Surely it is irresponsible for us to withhold judgment on the morality of these merely because they occurred in a different culture. It is obvious that in both cases the men’s response, murder, was out of all proportion to the women’s “offenses,” and therefore demonstrated a wanton disregard for the women’s human rights. Their response is thus properly judged immoral. And this judgment implies another—that the culture condoning such behavior is guilty of moral insensitively.
9. Art as Nonverbal Communication
Like language and social organization, art is essential to man. As embellishment and as creation of objects beyond requirements of the most basic needs of living, art has accompanied man since prehistoric times. Because of its almost unfailing consistency as an element of many societies, art may be a response to some biological or psychological need. Indeed, it is one of the most constant forms of human behavior.
However, use of the word art is not relevant when we describe African art, because it is really a European term that at first grew out of Greek philosophy and was later reinforced by European culture. The use of other terms, such as exotic art, primitive art, and so on, to delineate differences is just as misleading. Most such terms are pejorative—implying that African art is on a lower cultural level. Levels of culture are irrelevant here, since African and European attitudes toward the creative act are so different. Since there is no term in our language to distinguish between the essential differences in thinking, it is best then to describe standards of African art.
African art attracts because of its powerful emotional content and its beautiful abstract form. Abstract treatment of form describes most often with bare essentials of line, shape, texture, and pattern intense energy and sublime spirituality. Hundreds of distinct cultures and languages and many types of people have created over one thousand different styles that defy classification. Each art and craft form has its own history and its own aesthetic content. But there are some common denominators (always with exceptions.)
African art is functional. Its function is its purpose, whether it is economic, magical, or religious. There is, though, some art for its own sake such as in the embellishment of pulleys used in weaving. The carving on the pulley may not make for a stronger pulley (a metal hook would be cheaper and stronger), but when asked why another kind wasn’t used, the weaver answered, “One does not want to live without pretty things.”
African art is a way of experiencing the world. All its forms, whether masks, sculpture, houses, fabrics, poetry, music, or dance, render the invisible visible and reveal the meaning of the confrontation between life and death (It was Paul Klee, influenced by African art, who said that the task of art was to make the invisible visible.)
The African artist works from the force to the form that embodies it. Until the twentieth century, European artists, inspired by Greek traditions, started from a concrete form, usually that of the human figure, to express the divine. The African artist, however, begins with a sense of a spiritual presence inside him, which he then expresses through art, in a concrete form.
The African artist is not considered an artist. He may be a farmer who carves or a smith who is endowed with magical powers. The responsibility for understanding the operation of forces issuing from the divine power, and of controlling them in a meaningful way, lies in the medicine man or priest. It is the priest who communicates the need for a certain form to the carver if it is to have some spiritual endowment. (That is why carvers don’t see anything wrong in copying another carver’s work. Copying is just another form of flattery.)
The African conception of art is a communal conception as compared with European individualistic expression. To the African, community existed prior to the individual, and the individual is just a small part of a long tradition. The sense of unity extends to nature and to the earth—earth belongs to ancestors. 感谢您阅读《Society 》一文，出国留学网(liuxue86.com)编辑部希望本文能帮助到您。