~

n ntro uct1on to t e

rt 1n rte acts

Ben Burt

BLOOMSBURY
LONDON NE\IV DELH I NEW YORK SYDNEY

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Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Pie
50 Bedford Square

175 Fifth Avenue

New York

London
WClB 3DP

NY 10010
USA

UK
www.bloomsbury.com
First published 2013
Ben Burt, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
Ben Burt has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as Author of this work.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or
refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publlcation Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB:
PB:

978-1-8478-8944-7
978-1-8478-8943-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publlcation Data

Burt, Ben.
World art: an introduction to the art in artefacts I Ben Burt.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84788-943-0 (alk. paper) - ISBN 978-1-84788-944-7 (alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-84788-945-4 (alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-85785-812-2 (alk. paper)
l. Art and anthropology. 2. Art and society. I. Tide.
N72.A56B87
701 '.18- dc23

2013

2012033114

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List of Illustrations

lX

Acknowledgments

Xll l

Introduction

PART I: WESTERN PERSPECTIVES

1

The Origins of Art

New Worlds and H istories
Industrial and Intellectual Revolutions
British Museums
Politics and Commerce, Art and Craft
Further Reading

Classical Art

7
8
11
13
19
21

The Obsession with Ancient Greece

Biblical An tiquity
Classical Art History
Classicism and Eurocen trism
Further Reading

22
23
24
28
35
37

0 riental Art

38

Orientalism
Islamic Art: An Orien talist Stereotype?
Indian Art: Deco rative and Denigrated
Chinese Art: Unrecognized Connoisseurship
Further Reading

39
40
43
47
51

Primitive Art

52
53
56
62

Savages and Anthropologists

Evolution, D iffusion, and Speculation
Identifying Cultures, Areas, and Styles

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v1

c o n t e n ts

The Survival of Evolution and Diffusion

Further Reading

65
67

Prehistoric Art

68
69
70
73
77
81

Discovering Antiquity
The Dawn of Art
Prehistoric Myths
The Poli tics of Prehistory
Further Reading

PART II: CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

6

Form

85

Connoisseurs of Form
Form in Northwest Coast Art
Structure in Northwest Coast Art
Structure in Northwest Coast Culture
Further Reading

86
86
90
92
96

Meaning
Reading Symbols
Explicit Meanings
Limits to Iconographic Analysis
Hidden Meanings
Further Reading

97
98
102
104
106
110

Performance

111

Showing Off
Parades
The Art of Impersonation
Performance by Proxy
Further Reading

112
114
119
123
126

Archaeology

127
128
129
132
135
139

Archaeological Methodology in Peru

Moche Iconography
Moche Culture
Nasca Iconography
Further Reading

10

The Work of Art

Art in Anthropology
Art in Cosmology
Art at Work
Art in Cosmic Agency
Further Reading

140
141
145
148
152
156

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PART Ill: ARTISTIC GLOBALIZATION

11

12

13

14

15

The Art World

159

Art H istory as Ideology

Reappraising Art H istory
Art as Collectibles
The Art Brokers
Fu rther Reading

160
16 1
166
169
171

The Exotic Primitive

172

Primitivism and Primitive Art

Adopting Primitive Art
The Primitive Art Market
Exhibiting Exotic Artefacts
Fu rther Reading

173
177
180
183
188

Marketing Exotic Art

189

Exporting Local Artefacts

Reconsidering Authenticity
Market Con tributions to Local Culture
The Homogenization of Exotic Art
Fu rther Reading

190
193
195
197
203

Artistic Colonialism

204

Images of Appropriation
Finding a Place in the Art World
Art Goes Global
G lobal but Exclusive
Fu rther Reading

206
210
213
219
22 1

The Global and the Local

222

The Commodification of Art

Universal and National Museums
Alternative Museums
New Ar t Communities
Further Reading

223
224
228
232
237

Afterword

238

References

241

Index

249

contents

VII

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Copyrighted material

Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12
Figure 13
Figure 14
Figure 15
Figure 16
Figure 17
Figure 18
Figure 19
Figure 20
Figure 2 1
Figure 22
Figure 23
Figure 24
Figure 25
Figure 26
Figure 27
Figure 28
Figure 29
Figure 30
Figure 3 1

Map: places and peoples feat ured in this book

Poussin's painting 1he Return from Egypt
The frontispiece to Bullock's Mexico exhibition catalog
The fas:ade of the newly rebuilt British Museum
A nineteenth-century display at Sir John Soane's Museum
Archer's painting of the Parthenon marbles
Denon's drawing of antique Egyp tian ruins
A sketch from Layard's excavations at Nimroud
Stephan off's painting An Assemblage ofWorks ofArt
The British Museum's Duveen Gallery
Gerome's p ain ting Pool in a Harem
The Hindu god Ganesh in south Indian style
A seventeenth-century scroll painted by Zhang Ruitu
An example of Pitt-Rivers's evolutionary typology
Pendants from Malaita in Solomon Islands
" H eraldic women": a pin from Luristan and a Maori h ouse-board
A culture area map of Native North America
The Lapita "face" design and New Guinea arrow-sh aft designs
The Paleolithic clay bison ofTuc d'Audoubert cave
The WillendorfVenus
Great Zimbabwe
Examples of Northwest Coast design from Boas
A Northwest Coast design, annotated by Holm
A Northwest Coast painted hat with a split design
A Kwakiutl village of communal big-houses
A double-headed serpent image at Alert Bay
The arms of the a'Court family from a book of genealogy
An advertising poster promoting Bombardier bitter
A brass plaque from the p alace of Benin
A Haida m odel of a big-house with totem pole
The fas:ade of an Abelam sanctum

4
10
15
16
17
24
25
27
29

36
41

46
48
57

58
60

64
66
72

75
79
88

89
91

95

96
100
101
104
106
108

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list

Figure 32
Figure 33
Figure 34
Figure 35
Figure 36
Figure 37
Figure 38
Figure 39
Figure 40
Figure 41
Figure 42
Figure 43
Figure 44
Figure 45
Figure 46
Figure 47
Figure 48
Figure 49
Figure 50
Figure 51
Figure 52
Figure 53
Figure 54
Figure 55
Figure 56
Figure 57
Figure 58
Figure 59
Figure 60
Figure 61
Figure 62
Figure 63
Figure 64
Figure 65
Figure 66
Figure 67
Figure 68
Figure 69
Figure 70
Figure 71
Figure 72

of illustrations

A painting from the interior of an Abelam sanctum

An important man of Malaita in valuable ornaments
A portrait of a Chinese imperial court official
A Wahgi dance
The Brigade of Guards Trooping the Colour
Elema women dancing with the sea-spirits
An Alagba mask of the Kalabari Ekine society
A puppeteer performing in Central Java
A Moche pot, painted with a "scene"
The Sacrifice Ceremony from a Moche pot
A Moche burial from the royal tombs of Si pan
A Nasca pot and the design drawn from it
Drawings of the Nasca "puma deity"
A Dinka camp in Sudan, with artistically designed cattle
A popular print, 7he Broad and Narrow Way
An array of relics an d trophies in an Ok sanctum house
A kula canoe showing its painted prow
A board from a kula canoe showing sections of the design
A Walbiri design representing kangaroo dreamings
Walbiri men impersonating rat-kangaroo dreamings
A painting, altar figure, tile painting, and sculpture, from Mula
The British invasion force with artefacts from the palace of Benin
A Kuba official with a figure obtained for the British Museum
The cover of the ''Primitivism" in 20th Century Art catalog
A Mijikenda man with memorial posts for two of his brothers
The courtyard of the Yoruba Religious Cults exhibition
Using role-play at the Palestinian Costume exhibition
A display of pottery in the Sainsbury Africa Galleries
Native artefacts for sale in Alasaka
Carvings for sale in an Iatmul village
Shona sculptor at work
Carvings from East Africa and Solomon Islands
A figure from Santa Cruz and its adaptation as an export carving
A sculpture commissioned for the coronation of George VI
Catlin's painting of a Blackfoot chief
Curtis's photograph of two Blackfoot men
Jupurrula Ross's painting Bush Potato Dreaming
Blackbear Basin's painting Prairie Fire
A film advertising banner from Bangladesh
Santana's wash drawing Kombong'abe: 7he River Spirit
Douglas Camp with her masquerade sculpture

109
11 3
115
117
119
121
122
125
130
131
133
136
138
144
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150
15 1
154
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165
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182
184
185
187
192
197
199
200
201
205
207
208
21 1
212
214
217
220

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Figure 73
Figure 74
Figure 75
Figure 76
Figure 77

A Cultural Centre fieldworker at Vanuatu's Arts Festival

Opening celebrations for the museum of Agua Blanca
A traditional-style dancer at a powwow in Oklahoma
British Pacific Islanders resting between performances
The Ermine Street Guard performing Roman Britain

l ist

of

illu strat i o n s

229
231
234
235
236

XI

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Copyrighted material

This book owes a special debt to Fiona Candlin, who devised a course on World Art and
Artefacts as a collaboration between the University of London's Birkbeck College and
the British Museum and invited me to teach it with her from 2003 to 2010. She then
allowed me to combine her art-historical contributions with my anthropological ones in
a book that we might have written together, if only we could agree on what we meant by
"art." As this implies, her generous support for the book does not make her responsible
for its contents.
The book also owes a great deal to the British Museum, to my experience gained in
working there, to its collections and resources, and to colleagues who have contributed
advice on their various areas of expertise. These include Marjorie Caygill, on British Museum history; Jill Cook, on Ice-Age European archaeology; Robert Storrie, on Northwest
Coast Native Americans; Colin McEwen, on the archaeology of Peru and Ecuador; Julie
Hudson, on the British Museum Africa program; and Lissant Bolton, on the Vanuatu
Cultural Centre. Many of the illustrations also derive from the British Museum.
Valuable advice as well as illustrations was also provided by Nancy Munn, for Walbiri
Aboriginals, with agreement from the families of Murray Wood Japangardi and Long
Paddy White Jakamarra and senior men of Yuendumu; Monica Udvardy, for Mijikenda sculptures; Sokari Douglas Camp, for Kalabari masquerade and her own sculpture;
Pamela Rosi and Larry Santana, for Papua New Guinea painting; and Agnes Henson
Darby, for the Kiribati-Tunguru Association. Others who generously provided illustrations without charge include Barry Craig, Charles Wells Ltd, Rita Willaert, Nina
Chang, and Matthew Isaac Cohen.
Advice and encouragement was offered by John Reeve, Katharine Hoare, Nick
Stanley, Jane Huxley-Khng, several anonymous reviewers, and the editors at Bloomsbury:
Anna Wright and Louise Butler.
The book is dedicated to Annette Ward, in the hope that she may one day read it.

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Copyrighted material

What do we mean by "art," and does it matter?

As a special category of objects and activities, the idea of art belongs to a particular
cultural tradition, originally European, then Western and now increasingly global; but
how useful is it for understanding other cultural traditions? The theme of this book is
that if we wan t to understand art in its most general sense as a universal human value, we
need to look at how Western concepts of art were constructed, in order to deconstruct
and then reconstruct them th rough an understanding of the wider world. The Western
con cept of art d eveloped within a system of roles, relationships, and institutions, which
has now become the "art world," whose values and theories interpret the things regarded
as art to everyone else. Art in this sense has made a m ajo r contribution to Western civilization, as its historians and philosophers can show, but what does the art world have
to do with "world art"?
Looking out from the Western art tradition to understand other art in other terms is
not a simple matter. Europeans have co lonized so much of the world and dominated it
for so long that their ideas about art have had a pervasive influence upon non-Western
cultu res as well as upon Western attitudes toward them. So if we want to investigate
world art- whatever that proves to be- it helps to begin with a critical look at the
Western ideas of art that were formulated as Western knowledge of th e world expanded
through exploration and trade, conquest and co lonization, and through research into
other cultures, present and past . This is the theme of Part 1 of this book, on Western

perspectives
on art.
Chapter 1 traces the origins of art in these terms, as the Eu ropean intellectual elite
formulated the concept of art and founded museums, galleries, and academies to collect, classify and research new information about the world and its products. Chapter 2
explains how, in the process, Europeans based their claims to cultural superiority on a
Mediterranean heritage of so-called Classical art, which set standards for comparison
with other cultur al traditions- recent and ancient- supported by the discipline of art
history. The study of these others dignified their products as art only of special and
generally inferior kinds. Chapter 3 examines how the category of Oriental art contributed
to the construction of an enduring opposition between Asian and Western civilizations.
Chapter 4 shows how ideas of primitive art helped explain small societies as the inferior

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world art

antecedents of those of their colonizers, as studied by anthropology to advance various

theories of culture history. Chapter 5 considers how changing understandings of human
origins involved artefacts treated as prehistoric art in issues around the character of
human culture in general and the identity of non-Western cultures in particular.
With the benefit of historical hindsight, the study of these subjects as art was a kind
of conceptual colonization, imposing Eurocentric categories upon oth er cultures, with
an enduring legacy that is the reason for focusing on it here. However, during the twentieth century the adequacy of Western art values to explain other artistic traditions was
increasingly challenged by more relativistic approaches from both anthropology and art
history. In Part 2, on cross-cultural perspectives, we look at theoretical insights that
have contributed to more universalistic compar ative views of art and to a clearer understanding of the usefulness of the con cept of art itself.
In Chapter 6 we see h ow the analysis of form by art connoisseurs was paralleled by
anthropological studies identifying formal style and structure in the artefacts of small
societies. Chapter 7 looks at how anthropological studies of th e meaning of artefacts to
those who made and used them employed theories of symbolism shared with ar t history
to interpret non-Western systems of iconogr aph y. Chapter 8 points out th at the artistic
values of artefacts are often realized only in the active performance of the social roles
and events for which they were devised. Chapter 9 provides examples of how archaeology has used all these insights from art history and anthropology to interpret ancient
cultures from their artefacts and iconography. In Chapter 10, such perspectives on nonWestern artistic traditions contribute to an explanation for the work of art in society.
A consideratio n of what the form, meaning, and performance of artefacts achieves in
non-Western societies allows us to go beyond the narrow categories of Western art to
support a definition for world art, which can be summarized as the patterning of form
and meaning-visual and conceptual-as an aspect of all cultural production, in contrast to the Western concept of art as a category of artefact and activity.
Having considered Western histories and theories of art, we are in a better position
to examine world art and the role of Western culture in making it what it has become.
Part 3, on artistic globalization, considers questions and issues arising from the historical relationships that have brought the world's artistic traditions together under the
influence of Western art values. H ow has art been used by colonizing and colonized
societies in the causes of collecting and commerce, cultural hegemony and autonomous
identities? How have non-Western peoples reacted to Western art values, as they attempted variously to emulate, adapt, or avoid them?
In Chapter 11, we subject the art world an d its values to the kind of scrutiny applied to non-Western cultures. Looking beyond its self-proclaimed aesthetic values to
the hierarchies of worth applied to artefacts collected through markets and m ediat ed by
institutional interests helps explain the global impact ofWestern art values. Chapter 12
focuses on ideas of the exotic primitive, which have influenced both Western art
and the collection of exotic artefacts, raising issues of the Western appropriation and

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representation of other artistic traditions. Chapter 13 examines non-Western responses

to such collecting as marketing exotic art, with local artefact traditions developing to
satisfy int ernational consu mers in ways that challenge art-world values of authenticity.
Chapter 14 looks at the artistic colonialism that has represented colonized peoples to
their co lonizers and taught th em the Western art values that have drawn some of them
into the global art world. It remains to review the prospects for a continuation of the
diversity that has ch aracterized world art up to now. Chapter 15 compares the global
and the local through examples of cultural communities that have developed alternatives to Western art institutions and reconstituted local traditions in response to global
commodification and homogenization.
The argu ments developed in th e book are intended to challenge conventional Western assumptions about the West's own artistic tradition as well as other peoples', by
taking an anthropological perspective which uses categories that allow comparison between cultures. Art historians m ight question whether we can speak of non-Western
artefacts as art without imposing Western categories upon other cultures, but anthropologists would reply that any attempt to understand other cultures in their own terms
requires us to devise cross-cultural categories- that is, anthropo logical ones. As a Western discipline, anthropology begins with such familiar concepts as politics, econ omics, and religion and then seeks to modify and qualify them to produce categories of
universal application. H ence economics must transcend the ideology of capitalism and
religion th e theology of monotheism, to explain also th e material and spiritual values of
societies that recognize neither imperso nal market transactions nor the worship of gods.
Anthropology has not actually been very successful in d oing this with art, too often
falling back on Western art-historical perspectives on the non-Western small societies
it usually studies, and this is why an anthropological definition of art is another focus
of this book.
The book deals mainly with artefacts: the material objects that people make. These
things have various artistic properties that may also be identified in speech, music, d ance,
and other activities, but we are focusing on what Western culture defines as "visual
arts." We cannot escape such Western categories, which include the comparative and
relativistic concepts of anthropology. For the purposes of this book, art is a property or
aspect of all artefacts, so we are looking at the art in artefacts, rath er than at artefacts of a
particular kind. Artefacts have various uses and purposes to which their artistic qualities
co n tribute, but they are not in themselves "art," any more than they are "economics,"
"politics," or "religion," all of which may also be represented in them. Calling them "art
objects" denies other purposes th at actually contribute to their artistic value. That said,
it is n ot easy to write about art without sometimes objectifying it in this way, particularly when describing Western ideas and practices that do so. In this book, rather than
put every instance of Western usage in quotation marks, the context should explain the
distinction, while recognizing the inevitable ambiguity involved in a Western critique
ofWestern culture.

introduction

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world art

To illustrate its arguments, the book has a special focus on the history and collections
of the British Museum. One reason for this is that, as a product of European Ei1lightenment and empire, the British Museum has long represented the dominant ideologies
and art values of the West. N ow responding to the political shifts of globalization, it
continues to raise issues relevant to this book as it repositions itself as a "world museum"
in terms still contested by opponents of Western cultural hegemony. The other reason
is that the author has worked for the British Museum for almost forty years, as an educator and curator in the D epartment of Ethnography, latterly Africa, O ceania and the
Americas. This book is by no means a British Museum project, but it is a cri tical tribute
to on e of the great institutions of the art world and of world art.
As a brief introduction to a vast subject, the book draws upon a wide sample of historical, theoretical, and descriptive sources. The further readings suggested at the end of
each chapter are m ostly chosen for brevity and availability, but many other works cited
may also repay study, and all are given in the References at the end of the book.

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Places and peoples featured in this book

Figure I Map of the world, showing places mentioned as case studies in the book

How ideas of art that developed in Europe were applied to other cultures, both present
and past, with the expansion of Western knowledge of the world through exploration,
commerce, and colonization.

We begin by looking at how the Western idea of art was constructed during the past five hundred years,
while Europeans were exploring the world and developing their claim to be at the apex of human civilization.
While distinguishing their own most valued products as art, they also collected and classified the artefacts of
the world, founding museums, galleries, and academies to serve concepts of art that were inherently ambiguous and contested.

Outline of the Chapter

New Worlds and Histories
A historical review of European expansion, the Renaissance of ancient Mediterranean culture, and the
idea of art.
Industrial and Intellectual Revolutions
The roots of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the development of art connoisseurship
British Museums
The collection and classification of artefacts since the eighteenth century, with a focus on the British
Museum.
Politics and Commerce, Art and Craft
A preliminary look at the Western culture of collecting.

Art originated in Europe, but not, as Europeans tend to assume, with the cave paintings
of the Paleolithic. Rather, it began only a few hundred years ago as a cultural tradition
of distinguishing the creation of particular artefacts and activities that communicate significant ideas an d em otions. This was n ot a simple matter even when Europeans applied
it to their own culture, and it produced all sorts of contradictions when applied to other
peoples' artefacts as they were drawn into ever closer relationships through globalization.
If the concept of art is indeed to have the universal application th at "world art" implies,
it is important to understand how it came to mean what it does through the history of
its construction in Europe and its application to the rest of humanity.

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world art

NEW WORLDS AND HISTORIES

It was five hundred years ago, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, that peoples
around the world began to have the generally unpleasant experience of being "discovered" by Europe. In the process, Europeans began to come to terms with the widening
horizons, as well as the wealth and power, that the onset of globalization brought them
in the centuries that fo llowed.
In the 1490s, the Spanish reached the Caribbean, and the Portuguese found a route
around Africa to India. In the 1500s, the Spanish began conquering territory in and
around the Caribbean, and the Portuguese founded a colony at Mozambique. In the
151 Os, the Portuguese captured Malacca in Malaya and began trading with southern
China, while the Spanish began the conquest of the Aztec empire of Mexico. In the
1520s, the Portuguese began to colonize Brazil, and the Spanish sailed around the world.
In the 1530s, the Spanish co nquered the Inca empire of Peru. By the mid-sixteenth century, Europeans were trading South American silver for Indian cotton cloth, Southeast
Asian spices and Chinese silks, and were shipping Africans as slave labor to work sugar
plantations in the Americas. By the early seventeenth century, the British, French, and
Dutch were establishing their own overseas empires, in competition with the Spanish
and Portuguese.
The riches brought home to Europe helped shift the balance of power in society, challenging the political and intellectual certainties of the state and church. As prominent
men increasingly bought their power with commercial wealth, rather than extracting
wealth by political power under feudal relationships, they became increasingly unwilling
to accept theological justifications for the old order. It was no longer enough to insist
on a single absolute divine truth, from which knowledge had to be deduced rather than
added to by n ew exp erience and research. In their search for new explanations for their
changing experience, Europeans discovered an ancient past for themselves at the same
time that they were discovering the wider world. The "age of discovery'' also saw a revival
of ancient Mediterranean culture and the emergence of new ways of thinking, which led
in time to new cultural traditions of science, and of art.
The revival of ancient knowledge and skills produced new theories of history. Following the fourteenth-century Italian philosopher Francesco Petrarch, it came to be
generally agreed that civilization had gone through a cycle of "ages." Growing from
"archaic" beginnings, it had achieved its highest point in "classical" Greece and Rome
(when, among other things, pain ting and sculpture were perfected), had declined with
the Roman empire under Christianity and the barbarian invasions, been forgotten in
the ensuing "dark ages," recovered somewhat in the transitional Christian "middle ages,"
and eventually revived with the rediscovery and rebirth, or "renaissance," of antiquity
from the mid-fourteenth centu ry. Later, in the eighteenth century, Eu ropeans decided
they had seen through the ignorant illusions of their predecessors, in the "enlightenment," which paved the way for "modernity."

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10

world

art

perfection of art and ca11not aspire to the 11onour bestowed on tl1e most learned of
his colleagues. To achieve this, it is necessary to move on from the representation of
a si11gle figure to t11at of a group; to deal with historical and legendary subjects and
to represent the great actions recounted by l1istorians or the p leasing subjects treated
by poets. And, in order to scale even greater heights, an artist must know how to
co11ceal the virtues of great men and tl1e most elevated m ysteries beneath the veil of
legendary tales and allegorical compositions. (Felibien 1669)

Figure 2 Nicolas Poussin, a seventeenth-century French artist working in Rome, produced what his friend Andre Fe libien describe d as the highest class of painting. Poussin
drew upon Classical as well as biblical themes to represent moral, philosophical, and
emotional values in paintings carefully composed in appropriate stylistic modes. The Return from Egypt, painted about 1630, showed the child Jesus having a vision foretelling his
crucifixion; the ferryman presumably alluded to Charon , who in Greek mythology carried
souls across the river Styx, separating the living from the dead. (Dulwich Picture Gallery)

statue-making" (p. 18). Gombrich introduced successive periods or styles through their
architecture before going on to deal with painting and sculpture and tracing relationships between them. His approach was to imagine the intentions of the artist and the
problems he was trying to so lve as he worked toward the realization of what the West
has come to regard as the highest achievements of art. Gombrich acknowledged that
his own Western idea of art as "some kind of beautiful luxury" was very recent, while
many buildings, paintings, and sculptures had been created by people with no such
concept of art. For these traditions, Gombrich assumed that their primary interest was
in the utility or function of their artefacts, as if this was less significant in the Western
tradition:
The further we go back in history, the more definite but also the more strange are the
aims which art was supposed to serve. The same applies if we leave towns and cities
and go to the peasants or, better still, if we leave our civilized countries and travel
to the peoples whose ways of life still resemble the conditions in which our remote
ancestors lived .... Among these priorities, there is no difference between building
and image-making as far as usefulness is concerned. Their huts are there to shelter
them from rain, wind and sunshine and the spirits which produce them; images are
made to protect them against other powers which are, to them, as real as the forces
of nature. Pictures and statues, in other words, are used to work magic. (1950:20)

These imagined primitives, living in a world of childish fantasy uncorrected by critical

rationality, provided the backdrop to The Story ofArt as a cultural history of Western
civilization. This began with ancient Egypt, whose painters and sculptors achieved a
well-defined style or set of rules that "give every individual work the effect of poise and
austere harmony" (p. 38). Gombrich characterized Mesopotamian art in similar terms,
as governed by the religious and political demands of ruling elites, and the implications
of this became clear when he introduced Greek art as "The Great Awakening" (Ch. 5).
"It was in the great oasis lands, where the sun burns mercilessly, and where only the land
watered by rivers provides food, that the earliest styles of art had been created under Oriental despots, and these styles remained unchanged for thousands of years. Conditions
were very different in the milder climes."
Gombrich then described Greece as a region of small, independent city-states whose
political culture of fractious bickering was a source of the artistic values so admired by
later Western artists. When viewing the simple architectural harmony of modest D oricstyle temples, "One feels that they were built by human beings, and for human beings.
In fact, there was no divine ruler over the Greeks who could or would have forced a
whole people to slave for him" (p. 45). He associated "The great revolution of Greek
art, the discovery of natural forms and of foresho rtening" (p. 52) with the democracy
of the Greek states, particularly Athens. This democracy allowed artists, participating in
government even as humble manual workers, to break free of the stylistic conformity

classical art

31

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32

w o r I d a rt

characteristic of the despotic Oriental traditions of Egypt and Assyria (although the slave
base of Greek society and the military oligarchy of Sparta, home of Doric architecture,
passed unremarked). Hence, great sculptors were able to go beyond ancient notions of
idolatry to "a new conception of the divine" when, at the height of Athenian democracy
in the fifth century B.C.E., the Parthenon was built, with sculptures that "reflect this new
freedom perhaps in the most wonderful way" (p. 59).
As Gombrich put it, "The great awakening of art to freedom had taken place in the
hundred years between, roughly 520 and 420 B.c." Henceforth, into the Hellenic period
of the empire established by Alexander over Greece, southwest Asia, and north Africa,
Greek sculptors developed not only idealized human images but also more expressive
and individual portraiture. Paintings began to include everyday scenes, still life, and
landscapes, as artists worked for a growing market of wealthy art connoisseurs. ''Art had
largely lost its old connection with magic and religion,'' which in Gombrich's terms
brought it closer to the Western idea of art for the sake of beauty (p. 77).
Gombrich treated the Romans as merely building on Greek artistic traditions; developing new architectural styles, more naturalistic portraiture, and commemorative
monuments. He saw early Christian art as a retreat from the Greek achievements of
free expression of beauty to a concern for religious messages and sacred images governed by tradition, although still benefiting from elements of Greek formal style. When
Christianity became the official religion of the Byzantine Roman empire in the fourth
century, sculptural images declined in a reaction against idolatry, but painting was
promoted as a means of religious instruction. But rather than maintain the ideal of realism, Byzantine art stylized Greek and Roman images in such a way that, as Gombrich
put it, "Christian art of the Middle Ages became a curious mixture of primitive and
sophisticated methods. The power of observation of nature, which we saw awakening
in Greece about 500 B.c. was put to sleep again about A.D. 500" (p. 97). In the ninth
century, after a period in which it discouraged religious images, the Byzantine church
accepted the contrary doctrine that religious images were manifestations of divinity and
hence subject to doctrinal conventions, limiting the initiative of the artist. So a cycle
was completed in the rise and fall of civilization and art, leading to the Dark Ages of
500- 1000 C.E.
Gombrich then took the opportunity to "cast a glance at what happened in other
parts of the world during these centuries of turmoil by looking eastwards" (p. 102)
and commenting on Islamic, Moghul, Chinese, and Buddhist art. The significance
of these traditions for his story of art can be inferred by the inclusion of images
ranging from the second to nineteenth centuries, from Spain to Japan, as an interlude
between Byzantine and medieval art, and Gombrich's comment on the Orient that
"styles lasted for thousands of years and there seemed no reason why they should ever
change" (p. 13 7).
With the European Dark Ages, we are back to the realm of the primitive, with the art
of the "armed raiders from the north ... as a means of working magic and exorcising evil

rghl

spirits" (pp. 114- 15). Gombrich admired the complexity of the intertwining patterns,
adapted to Christian manuscripts, but was surprised by its effects on human figures
derived from the Classical tradition, which "look almost as still and quaint as primitive
idols" (p. 118). But despite such stylistic constraints, he interpreted this medieval style
as representing the artists' feelings in a way that neither Classical nor Oriental art had
done: "the Egyptians had largely drawn what they knew to exist, the Greeks what they
saw; in the Middle Ages the artist also learned to express in his picture what he felt." He
interpreted these feelings according to his own self-evident Christian faith, but made
little effort to extend the method to other artistic traditions by attempting to understand
their religious motivations.
In line with his assumption that naturalism was the highest achievement of artistic
style, Gombrich treated the medieval period as one of regression. Of the Bayeux Tapestry he wrote, "When the medieval artist of this period has no model to copy, he drew
rather like a child" (p. 124). On the other hand, the abandonment of naturalism allowed
art to communicate religious narratives: "Painting was indeed on the way to becoming
a form of writing in pictures" (p. 136). Then the Gothic style of church architecture superseded the Romanesque, as an engineering accomplishment that "seemed to proclaim
the glories of heaven" (p. 141). When thirteenth-century Gothic artists began to experiment with naturalism once again, the better to represent "the sacred story," Gombrich
implied that this was a lesser aim than the Greek pursuit of the beauty of the body for its
own sake. He regularly compared these ancient artists with those of his own time who
worked in the Classical tradition: "We think of an artist as a person with a sketchbook
who sits down and makes a drawing from life whenever he feels inclined" (p. 147), in
contrast to the training of a medieval artist as a craft apprenticeship, learning to repeat
conventional images and designs.
The revival of Classical naturalism Gombrich attributed less to Gothic art than to its
preservation in the Byzantine tradition, which influenced the Italian painter Giotto in
the early fourteenth century and led the history of art to become "the history of the great
artists." Both Byzantine and Gothic traditions contributed to the fourteenth-century
development of religious paintings and sculptures, commissioned for the private use of
an increasingly prosperous European elite who appreciated studies from nature, of flowers, animals, and people, in what became an "international" style.
This development throughout the increasingly integrated western region of Europe
laid the ground for a revival of the still-revered achievements of ancient Rome in the
early fifteenth century. So began the Renaissance, which Gombrich endorsed as the
rediscovery of Classical artistic values. The rise of the merchant class and their gilds as
sponsors and trainers of artists led schools of art in various European cities to develop
distin ctive styles as they explored the possibilities of naturalism and perspective through
the Gothic and the revived Roman styles. Historical circumstances made it possible for
the artist to be elevated from lowly craftsman to esteemed master: ''At last, the artist was
free" (p. 219).

c Ia s s i c a I a r

33

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w or Id art

Gombrich paid great attention to this Italian "High Renaissance" and its leading artists, with appraisals of their innovations in perspective, anatomy, and Classical style and
an account of their influence on some of the Gothic-style artists of northern Europe. He
went on to trace later stylistic and technical developments in Catholic southern Europe
through the eccentric innovations of the sixteenth century and the Baroque elaboration of Classical style in the seventeenth century, contrasted with the suppression of
religious painting under the Protestant Reformation of northern countries, which led to
developments in portraiture and paintings of contemporary life. Gombrich traced this
history through the artistic values developed by individual artists and debated with the
wealthy connoisseurs who commissioned and collected their work. As to the questions
of whether beauty depended on the imitation of nature or its idealization: "Even the
'idealists' agreed that the artist must study nature and learn to draw from the nude, even
the 'naturalists' agreed that the works of Classical antiquity were unsurpassed in beauty"
(p. 376).
The Enlightenment or ''Age of Reason" of the late eighteenth century, Gombrich described as breaking with this tradition through a new self-consciousness of artistic styles,
stimulated by the French Revolution, the development of antiquarian and historical
studies, and the academic training of artists which promoted a distinction between art
and craft. During the nineteenth century, as craft skills were undermined by industrial production, art diversified in both style and content, and popular conventional art
was challenged by idealistic nonconformists, motivated by their "ar tistic conscience."
Gombrich saw this as a triumph of individualism: "the history of a handful of lonely
men who had the courage and persistence to think for themselves, to examine conventions fearlessly and critically and thus to create new possibilities for their art" (p. 399).
Through the efforts of these artists, he traced a series of experimental movements rebelling against the perceived artificiality of conventional popular styles, constantly solving
problems in pursuit of new artistic values. These developed from the mid-nineteenthcentury French Realism, which sought t ruth rather than affectation, and the British PreRaphaelite ideals of medieval simplicity, into the later French Impressionist attempts
to capture immediate visual experience, the British Arts and Crafts reaction against
industrial technology, and the Art Nouveau adaptation to this techno logy at the end
of the century. Gombrich also noted the way late-nin eteenth-century im provements
in photography undermined portrait and documentary painting, and the interest in
Japanese prints, which provided new alternatives to European conventions of pictorial

compos1t1on.
The story of art presented by Gombrich was one of individual artists solving problems in realizing the current aspirations of a Western cultural tradition through the
creation of a very limited category of prestigious artefacts. In his own time, this tradition
was deliberately and effectively challenged from within, through the development of
so-called "modern art" from the early twentieth century. Gombrich described this as a
period of "experimental art," ranging from architectural experiments with the functional

rghl

Aboriginal Australians, 57, 71 , 73, 141 , 209, 228

dreaming designs, 153- 6, 210- 11
academies of art, 9, 36, 163, 171, 215

see also Royal Academy

aesthetics, 86- 7, 14 1, 143- 4, 148- 9, 156,

161- 2, 177, 193, 2 18

African artefacts and art, 65, 67, 86, 96, 110,
167, 177, 192- 3,203, 219- 20
art influences, 199- 20 1, 177, 198
exhibitions, 167, 178- 81 , 186- 7, 188
see also British Museu1n, collections; Congo;
Ghana; Kenya; Nigeria; Sudan; Zimbabwe
agency, 148- 56 passim
American Indians see Native North America
anthropology, 54- 6, 62- 3, 67, 140

see also art definitions; art theories

Araeen, Rasheed, 2 19-20
archaeology

Papua New Guinea, 107- 8, 120

Stonehenge, 76
Zimbabwe, 77- 81
art-craft distinctions, 12, 20, 33.. .31, 45, 141,

148, 162- 3, 167, 194, 198, 213- 15

art definitions , 3-, 11 , 12, 19, 22, 3-L 55, 141- 5,
156, 160- 1, 166, 170
see also art-craft distinctions
art education, 16, 210- 17 passim, 220, 221
art history, 11, 12, 22, 28- 30, 37
of Asia, 32.. 38- 51 passim (Ch. 3).
New Art History 160- 6, 171
of the West, 30- 5
art markets and dealers, 19- 20, 42, 162, 167- 71,
180- 3, 189- 203 passim (Ch. 13), 209- 18
passim, 223- 4
see also theft and looting
art theories see agency; communication; diffusion;

Ecuador, 231 - 2, 237

evolution; form and forn1alis1n;

Europe, 73-5, 81

iconography; structure

North America, 80, 81

Arts and Crafts movement, .3A. 45, 191

origins, 69- 7 1, 8 1

Ashtnolean Museutn, 13

Peru, 127- 39 (Ch. 9)

Assyria see Mesopotamia

Zin1babwe, 77-8 1

Australians, colonial, 209-10, 221

architecture, 12, 30- 1, 62 , 16 1, 168

authenticity, 11 , 20, 86, 180, 181, 190- 9 passim, 227

Assyria, 26, 27
China, 47

Barthes, Roland, 98, 101

C lassical, 15-16, 23, 3 1-2, 36, 37

basketry, 180, 191

Egypt, 25, 26, 27

Belk, Russell, 19, 167- 8

Gothic, 33

Bell, C live, 86, 142

India, 44, 45, 46

Bernal, Martin, 35, 37

Islamic, 40, 42

biblical antiquity, 24- 7, 39, 40, 69 , 70

Northwest Coast Native America, 94- 5

biennale exhibitions, 170, 179 , 211

250

in de x

Birdwood, George, 44, 45, 55

Classical

Black and minority ethnic art, 219- 21

collections, 14, 17, 19, 22- 37 (Ch. 2}

Boas, Franz, 62, 63, 87- 8, 90- 91, 92,

arc values,

105, 141
body arcs, 112-22, 126, 233-6
see also m asquerade
Botta, Paul-Emile, 26, 28
British Library, 14, 15, 18, 42
British Museum
collections
Africa, 14- 15, 18, 103, 104, 144, 167,

174-7, 186, 187, 199, 220

Chinese, 18, 48, 50, 115
Classical, biblical, Mesopotamia, 23- 9,

36, 37
Indian, 214
Islamic, 42, 43
Native North American, 64, 91, 95 , 106,

186, 192,210,234
Pacific, 60, 109, 117, 121 , 201 , 211
South and Central American, 128, 130,

135, 136, 138, 186

exhibitions and galleries, 25, 26, 28, 36,

43, 63, 167, 186-7

history, 13- 19, 20, 21, 28, 236, 237
personnel, 14, 21, 30, 57, 74, 86, 114, 116,
135, 167, 186, 226, 229, 231
see also Museum of Mankind
Bullock's Museum, 15, 20, 25
Bushmen see San

.8.. 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 22- 37

passim (Ch. 2) , 39-40, 43- 8 passim,

51, 162, 214, 218

Cole, Henry, 44
collecting, 11, 12, 19- 20, 25, 40, 49, 161 - 2,

166-7, 171, 172, 177, 178, 180- 1,

189- 203 passim (Ch. 13), 225- 6
Asian, 47- 8, 170- 1
see also arc markets and dealers;
British Museun1; n1useu1ns
colonialism, 52, 54, 173, 202, 204- 21 passim
(Ch. 14), 225 - 6
Africa, 65, 77- 8, 173- 4, 180- 1, 188, 215
Asia, 43, 50, 51 , 124, 205, 213, 214
North America, 63- 4, 80, 186, 188,

190- 1, 2 12
Pacific, 209-10, 216, 218
communication, 97- 110 passim (Ch. Z).
Congo, Belgian colony, 173- 4
Kuba kingdom, 18, 176- 7
connoisseurship, 11 - 12, 16, 19, 34, 86, 96, 161 ,
167- 8, 17 1, 177, 183, 185, 187, 193
Asian, 42, 47- 50
contemporary art, 19, 64, 169- 71 , 186, 216
Cook, Jill, 74-5, 81
Coombes, Annie, 17 4, 188
Coomeraswamy, Ananda, 45 - 6
cosmological symbolism, 143
Aboriginal Australia, 153- 5

calligraphy, 41 , 42, 48, 2 18

Christian, 146

Caygill, Marjorie, 14, 21

Native North America, 80, 92- 4

ceramics

Paleolithic, 76-7

African, 167, 180, 187

Chinese, 49- 50
Japanese, 218
Melanesian, 65 - 6
Peruvian, 127- 39 passim (Ch. 9)
China, 39, 47- 51, 59, 114- 5, 170- 1
Christian arc, .LO. 32- 3, 42, 135, 146, 164- 5
class, 11, 28, l i 41 , 99, 102, 167- 70, 189, 191,

192, 194
issues in art history, 162, 166, 167

Papua New Guinea, 108- 9, 145- 8 passim, 152,

196
Peru, 129- 37 passim
Craig, Barry, 65- 7, 147- 8
cultural centers, 228- 33, 237
cultural identities
non-Western, 80, 193, 196, 202, 2 15, 216,

223,228,233, 236
Western, 19, 22- 3, 35, 173, 209- 10
culture areas, 63-5, 183, 186

dance, 12, 87, 113, 145, 156

formal style, 58, 61, 64-7

Britain, 118

Fraser, Douglas, 59- 6 1

Native North America, 233- 4

Frazer, James, 56, 7 4

Nigeria, 122-3
Pacific, 116- 18, 120-1, 229, 235-6

Gell, Alfred, 148-9, 151, 156

Peru, 132, 129, 134

gender

decorative arc, 16, 20, 2 1, 87, 141, 162- 3, 166,

168, 209
Asian, 40, 42, 44, 45, 46, 50, 52, 55, 214, 218
d iffusion, 44, 58- 61, 62- 3, 65 - 6, 67, 92
from Egypt, 58, 62, 175

in cosmology, 74, 76- 7, 108, 120,

122, 145, 152

issues, in art h istory, 7 4- 6, 166
sy1nbolis1n, 59- 61, 107- 8, 116, 152

see also wornen

Ghana, 184, 215-6, 221

Ecuador, 23 1- 2

globalization, 7- 8, 11 , 202, 222, 223, 232

Egypt, 15, 25- 6, 2_133, 35, 37, 39

see also British Museurn

.a,. 11- 12,

19, 21, 34
Errington, Shelly, 12, 161 , 180, 181 , 186, 188, 202
ethnic arc, 67, 185, 186, 190, 193- 5, 199, 202,
203,219,220, 221
ethnography, 17, 18, 40, 43, 54, 55, 168, 175,
180, 183,210,228
Eurocentrism, 35-6, 37, 46, 50, 73, 179, 185,
188,2 19,22 1
evolution, 53, 55- 8, 62- 3, 67, 70, 74
Enlightenment,

exhibition
non-Western artefacts, 15, 25, 42, 167, 178- 80,

218,227,231
see also British Museum; Great Exhibition;
Museum of Mankind
Western-style art, 166, 168, 21 1, 2 16, 219

see also biennale exhibitio ns

export art, 49, 186, 189- 203 (Ch. 13), 2 10, 216,

223- 4, 230
Fagg, William, 65, 67, 86, 96, 178, 183

of art, 159, 170, 2 13, 219

Gombrich, Ernst, 30-5, 160- 1
Graburn, Nelson, 193- 4, 203, 219
Great Exhibitio n, 16, 26, 43, 50
Greece, ancient see C lassical
Gretton, Tom, 161, 17 1
Havell, Ernest, 45 - 6
Hegel, Georg, 30, 39, 44, 46
heraldry, 98- 102, 110
history, theories of, 8- 9, 12, 30, 53, 68-70

see also art h istory

hunting and gathering see foraging cultures
iconography, 87, 98- 9, 141
Indian art, 39- 40, 43- 7, 51 , 59,

213-5,22 1
Indonesia, Java, 123- 6
Iran-Persia, 24, 59 - 60
Islamic arc, 22., 40- 3, 51
Japanese art, 34, 50, 51 , 170, 2 14, 218

Felibien, Andre, 9- 10
feminis1n see gender

Kasfir, Sidney, 65, 180- 1

Fergusson, James, 44, 45, 46

Kenya, M ijike nda, 182

Firth, Raymond, 142- 5, 156

Kiribati, 235 - 6

foraging cultures, 70- 3, 76

Forge, Anthony, 107- 10

Layard, Austen Henry, 26- 8

fonn a nd formalism 30, 43, 85- 96 passim

Levi-Strauss, Claude, 90- 6, 105, 137

(Ch . 6), 142-5 passim, 148, 149, 156,

Louvre, 19, 25, 28, 60

177,209

Lubbock, John, 70-1

i n d ex

25 I

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in de x

Marx, Karl, 30, 76, 79, 162

masquerade, 92- 4, 111 , 120- 3, 126, 129, 132,
136, 138, 190, 196, 200
Melanesia, 58-9, 228-9

O'Hanlon, Michael, 116- 18

Orientalism, 36, 38- 51 (Ch. ~ 205
ornamental art see decorative art
Ottoman empire, 23-4, 28, 39, 40, 41

see also Papua New Guinea; Solomon Islands;

Vanuatu
Mesopotamia, 15, 26- 8, 31, 37
see also British Museum

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 42, 178, 183

Mexico, 15, 6 1, 128, 186, 232
Mitra, Rajendralala, 45

painting
in Asia, 44, 4 5, 48-9, 170, 184
colonially introduced, 209, 2 10-18, 22 1
as Western art, lii 9- 12, 16, 25, 27, 29, 3 1- 4,
41, 86, 161 - 6 passi1n, 178, 206- 7
Papua New Guinea, 200, 203, 2 16-18

M itter, Parrha, 43, 47, 51, 213-14, 221

modernism, 34, 35, 178- 9, 181 - 2, 183,

Highlands, 116- 18, 126, 145, 148, 184

Papuan Gulf, 120- 1, 126

198,215
Morphy, Howard, 67, 141, 156

Sepik,65- 6,77, 107- 11, 195- 7,203

Munn, Nancy, 153-6, 211

Musee du quai Branly, 186
Museum of Mankind, 18, 178, 183- 6

Trobriand Islands, 148- 52, 156

Parker, Rozsika and Griselda Pollock, 163, 166
Parthenon, 14, 20, 23- 4, 28, 29, 32, 36, 37,
46,225

Museum of Modern Art, 178-9, 181, 183

performance, 12, 93, 94, 111 -26 (Ch . .8}, 129,

museums, 12-13, 19-20, 40, 42, 50, 168, 181,

133, 153- 5, 190,230,233- 6

Peru, ancient, 127- 39 (Ch. 9)

183, 186,224- 6
in Africa, 226- 7
in Melanesia, 228

Phillips, Ruth and Christopher Steiner, 195, 203

of Native America, 186, 229- 30

photography, 34., 166, 206- 8

Pitt-Rivers and Pitt Rivers Museum, 56, 57

in South and Central America, 23 1- 2

prehistoric Europe, 69- 77

see also British Museum and other museu1ns

pritnitive art, 19, 55, 58, 61 - 2, 67, 85, 87,

by name; site 1nuseu1ns

National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, 16
Native North America, 63- 4, 80

172-88 passim (Ch. 12), 190, 192-202

passim, 2 15- 16
primitives, savages, barbarians, 17, 3.L 53- 8, 62,

Arctic, 184, 19 3

63, 173-4, 185, 188, 198, 206

Primitivist art, 86, 177-9, 183, 202

Northwest Coast, 63- 64, 86- 96 (Ch. 6),

puppets, 123- 6

105-6, 11 0, 190-2,203,207,229-30
Plains, 63, 64, 207-8, 2 10-13, 233-4
Natural History Museum, 13- 15, 18
naturalism and realism, 32- 4, 35, 39, 43,
49, 90, 176, 177, 178, 197, 214, 215,
2 16,218
New Zealand, 60, 9 1, 209- 210
Nigeria

Renaissance, -8,. 9, 16, 28, 33-4, 35, 53, 160,

163, 166, 177
repatriation of artefacts, 24, 80, 182, 225- 6,
228- 30
Richardson, Jonathan, 11
Rome see Classical
Rosi, Pamela, 2 16- 8, 221

Benin, 18, 102- 4, 110, 174, 175, 183, 186,

Royal Acade1ny, 24, 166, 168, 180

188,225
Kalabari, 12 1-3, 220

Royal Ontario Museum, 168, 230

Rubin, William, 178- 9

Yoruba, 183-4

Ruskin, Jol1n, 40

Said, Edward, 36, 39

Tate Gallery, 16

San, 71, 73, 74, 76

theft and looting, 128, 103, 174, 18 1, 182, 225,

Saussure, Ferdinand de, 98

Science Museum, 16

227,231
1l1on1as, David, 80

Silvern1an, Eric, 195, 196, 303

1l101nas, Nicholas, 156, 209-10, 22 1, 237

Sir John Soane's Museum, 17

Torday, Emil, 176

site museums, 133, 23 1, 237

tourist art see export art

Srnith, Vincent, 45

typology, 56-7

Solomon Islands, 58, 112- 14, 199- 20 1

South Kensington Museum see V ictoria and Albert
Museum

Udvardy, Monica, 182

un iversal museums, 18, 224- 6

Speiser, Felix, 58-9

sponsorship and patronage, 9, 33, 4 1, 42, 124,

Vanuatu, 228- 9

160, 16 1, 162, 168, 169, 170, 18 1, 237

specific cases, 186, 210, 215, 216, 224
Stonehenge, 76- 7, 8 1
Strathern, Andrew and Marilyn, 116, 126
structure, 65- 6, 90- 6, 137
Sudan, N ilotic, 143- 4, 156
sy1nbolisn1, 98, 106-7, 118, 142, 144, 148-9, 156
see also iconography

Vasari, Georgia, 9, 12

symbols
in art, 58, 70, 74, 86, 87, 88, 92, 127
fertility, 59, 61, 74, 108, 180
of identity, rank and status, 23- 4, 47- 8, 79, 92,

99- 106, 110, 112- 19, 143- 4, 166, 169,

170, 172,209,232,234
see also cosmological symbolism

Victoria and Albert Museum, 16, 18, 21,

44, 50, 51
Winckelmann, Joachim, 12, 22
Wissler, C lark, 63
women
artefacts, 75, 88, 91, 112, 153,

162- 3,236
collections, 49, 19 1
exclusion, 107- 8, 112, 120, 122, 145,
155, 166,224
see also gender
Zimbabwe, Shona, 77-9, 197- 9

i n de x

253