The Modern Art-Culture System

Title

The Modern Art-Culture System

Description

Since the turn of the century, objects collected from non-Western sources have been classified in two major categories: as (scientific) cultural artifacts or as (aesthetic) works of art. Other collectibles--mass-produced commodities, "tourist art," curios, and so on--have been less systematically valued; at best they find a place in exhibits of "technology" or "folklore." These and other locations within what may be called the "modern art-culture system" can be visualized with the help of a (somewhat procrustean) diagram. …A. J. Greimas’s ‘semiotic square’ shows us ‘that any initial binary opposition can, by the operation of negations and the appropriate syntheses, generate a much larger field of terms. … Beginning with an initial opposition, by a process of negation four terms are generated. This establishes horizontal and vertical axes and between them four semantic zones: (1) the zone of authentic masterpieces, (2) the zone of authentic artifacts, (3) the zone of inauthentic masterpieces, (4) the zone of inauthentic artifacts. Most objects--old and new, rare and common, familiar and exotic--can be located in one of these zones or ambiguously, in traffic, between two zones.
The system classifies objects and assigns them relative value. It establishes the ‘contexts’ in which they properly belong and between which they circulate. Regular movements toward positive value proceed from bottom to top and from right to left.

Designer

Clifford, James

Date

1988

Source

“On Collecting Art and Culture"

Bibliographic Citation

Clifford, James. "On Collecting Art and Culture." In The Cultural Studies Reader (Second Edition, 1999). Edited by Simon During. Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group. Pages 62-63.

Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Harvard University Press.

is depiction of attribute

Square

is composed of

Cross/axis

has attribute

Solid Line

Arrow

use feature

Brace

depict things of type

Typological or Classification

Coverage

aesthetics

anthropology

art