Tribal art
Encyclopedia

Tribal art is an umbrella term used to describe visual arts and material culture of indigenous peoples. Also known as Ethnographic art, or, controversially, Primitive Art, tribal arts have historically been collected by Western anthropologists, private collectors, and museums, particularly ethnographic and natural history museum
Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...

s. The term "primitive" is criticized as being Eurocentric and pejorative.

Description

Tribal art is often ceremonial or religious in nature. Typically originating in rural areas, tribal art refers to the subject and craftsmanship of artefacts from tribal cultures.

In museum collections, tribal art has three primary categories.
  • African art
    African art
    African art constitutes one of the most diverse legacies on earth. Though many casual observers tend to generalize "traditional" African art, the continent is full of people, societies, and civilizations, each with a unique visual special culture. The definition also includes the art of the African...

    , especially arts of Sub-Saharan Africa
    Sub-Saharan Africa
    Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...

  • Art of the Americas
  • Oceanic art, originating notably from Australia
    Australia
    Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

    , Melanesia
    Melanesia
    Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania extending from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji. The region comprises most of the islands immediately north and northeast of Australia...

    , New Zealand
    New Zealand
    New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

    , and Polynesia
    Polynesia
    Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...

    )


Collection of tribal arts has been historically been inspired by the Western myth of the "noble savage
Noble savage
The term noble savage , expresses the concept an idealized indigene, outsider , and refers to the literary stock character of the same...

", and lack of cultural context has been a challenge with the Western mainstream public's perception of tribal arts. In the 19th century, non-western art was not seen by mainstream Western art professional as being as art at all. The art world perception of tribal arts is becoming less paternalistic, as Indigenous and non-indigenous advocates have struggled for more objective scholarship of tribal art. Before Post-Modernism emerged in the 1960s, art critics approached tribal arts from a purely formalist
Formalism (art)
In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content...

 approach, that is, responding only to the visual elements of the work and disregarding historical context, symbolism, or the artist's intention.

Influence on Modernism

Major exhibitions of tribal arts in the late 19th through mid-20th centuries exposed the Western art world to non-Western art. Major exhibitions included the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

's 1935 Africa Negro Art and 1941 Indian Art of the United States. Exposure to tribal arts provide inspiration to many modern artists, notably Expressionists
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

, Cubists
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

, and Surrealists
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, notably Surrealist Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...

. Cubist painter, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

 stated that "primitive sculpture has never been surpassed."

See also

  • Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association
    Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association
    The Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association , was founded in 1988, by a group of independent antique tribal art dealers to form a professional association of dealers that would provide education for the public and set standards for the trade...

  • Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979
    Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979
    The Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 , also referred to as ARPA, is a federal law of the United States passed in 1979 and amended in 1988...

  • Australian aboriginal art
    Australian Aboriginal art
    Indigenous Australian art is art made by the Indigenous peoples of Australia and in collaborations between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians . It includes works in a wide range of media including painting on leaves, wood carving, rock carving, sculpture, ceremonial clothing and sandpainting...

  • Folk art
    Folk art
    Folk art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic....

  • John Young Museum of Art
    John Young Museum of Art
    The John Young Museum of Art is located on the campus of the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Krauss Hall at 2500 Dole StreetHonolulu, HI 96822.The museum consists of two galleries―one of Asian art and one of tribal art...

    , Honolulu, including a tribal art gallery
  • List of indigenous peoples
  • Musée du quai Branly
    Musée du quai Branly
    thumb|225px|Musée du quai BranlyThe Musée du quai Branly , known in English as the Quai Branly Museum, nicknamed MQB, is a museum in Paris, France that features indigenous art, cultures and civilizations from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. The museum is located at 37, quai Branly -...

     in Paris
  • Museum of Primitive Art
    Museum of Primitive Art
    The Museum of Primitive Art, is a now defunct museum devoted to the arts of the indigenous cultures of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas as well as the early civilizations of Europe and Asia. It was founded in 1954 by Nelson Rockefeller, who donated his own collection of Tribal art. The museum...

  • Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
    Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
    The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act , Pub. L. 101-601, 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq., 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law passed on 16 November 1990 requiring federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funding to return Native American "cultural items" to...

  • Old media
    Old media
    The Old Media or Legacy Media are traditional means of communication and expression that have existed since before the advent of the new medium of the Internet...

  • The Tribal Eye
    The Tribal Eye
    The Tribal Eye is a seven-part BBC documentary series on the subject of Tribal art, written and presented by David Attenborough. It was first transmitted in 1975.- 1. "Behind the Mask" :...

    , a 1975 British television David Attenborough
    David Attenborough
    Sir David Frederick Attenborough OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, FZS, FSA is a British broadcaster and naturalist. His career as the face and voice of natural history programmes has endured for more than 50 years...

     documentary

Further reading

  • Edmund Snow Carpenter
    Edmund Snow Carpenter
    Edmund "Ted" Snow Carpenter was an anthropologist best known for his work on tribal art and visual media.-Early life:...

    , The Tribal Terror of Self-Awareness. In Paul Hockings (editor), Principles of Visual Anthropology, 1975, pages 451–461.
  • Dennis Dutton, Tribal Art and Artefact. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 51(1):13–21, Winter 1993.
  • Dennis Dutton, Mythologies of Tribal Art. African Arts, 28(3):32–43, Summer 1995.

External links

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