Expressive culture The most superstructural feature of culture is expressive behavior Expressive culture comprises visual arts music dance games folklore and ritual Art and superstructure Expressive culture clearly appeals to the emotional needs of producers and consumers But expressive culture is the most superstructural feature of culture If sex roles for example or mental illness have some biological basis there is no argument for it with expressive behavior other than the capacity for abstract expression itself The emotional component however is plastic Where does the emotional component of art come from Is it a random event Is it rule driven If it is rule driven then superstructure at some level of time and to some degree reflects structural and infrastructural components of society Culture and culture Music dance visual art and games and folklore all are driven by the structural and infrastructural parts of society to some degree at the macro level Body art is universal Body art is universal and in addition to simple adornment may be used to denote sex differences rank occupation ethnicity or religion Body decorations or modifications attachments and clothing are used in many societies as sexual attractors ears neck lips tattoos beards The most ancient art Ancient cave art of the Magdalenian Perigoridan and Azilian Lascaux France Ekain Spain Rice and Patterson Patricia Rice and Ann Patterson examined the animal bones in 90 caves where late Paleolithic art is found Most common bones bovines horse reindeer ibex deer mammoth Most common paintings reindeer horse bovines deer ibex mammoth Fear and loving in the Paleolithic For the number of portrayals and the percentage of bone matter r 41 But larger species mammoth horse bison are overportrayed The correlation between species weight and bone prevalence is r 76 19 experts ranked species for danger in hunting For average ranked danger and species weight r 96 Primitive art In light of everything you ve learned this semester what can be said of the term primitive art Many Western artists incorporated so called primitive elements in their work Stravinsky Picasso Gaugin Chavez Fischer s hypothesis Egalitarian societies have art based on repetition of simple elements and plenty of empty space The art of stratified societies combines elements into complex designs and tends toward a more baroque style Egalitarian Repetition of simple elements empty space symmetrical design Unenclosed figures Stratified Integration of diverse elements filled space asymmetrical design Enclosed figures Art and practicality Art is part of everyday life in most societies as is religion kinship economics and politics Why is modern Western art valued for originality and obscurity of meaning Harris mass production capitalism and commercialization has led to individualistic secular art as part of our everyday life Ancient Greek vase art Ancient Greek society went from egalitarian to highly stratified between 1000 BCE and 450 BCE and the vases became crowded and complex with enclosed art Dressler and Robbins 1975 Meaning and folklore If a mythology gives prominence to evil grandmothers then people say in that society grandmothers are evil and the myths reflect reality But if there is conflict between myth and observed behavior then clever people talk about myth expressing repressed feelings or whatever Claude Levi Strauss 1967 203 Universal themes in folklore Clyde Kluckhohn five recurrent themes in folklore around the world catastrophe mostly floods slaying of monsters Incest sibling rivalry castration These universal themes are not equally likely to be found in any given place Alex Cohen for example found that unprovoked aggression is associated with unpredictable food shortages and that in societies with such shortages natural catastrophes are not likely to be mentioned Music and structural correlates Alan Lomax studied folk song style around the world using a corpus of 3 500 songs He found a relationship between social complexity and stylistic elements of music just as Fischer did with art Lomax s study of music For example wordiness and clarity of enunciation is associated with stratified societies These societies depend on wordiness for job performance and for maintaining a highly diverse occupational structure Lomax s hypothesis complex instruction is expressed in complex songs By contrast hunters and gatherers all know their roles and engage in song for its own sake and for the simple pleasure of singing In other words the music does not serve the purpose of validating social structural complexity H G songs are characterized by repetition of a few simple elements by relaxed rendition tra la tra la etc Lomax s findings H G societies have no leaders in song Intermediate societies ranked leader with no real power like the Big Men societies of Papua and the Yanomami of the Amazon have leaders who START songs just as a Yanomami leader starts sweeping his village center and hopes that by example he can get others to follow see Kottak Highly stratified societies have soloists and leaders of songs virtuosos reflecting the structure of society in economic and political spheres of action Finally Lomax found that counterpoint and polyphony are NOT the products of our so called high culture but of women in societies where women contribute at least half or more of the total food Conversely men sing most in societies that have low contribution by women for subsistence like the Eskimos Barbara Ayres on music and structure In societies that use cradle boards and cradles for babies there are either irregular or free rhythms Where babies are carried in a sling or shawl there are regular rhythms Where infants are stressed before the age of two there is wider tonal range and firmer accents and beats Ayres B 1973 Effects of Infant Carrying Practices on Rhythm in Music Ethos 1 387 404 Circumcision severe toilet training cauterization cicatrization piercing and shaping binding procedures for infants all are associated with a particular kind of music expression In societies that stress compliance there is cohesive singing Japanese games song fests are group events Meals begin in Japan when everyone is at the table Ayres found that harshness of voice tone and raspiness increases with assertiveness training for children So in societies with high assertiveness for women and with high food production by women as in W Africa and African American you get more raspy more assertive