I read this  – ‘The scourge of artistic aparthied’

over breakfast today, I may be a bit over emotional today but it nearly made me cry, then it made me filled with rage.

Then I found it online, read the comments and got even angrier and decided a blog was in order.

Our culture does value white western art much more than anything else. Our culture is ’superior’ ; you just have to look at the trite wording of ‘ethnic’ and ‘native’ etc etc and the dumbing down of non white western art as trinkets for tourists and ‘ohh look how PRIMITIVE it is ohh it’s so EARTHY’ and other such trite bollocks.

‘Art for Arts sake’ is a very recent phenomena in human history, ritual and sacred art has a much deeper history and was developed by pretty much every culture on earth. Our modern perception of art, even we go back to medieval times before the renaissance is just a teeny tiny spec in the whole history of art and human creation.

As an archaeologist I strongly believe that there is no such thing as a ’superior’ culture. Just becuase one culture developed big stone buildings , it doesn’t mean it’s better than nomads who live in tents, it’s just an adaptation of a different lifestyle. Another thing I have learnt is you cannot judge another culture by the standards of your own. You cannot say something is less worthy of being ‘art’ as it is ’simplistic’ and not as ‘detailed’ as a grand master’s painting or it does not conform to your understanding of art, cos guess what; it wasn’t created with your understanding of art.

While we can never appreciate an artwork form another culture in the same way as we would our own, we lack the cultural knowledge, the semiotics, the language for interpreting it doesn’t mean we can dismiss it out of hand as not worthy just becuase we cannot grasp it. That said I feel you can appreciate all forms of art, even if you don’t have this deep understanding of a culture, of the ideas of what art means. In the course of my degree I have been moved by pictures and when I’m lucky the actual artefact, of ancient artworks. As much as I study ancient Egyptian culture,, art and all the layers of meaning and symbolism imbued in everything from posture to the colour the paint, I can never truly understand becuase I am an outsider, I have not grown up with these ideas, I can never remove my own cultural background. But I am still moved, I can learn that granite was used by royalty , that black was the colour of regeneration and osiris, that men were depicted as red skinned and women yellow; this information adds to my understanding and appreciation but I will still always view as an outsider.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is , we need to walk the line between being able to appreciate another culture and knowing that as we are not part of it we can never hope to have the insights of someone who is, that we cannot speak for them, that we cannot understand on the same level (there’s nothing more nauseating than some rich white person trotting off to live in a ten in Mongolia for a month and them coming back claiming to be an ‘expert’ on thier culture…) . But when something is beautiful it’s beautiful and human skill should be valued whether it’s a Michaelangelo, an anonymous ancient Egyptian artisan, an Australian Aboriginal artist ; anyone.  We’re all human and we all have something valid to say , to express through art like we’ve been doing ever since we crawled out the primordial soup.

Art is so much more than the end product, the pretty picture or the nice sculpture. Art is about expression, about ideas. Art isn’t about what it is but it represents.

At the end of the day these rock paintings are important becuase they are part of our history as humans. The oldest representation of the human face, that is something that is important to us all, and the sooner a load of white bigots who are under the misguided belief that their culture is ’superior’ and that ‘ethnic’ art has nothing to do with them realise this the better.

The sheer variety , ingenuity and beauty of human creations never ceases to amaze me. I get upset when people spout crap about the pyramids being built by aliens, not just becuase it’s a load of bollocks with a disregard for the bloody obvious but becuase it devalues humanity’s ability to create. Human beings have been creating amazing , wonderful, beautiful things ever since we existed.

I find it fascinating how different cultures have approached the same ideas, the same worries we all have as humans ; there is this need to discover, to express ideas and to create that spreads across time and geography. No matter where in the world, or where in time human beings have created amazing art. Just becuase definitions of art vary (and lets face it no one has a concrete applicable to all definition of art do they?) and different cultures have different views on the meaning and purpose of their art it does not mean one is superior to another, they are all important and they all tell us something about who we all are.  This ‘othering’ and belittling of anything that does not fit within western white man’s narrow minded remit of aesthetic appreciation is insulting to us all quite frankly.

Think of it, western white man’s art is just ‘art’ other art art is ‘insert ethnic idenity here art’ ‘women’s art’ ‘ancient art’ ‘insert other othering identity here art’.

This is all a bit incoherent and blabbery but ohh I’m mad. The destruction of important artworks that are valuable in their own right as art works and valuable as history, of part of our understanding of human history and development so someone can build a gas line? It’s hideous.

http://www.burrup.org.au/
http://www.standupfortheburrup.com/