The origin of art according to Karl von den Steinen
Year: 2015
Type: other
Abstract: Based on a study of the custom, adopted by ethnologists in the early 20th century, of asking Amerindians of Lowland South America to do drawings in pencil in their notebooks, I explore three forgotten fragments of the history of thinking: the intense debates on the origin of ornaments, opposing an evolutionist and a materialist approach at the end of the 19th century; the theories on the origin of figuration, which I show date back to the important work of Karl von den Steinen regarding the populations of central Brazil; and the publications of ethnologists’ portraits drawn by Indians of the lowlands of South America, a little-known tradition of reverse anthropology serving as a counterpoint to the study of the reception of Amerindian art in Western ethnological literature.
Author: Déléage, Pierre
Institutions: Collège de France, Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale
Language: German
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1228600609