1. The Arts

2. Art is an integral part of religious, social and political life
What is art?
Art is an integral part of religious, social and political life
It expresses and evokes both feelings and ideas in a variety of different ways—drawing, painting, carving, weaving, body decoration, music, dance, and story.
Art excites the senses and produces feelings of pleasure, awe, repulsion, and sometimes fear. It communicates to the observer.

3. Body Decoration and Adornment
Decorations can be both temporary (paint, feathers, jewelry) and permanent (scars, tattoos, changes in the shape of a body part)
Forms of decoration depend on cultural traditions.
Pierced noses of women in India
Elongated necks of the Mangebetu in Central Africa
Tattooing of men and women in North America
Body painting of the Caduveo of South America

4. Body Decoration and Adornment…cont’d
Decorations can sometimes be used to delineate social position, rank, sex, occupation, identity, religion within a society, and social declaration.
Symbolic halo on king’s head, scarlet hunting jacket of the English gentlemen, eagle feathers of Native Americans, gold-embroidered jacket of the Indian rajah—represents high status.

5. Top: Karo families in Africa
Bottom left: Karo man ready for ceremony
Bottom right: african man’s headpiece

6. Lip Plate After Lip Plate Before Also called Labrets
Found in tribes in Africa and South America (ex: Sara People & Mursi People)
Used to show either economical or social importance to the tribes and their members
Some are used as desired
Lip Plate Before
Lip Plate After

7. Visual Arts
Materials can be limited in a cultural society. Some used include stone, wood, bones, clay, sand, shells, horns, tusks, gold, and copper.
Artistic differences…
Egalitarian society- repetition of simple elements, more empty space, symmetrical design, unenclosed figures.
Stratified societies- integration of unlike elements, little empty space, asymmetrical design, enclosed figures.
Kalamkari cloth from
India (Stratified society)
Lakota skin bag from
N. America (Egalitarian
Society)

8. Music
Music and instruments vary widely in style from society to society
Studies made by music theorists
Alan Lomax and co-researchers—theory that music styles vary with cultural complexity and discovery of a relationship between polyphony
Barbara Ayres—suggested that the importance of regular rhythm in the music of a culture is related to the rhythm’s acquired reward value (feelings of security or relaxation).

9. Dance
Similar to art and song, dance styles also seem to reflect social complexity.
Ex: less complex societies—everyone participates in dances in the same way, as in the Huli of New Guinea. More complex societies—leading and minor roles in dances, as in a Japanese Geisha show.

10. Folklore
Broad category compromising all the myths, legends, folktales, ballads, riddles, proverbs, and superstitions of a cultural group.
Transmitted orally and also written. It is constantly created by an social group that has shared experiences.
Folklore contains various themes…some anthropologists have identified basic themes, including Clyde Kluckhohn—five themes suggested: catastrophe, monster slaying, incest, sibling rivalry, and castration.
Reflects the feelings, needs, and conflicts that people acquire as a result of growing up in the culture.

11. Art today... Art is constantly changing and effecting today’s world.
With the decline of many indigenous groups, many areas have lost some of their artistic traditions.
The selling of arts and crafts has become large in today’s society