I couldn’t quite fit what I wanted to ask in the title, but essentially it’s, if I (as a working class white person) wanted to produce a painting in the Aus Aboriginal dot-style genre, what would be the sentiment towards doing so?
Let’s assume (for the sake of the argument) I am NOT going to misrepresent the origins of the artist, making no claim or disclaimer of my ancestry. But I figure I can do a decent ‘dot-art’ symbolic representation identical to those produced by actual aborigines, and in doing so might be able to sell some of the paintings for a few dollars.
Personally, I feel it would be the wrong thing to do, but I can’t figure out why! Artistic ‘styles’ (think cubism, impressionism yada yada) have been appropriated all along their continuums. Is there any reason why Australian Aboriginal art styles are somehow exempt from being shared?
I think it’s absurd to seek permission to create a painting or a song. Should a Chinese person not wear a tie or play the guitar without some special pass?
The thing about indigenous art styles in Australia, is that the ‘dot art’ style is unique to Aborigines. With Chinese guitarists, the music is so ubiquitous nowadays that it wouldn’t be at all unusual for them to play Clapton or Dylan or Renbourne…
As you said, cubism, impressionism, etc. have been appropriated and used by other artists widely and freely. No one owns a style of art. That’s why it can’t be trademarked or copyrighted. Unless you’re going to be selling your paintings to a market that would assume your Aborigine bona-fides based upon the style of the paintings, I don’t think you’ll be doing anything wrong. I don’t really think you’d be doing anything wrong in a legal sense by presenting them even to an audience that would presume them to be Aboriginal, but it would be wrong in the sense that it would cause them to feel deceived were they to learn the truth. Sort of like having gone to an elaborate Chinese restaurant and later finding out that the cook was a white Swedish guy from Minnesota. Even if the food were cooked to perfection you’d still likely feel that you’d been misled and hadn’t gotten the product you thought you’d paid for. But if you’re going to sell them outside Australia I’d say you’re in the clear and don’t worry about it.
Personally I think the recent brouhaha over cultural appropriation is a lot of nonsense. Aren’t we supposed to be inclusive and welcoming of all cultures and people? If so, then no one has a right to say “You can’t wear/paint/sing/whatever because it’s from my culture, not yours”. This looks to me like a way of setting people against one another rather than being inclusive. Especially when you consider that so much of so many cultures that exist today are an admixture of other cultures that have blended into them over the years, decades or centuries past.
Actually, most of the world’s people don’t require the cook’s ancestry to match the official origin of the food. It appears to be mainly an American peculiarity.
Kam, I searched for “use of dot art by non-aboriginals”. From what I can see,
in Australia, dotted lines and figures decorated with dots have been in use on rock for a very long time. Due to the religious significance of the drawings, the artists were always men. The art may be “layered”, with the religiously-significant parts hidden to those who don’t know how to search for them
use on mobile substrates started c. 1970
and moved to include non-religious themes, which among other things opened the form to women
I expect there will be more and better sources close to you than here. I can tell you what kind of uses of my traditions I find misuses, but I can’t answer for Australian aboriginals. I can also tell you that there have been other artists using pointillism, although whether they were inspired by Australian rock art or not, I have no idea (some of the pointillist art we copied in art class is late 19th, early 20th century).
Although I normally don’t give the time of day to Appropriation Theory, and consider that any public domain stuff in an artist’s head is fair game for making art out of, actually I would consider Indigenous art forms to be in a bit of a special category, for a few reasons.
There’s only about half a million Aboriginal people in the entire world, and they don’t have a country of their own. If there was, for instance, a craze for traditional Chinese music in this country, and there were suburban white kids with erhus busking on every shopping strip … well, I can see that that would be deeply annoying to anyone who likes traditional Chinese music 'cos it would probably be crap. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t really touch the heartland of Chinese music, since there’s a billion people in China making and appreciating it, and they probably don’t give a fetid Giant Panda’s kidney what we do. And maybe crappy suburban Australian erhu music would then spin off into a genre of its own … but the original “real thing” would continue on its way unaffected. On the other hand, you only need about one in thirty mainstream Australian artists to embrace the dot painting format, and suddenly the Aboriginal artists are a minority in their own art form … I do think that is a problem. And because novelty is integral to art, they’ll be adding to it, and changing what the art form means … and Aboriginal people already have “being ignored” as one of their major problems in this society.
whatever disclaimers you put on it, people would tend to assume it was done by an Indigenous person - and not that many people read disclaimers. So there is a real possibility of people being deceived about the provenance, whatever you do.
there are rules about how you do dot painting, and who gets to do what designs, and … I don’t really know what else (which is rather the point). Which, presumably, Aboriginal artists are following, and you probably wouldn’t be if you just woke up one morning and decided to do some dot painting. (on the other hand, if you went off to an Indigenous artist and said ‘hey, I’d really like to learn about how to properly do this’ and they didn’t say ‘bugger off whitefeller’ - well, then, I guess you’ve got not only the knowledge but also the permission - have at it!)
If you’re just a guy trying to make a few bucks on the street, it wouldn’t bother me. But it would probably bother me if you started getting high acclaim for your work not because they are particularly great or creative, but because of the “Lookit! The white guy doing Aboriginal art!!” novelty. Art is very much about the life behind the work as much as the work itself.
I don’t think there’s a problem with using pre-existing styles to display your ideas. Every artist borrows. But there is a difference between using a style to serve your artistic voice (see Kehinde Wiley) and using a style to make money. Neither are “right” or “wrong” in any objective sense. But the latter motivation is kinda the definition of someone who exploits someone else’s culture for their own benefit.
That no-one is under any obligation to follow. An outright copy is one thing, painting in a style is absolutely fine for anyone to do, for any type, in any circumstances
You don’t need to ask permission, that way madness lies.
I’m confused by those highlighted sentences, as they seem be contradictory. In both instances, someone is making money. What’s the difference? The amount of money made? And in your second paragraph, it would seem that the real injustice, if there is one, comes from the fawning admirers of the artist, and not the artist himself.
Suppose the artist is an “enlightened social critic” and use the dot style art to depict the grave injustices that have been and still are inflicted on Australian Aboriginals. Would that be OK, even if the artist made a bunch of money in the process?
To me, art is all about what the observer feels when viewing the art. Nothing more, nothing less. If some white guy was inspired by Australian Aboriginal “dot art” to make what I feel is a beautiful painting that speaks to me in a similar way that this speaks to me, then that’s all I need to know.
I personally don’t have a problem if you want to wave your dick and call it art. If someone gives you some money for it, then obviously you’re fulfilling a need.
But if you choose to go down this route, don’t be shocked if people call you a big ole ho. I don’t think being a ho is inherently good or bad. But if you look like a ho and act like a ho, then you’s a ho. Own that shit.
Did you not follow the link I provided? Kehinde Wiley intentionally references the old masters in his art form to make a statement about the marginalization of black bodies and lives. He could have chosen some other style for his portraits, but then an entirely different meaning would be conveyed.
If Wiley merely replicated the works that he took inspiration from, I wouldn’t expect him to get any acclaim. Because everyone would know he’s a hack trying to “steal” from others.
Is the OP trying to simulate Aboriginal artwork because Aboriginal artwork is “hot” right now? Or is he borrowing the dot-art style to convey his own original ideas, using the dot style because it is the best vehicle? If it is the latter, then he’ll be able to defend the charge that he’s capitalizing off of Aboriginal culture. If it’s the former, then he needs to accept that he is exploiting another culture for commercial purposes. And part of this acceptance is appreciating that people will take offense. Doesn’t mean he needs to kowtow to it, but he should at least understand where the offense comes from.
That’s a very simplistic view of art, one that no doubt many share. But there are many observers and not all are just fixated on the canvas. Some people are also interested in the “why” and “how” behind the canvas because it helps to better understand what’s being shown. “Ooh pretty” is just one interpretation of a particular piece. It can also make a person think about the world around them. I don’t blame anyone for looking at a particular piece–even one designed to evoke “ooh pretty”–and deciding that its subtext isn’t so nice. Appealing to the “ooh pretty” kind of observer is important for making money. But when it comes to earning respect from the art community, appealing to the more intellectual observer is more important.
Not sure how you got “ooh pretty” from “speaks to me”. Just to be clear, when I used the phrase “speaks to me”, I meant that it makes me think about the world, about what it means to be human, and in that particular piece, about the depth of pain and loss that a person can feel. There is a great deal of art that “speaks to me” but would hardly be called “pretty”. My apologies if I was unclear.
Furthermore… I can think of lots of adjectives to describe Michaelangelo’s Pieta, but “pretty” in not one of them. Let’s say I linked to this instead. That speaks to me every bit as much as the first piece does.
I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, but I couldn’t help feeling insulted by claims that I had “simplistic” view of art.
You obviously care about beauty. There’s nothing wrong with this. I’d be first one to say that I esteem beauty too. But not all observers are just looking at beauty when they evaluate art.
You should exploit what you can for your benefit. Aside from things like rape, robbery, murder etc. But if I can improve or use a technique that provides value to someone why wouldn’t I do that? Should there be no professional aboriginal or pacific island rugby players for example?
When you sum up art in the way you did (“…that’s all I need to know”), I can’t help but to think that you have a simplistic view of art. You invite that label by using that kind of phrasing.
I think that we’re talking past each other. I’ll just say that there is a world of difference between “pretty” and “beautiful”. As someone who is one of the best writers on this message board, you surely know that. And if something does not “speak to you”, I don’t see how you could consider it to be art.
Beyond that, we needn’t define what art is to talk about so-called “cultural appropriation”. The point I was trying to make is that if someone has actually created a work of art (and you can use any definition you like), it shouldn’t matter what his source material is. We are all the sum total of our many different experiences. Aboriginals maintaining their artistic traditions can continue doing whatever they want or need to do irrespective of what anyone else does.
Now, if you were a collector of Aboriginal Art and someone who was not part of that tradition tried to pass off his work as being part of that tradition, then I can understand why you might not be interested in it. But that doesn’t mean the work could not stand on its own (or not) as a piece of art.
A lot of the time (more in fashion than in art), the issue is whites being fawned over and given money for doing and being things that non whites practicing their own culture are dismissed or vilified over.
I suppose if you suddenly became THE NEXT GREAT TRENDSETTER IN ART doing stuff that natives have been doing ignored for hundreds of years, that could cause some raised eyebrows.
