Ritual
re this topic;  [whose art is it anyway?]

See also: -[Ritual in Performance Art Act]-
      or: -[Performance Art - Ritual]-

           [Cultural Art]
           [Art Periods]
           [Flying Gallop] (prance image)
           [Meso American Art]
           [South American Art]
           [Pacific Islands Art] 
          
              [Art Periods]
              [Art Movements]
              [(art) concepts]
              [Time Line]

Ritual

Note: I deal as best i can with the "trade offs" that
      we as artists make when trying to incorporate
      ritual into art in the article in Perf Art Act:
     -[Ritual in Performance Art Act]-

In this section:  {Intro}
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                  {Refs}
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Intro
                  
  


Refs
                
I have taken the liberty of duplicating the following here:



References
 
(this section only) 

Having been formally (B grade, a gift me thinks)
through a course in ritual - just a survey one.
I think that a good "self-paced" course in ritual
could be gleaned from the following:


  Eliade, Mircea. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries. 1957. 
          Trans. Philip 

          For artists of all kinds, Eliade is THE
          book. He was the first to range far and 
          wide and even his detractors have to admit
          that even when he is wrong - he's still right.
          As the saying goes:

             The opposite of simple truth is a simple lie.
             But the opposite of a profound truth, is
             another sort of profound truth.

  Langer, Susanne K. (1957, 3rd Ed.) Philosophy in a New Key 
          - A Study in the Symbolism Reason, Rite, and Art.
          Harvard Press. Cambridge (Massachusetts).
          
          It is so heartening to me that she is (finally!)
          getting the respect that she so richly deserves
          for her work. During the "cold war" she was 
          seen as almost under-mining the good, strong
          approach to TRUTH - which must surely, Shirley,
          reside in the "hard sciences", better living
          through pesticides and chemicals, and of
          course: To pave the entire world in Concrete.

          Enjoy a bit of Eliade and Langer today - you'l
          be glad you did!  - frank,  fleeding @ hotmail.com


Now for the more formal "ritual" studies as anthro:

   Turner, Victor (1969). "Liminality and Communitas" 
           in "The Ritual Process". New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

           Turner (along with Van Ganep) are seen as
           the founding fathers of ritual studies in       
           Anthro. Very readable and very human.


   Van Gennep, A. (1960). The Rites of Passage. 
       Chicago, Ill: The University of Chicago Press.
       This is a reprint of his original 1910d work.
       Don't let that date fool you - he's a refreshing
       blast from the past (eg, the fact that no one
       needs a passport to travel from country to
       country :) and he builds a sturdy foundation.
       Think: da Vinci on "scafolding" or van Gogh on
       "black and white".



  Grimes, Ronald L. (1996) Readings in Ritual 
          Studies. 
          Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

          This is a "catch all" sort of book with
          a superb wealth of both breadth and depth. 
          Rituals in "Super Tuesday" (voting day)
          as well as reprinting many of the classic
          papers.

With that simple bookshelf, i think that you will find
(as i did) a new and beautiful path to viewing the
sculpture (in both open and closed forms) that IS
ritual among the humans.


I have to end with a personal favorite (mainly because he
went to the same school that i did) - even though it is
(for me, personally) a difficult but rewarding book to
work through. I'd say that his book is a bit easier than
Rapport's works are in the same way that Taylor's books
on relativity are easier than say those of Slater and
Frank.   

  Armstrong, Robert Plant (1981). The Powers of Presence: 
             Consciousness, Myth, and Affecting Presence. 
             Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Press

  The key concept is synthesis vs. syndesis. Which i (still
  trying to get grip on - i dip into the book quite often)
  take to be a view of the time-dependent and time-independent
  forms of art/ritual/etc. Probably because Hegel has given
  us such a clear new "dialectic" in his formula:

      Thesis (gives rise to its opposite) -->  Anti-thesis
  
         And hence in terms of evolution:

      Thesis + Antithesis --->  Synthesis (new thesis)

   Thus, the process of change/growth/evolution are clear as
   historical consequents of previous conditions: Synthesis.
   Well, that's as much is clear to me. Syndesis is more in
   the realm of being outside of time (change/growth/evo/etc).

   e mail me with your thoughts,  frank  fleeding @ hotmail.com


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Links