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Aesthetics and Market Demand: The Structure of the Tourist Art Market in Three African Settings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Bennetta Jules-Rosette
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Extract

The concept of aesthetics is a “red herring” in the study of contemporary art. Often aesthetics is equated with technique (cf. Henri, 1960: 88) or with adherence to the dominant themes of a particular school of art. In the case of “tourist” and “folk” art, the concept of aesthetics is generally salvaged by introducing the notion that artistic preferences are culturally relative and are influenced by the conditions under which the particular art form is produced. Warren d'Azevedo (1973: 7) thus qualifies: “The apparent absence of these factors [i.e., formal aesthetic standards], as well as the lack of clearly explicated concepts equivalent to art or aesthetics in most non-Western cultures, has caused us to suspect that the expression of artistry may be somehow fundamentally different from our own.”

This and similar assertions have led to the development of the approach of “ethnoaesthetics” based upon the internal standards of judgement and criticism generated by the values of the artists and the audience in non-Western cultures. Here I shall argue that neither the conventional notion of aesthetics nor the new concept of “ethnoaesthetics” (cf. Crowley, 1966; Thompson, 1968; Silver, 1979: 289-292) adequately explains the complex relationship between the production and reception of tourist art. Moreover, I shall introduce an analysis of aesthetics which defines tourist art objects as media of communication between the new art producers and their audience. Therefore, it is necessary to begin with a basic definition of tourist art in Africa.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 41 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1986

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