Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture ... - UBC Blogs

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Mind in Matteran analytical approach breaks down the complexityof a work of art into simple categories and inso doing destroys the aesthetic experience irretrievably.21The question is whether the analytical proceduresof material culture wreak this kind of aestheticdamage.The initial steps of the methodology proposedhere are completely descriptive and do not compromisethe aesthetic response. Close examinationof the object accords with accepted procedures foraesthetic evaluation. And the second stage of deductiveand interpretative analysis involves objectiveprocedures that only enhance and magnify familiarity,understanding, and aesthetic appreciation.Danger lies in the third stage-speculation. Theaesthetic dilemma does not in fact arise from analysis;it arises from speculation. The aesthetic experienceof a work of art (or music or literature)can be affected, even permanently altered, by externalassociations-a distasteful experience at thetime of perception, the intrusion of a parody, anunsolicited, uncongenial interpretation. Speculation,especially by an "expert," can color, perhapspermanently, the perception of others. Regardlessof the validity of the interpretation, the state ofmind of the listener or reader is altered, innocenceis lost, what has been said cannot be unsaid, theaesthetic experience is irredeemably changed.Students of material culture who have appliedthe analytical techniques, including speculation,have in fact found their aesthetic pleasure in theobject enhanced, not compromised. But aestheticdamage is done not to the interpreter, for whomthe speculations are arrived at freely, but to hisaudience. This, however, is one of the pitfalls inthe play of ideas, especially in the area of aestheticcriticism. Speculation is essential to a democracy ofideas, and the danger of restricting ideas or associationsis much more serious than the occasionalaesthetic damage caused by their expression. Imaginativecritical interpretation may change an objectirretrievably, but our ideas and our perceptions arecontinually being altered by new ideas and perceptions.That is life. The "aesthetic dilemma" turnsout on close inspection to be less a real problemand more in the order of normal intellectual growingpains.DiversionsIn attempting to classify artifacts, I initially establisheda miscellaneous category for things, such asbooks, toys and games, prepared meals, and the21Hauser, "Sociology of Art," pp. 274-76.accoutrements of theatrical performance, that didnot fit into the other obvious categories. These objectsshare the quality of giving pleasure, or entertainmentto the mind and body, and the categoryhas an affinity with, although separate from, art.This is a category in the process of definition andfurther discussion of it must be deferred.AdornmentAdornment, especially clothing, has, like the appliedarts, the advantage of touching on a widerange of quotidian functions and of embodying arelatively uncomplicated partnership of functionand style that permits the isolation and study ofstyle. The potency of this material as cultural evidencecan be tested by the simple act of criticizingsomeone's clothes; the reaction is much more intensethan that aroused by comparable criticism ofa house, a car, or a television set. Criticism of clothingis taken more personally, suggesting a high cor-relation between clothing and personal identity andvalues. Although personal adornment promises tobe a particularly rich vein for material culture studies,to date little significant work has been donewith it.Modifications of the LandscapeThe most essential quality of an object for the studyof material culture, after survival, is authenticity.The optimum object is the gravestone because itis geographically rooted and attended by a greatdeal of primary data; we are quite secure in attachingit to a particular cultural complex. Therehas been little or no faking of gravestones and onlya limited amount of recarving or relocating. Althoughan individual gravestone can be consideredas sculpture, gravestones and graveyards (or cemeteries)fundamentally belong to a broader category,modifications of the natural landscape. Architecture,town planning, and indeed all aspectsof the human-shaped landscape (cultural geography)share with gravestones the same quality ofrootedness that ties artifacts to a particular fabricatingculture. Although lacking the inscribed dataof grave markers, architecture has much greatercomplexity. Having been built for human occupancy,it responds in very direct ways to people'sneeds. Glassie has observed that historically orientedfolklorists have concentrated on architecturebecause the material survives, it is geographicallysited, and it is complex. It is both a work of art anda tool for living, combining aesthetic with utilitariandrives at a variety of conceptual levels.22 Town and22 Glassie, "Folkloristic Study," p. 15.13
14city planning, that is, architecture on a larger scale,share these qualities. In the case of less complexalterations in the physical landscape a distinctionmust be made between conscious shaping, as inplowing or the construction of a stone wall, andsimple behavioral consequences, such as accumulationsof animal bones indicative of eating habits.Applied ArtsApplied arts (furniture, furnishings, receptacles),like architecture, are a partnership of art and craft,of aesthetic appeal and utility.23 They lack the rootednessof architecture and, except in the case ofmaterial retrieved archaeologically, present greaterhazard in associating objects with their originatingculture. Applied arts, however, have an advantagein their simplicity of function which makes it easierto isolate that potent cultural indicator, style. Asdiscussed above in Cultural Perspective, the fundamentalvalues of a society are often unexpressedbecause they are taken for granted.24 As a result,they are manifest in style rather than in content.Stylistic expression can be affected by functionalutility or conscious purposefulness. The configurationof a tool or machine is almost completelydictated by its use; the configuration of a story ora play or a painting may be similarly conditionedby its content or message. In architecture and theapplied arts form and function are partners. Wherethe function is simple and constant, as with teapotsor chairs, it can be factored out. The remainingvariable is style, bespeaking cultural values and attitudesin itself and in its variations across time,space, class, and so forth.There is, of course, significant cultural evidencein the utilitarian aspect of artifacts. Both architectureand the applied arts, by their use in a widerange of daily activities, especially domestic, arebearers of information about numerous, sometimesquite private, reaches of human experience.Another student in my material culture course,Barbara Mount, studied a seventeenth-centuryBoston trencher salt. We take salt for granted becauseour contemporary (largely processed) dietmore than satisfies our requirements. Yet the physiologicalneed for salt is fundamental; if deprivedof it we, like all animals, would have severe physical23The English usage of the term applied arts is preferable tothe American decorative arts for material culture purposes. Theterm is intended to describe objects whose essential characteris that they combine aesthetic and utilitarian roles. Since thenoun arts common to both terms takes care of the aestheticaspect, it seems sensible to have the descriptor emphasize utility,that is, applied rather than decorative.24 See also Prown, "Style as Evidence," pp. 69-71.Winterthur Portfolioand mental problems. Early economies developeda salt trade. Salt containers historically occupied aplace of honor at the dinner table, and it matteredwho was seated above or below the salt. Salt appearsfrequently in biblical imagery, representing desic-cation and purity. People dream of salt. Human lifeemerged from brackish pools, the saline content ofwhich is encoded in the human bloodstream. Salthas ritual functions associated with baptism; saltwater is put on the infant's lips in Catholic baptismalrites; the forms of early trencher salts derivefrom medieval and renaissance baptismal fonts.Many body fluids are salty-blood, urine, tearsandin some cultures are associated with fertilityrites. These scattered observations suggest the multiplepossibilities for cultural investigation that canarise from one simple applied arts object.DevicesDevices-implements, tools, utensils, appliances,machines, vehicles, instruments-constitute themost problematic and, to date, a relatively unproductiverange of artifacts for the study of materialculture. Much of the scholarship on devices hasbeen taxonomic, recording functional details andmechanical variations. Little writing has been culturallyinterpretive except on the automobile, amachine with powerful personal stylistic overtones.25Theoretical writing that relates devices toculture has dealt with the stylistic modification ofmachine forms to make them culturally acceptableand pervasive images of technology in the popularmind.26 But there has been little cultural analysisof the devices themselves, and no theoretical literaturehas as yet established a technological orscientific counterpart to the link between art andbeliefs.27 Certain devices have particular promisefor cultural interpretation. For example, clocks andwatches, linked with a significant aspect of everydayhuman experience-time-surely have cultural significance.Ocular devices-telescopes, microscopes,25For example, Roland Barthes, "The New Citroen," inMythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (1972; reprint ed., New York:Hill & Wang, 1978), pp. 88-90.26John Kasson, Civilizing the Machine: Technology and RepublicanValues in America, 1776-1900 (New York: Grossman Publishers,1976), and Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technologyand the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1965).27Perhaps this will be achieved in time. Glassie speaks of theimportance of banjos as well as banjo playing for folklorists("Folkloristic Study," p. 4), but it remains to be seen whether thisassertion will be validated. Glassie had discussed banjos brieflyearlier in Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern UnitedStates (1968; reprint ed., Philadelphia: University of PennsylvaniaPress, 1971), pp. 22-24, but did not follow through to anycultural interpretations there.
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