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Accepted Paper:

Ethics towards world art history: Karl With's struggle between art historical and ethnological practices of material culture studies  
Marie Yasunaga (University of Amsterdam)

Paper short abstract:

Karl With’s incomplete book Functional Integration in the Arts and his exhibitions challenged the question how to present artistic value of objects from different cultures. His struggle to sublate art historical and ethnological methods gives us insights on the morality of material culture studies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will discuss the art historical and curatorial practices of German scholar Karl With (1891-1980), whose lifelong concern lied in the problematics of how to describe/present artistic objects derived from a culture that was not yours.

Inspired by ethnological methodology, his early writings on material culture of Japan, Bali and Java, were written from his viewpoint that understanding of art from different culture required understanding of their religion and custom. While they addressed positively to the Western readership stimulating further interests; they at the same time became "instrumental" in exposing the local culture to the "destructive evils of tourism," for which he later "c[ould] not help but feeling guilty."

His awareness of the inconsistency embedded in the both practices, either qualifying aesthetic value for those objects or relegating them to the materials for ethnographic study, lead him to explore a new formulation to integrate cultural items under the concept of "function." Negating the Western dichotomy between fine and applied arts, With redefined artistic value as something "rests upon the functional fulfillment of serviceability and purposefulness." Although his book project "Functional Integration in the Arts" had to remain manuscript due to the deep-rootedness of the inconsistency, in his ceaseless efforts to reconcile the contradiction in installations and in his deliberation and hesitancy of his writings, are the signs from where we could start discussion of the scholarly morality of material culture studies.

Panel Ethn05
Morality and material culture studies
  Session 1