Primitive Art

In Ellen Dissanayake's book What Is Art For she discusses some reasons why primitive art is hard to define because in primitive cultures “art” is indistinguishable from things used in daily life or for a practical purpose. Many artifacts found are given lots of artistic merit by people today, but when these artifacts were created they were made for a specific purpose. This does not mean that there was no art in primitive cultures. Ellen goes on to explain how animals and children have an aesthetic taste and are able to create art. While their art is very simple and not complex it is made from expression. Even in the tools of early man art can be found. While an arrow or spear head may not be considered art itself, the symmetry and preside choice of material lead one to believe that there may have been some sort of early art thought while creating tools.
In Robert Layton’s The Anthropology of Art explains that it is hard to discuss primitive art because Western societies try to explain what art is through their own experiences. Primitive art belongs to its culture and society. It is removed from the Western world and was created for some function of that society in that specific time. Also the term primitive implies a society uncultured. This makes the term “primitive art” an oxymoron statement. If a society has art then it also must have some sort of culture. Lastly it is almost impossible to really know why someone created a piece of art. Anthropologists are still learning about ancient cultures and the significance of many of their art forms is still vexing.
I agree with both authors. Western society often places artistic value on artifacts that were taken out of context. We use our own knowledge and impart a piece of ourselves on something old, making it art. But that does not mean that the item was created with art in mind. Only by taking an artifact at face value and keeping it in context can one determine whether or not it is actually a piece of art. And even this is often very hard to do. Like in The Anthropology of Art we are still learning about ancient cultures. Keeping an artifact in context with its time and society is a challenge in of itself.

Picture 1: Painting done by Congo the Chimpanzee en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_(chimpanzee)

Picture 2: Petroglyphs in Utah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroglyph