The Theatre Times: The insensitivity of many Westerners in the question of looted artifacts or artifacts acquired under dubious circumstances is astonishing. Hirst and other Western artists can derive inspiration from the looted artifacts kept in Western museums, which they can visit anytime they want. But where can African artists derive such inspiration when iconic African objects are all kept away in Western capitals they can’t visit?
2 comments:
What is interesting about this is how it's not only a racial issue but also a socio-economic issue. Museums are a huge part of Western culture and in many ways that prevents people with little means of having access. However, I do believe that if a country is requesting artifacts to be returned, we should return them.
There is a very fine line between admiring another person's or culture's art and taking your experience of seeing them and putting towards the perspective that you put in your own work and appropriating a culture that is not your own. Because we are living in a time of political correctness and reassessment of how we treat minority groups and cultures, it is important to look at this line. Europeans using African culture to make art is not new, artists like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso used African masks as inspiration to start the cubist movement. The point is, that African art looks a certain way because the artist made choices as they relate to their culture, and when European artists use those same aesthetics, the cultural meaning is taken away and appropriated.
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