The Invention of Fine Art: Creating a Cultural Elite in a Marginal Community

In Puerto Limón, Costa Rica, a small group of artists have established and maintain an aesthetic hierarchy, which distinguishes art from craft, artists from artisans, men from women, elite from philistine. Canvas art is part of a cycle of aesthetic invention, where Limonenses appropriate external resources to fit certain paradigms of legitimacy and permanence. This article explores the arbitrary nature of “fine art” as a category of aesthetic practice, and how the creation of a cultural elite legitimates the production and consumption of art objects.