Art As A Cultural System PDF

Art as a Cultural System
Author(s): Clifford Geertz

Source: MLN, Vol. 91, No. 6, Comparative Literature (Dec., 1976), pp. 1473-1499
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
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A note for Minerva students: Clifford Geertz, was a noted public

intellectual and symbolic anthropologist from the 1970s until his death in
2006. Most of that time, when not doing field research in many parts of the
world, he was at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. Among his
most famous and influential works are: Islam Observed (1968), which
compared Indonesia and Morocco; The Interpretation of Cultures (1973);
and Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. In this article, he turned
his attention to the question of the embeddedness of art in culture.
In the following pages you will find the word quattrocento. It means
four hundred in Italian. Here it refers to the fifteenth century (1400s)
in Italy.
Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to MLN.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 128.226.37.5 on Sat, 05 Dec 2015 11:26:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
A RT AS A CULTURAL SYSTEM
CLIFFORD GEERTZ ^
t
1.
Art is notoriouslyhard to talk about. It seems, even when made
of words in the literaryarts,all the more so when made of pigment,
sound, stone, or whatever in the non-literaryones, to exist in a
world of itsown, beyond the reach of discourse. It not only is hard
to talk about it; it seems unnecessaryto do so. It speaks, as we say,
foritself:a poem mustnot mean but be; ifyou have to ask whatjazz
is you are never going to get to know.
Artistsfeel this especially. Most of them regard what is written
and said about theirwork,or worktheyadmire as at best beside the
point,at worsta distractionfromit."Everyonewantsto understand
art," Picasso wrote,"whynot tryto understand the song of a bird?
... People who tryto explain picturesare usually barkingup the
wrong tree."1 Or if that seems too avant garde, there is Millet,
resistingthe classificationof himselfas a Saint-Simoniste:"The
gossip about myMan Witha Hoe seems to me all verystrange,and I
am obliged to you for lettingme know it, as it furnishesme with
another opportunityto wonder at the ideas people attributeto me
... My criticsare men of taste and education, but I cannot put
myselfin theirshoes, and as I have never seen anythingbut fields
since I was born, I tryto say as best I can what I saw and feltwhen I
was at work."2
But anyone at all responsive to aesthetic forms feels it as well.
Even those among us who are neithermysticsnor sentimentalists,
nor given to outburstsof aestheticpiety,feel uneasy when we have
talkedverylong about a workof art in whichwe thinkwe have seen
somethingvaluable. The excess of whatwe have seen, or imaginewe
have, over the stammeringswe can manage to get out concerningit
is so vast thatour words seem hollow, flatulent,or false. Afterart
on Art(New York, 1945), p. 421

Quoted in R. Goldwaterand M. Treves, Artists
2 Quoted ibid., pp. 292-3
MLN 91 (1976) 1473-1499

Copyright Press
? 1976 byTheJohnsHopkinsUniversity
ofreproduction
Allrights reserved.
inanyform
1474 CLIFFORD GEERTZ
talk,"whereofone cannot speak, thereofone mustbe silent,"seems

like veryattractivedoctrine.
But, of course, hardlyanyone, save the trulyindifferent, is thus
silent,artistsincluded. On the contrary,the perception of some-
thingimportantin either particularworksor in the arts generally
moves people to talk(and write)about themincessantly.Something
thatmeaningfulto us cannot be leftjust to sittherebathed in pure
significance,and so we describe,analyse,compare,judge, classify;
we erect theories about creativity,form, perception, social func-
tion; we characterizeart as a language, a structure,a system,an act,
a symbol,a patternof feeling; we reach for scientificmetaphors,
spiritualones, technologicalones, politicalones; and if all else fails
we stringdark sayingstogetherand hope someone else willeludicate
them for us. The surface bootlessnessof talkingabout art seems
matchedbya depth necessityto talkabout it endlessly.And it is this
peculiarstateofaffairsthatI wanthere to probe,in partto explain it,
but even more to determinewhat differenceit makes.
To some degree art is everywheretalked about in what may be
called craftterms-in termsof tonal progressions,color relations,
or prosodic shapes. This is especiallytrue in the West where sub-
jects like harmonyor pictorialcompositionhave been developed to
the pointof minorsciences,and the modern move towardaesthetic
formalism,best represented right now by structuralism,and by
those varietiesof semioticswhich seek to followits lead, is but an
attemptto generalize this approach into a comprehensiveone, to
create a technical language capable of representingthe internal
relationsof myths,poems, dances, or melodies in abstract,trans-
posable terms.But the craftapproach to art talkis hardlyconfined
to eitherthe West or the modern age, as the elaborate theoriesof
Indian musicology,Javanesechoreography,Arabic versification, or
Yoruba embossment remind us. Even the Australian aborigines,
everybody'sfavoriteexample of primitivepeoples, analyze their
body designs and ground paintings into dozens of isolable and
named formalelements,unit graphs in an iconic grammarof rep-
resentation.3
But whatis more interestingand I thinkmore importantis thatit
is perhaps only in the modern age and in the West thatsome men
(stilla small minority,and destined,one suspects,to remain such)
3 See N. D. Munn, WalbiriIconography

(Ithaca, N.Y., 1973).
M L N 1475
have managed to convincethemselvesthattechnicaltalk about art,

howeverdeveloped, is sufficientto a complete understandingof it;
that the whole secret of aesthetic power is located in the formal
relations among sounds, images, volumes, themes, or gestures.
Everywhereelse-and, as I say, among most of us as well-other
sorts of talk, whose terms and conceptions derive from cultural
concerns art may serve, or reflect,or challenge, or describe, but
does not in itselfcreate, collects about it to connect its specific
energies to the general dynamicof human experience. "The pur-
pose of a painter,"Matisse, who can hardlybe accused of under-
valuing form,wrote,"must not be conceived as separate fromhis
pictorialmeans,and thesepictorialmeans mustbe more complete(I
do not mean more complicated) the deeper his thought.I am un-
able to distinguishbetween the feelingI have for life and my way
of expressingit."4
The feeling an individual, or what is more critical,because no
man is an island but a part of the main, the feelinga people has for
life appears, of course, in a great many other places than in their
art. It appears in theirreligion,theirmorality,their science,their
commerce,theirtechnology,theirpolitics,theiramusements,their
law, even in the way they organize their everydaypractical exis-
tence. The talkabout art thatis not merelytechnicalor a spirituali-
zation of the technical-that is, most of it-is largely directed to
placing it withinthe contextof these other expressions of human
purpose and the patternof experience theycollectivelysustain.No
more than sexual passion or contact with the sacred, two more
mattersit is difficultto talk about, but yetsomehow necessary,can
confrontationwith aesthetic objects be left to float, opaque and
hermetic,outside the general course of social life.They demand to
be assimilated.
What this implies,among other things,is that the definitionof
art in any societyis never whollyintra-aesthetic,and indeed but
rarelymore than marginallyso. The chief problem presented by
the sheer phenomenon of aestheticforce,in whateverformand in
resultof whateverskill it may come, is how to place it withinthe
othermodes of social activity,how to incorporateit intothe texture
of a particularpatternof life. And such placing, the givingto art
objectsa culturalsignificance,is alwaysa local matter;what art is in
4 Quoted in Goldwater and Treves,

op. cit., p. 410.
classical China or classical Islam, what it is in the Pueblo southwest

or highland New Guinea, isjust not the same thing,no matterhow
universal the intrinsicqualities that actualize its emotional power
(and I have no desire to deny them) may be. The varietythat
anthropologistshave come to expect in the spiritbeliefs,the clas-
sificationsystems,or the kinshipstructuresof differentpeople, and
notjust in theirimmediate shapes but in the way of being-in-the-
world they both promote and exemplify,extends as well to their
drummings,carvings,chants,and dances.
It is the failure to realize this on the part of many studentsof
non-westernart, and particularlyof so-called "primitiveart," that
leads to the oft-heardcomment that the peoples of such cultures
don't talk, or not very much, about art-they just sculpt, sing,
weave, or whatever;silentin theirexpertise.What is meant is that
they don't talk about it the way the observer talks about it-or
would like them to-in termsof its formalproperties,its symbolic
content,its affectivevalues, or its stylisticfeatures,except laconi-
cally, cryptically,and as though they had precious littlehope of
being understood.
But, of course, theydo talkabout it,as theytalkabout everything
else striking,or suggestive,or moving,that passes through their
lives-about how itis used, who owns its,when it is performed,who
performsor makes it,what role it playsin thisor thatactivity, what
itmaybe exchanged for,whatitis called, how itbegan, and so forth
and so on. But thistends to be seen not as talkabout art,but about
somethingelse-everyday life, myths,trade, or whatever.To the
man who may not know what he likes but knows what art is, the
Tiv, aimlesslysewing raffiaonto cloth prior to resistdyeing it (he
will not even look at how the piece is going until it is completely
finished),who told Paul Bohannan, "ifthe design does not turnout
well, I will sell it to the Ibo; if it does, I will keep it; if it comes out
extraordinarilywell, I shall give it to mymother-in-law," seems not
to be discussing his work at all, but merelysome of his social at-
titudes.5The approach to art fromthe side of Western aesthetics
(which, as Kristellerhas reminded us, only emerged in the mid-
eighteenthcentury,along with our rather peculiar notion of the
"finearts"),and indeed fromany sortof prior formalism,blindsus
to the veryexistenceof the data upon whicha comparativeunder-
5 P. Bohannan, "Artistand Critic in an African

Society," in C. M. Otten ed.
and Art(N.Y., 1971), p. 178.
Anthropology
M L N 1477
standingof it could be built. And we are left,as we used to be in

studies of totemism,caste, or bridewealth-and stillare in struc-
turalistones-with an externalizedconceptionof the phenomenon
supposedly under intense inspectionbut actuallynot even in our
line of sight.
For Matisse,as is no surprise,was right:the means of an art and
the feelingforlifethatanimates it are inseparable,and one can no
more understand aestheticobjects as concatenationsof pure form
than one can understandspeech as a parade of syntacticvariations,
or mythas a setof structuraltransformations. Take, as an example,
a matteras apparentlytransculturaland abstractas line, and con-
sider itsmeaning,as RobertFaris Thompson brilliantlydescribesit,
in Yoruba sculpture.6Linear precision,Thompson says,the sheer
clarityof line, is a major concern of Yoruba carvers,as it is of those
who assess the carvers'work,and the vocabularyof linear qualities,
which the Yoruba use colloquially and across a range of concerns
far broader than sculpture,is nuanced and extensive.It is notjust
theirstatues,pots, and so on thatYoruba incise withlines: theydo
the same with their faces. Line, of varyingdepth, direction,and
length, sliced into their cheeks and left to scar over, serves as a
means of lineage identification,personal allure, and statusexpres-
sion, and the terminology of the sculptor and of the cicatrix
specialist-"cuts" distinguished from "slashes," and "digs" or
"claws" from"splittingsopen"-parallel one another in exact pre-
cision. But there is more to it than this.The Yoruba associate line
with civilization: "This country has become civilized," literally
means, in Yoruba, "this earth has lines upon its face." "'Civiliza-
tion' in Yoruba," Thompson goes on
isildju-facewithlinedmarks.The sameverbwhichcivilizes theface
withmarksof membership in urbanand townlineagescivilizesthe
earth:6 s.dke.k;6 sdko(He slashesthe [cicatrix]marks;he clears
thebush).The sameverbwhichopens Yorubamarksupon a face,
opens roads,and boundariesin the forest:6 ino.n; 0 1ddici; 0
lapa(hecuta newroad;he markedouta newboundary;he cuta new
path).In fact,thebasicverbtocicatrize(ld)has multipleassociations
of imposingof humanpatternupon thedisorderof nature:chunks
of wood,thehumanface,and theforestare all "opened".. . allow-
ingtheinnerqualityof thesubstanceto shineforth.7
6 R.F.
Thompson, "Yoruba ArtisticCriticism,"in W.L. d'Azaredo, ed., The Tradi-
tionalArtistin AfricanSocieties(Bloomington, Ind., 1973), pp. 19-61.
7
Ibid., pp. 35-36.
The intense concern of the Yoruba carver with line, and with
particularformsof line, stemsthereforefromrathermore than a
detached pleasure in its intrinsic properties, the problems of
sculpturaltechnique,or even some generalized culturalnotionone
could isolateas a nativeaesthetic.It growsout of a distinctivesensi-
bilitythe whole of life participatesin forming-one in which the
meanings of thingsare the scars that men leave on them.
This realization,thatto studyan art formis to explore a sensibil-
ity,that such a sensibilityis essentiallya collectiveformation,and
thatthe foundationsof such a formationare as wide as social exis-
tence and as deep, leads away not only fromthe view thataesthetic
power is a grandiloquence for the pleasures of craft.It leads away
also from the the so-called functionalistview that has most often
been opposed to it: that is, that works of art are elaborate
mechanisms for defining social relationships, sustaining social
rules, and strengtheningsocial values. Nothing very measurable
would happen to Yoruba societyif carvers no longer concerned
themselveswiththe finenessof line, or, I daresay, even withcarv-
ing. Certainly,it would not fall apart. Just some thingsthat were
feltcould not be said-and perhaps, afterawhile,mightno longer
even be felt-and lifewould be the greyerfor it. Anythingmay,of
course, play a role in helping societywork,paintingand sculpting
included; just as anythingmay help it tear itselfapart. But the
central connection between art and collectivelife does not lie on
such an instrumentalplane, it lies on a semioticone. Matisse'scolor
jottings (the word is his own) and the Yoruba's line arrangements
don't, save glancingly,celebrate social structureor forwarduseful
doctrines.They materializea way of experiencing;bringa particu-
lar cast of mind out intothe worldof objects,where men can look at
it.
The signs or sign elements-Matisse's yellow, the Yoruba's
slash-that make up a semiotic systemwe want, for theoretical
purposes, to call aestheticare ideationallyconnected to the society
in whichtheyare found,not mechanically.They are, in a phrase of
Robert Goldwater's,primarydocuments; not illustrationsof con-
ceptionsalready in force,but conceptionsthemselvesthatseek-or
forwhichpeople seek-a meaningfulplace in a repertoireof other
documents,equally primary.8
8 R. Goldwater,"Art and
Anthropology:Some Comparisons of Methodology,"in
A. Forge, ed., Primitive
Artand Society(London, 1973), p. 10.
M L N 1479
To develop the point more concretely,and to dissipateany intel-

lectualistor literaryaura such words as "ideational" and "concep-
tion" may seem to carrywith them,we can look for a moment at
some aspects of one of the few other discussionsof tribalart that
manages to be sensitiveto semioticconcerns withoutdisappearing
intoa haze of formulas:AnthonyForge's analysisof the four-color
flat painting of the Abelam people of New Guinea.9 The group
produces, in Forge's phrase, "acres of painting,"on flatsheets of
sago spathe, all done in cult situationsof one sortor another. The
details of all this are outlined in his studies. But what is of im-
mediate interestis the factthat,although Abelam paintingranges
from the obviouslyfigurativeto the totallyabstract(a distinction
which, as their painting is declamatory,not descriptive,has no
meaning to them), it is mainly connected to the wider world of
Abelam experience by means of an almost obsessivelyrecurrent
motif,a pointed oval, representing,and called, the belly of a wo-
man. The representationis, of course, at lease vaguely iconic. But
the power of the connectionforthe Abelam lies less in that,hardly
much of an achievement,than in the factthattheyare able withit
to address a burning preoccupation of theirs in terms of color-
shapes (in itself,line here hardly exists as an aesthetic element;
while paint has a magical force)-a preoccupation theyaddress in
somewhat differentways in work, in ritual, in domestic life: the
natural creativityof the female.
The concern forthe differencebetween femalecreativity, which
the Abelam see as pre-cultural,a product of woman's physicalbe-
ing, and thereforeprimary,and male creativity,which theysee as
cultural, dependent upon men's access to supernatural power
throughritual,and thereforederivative,runs throughthe whole of
theirculture.Women created vegetationand discovered the yams
that men eat. Women firstencountered the supernaturals,whose
lovers they became, until the men, grown suspicious, discovered
what was going on and took the supernaturals,now turned into
wood carvings,as the focus of theirceremonials. And, of course,
women produce men fromthe swell of theirbellies. Male power,
dependent upon ritual, a matternow jealously kept secret from
women,is thusencapsulated withinfemale power dependent upon
9 A.
Forge, "Styleand Meaning in Sepik Art,"in Forge, ed., op. cit.,pp. 169-192.
See also, A. Forge, "The Abelam Artist,"in M. Freedman, ed., Social Organization
(Chicago, 1967), pp. 65-84.
biology; and it is this prodigious fact the paintings,packed with

red, yellow,white,and black ovals (Forge found eleven of them in
one small paintingwhich was virtuallycomposed of them) are, as
we would say "about."
But theyare directlyabout it,not illustratively. One could as well
argue that the rituals,or the myths, or the organization of family
life,or the divisionof labor enact conceptions evolved in painting
as that paintingreflectsthe conceptions underlyingsocial life. All
these matters are marked by the apprehension of culture as
generated in the womb of nature as man is in the bellyof woman,
and all of them give it a specificsortof voice. Like the incised lines
on Yoruba statues,the color-ovalsin Abelam paintingsare mean-
ingfulbecause theyconnect to a sensibilitytheyjoin in creating-
here, one where, rather than scars signing civilization,pigment
signs power:
In generalcolour(or strictly paint)wordsare appliedonlyto things
ofritualconcern.Thiscanbe seenveryclearlyintheAbelamclassifi-
cationof nature.Tree speciesare subjectto an elaborateclassifica-
tion,but... thecriteriaused are seed and leafshapes.Whetherthe
treehas flowers or not,and thecolourofflowers or leavesare rarely
mentionedas criteria.Broadlyspeaking,the Abelamhad use only
forthehibiscusand a yellowflower, bothofwhichservedas [ritual]
decorations formenand yams.Smallflowering plantsof anycolour
wereof no interestand wereclassifiedmerelyas grassor under-
growth. Similarly withinsects:all thosethatbiteor stingarecarefully
butbutterflies
classified, formone huge classregardlessof size or
colour.In theclassificationofbirdspecies,however, colouris ofvital
importance ... butthenbirdsare totems, and unlikebutterflies and
flowersare centralto theritualsphere... It wouldseem . . . that
colourtobe describable hastobe ofritualinterest. The wordsforthe
fourcoloursare . . . reallywordsforpaints.Paintis an essentially
powerful substanceand itis perhapsnotso surprising thattheuse of
colourwordsis restricted to thosepartsof thenaturalenvironment
thathavebeen selectedas ritually relevant. . .
The association betweencolourand ritualsignificance can alsobe
seen in Abelam reactionsto European importations.Coloured
magazinessometimes findtheirwayintothevillageand occasionally
pagesare tornfromthemand attachedto thematting at thebaseof
theceremonialhouse facade. . . The pages selectedwerebrightly
coloured,usuallyfoodadvertisements ... [and]theAbelamhad no
idea of whatwas representedbut thoughtthatwiththeirbright
coloursand incomprehensibility theselectedpageswerelikelyto be
European [sacred designs]and therefore powerful.10
10A.
Forge, "Learning to See in New Guinea," in P. Mayer, ed., Socialization,the
ApproachfromSocial Anthropology (London, 1970), pp. 184-6.
M L N 1481
So in at least two places, two matterson the face of them as

self-luminousas line and color draw theirvitalityfromrathermore
than their intrinsicappeal, as real as that mightbe. Whatever the
innate capacities for response to sculptile delicacy or chromatic
drama, these responses are caught up in wider concerns, less
generic and more contentful,and it is thisencounter withthe loc-
ally real that reveals their constructivepower. The unityof form
and content is, where it occurs and to the degree it occurs, a cul-
tural achievement,not a philosophicaltautology.If there is to be a
semioticscience of art it is thatachievementit will have to explain.
And to do so itwillhave to give more attentionto talk,and to other
sortsof talkbut the recognizablyaesthetic,than it has usuallybeen
inclined to give.
2.
A common response to thissort of argument,especiallywhen it
comes from the side of anthropologists,is to say, that may be all
well and good for primitives,who confuse the realms of theirex-
perience into one large, unreflectivewhole, but it doesn't apply to
more developed cultures where art emerges as a differentiated
activityresponsivemainlyto itsown necessities.And like mostsuch
easy contrastsbetween peoples on differentsides of the literacy
revolution,it is false, and in both directions: as much in under-
estimatingthe internaldynamicof art in-what shall I call them?
unlettered societies?-as in over-estimatingits autonomy in let-
tered ones. I will set aside the firstsort of error here-the notion
thatYoruba and Abelam typeart traditionsare withouta kineticof
theirown-perhaps to come back to it on a later occasion. For the
momentI wantto scotchthe second bylookingbrieflyat the matrix
of sensibilityin two quite developed, and quite different,aesthetic
enterprises:quattrocentopaintingand Islamic poetry.
For Italian painting, I will mainly rely on Michael Baxandall's
recentbook, Paintingand Experiencein Fifteenth Century Italy,which
takes preciselythe sortof approach I here am advocating."1Baxan-
dall is concerned withdefiningwhat he calls "the period eye"-that
is, "the equipment that a fifteenth-century painter's public [i.e.,
other painters and "the patronizingclasses"] brought to complex
visual stimulationslike pictures."12A picture,he says,is sensitiveto
" M. Baxandall, Paintingand Experiencein Fifteenth Italy(London, 1972).

Century
12
Ibid., p. 38.
the kinds of interpretiveskill-patterns, categories, inferences,

analogies-the mind bringsto it:
A man'scapacitytodistinguish a certainkindofformor relationship
of formswillhave consequencesfor the attentionwithwhichhe
addressesa picture.For instance,if he is skilledin notingpropor-
tionalrelationships,or ifhe is practicedin reducingcomplexforms
tocompoundsofsimpleforms, or ifhe hasa richsetofcategoriesfor
differentkindsof red and brown,theseskillsmaywelllead himto
orderhisexperienceof Pierodella Francesca'sAnnunciation differ-
entlyfrompeoplewithouttheseskills,and muchmoresharplythan
peoplewhoseexperiencehas notgiventhemmanyskillsrelevantto
thepicture.For itis clearthatsomeperceptualskillsare morerelev-
ant to any one picturethanothers:a virtuosity in classifying
the
ductusof flexinglines-a skillmanyGermans,forinstance, possess-
ed in thisperiod... wouldnot findmuchscope on theAnnuncia-
tion.Muchofwhatwe call"taste"liesin this,theconformity between
demandedbya paintingand skillsof discrimination
discriminations
possessedbythebeholder.13
But what is even more important,these appropriate skills,for
both the beholder and the painter,are forthe mostpartnot builtin
like retinalsensitivityfor focal lengthbut are drawn fromgeneral
experience, the experience in thiscase of livinga quattrocentolife
and seeing thingsin a quattrocentoway:
... someof thementalequipmenta man ordershis visualexperi-
encewithis variable,and muchof thisvariableequipmentis cultur-
allyrelative,in thesenseof beingdetermined bythesocietywhich
has influenced hisexperience.Amongthesevariablesare categories
withwhichhe classified hisvisualstimuli,theknowledgehe willuse
tosupplement whathisimmediate visiongiveshim,and theattitude
he willadoptto thekindofartificial objectseen.The beholdermust
use on thepaintingsuchvisualskillsas he has,veryfewofwhichare
normallyspecialto painting,and he is likelyto use.thoseskillshis
societyesteemshighly.The painterrespondsto this;his public's
visualcapacitymustbe his medium.Whateverhis own specialized
a memberofthesocietyhe worksfor
skills,he is himself
professional
and shares its visual experience and habit.14
The firstfact(though,as in Abelam, onlythe first)to be attended
to in these termsis, of course, that most fifteenth-century Italian
paintings were religious paintings,and not just in subject matter
but in the ends theywere designed to serve. Pictureswere meant to
13
Ibid., p. 34.
14
Ibid., p. 40.
M L N 1483
deepen human awareness of the spiritualdimensionsof existence;

theywere visual invitationsto reflectionson the truthsof Christian-
ity.Faced withan arrestingimage of The Annunciation,The As-
sumptionof the Virgin,The Adorationof the Magi, The Charge to
St. Peter,or The Passion,the beholder was to complete itbyreflect-
ing on the event as he knew it and on his personal relationshipto
the mysteriesit recorded. "For it is one thingto adore a painting,"
as a Dominican preacher defending the virtuousnessof art, put it,
"but it is quite another to learn froma painted narrativewhat to
adore."15
Yet the relationbetweenreligiousideas and pictorialimages (and
thisI thinkis true forart generally)was not simplyexpositive;they
were not Sunday school illustrations.The painter,or at least the
religiouspainter,was concerned withinvitinghis public to concern
themselveswithfirstthingsand last,not withprovidingthemwitha
recipe or a surrogatefor such concern,nor witha transcriptionof
it. His relation,or more exactly,the relationsof his painting,to the
wider culturewas interactiveor, as Baxandall puts it,complemen-
tary.Speaking of Giovanni Bellini's Transfiguration, a generalized,
almosttypological,but of course marvellouslyplastic,renderingof
the scene, he calls it a relic of cooperation between Bellini and his
public-"The fifteenth-century experience of the Transfiguration
was an interactionbetween the painting,the configurationon the
wall, and the visualizingactivityof the public mind-a public mind
with differentfurniture and dispositions from ours."16 Bellini
could count on a contributionfromthe other side and designed his
panel so as to call thatcontributionout, not to depict it. His voca-
tion was to constructan image to which a distinctivespirituality
could forciblyreact. The public does not need, as Baxandall re-
marks, what it has already got. What it needs is an object rich
enough to see it in; rich enough, even, to, in seeing it, deepen it.
There were, of course, all sortsof cultural institutionsactive in
formingthe sensibilityof quattrocentoItalywhichconverged with
painting to produce the "period eye," and not all of them were
religious(as not all the paintingswere religious).Among the religi-
ous ones, popular sermons,classifyingand subclassifyingthe rev-
elatoryevents and personages of the Christian mythand setting
15
Quoted Ibid., p. 41.
16
Ibid., p. 48.
forththe typesof attitude-disquiet, reflection,inquiry,humility,

dignity,admiration-appropriate to each, as well as offeringdicta
as to how such matterswere represented visually,were probably
the mostimportant."Popular preachers ... drilled theircongrega-
tions in a set of interpretive skills right at the centre of the
fifteenth-centuryresponse to painting."17Gestureswere classified,
physiognomies typed, colors symbologized,and the physical ap-
pearance of central figuresdiscussed withapologetical care. "You
ask," another Dominican preacher announced,
Was theVirgindarkor fair?AlbertusMagnussaysthatshewas not
simplydark,norsimplyred-haired, Foranyone
norjust fair-haired.
of thesecoloursbyitselfbringsa certainimperfection to a person.
This is whyone says:"God saveme froma red-hairedLombard,"or
"God saveme froma black-haired German,"or "froma fair-haired
Spaniard,"or"froma Belgianofwhatever colour."Marywasa blend
ofcomplexions, partaking of all ofthem,because a facepartakingof
one. It is forthisreasonmedicalauthorities
all ofthemis a beautiful
declarethata complexion compoundedofredand fairisbestwhena
thirdcolouris added: black.And yetthis,saysAlbertus,we must
admit:she wasa littleon thedarkside.There are threereasonsfor
thinking byreasonofcomplexion,
this-firstly sinceJewstendto be
darkand she was a Jewess;secondlybyreasonof witness,sinceSt.
Luke made the threepicturesof her now at Rome, Loreto and
Bologna,and theseare brown-complexioned; by reasonof
thirdly
affinity.A son commonlytakesafterhis mother,and vice versa;
Christwas dark,therefore ... 18
Of the other domains of Renaissance culture thatcontributedto
the way fifteenth-century Italians looked at paintings,two which
Baxandlall finds to have been of particular importance were
another art,though a lesser one, social dancing, and a quite practi-
cal activityhe calls gauging-that is, estimatingquantities,volumes,
proportions,ratios,and so on for commercial purposes.
Dancing had relevance to picture seeing because it was less a
temporalart allied to music,as withus, than a graphicone allied to
spectacle-religious pageants, streetmasques, and so on; a matter
of figural grouping not, or anywaynot mainly,of rhythmicmo-
tion.As such,itboth depended upon and sharpened the capacityto
discern psychological interplayamong static figures grouped in
subtle patterns,a kind of body arranging-a capacity the painters
17 Ibid.
Quoted, ibid., p. 57.

18
M L N 1485
shared and used to evoke theirviewer'sresponse. In particular,the

bassadanza, a slow paced, geometrizeddance popular in Italyat the
time presented patternsof figuralgrouping that painterssuch as
Botticelli,in his Primavera(which revolves,of course, around the
dance of the Graces) or his Birthof Venus,employed in organizing
theirwork. The sensibilitythe bassa danza represented,Baxandall
says,"involveda public skillat interpretingfigurepatterns,a gen-
eral experience of semi-dramaticarrangement[of human bodies]
thatallowed Botticelliand other paintersto assume a similarpublic
readiness to interprettheir own groups."19Given a widespread
familiarity withhighlystylizeddance formsconsistingessentiallyof
discretesequences of tableaux vivants,the paintercould count on
an immediatevisual understandingof his own sort of figuraltab-
leaus in a way not veryopen in a culturesuch as ours where dance
is a mattermore of movement framed between poses than poses
framedbetween movementand the general sense fortacitgesture
is weak. "The transmutationof a vernacularsocial art of grouping
intoan art where a patternof people-not gesticulatingor lunging
or grimacing people-can still stimulate a strong sense of...
psychologicalinterplay,is the problem: it is doubtfulifwe have the
rightpredispositionsto see such refinedinnuendo at all spontane-
ously."20
Beyond and behind thistendencyto conceive of both dances and
paintingsas patternsof body arrangementcarryingimplicitmean-
ing lies, of course, a wider tendencyin the whole society,and par-
ticularlyin its cultivatedclasses, to regard the way in which men
grouped themselveswith respect to one another, the postural or-
derings theyfell into in one another's company, as not accidental,
but the resultof the sortsof relationshipstheyhad to one another.
But it is in the other matterBaxandall takes to have had a forming
impact on how the people of the Renaissance saw paintings-
gauging-that this deeper penetrationof visual habit into the life
of society,and the life of societyinto it, is apparent.
It is an importantfactof art history,he notes, thatcommodities
have come regularlyin standard-sizecontainersonlysince the nine-
teenthcentury(and even then, he mighthave added, only in the
West). "Previouslya container-barrel, sack, or bale, was unique,
19Ibid., p. 80.
20
Ibid., p. 76.
and calculatingitsvolume quicklyand accuratelywas a conditionof

business."21And the same was true of lengths,as in the clothtrade,
proportions,as in brokerage,or ratios,as in surveying.One did not
survivein commercewithoutsuch skills,and itwas merchantswho,
for the most part,commissionedthe paintings,and in some cases,
like Piero della Francesca,who wrotea mathematicalhandbook on
gauging, painted them.
In any case, both painters and their merchant patrons had a
similareducation in such matters-to be literatewas at the same
timeto have command of the sortsof techniquesavailable tojudge
the dimensions of things. So far as solid objects were concerned
these skillsinvolvedthe abilityto break down irregularor unfamil-
iar masses into compounds of regular and familiar,and thus cal-
culable, ones-cylinders, cones, cubes and so on; for two-
dimensional ones, a similar abilityto analyze ununiformsurfaces
into simple planes: squares, circles, triangles, hexagons. The
heightsto which thiscould rise is indicated in a passage Baxandall
gives fromPiero's handbook:
There is a barrel,each of itsends being2 bracciin diameter;the
diameterat itsbungis 21/4 bracciand halfwaybetweenbungand end
itis 22/9bracci.The barrelis 2 braccilong.Whatis itscubicmeasure?
This is likea pair of truncatedcones. Square the diameterat the
ends: 2 x 2 = 4. Then square the median diameter 22/9x 22/9=
476/81. Add themtogether[giving]876/81.Multiply2 x 2/9 = 44/9.Add
this to 876/81= 1331/8s.Divide by 3 = 4112/243. . . Now square 21/4
[giving]51/16.Add it to the square of the median diameter: 55/16 +
476/81 = 101/129. Multiply 22/9x 21/4=5. Add thisto the previous
sum [getting]151/129.Divide by 3 [whichyields]5 and 1/3888.Add it to
the firstresult... = 91792/3888. Multiplythisby 11 and thendivide by
This is thecubic
14 [i.e. multiplybypi/4]:the finalresultis 723600/54432.
measureof thebarrel.22
This is,as Baxandall says,a special intellectualworld; but itis one

in which all of the educated classes in places like Venice and Flor-
ence lived. Its connection with painting, and the perception of
painting,lay less in the calculational processes as such than in a
dispositionto attendto the structureof complex formsas combina-
tions of simpler, more regular, and more comprehensible ones.
21Ibid., 86.
p.
22
Ibid.
M L N 1487
Even the objects involved in paintings-cisterns, columns, brick

towers,paved floors,and so on-were the same ones that hand-
books used to practicestudentsin the art of gauging. And so when
Piero, in his other hat as painter,rendersTheAnnunciation as set in
a columned, multilevel,advancing and receding Perugian portico,
or the Madonna in a domed, half-roundedcloth pavillion,a fram-
ing dress to her own, he is calling upon his public's abilityto see
such formsas compounds of others and thus to interpret-gauge,
if you will-his paintingsand grasp theirmeaning:
To thecommercial manalmostanything was reducibleto geometri-
cal figuresunderlying surfaceirregularities-that pile of grainre-
ducedto a cone,thebarrelto a cylinder or a compoundoftruncated
cones,thecloak to a circleof stuffallowedto lapse intoa cone of
stuff,the bricktowerto a compoundcubic body composedof a
calculablenumberof smallercubic bodies,and ... thishabitof
analysisis veryclose to the painter'sanalysisof appearances.As a
mangaugeda bale,thepaintersurveyed a figure.In bothcasesthere
is a consciousreductionof irregularmassesand voidsto combina-
tionsof manageablegeometric bodies... Because theywereprac-
tisedin manipulating ratiosand in analysingthevolumeor surface
of compoundbodies,[fifteenth-century Italians]were sensitiveto
picturescarrying themarksof similarprocesses.23
The famous lucid solidityof Renaissance painting had at least
partof itsoriginsin somethingelse than the inherentpropertiesof
planar representation,mathematicallaw, and binocular vision.
Indeed, and this is the central point, all these broader cultural
matters,and othersI have not mentioned,interworkedto produce
the sensibilityin which quattrocentoart was formed and had its
being. (In an earlierwork,Giottoand theOrators,Baxandall connects
the development of pictorialcomposition to the narrativeforms,
most especially the periodic sentence, of humanist rhetoric; the
orator's hierarchyof period, clause, phrase, and word being con-
sciously matched, by Alberti and others, to the painter's one of
picture, body, member, and plane.)24 Differentpainters played
upon differentaspects of that sensibility,but the moralismof re-
ligious preaching,the pageantryof social dancing, the shrewdness
of commercialgauging,and the grandeur of Latin oratoryall com-
bined to provide what is indeed the painter's true medium: the
23
Ibid., pp. 87-9, 101.
24
M. Baxandall, Giottoand theOrators(Oxford, 1971).
capacityof his audience to see meaningsin pictures.An old picture,

Baxandall says,though he could have omittedthe "old," is a record
of visual activitythat one has to learn to read, just as one has to
learn to read a text from a differentculture. "If we observe that
Piero della Francesca tends to a gauged sort of painting, Fra
Angelico to a preached sortof painting,and Botticellito a danced
sort of painting,we are observingsomethingnot only about them
but about theirsociety."25
The capacity,variable among peoples as it is among individuals,
to perceive meaning in pictures (or poems, melodies, buildings,
pots, dramas, statues) is, like all other fullyhuman capacities, a
product of collectiveexperience which far transcendsit, as is the
far rarer capacity to put it there in the firstplace. It is out of
participationin the general systemof symbolicformswe call cul-
ture that participationin the particularwe call art,which is in fact
but a sectorof it,is possible. A theoryof art is thus at the same time
a theoryof culture, not an autonomous enterprise.And if it is a
semiotictheoryof art it musttrace the lifeof signsin society,not in
an invented world of dualities, transformations,parallels, and
equivalences.
3.
There is hardlya betterexample of the factthatan artistworks
with signs which have a place in semiotic systemsextending far
beyond the craft he practices than the poet in Islam. A Muslim
making verses faces a set of cultural realities as objective to his
intentionsas rocks or rainfall,no less substantialfor being non-
material,and no less stubbornfor being man-made. He operates,
and alway has operated, in a contextwhere the instrumentof his
art,language, has a peculiar, heightenedkind of status,as distinc-
tivea significance,and as mysterious,as Abelam paint. Everything
frommetaphysicsto morphology,scriptureto calligraphy,the pat-
ternsof public recitationto the styleof informalconversationcon-
spires to make of speech and speaking a mattercharged with an
import if not unique in human history,certainlyextraordinary.
The man who takes up the poet's role in Islam traffics,and not
whollylegitimately,in the moral substance of his culture.
In order even to begin to demonstratethisit is of course neces-
25
Paintingand Experience,op. cit., p. 152.
M L N 1497
In short, in speech terms, or more exactly speech act terms,

poetrylies in betweenthe divine imperativesof the Quran and the
rhetoricalthrustand counter-thrust of everydaylife,and it is that
Pages 1489-1496 are Deleted.
which gives it its uncertain status and strange force. On the one
hand, it formsa kindof para-Quran, sung truthsmore thantransit-
ory and less than eternal in a language stylemore studied than the
colloquial and less arcane than theclassical.On the other,it projects
the spiritof everydaylife into the realm of, if not the holy,at least
the inspired. Poetryis morallyambiguous because it is not sacred
enough tojustifythe power it actuallyhas and not secular enough
forthatpower to be equated to ordinaryeloquence. The Moroccan
oral poet inhabitsa region between speech types which is at the
same timea region between worlds,between the discourse of God
and the wrangleof men. And unless thatis understood neitherhe
nor his poetrycan be understood, no matterhow much ferreting
out of latentstructuresor parsing of verse formsone engages in.
Poetry,or anywaythis poetry,constructsa voice out of the voices
that surround it. If it can be said to have a "function,"that is it.
"Art," says my dictionary,a usefullymediocre one, is "the con-
scious production or arrangement of colors, forms,movements,
sounds or other elements in a manner that affectsthe sense of
beauty,"a way of puttingthe matterwhich seems to suggest that
men are born withthe power to appreciate, as theyare born with
the power to see jokes, and have only to be provided with the
occasions to exercise it.As what I have said here ought to indicate,I
do not thinkthatthisis true (I don't thinkthatit is true forhumor
either); but, rather, that "the sense of beauty," or whatever the
abilityto respond intelligentlyto face scars, painted ovals, domed
pavillions,or rhymedinsultsshould be called, is no less a cultural
artifactthan the objects and devices concocted to "affect"it. The
artist works with his audience's capacities-capacities to see, or
hear, or touch,sometimeseven to tasteand smell,withunderstand-
ing. And though elementsof these capacities are indeed innate-it
usually helps not to be color blind-they are brought into actual
existenceby the experience of livingin the midstof certainsortsof
thingsto look at, listento, handle, thinkabout, cope with,and react
to; particularvarietiesof cabbages, particularsorts of kings. Art
and the equipment to grasp it are made in the same shop.
For an approach to aestheticswhichcan be called semiotic-that
is, one concerned withhow signssignify-whatthismeans is thatit
cannot be a formalscience like logic or mathematics,but mustbe a
social one like historyor anthropology.Harmony and prosody are

hardlyto be dispensedwith,anymorethan compositionand syntax;
but exposing the structureof a work of art and accounting for its
impact are not the same thing.What Nelson Goodman has called
"the absurd and awkward mythof the insularityof aestheticex-
perience," the notion that the mechanicsof art generate its mean-
ing, cannot produce a science of signs or of anythingelse; only an
emptyvirtuosityof verbal analysis.28
If we are to have a semioticsof art (or forthatmatter,of any sign
systemnot axiomaticallyself-contained),we are going to have to
engage in a kind of natural historyof signs and symbols, an
ethnographyof the vehicles of meaning. Such signs and symbols,
such vehiclesof meaning,play a role in the lifeof a society,or some
part of a society,and it is that which in factgives them their life.
Here, too, meaning is use, or more carefully,arises fromuse, and it
is by tracingout such uses as exhaustivelyas we are accustomed to
for irrigationtechniquesor marriagecustomsthatwe are going to
be able to findout anythinggeneral about them. This is not a plea
for inductivism-we certainly have no need for a catalog of
instances-but for turningthe analyticpowers of semiotictheory,
whether Peirce's, Saussure's, Levi-Strauss's,or Goodman's, away
from an investigationof signs in abstractiontoward an investiga-
tion of them in theirnatural habitat-the common world in which
men look, name, listen,and make.
It is not a plea, either,forthe neglectof form,but forseekingthe
roots of formnot in some updated version.of facultypsychology
but in what I have called elsewhere "the social historyof the
imagination"-that is, in the constructionand deconstructionof
symbolicsystemsas individuals and groups of individuals tryto
make some sense of the profusionof thingsthat happen to them.
When a Bamileke chieftook office,Jacques Maquet informsus, he
had his statuecarved; "afterhis death, the statuewas repsected,but
it was slowlyeroded by the weather as his memorywas eroded in
the mindsof the people."29Where is the formhere? In the shape of
the statueor the shape of itscareer? It is, of course, in both. But no
analysis of the statue that does not hold its fate in view, a fate as
28
N. Goodman, LanguagesofArt(Indianapolis, 1968), p. 260.
29J.Maquet, "Introductionto AestheticAnthropology," A Macaleb Module in An-
thropology(Reading, Mass, 1971), p. 14.
M L N 1499
intended as is the arrangementof its volume or the gloss of its

surface,is going to understand its meaning or catch its force.
It is, after all, not just statues (or paintings,or poems) that we
have to do with but the factorsthat cause these things to seem
important-that is, affectedwith import-to those who make or
possess them,and these are as various as life itself.If there is any
commonalityamong all the artsin all the places thatone findsthem
(in Bali theymake statuesout of coins, in Australiadrawingsout of
dirt) thatjustifies including them under a single, Western-made
rubric,it is not thattheyappeal to some universalsense of beauty.
That may or may not exist,but if it does it does not seem, in my
experience, to enable people to respond to exotic arts with more
than an ethnocentricsentimentalismin the absence of a knowledge
of what those artsare about or an understandingof the cultureout
of which they come. (The Western use of "primitive"motifs,its
undoubted value in itsown termsaside, has only accentuated this;
mostpeople, I am convinced,see Africansculptureas bush Picasso
and hear Javanese music as noisyDebussy.) If thereis a commonal-
ityit lies in the factthatcertainactivitieseverywhereseem specifi-
callydesigned to demonstratethatideas are visible,audible, and-
one needs to make a word up here-tactible, thattheycan be cast in
formswhere the sense, and through the senses the emotions,can
reflectively address them. The varietyof artisticexpression stems
fromthe varietyof conceptionsmen have about the way thingsare,
and is indeed the same variety.
To be of effectiveuse in the studyof art, semioticsmust move
beyond the consideration of signs as means of communication,
code to be deciphered, to a consideration of them as modes of
thought,idiom to be interpreted.It is not a new crytographythat
we need, especially when it consists of replacing one cipher by
another less intelligible,but a new diagnostics,a science whichcan
determinethe meaning of thingsfor the life thatsurroundsthem.
It willhave, of course, to be trainedon signification, not pathology,
and treatwithideas, not withsymptoms.But byconnectingincised
statues,pigmentedsago palms,frescoedwalls,and chanted verseto
jungle clearing,totem rites,commercialinference,or streetargu-
ment, it can perhaps begin at last to locate in the tenor of their
settingthe sources of theirspell.
forAdvancedStudy
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Art as a Cultural System

Author(s): Clifford Geertz

A note for Minerva students: Clifford Geertz, was a noted public

on Art(New York, 1945), p. 421

MLN 91 (1976) 1473-1499

talk,"whereofone cannot speak, thereofone mustbe silent,"seems

3 See N. D. Munn, WalbiriIconography

have managed to convincethemselvesthattechnicaltalk about art,

4 Quoted in Goldwater and Treves,

classical China or classical Islam, what it is in the Pueblo southwest

5 P. Bohannan, "Artistand Critic in an African

standingof it could be built. And we are left,as we used to be in

To develop the point more concretely,and to dissipateany intel-

biology; and it is this prodigious fact the paintings,packed with

So in at least two places, two matterson the face of them as

" M. Baxandall, Paintingand Experiencein Fifteenth Italy(London, 1972).

the kinds of interpretiveskill-patterns, categories, inferences,

deepen human awareness of the spiritualdimensionsof existence;

forththe typesof attitude-disquiet, reflection,inquiry,humility,

Quoted, ibid., p. 57.

shared and used to evoke theirviewer'sresponse. In particular,the

and calculatingitsvolume quicklyand accuratelywas a conditionof

This is,as Baxandall says,a special intellectualworld; but itis one

Even the objects involved in paintings-cisterns, columns, brick

capacityof his audience to see meaningsin pictures.An old picture,

In short, in speech terms, or more exactly speech act terms,

social one like historyor anthropology.Harmony and prosody are

intended as is the arrangementof its volume or the gloss of its

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