A Brief History Of Anthropology Of Art

This dissertation aims at introducing the distinctive view of anthropology of art putting on art studies through drawing the outline of its developmental history.It contains six chapters. The preface gives a brief introduction on intentions and significance of this topic. The first chapter is on the universal understanding of art and the anthropological specific meanings of art. The second chapter discusses the art studies of evolutionism and historical particularism before the World War II, which focused on the origin, style distributing and changing of art and emphasized particular on physical existence, skills and techniques of art. The third chapter introduces the main two researching method of anthropology after the World War II: functionalism and structuralism. These two different paradigms enriched the contents of art studies, turning from merely focusing on art object to the practice of art, which included the idea of art, manufacture and the feedback of audience.The fourth chapter is on the translation of art and the retrospective anthropology of art after 1980' s. The emergence of symbolic anthropology signified a shift from "objective"and scientific research to "objective translation" ofsymbolic system. It looked for the direct performance ormetaphor of drama in daily life or the political symbols ofcountry. After 1980's, based on "thick-descriptive"ethnographies on art, it called for renegotiating therelationship between art and anthropology in order to thefurther development of anthropology of Art. The fifth chaptergives some brief comments on key topics in anthropology of art,for example, the roles and positions of artists, artcollections and some innovative research from differenttheoretical tendencies in recent years: biological, feministor political etc.The sixth chapter draws some conclusions on the development of anthropology of art from the forgoing.