| Description |
As a discipline, art history developed categories of analysis and interpretation of the artistic object that have remained valid to the present day. Anthropology, as a parallel social science, also developed on its own strategies to approach a similar material culture, mainly from the non-Western world. With the latest evolution of each discipline and the interests in each other's fields, art history and anthropology have approached similar problems, sharing more and more scenarios of knowledge, diversifying research on art and establishing new interactions: anthropologists studying the western artistic field, art historians analyzing non-Western cultures, artists working as ethnographers or art historians using anthropological tools. Within this dynamic, it is crucial to understand anthropological thought, its history, its treatment of the work of art and its main differences with art history.
The seminar seeks to understand and trace the history of these interactions, through a detailed reading of seminal works by Claude Levi-Strauss, Philippe Descola, Aby Warburg, Ian Hodder and Alfred Gell. It is expected that through the seminar discussion, students will be able to recognize key concepts of anthropology, as well as theoretical reflections that can be expanded on selected objects of study. The seminar is aimed at those students interested in the study and deepening of non-Western art, as well as those who wish to learn and develop skills in the anthropological study of the artistic field of the western world.
The seminar will be conducted in English, although written assignments, presentations and class participation can also be made in German. For successful course completion, constant reading and preparation of the texts provided is expected. In accordance with Institute guidelines, students may be absent twice.
Basic bibliography
Belting, Hans. An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011
Claude Levi-Strauss. The Way of the Masks. Washington University of Washington Press, 1988
Descola, Philippe. Les formes du visible. Paris : Seuil, 2021
Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency. Oxford, oxford University Press, 1998
Hodder, Ian. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Wild thought: a new translation of La pensée sauvage. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 2021
Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. Beyond the Milky Way: hallucinatory imagery of the Tukano Indians. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publ., 1978
Westermann, Märiet. Anthropologies of Art, Yale University Press. 2005
Warburg, Aby. “A Lecture on Serpent Ritual”. in Journal of the Warburg Institute, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Apr., 1939), pp. 277-292 |
User:
Öffentlicher Bereich
Support