Presses Universitaires de Vincennes

Claire Fagnart
Art and Ethnography
In this article, Claire Fagnart, examines some of the factors she deems responsible for the development of links between Art and Ethnography. This concerns the Anthropology “crisis”, following decolonization, the development of means of transportation and doubts concerning its supposedly “objective” role (scientific). On the other hand, it concerns the acknowledgment of the figure of the artist as a “giver” and as “intermediary”. 

Maria Ivens
The Artists' Ordinary History 
The renewal of artistic communities at the end of the sixties recalled a public visibility the artist was once offered in the 18thcentury. With the appearance of the idea of a sensus communisand the opening of the Salon as a public space, a common place was initiated that would create a link between the artist and the people. This would however be invalidated by the creation of the notion of genius put forward by Romanticism. Restricting the public sphere would bring about the modern conception of the artwork – as an expression of an exceptional singularity – that only the chosen few would be able to define in the social sphere. 

Jean-Claude Moineau
The Artist and its Models
After situating in their contexts of reference several artistic roles, such as “the artist as anthropologist” (Kosuth) and “the artist as producer” (Benjamin), Jean-Claude Moineau insists on the idea of “the artist as an ethnographer” (Foster). He places it in relation to a double deconstruction of the opposition between Art and Anthropology as well as the distinction between Ethics and Aesthetics. The author makes a critical reading of the artworks he considers related to the field of ethnographic art, before concluding about the figure of “the artist as speech-holder”. 

Virginia Whiles
Art and Ethnography
Virginia Whiles relies on her personal experience. As an art historian and exhibition curator of non western art, she states first her motivations in choosing Anthropology. Being an instructor she recalls experiences and choices made during her seminars – seen as fields of experimentation for a dialogue between Art and Anthropology. This approach allows her to answer a requirement for contemporary concerns, while remaining alert when it comes to “romanticized” attitudes. She wishes to escape in fact the all too general affirmations typical of an Ethnocentric approach. She does so without however succumbing to justification, through Ethnography, of certain art forms. 

François Soulages 
Image of the Self, Image of the Others, Europe of Tomorrow (Art &Philosophy) 
To make and to live the Europe of tomorrow means triply experiencing Otherness: the other country in front of our own or the Other from this other country; the Other for the European; the Other that we will become. In a similar way, the experience of a work of art is an experience of otherness. Lévinas helps us prepare the ground for these questionings, putting forward a distinction between “with the Other” and “in front of the Other”. In the end, an experience of otherness relies on a desire that sets us free of images of ourselves, unless it concerns images of others we had built in our own image.