tailieunhanh - ‘Marvels of Everyday Vision’: The Anthropology of Aesthetics and the Cattle-Keeping Nilotes

The visual stimulation offered by both black and red markings amongst a herd of greyish cattle is not to be doubted. It might be expected, then, that it should be the pure black or red beasts which are most highly valued. This is not the case, for while the appreciation of well marked beasts should be understood in the context of a dull and pale landscape and herds preponderantly off-white in colour, it is the contrast of black and white or red and white in the single beast which provides the greatest aesthetic satisfaction. The individual beast, then, provides. | From Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton eds Anthropology Art and Aesthetics Oxford Studies in the Anthropology of Cultural Forms Oxford Clarendon Press pp. 245-73. . Original page numbers have been indicated in square brackets within the text. Captions to the ten illustrations which are not included here are given at the end with original page numbers . Marvels of Everyday Vision The Anthropology of Aesthetics and the Cattle-Keeping Nilotes Jeremy Coote The current idea that we look lazily into the world only as far as our practical needs demand it while the artist removes this veil of habits scarcely does justice to the marvels of everyday vision. E. H. Gombrich Art and Illusion Reprinted with permission from J. Coote and A. Shelton eds. Anthropology Art and Aesthetics Oxford University Press pp245-273. Introduction This essay is written out of a conviction that progress in the anthropological study of visual aesthetics has been hampered by an undue concentration on art and art objects. The cattle keeping Nilotes of the Southern Sudan make no art objects and have no traditions of visual art yet it would be absurd to claim that they have no visual aesthetic. In such a case as this the analyst is forced to attend to areas of life to which everyday concepts of art do not apply to attend indeed to the marvels of everyday vision Gombrich 1977 275 which we all not just the artists and art critics amongst us experience and delight in. It is my contention that such wide-ranging analyses will produce more satisfactory accounts of the aesthetics of different societies even of those with art traditions and art objects. With this in mind then I present the cattle-keeping Nilotes of the Southern Sudan as a sort of test-case for the anthropology of aesthetics. The Anthropology of Aesthetics While it is generally recognized that aesthetics concerns more than art and that art is about more than aesthetics anthropologists along with philosophers and aestheticians in .