• Anderson, Richard L. - American Muse : Anthropological Excursions Into Art
• Holm, Bill - Northwest Coast Indian Art
• Dewey, John - Art as Experience
• Pinney, Christopher (ed.), Beyond aesthetics : art and the technologies of enchantment
• Plattner, Stuart - High Art Down Home
• Price, Sally - Primitive Art in Civilized Places

Available as PDF files and as a hard copy to be put either in Clemons or Brooks Hall:

• A short selection from Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment.
  Download .PDF file - part 1.
  Download .PDF file - part 2.
  

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  Download .PDF file - part 3.
  This third installment is taken from another course given on aesthetics. It concerns the sublime. Read this file before Part 2. Pay especial attention to the introduction and to the section of the sublime in nature.

  Edmund Burke on the sublime

  Four Examples of the American Sublime

• A selection from Alfred Gell's Art and Agency (to go with Beyond Aesthetics).
  Download .PDF file - Ch. 1.
  
  

This course is aimed at upper level undergraduates and graduate students. It will be run as a discussion group and as a seminar, not as a lecture. We will go through the readings and discuss each in turn.

The first readings will be the Kant followed by the John Dewey. These two will serve to block out Western notions of Art and Aesthetics. After these readings we will move into the domain of anthropology. We will cover a number of topics starting with the traditional view of art within the anthropology. The reading here will be Franz Boas' classic, Primitive Art.

Each student will be responsible for two projects. The first will be a presentation on the aesthetics of one non-Western (typically anthropological) subject. The other topic will be to investigate an aspect of common aesthetics in our own culture. The latter could, but not necessarily, entail some actual ethnographic field research. Each project will be presented orally and then written up. The course grade will be determined by performance on the presentation and write-up and on class participation. I want to emphasize here the importance of the latter.

Extended Outline

We will devote full class time to the Kant followed by the Dewey. We should be through with them either the end of next week or the week following. Then:

• David MacDougall's Doon School Chronicles. This is a two hour film that we will see outside of class. I will arrange for a Saturday showing - 3rd February. We will then discuss the film the following Monday (if we are through with the Dewey). Below is an article MacDougall wrote about the film. I have put on reserve a copy of the journal (Visual Anthropological Review) where it appears. He is here interested in the social aesthetics of the school. Please read the article before you see the film.
  
  
  • Doon School Aesthetics 1
  • Doon School Aesthetics 2
  • Bibliography for the Doon School article

Starting in here one class each week will be devoted to student presentations. Each student will give two presentations, a short one and a long one. They will both have to do with the a single project, where the first presentation will be a preliminary statement. It is essential that each one of you speak to me about what you want to do, and the sooner you get started the better. Although I have no regular office hours, appointments can be arranged for pretty much any time.

• We read the Preface and the Introduction to Franz Boas, Primitive Art. and then examine fairly recent discussions of N.W. coast Native American art in the Holm. North West art is an excellent place to start considering where anthropology fits in with art and aesthetics.
• Alfred Gell, Art and Agency, a recent book developing a theory of art from an anthropological perspective. It has gained a fair amount of attention since its publication. However, it is so involuted that it is painful to read, unless you are prepared to spend a lot of time following his arguments about Melanesian art. We will read the first chapter to the book (a PDF file above) and go through essays in Beyond Aesthetics which is dedicated to Gell's memory.
• Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places, which addresses the complex and ambiguous place non-Western art has in the West. Along with the book we will see a film, In and Out of Africa about the movement of African art ("wood") from Africa to the galleries of Los Angeles.
• Stuart Plattner, High Art Down Home, brings us back to our world and the art scene of a mid sized American community (St. Louis, Missouri). This is a small piece of exceedingly interesting ethnography of an Art World.
• We end with Richard Anderson's American Muse, an interesting discussion of how aesthetics and art play out in the world of everyday life. It brings us back to John Dewey.

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