Errington, 9/25

In her essay, What Became Authentic Primitive Art, Errington claims that authenticity itself is a social construct, a product of Western ideology and epistemology. The legitimacy of art, both primitive and civilized, is something institutionalized; its monetary and cultural value is established and defined by collectors and curators. Art and the act of collecting are inseparable, and what links art by intention and art by appropriation is the metamorphosis that occurs from the objects creation to its final display.

In an act of backlash against a fleeting and ephemeral reality, man attempts to create a long-standing and tangible structure as a representation of his evolved consciousness. Permanence and civilization are subconsciously linked, the necessary illusion of existing indefinitely within a physical environment at a particular moment in history. Because of the conflict that categorizes the human condition -- our mind's ability to perceive infinity in both time and space, while our body is only capable of occupying a single moment in one particular space -- we seek the sacred. The primitive culture does so through ritual: communal gatherings which include the consumption of drugs or drink to dissolve the ego and comprehend  the spiritual. The modern artist does so through creativity: deemed to be imbued with shamanic qualities, capable of transcending the present and accessing the sacred, using his creativity to generate a physical manifestation of this voyage, creates a work of high art which functions as an object that is contextually utilitarian in its ability to incite contemplation if it is displayed.

Primitive art, art by appropriation, is stripped of its cultural context and functionary value, in order to employ a different meaning from its creator's intention, and incite a novel way of interpreting - a new way of seeing, for the modern, refined curator, collector, and museum frequenter. This act of stripping something of its value, and creating it as iconic, representational, rather than functional, is a product of Western ideology, capitalism, and imperialism. Our modern institutions can be seen in the same light: family, property, the state, religion are all more representational than meaningful. They all create an illusion, rather than a form of enduring meaning. Primitive art becomes high art only when the object being displayed was once associated with a ritual performed by the savage culture of its origin, rituals which attempt to dissolve the individual ego and reach the sacred. When it is framed for a gallery and marked as an object of monetary value, however, it loses its religious function, and is fully stripped of its meaning.

This obsession with the sacred, and the modern world's disenchantment and separation from "higher states" reflects our species need for transcendence, the instinctual act of creating order through symbols in a chaotic world, and the role of art in accessing that realm and representing that order. Perhaps this leaves us hopeful for the function of contemporary art in the 21st century. More and more, art is becoming something that is both functional and representational, part of its natural and social environment in the sense that objects (often times those deemed useless -- for the most part, garbage) can be stripped of their original function in order to come to represent something bigger and more valuable both monetarily and culturally, without having to be taken and used by a completely different society. Instead, these objects can be appropriated and used by the same society which turns it into a work of art, a symbol of the achievements of the human species. Is it possible for something to have aesthetic value and be utilitarian in its social context, while also being capable of inciting contemplation and transcending the present in order to access higher states, or that ideal too lofty for our species?