Art and Anthropology by Raymond Firth

Firth states the myriad of ways in which art has been expressed and contemplated in this essay. He says that although anthropologists give particular importance to the formal qualities of a piece of art (whether a sculpture or a piece of music), “even the simplest naming of an object—as mask, or anthropomorphic figure, or funeral song—indicates an awareness of a social, ritual, and economic matrix in which the object has been produced (pg.121).”
Modern architects or scientists claim that the construction of a building, and the discoveries using scientific theory are all really art. However, Firth attempts to make a clear distinction by stating that craft is technical skill that has been applied to useful ends, whereas “art” is predominantly non-utilitarian. In many societies, the artist and the craftsman are practically the same thing. The title of “craftsman” depends on his creation’s level of social use. There is a tendency to think of art as only consisting of man-made objects, and created by man. While comparing man-made “art” with natural aesthetic patterns and occurrences, Firth makes a point of defining “incipient art.” He states that although patterns such as forms in snow crystals, and the songs of birds occur naturally, they are converted (whether consciously or unconsciously) into art by human recognition.
Although he offers different examples of art and different societies’ interpretation of art such as the Tikopia and the cattle-keeping Ahir of Bihar, he also presents the reader with some pros of Western influence. “Industrial society has not only offered a new market for indigenous art work, it has also given new opportunities for artistic enterprise (pg.131).”
Firth questions the motivations of exotic art, and where the tensions in the pieces arise. Do the tensions arise from personal woes and wishes or from the political system as a whole? The entire essay forced me to think about so-called exotic art from different angles, as opposed to the well-known angles that are posed to us by the West. It was a great contextual introduction to the anthropology of the arts.