On Collecting Art and Culture

James Clifford, “On Collecting Art and Culture” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethanography, Literature, and Art, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp 215-251

Clifford has written a number books, prompting debate across the fields of literature, art history, visual studies and particularly cultural anthropology. He is a historian and holds a role as Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California.

“A picture is worth a thousand words”

Wikipedia attribute this idea across cultures to a number of people including Bonaparte and Confucius. Clifford’s Art-Culture Machine – A machine for Making Authenticity, provides a worthy example of this adage. Clifford goes to some detail in the text to support his deceptively simple diagram. He enlarges on his double headed arrows to describe the way art-works, curios, primitive works, even inventions, can be perceived to move or travel between his artistic and cultural zones of consideration. The diagram provides the reader with a visual reference, allowing them to come back to it for visible clarification while reading. Like a person using a map to navigate an unfamiliar city. Arrows provide direction and convey a sense that everything considered is on a continuum - not absolute, but existing in degrees. The text further introduces the aspect of time, for example, the shift due to age and rarity.

This diagrammatic approach to convey a complex idea is utilised by Rosiland Kraus in her discussion of sculpture and how it interrelates within architecture, landscape and site construction. (Krauss) As readers we would find it tough going to understand the model being suggested. It seems tough enough with the diagram but she at least shows the development of the idea through a series of diagrams that gain complexity and detail as she develops her idea in a sequential manner.

I think both these examples show that while the picture can act as a map, words add context and depth to the idea that the diagram cannot sustain without them.

Bibliography

Clifford, James. On Collecting Art and Culture” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethanography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Krauss, Rosiland. “Sculpture in the Expanded Field.” October 1979 Spring 1979: pp 30-44.