1. MODULE 10OBSERVING THE OBJECT Art 100 Understanding Visual Culture

2. Why do we need material culture?Jules ALTHOUGH ART MUSEUMS, historical societies, museums ofPrown history and technology, historic houses, open-air museums, and museums of ethnography, science,Mind in and even natural history, have long collected, studied, and exhibited theMatter material of what has come to be called material culture, no comprehensive academic philosophy(1982) or discipline for the investigation of material culture has as yet been developed.p. 1

3. The Grand EntranceKrannert Art Museum Addition, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1985

4. The First FloorEducation Director Anne Sautman leading a gallery discussion

5. The BasementLouis Sullivan, Elevator Gate from The Chicago Stock Exchange Building, 1894,Cast-iron with bronze plating

6. How do we define materialculture?Jules Prown Material culture is the study through artifacts of the beliefs values, ideas, attitudes, andMind in assump- tionsof a particular community or society at a givenMatter time. The term material culture is also fre- quently used to refer to artifacts themselves, to the body(1982) of material available for such study. I shall restrict the term to mean the study and refer to thep. 1 evidence simply as material or artifacts.

7. What is an artifact? Pebble tools, Olduvai Gorge,Ordinary old pebble Tanzania, 1.8 million years ago

8. a usually simple object (as a tool or ornament) that shows evidence ofhuman modification or workmanship, as distinct from a naturallyoccurring thingARTIFACT

9. Piece of obsidian (volcanicglass)

10. Obsidian toolsProperties of the material areenhanced by human intervention

11. Are these naturally-occurringthings, or artifacts?

12. Take a look around the room where you are right now.1. List 10 artifacts that you can see fromwhere you are sitting. Which of theseten would you propose to study as mostrevealing of our contemporary culture?2. What can you see around you that isnaturally occurring, rather thanmanmade or modified?Post on Compass.

13. Why bother with objects? Wouldnt words and deeds be morerevealing of culture?Jules Prown Why should one bother to investigate material objects in the quest for culture, for a societys systems of belief? Surely people in all societies express and haveMind in expressed their beliefs more explicitly and openly in their words and deeds than inMatter the things they have made. Are there aspects of mind to be discovered in objects that differ from, complement, supplement, or contradict what can be(1982) learned from more traditional literary and behavioral sources?p. 3

14. What could be culturallyrevealing about the study ofobjects? value can be understood through 1. Cultural multiple lenses when dealing with material objects. Inherent value. Value in original context, at a later point, today. (subject to frequent change) Use value. Aesthetic, spiritual, relational values.

15. What could be culturallyrevealing about the study ofobjects? 2. Objects survive and provide direct and tangible evidence of the past. This allows us to experience the past through empathetic engagement of our senses.

16. What doors might the study of objectsopen? "This affective mode of apprehensionJules Prown through the senses that allows us to put ourselves, figuratively speaking, inside the skins of individuals who commissioned,Mind in made, used, or enjoyed these objects, toMatter see with their eyes and touch with their hands, to identify with them empathetically, is clearly a different way(1982) of engaging the past than abstractly through the written word. Instead of our minds making intellectual contact with minds of the past, our senses makep. 5 affective contact with senses of past. Arnold Hauser, Sociology of Art

17. Group question What different kinds of value can we isolate and appreciate in this pendant?

18. What could be culturallyrevealing about the study ofobjects? 3. Objects might be more representative of what people in a society are doing, thinking and feeling than words are.

19. Jules Prown Henry Glassie has observed that only a small percentage of the worlds population is and has been literate,Mind in and that the people who writeMatter literature or keep diaries are atypical. Objects are used by a much broader cross section of the population and(1982) are therefore potentially a more wide-ranging, more representative source of information than words.p. 3

20. What could be culturallyrevealing about the study ofobjects?3. Objects are physically real, capable of empathetic use.The theoretical democratic advantage of artifacts in general, and vernacular material in particular, is partially offset by the skewed nature of what in fact survives from an earlier culture. A primary factor in this is the destructive, or the preservative, effect of particular environments on particular materials. Materials from the deeper recesses of time are often buried, and recovered archaeologically. Of the material heritage of such cultures, glass and ceramics survive in relatively good condition, metal in poor to fair condition, wood in the form of voids (postholes), and clothing not at all (except for metallic threads, buttons, and an odd clasp or hook).