Edmund Carpenter

Edmund Carpenter

One of the most renowned American anthropologists, Edmund Carpenter, died in July 2011. He spent his life exploring the most enigmatic forms of tribal and traditional art while also examining modern media and electronic communication. In the 1950s he and his colleagues at the University of Toronto, among them Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye, created a theory of global communication. Purple wanted to celebrate the richness of his research, which connects both the past and present, and diverse art forms and symbolic systems across time.

portrait by MAX SNOW
text by JEFF RIAN

 

Every environment teaches us something. New York City is no exception. Not long after moving there in 1980, people I’d met at the peripheries of the art world turned me toward various sources of local information. One of those sources was Edmund Carpenter’s night class at The New School…