Life needs change.

NAVEL-GAZING

I’m beginning to see that the whole ‘discipline’ of art history isn’t something so great, because of all its flaws. Yes, it was naïve of me to think that it was innocent and untainted. I used to think that there was no culture in North America, part of that is simply because we don’t have such a historical past. North America is a young continent. Much of ‘Western’ culture, as we know it is an appropriation of the ‘Other,’ obviously without acknowledgement. Would North America be equally as guilty of such imperialist and colonialist behaviour given the same amount of time as Europe? Probably. And technically we are because look what we’ve done and still ARE doing to the first inhabitants of the land. We’re destroying their way of life with our ‘civilized’ one, shoving them onto bits of land called reserves. What, are they supposed to feel privileged because the government is ‘reserving’ the land for them? What a stupid word! We want them to be ‘Noble Savages,’ but also force them to assimilate to a Western lifestyle even though we’re giving them almost no resources to do so. The government is often ‘helping’ them by DOING things FOR them, but not really LISTENING to their wants and needs. Why can’t we just let them be, because obviously ‘our way’ is NOT the right way. Are the First Nations peoples too disruptive? Why can’t they juxtapose the old with the new like the West is allowed to? Why does the West always have to be the newest, latest, and trendiest? What is the politically correct term for such an ‘Other’ to the West? Aren’t we just perpetuating the colonialist attitude by playing ‘catch-up’ to the Europeans? There probably aren’t any nations that are ‘guilt-free,’ but how does one deal with that? How DO you write about something such as race/ethnicity without being accused of tokenism, without sounding like you’re just writing about it because it’s an edgy or racy topic? Just write it honestly. But if I’m brought up in this West-centric mindset, where does that get me? Is this where I have the advantage in 2 ways of being an ‘Other’ because I’m Asian AND a woman? Where does one begin? Am I just doomed to write something that will uphold West-centric art history?

I think I’m equally as guilty for bitching about North America not ‘understanding’ culture like the Europeans do. That the Europeans are ‘doing something right.’ But are they really? If we’re constantly looking, deconstructing and analyzing art history as a Euro-centric discipline we realize that it DOES need to adapt to how things are in the world today. It can’t remain Euro-centric, WASP-y, West-centric because it would be doomed to fail as a discipline in the end because people are realizing what is gone wrong with it until now. This is probably true of everything and nothing in a sense. Is North American art practice and art historical practice any more progressive in that sense? The civil rights movement in the US preceded the feminist movement and it was the opposite in the UK, does that change how culture is perceived? Probably. But how does one look at that? Art history is an interdisciplinary subject. One CAN look and analyze something from an art historical perspective, but isn’t that perspective shaped by other disciplines?

Perhaps the Europeans aren’t doing it right, perhaps the North Americans are doing something right, but then why is culture viewed as ‘fluff?’ Yet when I tell people what I’m studying they often speak wistfully about the arts, like they want to be studying it, but it’s just not ‘practical’ or ‘economically sound.’ If culture is supposed to be the height of a civilization’s progress, why is it put down so much? Is this because we’re still at a ‘primitive’ stage? NO, because then we wouldn’t be so West-centric. We have enough cities and we have enough culture, but it’s not valued even though it’s seen as the epitome of civilization. Where does this mindset come from? Does this mean that after we’ve finished comparing the incomparable of, “you’re wasting money on a $2m painting while my son’s dying in a hospital,” and the money goes to said son, will arts be valued then?

posted by: conspiracytheorist at 14:40 | link | comments (1) |

Comments:

#1  13 November 2004 - 18:03

 

Hey darling. welcome to the navel gazers club, yay!

Check out this website for Ortega Y Gasset. I think his stuff would be helpful to you, if you can find English translations.

When I was studying aesthetics and philosophy a-way back in high school, I discovered him. That was a long time ago so I can't quite remember the title of the essay, but he wrote something on African art and how Westerners haven't considered it real art because it's functional. i.e. Western art is supposed to be purely aesthetic, not functional, and that's really ethnocentric.

same deal could be said for all kinds of indigenous art.

argh this is long. I'll email you.

Steph

Anonymous

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