Indigenous Australian art includes art made by Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, including collaborations with others. It includes works in a wide range of media including painting on leaves, bark painting, wood carving, rock carving, watercolour painting, sculpting, ceremonial clothing and sandpainting. The traditional visual symbols vary widely among the differing peoples' traditions, despite the common mistaken perception that dot painting is representative of all Aboriginal art.
Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative. The makers of folk art are typically trained within a popular tradition, rather than in the fine art tradition of the culture. There is often overlap, or contested ground with 'naive art'. "Folk art" is not used in regard to traditional societies where ethnographic art continue to be made.
In the arts of the Western World, Primitivism is a mode of aesthetic idealization that means to recreate the experience of the primitive time, place, and person, either by emulation or by re-creation. In Western philosophy, Primitivism proposes that the people of a primitive society possess a morality and an ethics that are superior to the urban value system of civilized people.
Anthropology of art is a sub-field in social anthropology dedicated to the study of art in different cultural contexts. Traditionally the anthropology of art has focused on historical, economic and aesthetic dimensions in non-Western art forms, including what is known as 'tribal art'. It has now broadened to include all art.
The National Museum in New Delhi, also known as the National Museum of India, is one of the largest museums in India. Established in 1949, it holds a variety of articles ranging from the pre-historic era to modern works of art. It functions under the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. The museum is situated on Janpath. The blueprint of the National Museum had been prepared by the Gwyer Committee set up by the Government of India in 1946. The museum has around 200,000 works of art, mostly Indian, but some of foreign origin, covering over 5,000 years.
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, with particular focus on the ethnography and archaeology of the Americas. The museum is caretaker to over 1.2 million objects, some 900 feet (270 m) of documents, 2,000 maps and site plans, and about 500,000 photographs. The museum is located at Divinity Avenue on the Harvard University campus. The museum is one of the four Harvard Museums of Science and Culture open to the public.
The Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, located in Paris, France, is a museum designed by French architect Jean Nouvel to feature the indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. The museum collection comprises more than a million objects, of which 3,500 are on display at any given time, in both permanent and temporary thematic exhibits. A selection of objects from the museum is also displayed in the Pavillon des Sessions of the Louvre.
The Iziko South African Museum, formerly the South African Museum, is a South African national museum located in Cape Town. The museum was founded in 1825, the first in the country. It has been on its present site in the Company's Garden since 1897. The museum houses important African zoology, palaeontology, and archaeology collections.
The Warli or Varli are an indigenous tribe (Adivasi) of western India, living in mountainous as well as coastal areas along the Maharashtra-Gujarat border and surrounding areas. They have their own animistic beliefs, life, customs and traditions, and as a result of acculturation they have adopted many Hindu beliefs. The Warli speak the unwritten Varli language which belongs to the southern zone of the Indo-Aryan languages. Waralis have sub castes such as Murde varli, Davar varali.
Jivya Soma Mashe was an artist of the Maharashtra state in India, who popularised the Warli tribal art form.
Haku Vajubhai Shah was an Indian painter, Gandhian, cultural anthropologist and author on folk and tribal art and culture. His art belonged to the Baroda Group and his works are considered in the line of artists who brought themes of folk or tribal art to Indian art.
Susie Bootja Bootja Napaltjarri was an Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. Born south-west of Balgo, Western Australia, in the 1950s Susie Bootja Bootja married artist Mick Gill Tjakamarra, with whom she had a son, Matthew Gill Tjupurrula.
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art is the modern art work produced by Indigenous Australians, that is, Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people. It is generally regarded as beginning in 1971 with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, involving Aboriginal artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, and facilitated by white Australian teacher and art worker Geoffrey Bardon. The movement spawned widespread interest across rural and remote Aboriginal Australia in creating art, while contemporary Indigenous art of a different nature also emerged in urban centres; together they have become central to Australian art. Indigenous art centres have fostered the emergence of the contemporary art movement, and as of 2010 were estimated to represent over 5000 artists, mostly in Australia's north and west.
The Museum of Primitive Art was a museum devoted to the early arts of the indigenous cultures of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. It was founded in 1954 by Nelson Rockefeller, who donated his own collection of Tribal art. Its origins lay in Egyptologist and Met director Herbert Eustis Winlock's rejection of a non-Western art donation, one that Rockefeller interpreted as "this whole pre-Columbian field as a threat to his program in Egypt." Established next door to Rockefeller's childhood home in a townhouse at 15 West 54th Street, The Museum of Indigenous art was chartered in 1954. In 1957 the museum was renamed to The Museum of Primitive Art and was opened to the public. Robert Goldwater (1907–1973) was the museum’s first director. The museum closed in 1976, and its collections were transferred to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya also referred to as the National Museum of Humankind, or Museum of Man and Culture is a museum located in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. The museum spreads over an area of about 200 acres on the Shymala Hills in the city. This museum depicts the story of mankind in time and space. It is the largest ethnographic museum in India.
Some African objects had been collected by Europeans for centuries, and there had been industries producing some types, especially carvings in ivory, for European markets in some coastal regions. Between 1890 and 1918 the volume of objects greatly increased as Western colonial expansion in Africa led to the removal of many pieces of sub-Saharan African art that were subsequently brought to Europe and displayed. These objects entered the collections of natural history museums, art museums and private collections in Europe and the United States. About 90% of Africa's cultural heritage is believed to be located in Europe, according to French art historians.
Arpana Caur is an Indian contemporary painter and graphic artist. Arpana Caur exhibits dynamism and deep insight in her depictions of women's conditions in modern India. A self-taught artist, Caur's portrayals of women in urban environments reflect her concerns with the issues of our time: life and death, violence, the environment, and women's issues. Clothing is a recurring theme in her work, both reinforcing and undermining the established image of women.
Folk and traditional arts are rooted in and reflective of the cultural life of a community. They encompass the body of expressive culture associated with the fields of folklore and cultural heritage. Tangible folk art includes objects which historically are crafted and used within a traditional community. Intangible folk arts include such forms as music, dance and narrative structures. Each of these arts, both tangible and intangible, was originally developed to address a real need. Once this practical purpose has been lost or forgotten, there is no reason for further transmission unless the object or action has been imbued with meaning beyond its initial practicality. These vital and constantly reinvigorated artistic traditions are shaped by values and standards of excellence that are passed from generation to generation, most often within family and community, through demonstration, conversation, and practice.
Sarmaya Arts Foundation is a not-for-profit curated repository of art, artefacts and living traditions from the Indian subcontinent, run by the Sarmaya Trust. Founded by former IndusInd Bank COO Paul Abraham in 2015, Sarmaya is based in Mumbai, India. Sarmaya is a digital museum with a physical collection that represents the diverse histories and artistic traditions of the Subcontinent. Objects in the collection fall into the categories of numismatics, cartography, photography, engravings, modern art, living traditions and rare books.
The Tribal Women Artists Cooperative (TWAC) was initially founded by Bulu Imam in 1993 out of a Tribal Art Project funded by the Australian High Commission, New Delhi. The cooperative continues to be directed by Bulu Imam, Padma Shri awardee (2019) as a social worker for promoting the ritual Khovar and Sohrai mural painting tradition, benefiting thousands of village women, and has gained international recognition through several exhibitions in major art galleries around the world.
