale. Indian temple sculpture is a celebration of the divine ceremonies. Doing this, we find relevant textual interpretations and references from Kalidas’ Kumarasambhava, an epic recounting the events leading to the ‘Kalyanasundara’- the iconographical depiction of the wedding rites of Shiva and Parvati and the birth of Kartika, making the art study an extension of literary apotheosis. KEYWORDS: Anthropology of Art, Cultural Anthropology, Indian Art and Sculpture, Kumarsambhava

Style and Meaning: Essays on the Anthropology of Art, Anthony Forge (ed. Alison Clark and Nicholas Thomas) (2017)

Review of: Style and Meaning: Essays on the Anthropology of Art, Anthony Forge (ed. Alison Clark and Nicholas Thomas) (2017) Leiden: Sidestone Press, 303 pp., ISBN 978 9 08890 446 2 (pbk), €39.95

Becoming traditional: Contemporary san art and the production of (non-) knowledge

The contribution of arts for development has recently received a great deal of attention from international donors ad organizations. The anthropology of art, however, has participated in a limited way in these debates. Borrowing theoretical tools from the socio-anthropology of development, this paper questions the politics of knowledge involved in the implementation of art projects in postcolonial context. Drawing on ethnographical research in Botswana on an art project opened by a NGO for the San people, it describes the ways areas of knowledge and non-knowledge have been attributed. It shows that the conceptions of knowledge at stake in the making of contemporary San art indirectly reproduce a Great Divide between modernity and tradition, which has direct impacts on the ways the practice is appropriated by local actors.

Autoethnographic (D)escriptions: performance in dialogue with anthropological research approaches

ABSTRACT The goal of this article is to develop the notion of sensory autoethnographic (d)escription to experience possibilities of making the scene present through writing. The article draws on anthropology of art and performance studies to analyze three poetic writings and the mediated senses based on the experience of seeing the shows Caprichosa voz que vem do pensamento, by Aderbal Freire Filho, Maria Alice Poppe and Tato Taborda, Casa de especiarias, by Terpsí Teatro de Dança, directed by Carlota Albuquerque, and a dance video by the dancer Marcela Reichelt. It is concluded that autoethnographic (d)escription as a writing genre is a means of making the scene present and illustrates new perspectives in which the personal experience is inscribed.

Reflexivity and Self-Referentiality in Image

This paper presents an analysis of ‘image-within-image’ in Panel VII, Hieroglyphic Stairway 2, Structure 33 of the ancient Maya city of Yaxchilan, considering the position it occupies in the set of panels and its integration in the architectural setting. It will also examine the narrative registered in the embedded text and the subject of both text and image. It will argue that the recursive device of ‘image-within-image’ in the Panel extends to the totality of the staircase with the other twelve that compose it, and to the ritual activity celebrated on it. The analysis will provide an opportunity to explore reflexivity and self-referentiality and their implications for insights on ritual and personhood among Late Classic Maya. To do this, I will build on anthropology of art approach and its notion that visual devices may elicit ontological conceptions.

The Anthropology of Art, After the End of Art: Contesting the Art-Culture System

We focus on the anthropology of art from the mid-1980s to the present, a period of disturbance and significant transformation in the field of anthropology. The field can be understood to be responding to the destabilization of the category of “art” itself. Inaugural moments lie in the reaction to the Museum of Modern Art's 1984 exhibition “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art, the increasing crisis of representation, the influence of “postmodernism,” and the rising tide of decolonization and globalization, marked by the 1984 Te Maori exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Changes involve boundaries being negotiated, violated, and refigured, and not simply the boundaries between the so-called “West” and “the rest” but also those of “high” and “low,” leading to a re-evaluation of public culture. In this review, we pursue the influence of changing theories of art and engagements with what had been noncanonical art in the mainstream art world, tracing multiple intersections between art and anthropology in the contemporary moment.

Chwasty i ruiny. O związkach krajobrazu i pamięci w projekcie Chwasty Karoliny Grzywnowicz

The article describes Karolina Grzywnowicz’s Chwasty (Weeds) project. In order to provoke the recipients to reflect on the life of the resettled people, the artist cut out a piece of the Bieszczady meadow and transferred it to Warsaw, where the installation was accidentally mowed. Attempting to answer the question why Weeds were destroyed, we examine how accurate the artist’s recognition is that the Bieszczady landscape is a carrier of memory of the resettled people, and then we prove that the part of the meadow, which in the Bieszczady co-created the keenly practiced landscape, is alienated and transformed into a commodity, and thus it loses its culture-forming functions. The project and the concept of landscape closely related to it are analysed from two complementary perspectives: field experience and anthropology of art.