The art of orality: how the absence of writing shapes the character of tribal, ‘primitive’ art

Abstract

This contribution aims to identify a clear link between whether a culture is oral or literate and their distinct styles of visual art. It looks with particular interest to the interconnectivity between the theories of two thinkers from disparate fields: the American philosopher and theorist of linguistics Walter J. Ong and the German art historian Wilhelm Worringer. It considers what we can learn from the intersectionality of their principal theories: the conception of orality and literacy as delineated by Ong and the conception of abstraction and empathy as elucidated by Worringer. It will be shown how the characteristics of oral peoples as explicated by Ong (that is, people entirely detached from literacy, with no written language, sometimes derogatorily called ‘primitive’, or sometimes tribal peoples) are driven by the same ‘urge to abstraction’ which is identified by Worringer in Abstraction and Empathy. In turn, the reason for certain characteristics of oral art is specifically related to their being detached from literacy; as Ong famously proposed, ‘writing restructures consciousness.’ It will be shown how this is verified by the fact that the movement away from universal styles of oral, abstractive art (such as a constraint to two-dimensionality, use of repeated patterns and symbolic counterparts of figures and objects) towards immersive, empathic art (the mimetic, representational, realistic rendering of space and figures) is historically concurrent with a shift from universal orality to widespread literacy. The implication of this theoretical synchronicity is rather radical, allowing for new theoretical alignments between these fields. It also sheds light on the reason behind concurrent characteristics in the visual art produced by disparate societies across time and cultures: their art is reflective of their status as an ‘oral’ culture.

Keywords:

• orality
• primitive art
• tribal art
• Walter J. Ong
• Wilhelm Worringer
• oral cultures
• language and art

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Victor Li notes, however, that even terms which knowingly depart from the overtly pejorative label of ‘primitive’ – such as ‘tribal’, ‘traditional’, ‘premodern’ and ‘archaic’ – often harbour a similar ‘chronopolitical’ baggage, but that this is unavoidable for studies which approach the subject (Li 2006, viii). When it comes to my own approach, the term ‘tribal’ is chosen as the best-suited of these alternatives, purely because it is a term commonly used to distinguish these particular art styles and forms in wider studies of art and art theory.

2 In the case of child art, the child must be of an age which Piaget calls the ‘egocentric’ stage, which is essentially a state of pre-literacy, whereby they have a grasp of language, but not to a significant enough degree that they can be considered literate. In the case of the psychotic producer of ‘outsider art’, they are essentially in a state of post-literacy, wherein language no longer serves its usual function of covering up the world in a veil of words. Ong gestures towards this idea when he draws attention to the similarities between oral and ‘bicameral’ peoples (Ong 1982, 30).

3 Havelock (1963) argues that this shift occurs after Plato, who is considered to be the marker of the historical transition from a principally oral mentality to a largely literate one within built-up societies. Havelock evidences Plato’s staggering awareness to this epochal transition, and how he was hostile towards the earlier, poetic form of prolonging knowledge which he saw as threatening to higher, more abstracted, scientific forms of thought.

4 Taking his cue from Riegl, Worringer expands by quoting Riegl’s Stilfragen, in which he states ‘from the standpoint of regularity the geometric style, which is built up strictly according to the supreme laws of symmetry and rhythm, is the most perfect. In our scale of values, however, it occupies the lowest position, and the history of the evolution of the arts also shows this style to have been peculiar to peoples still at a low level of cultural development’ (Worringer 1997, 17).

5 ‘A rendering in the round of the natural model in its three-dimensionality afforded no satisfaction … this reproduction, in its unclarity to perception and its connection with infinite space, would inevitably leave the spectator in the same anguished state as vis a vis, the natural model’ (Worringer 1997, 38). Some clarity should be given here in terms of the mention of ‘three dimensionality’, in that oral sculpture can be three dimensional, as with the Lefkani Centaur, but the critical point is that they are still an abstraction from any real, naturalistic rendition: they are still archetypal, iconic.

6 Havelock also explains why the term ‘non-literate’ should be uttered with caution: this is a culture which is, for an incredibly long time, entirely non-literate, and yet they were still advanced enough to create cities, great temples, smelt iron, and produce of the greatest art and literature of all time, as well as solve some of the most profound problems in philosophy, science and mathematics.

7 Ivan Illich writes lucidly on this idea of a much more overarching transition of volition, shifting towards ‘a distinct mode of perception in which the book has become the decisive metaphor through which we conceive of the self’ (Olson and Torrance 1991, 28).

8 The geometric, mathematical structure of The Iliad is discussed by Whitman (1965). Havelock (1963) too discusses its mathematical and formulaic nature in Preface to Plato. The two Homeric texts are seen to represent a key point of opposition in terms of the oral vs literate consciousness. The Iliad is borne of an oral society, whilst The Odyssey comes from a literate one, and this is reflected by a gulf in terms of style and characteristics.

9 Worringer signals a clear unity of mindset when he describes how those driven by the urge to abstraction ‘experience only obscurity and caprice in the inter-connection and flux of the phenomena of the external world … the urge in him is to divest the things of the external world of their caprice and obscurity in the world picture and to impart to them a value of necessity and a value of regularity’ (Worringer 1997, 18).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Declan Lloyd

Declan Lloyd is a postdoctoral researcher and associate lecturer in the History, ELCW (English Literature and Creative Writing) and LICA (Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts) departments at Lancaster University, UK. He is the author of Authors and Art Movements of the Twentieth Century: Painterly Poetics (2022) and has also published work on the intersections of art and literature in edited collections and in various journals. He has written articles on similar themes for The Guardian and The Conversation.