ABSTRACT
The anthropology of art seems at times to have been squeezed between – and distorted by – two myths. They are the myth adhered to by the art market, and by some art curators, that somehow an anthropological approach to indigenous art created its otherness and separated it from Western artworks; and the anthropological myth that classifying works as ‘art’ imposed a Western categorization upon them. In the myth concerning the role of the anthropologist in the creation of the otherness of primitive art, that role has been greatly exaggerated, often attributing to anthropologists the presuppositions of other members of their own societies that they have both at times shared and at other times challenged. When trying to persuade a Western public of the aesthetic dimension of other peoples’ material culture, anthropologists present their arguments not only through their writings but also by organizing exhibitions of other peoples’ work as art.
