Gauguin, Negrîn, and the Art of Anthropology: Reflections on the Construction of Art Worlds in a Costa Rican Port City By Russell Sharman

Sharman analyzes the works of Paul Gauguin and Negrîn (Ricardo Rodriguez-Cordoba) in this article. He writes that Gauguin’s paintings and projects were the result of internal disputes. He, like many at the time, disliked the white invasion of his home in French Polynesia and portrayed the effects of the invasion in his work. Although Negrîn shared Gauguin’s feelings of dislike for the white invasion, he painted scenes from what life was like before the invasion. Negrîn, painting scenes of early Puerto Limon, called this trying to “rescue the culture.”
The term “aesthetics” and its roots and implications are discussed at length. It originated from the Greek term aesthetica, which referred to the attachment of value to experience, and the objectification of that socially valued experience. Greek philosopher, Plato, thought, “aesthetics, relying as it does on the emotions, polluted the purity of intellectual reason.” As Plato’s attitude toward aesthetics spread, it was Kant that brought the term back into contemplation.
Sharman also addresses the issue of art versus craft. He sites many artists and craftsmen in Limon as saying that they are both the same. One sentence that stood out to me was, “[This] distinction between art and craft is more economic and political than aesthetic.”
From this article, I got an overall idea of how aesthetics and art are perceived in different societies. The ethnography of art can be studied from many angles. It had been studied from the wrong angle for too long; giving more importance to the actual object rather than the creator of the object. Art is being studied from the correct angle slowly but surely, informing the anthropology of race, gender, and political economy, and not merely a glorification of objects.