Wu Chen (Chinese, 1280-1354), Manual of Ink – Bamboo, 1350, ink on paper, National Palace Museum, Taipei.
In comparison to the Audience Studies, Anthropological approach is different in a way that it looks more to the actual materials and settings of the image rather than interviewing the audience. Audience Studies uses approach of interviewing a group of people or one-to-one interviews that explore how people make sense and understand the media. In Ethnography the research actually exists within the researched group to find factors that affect the group and lead them to specific responds. However, Anthropological approach differ from two because it does not look specifically on social aspects of the imagery but rather on the physical matter that it is made like paper, the quality of print or painting.
If we take the chosen image and apply the Anthropological approach to it we would be able to say that painting is the most historically used media for artists in China at that time. It is historically shown that Chinese people would pick specific colors and use them on the paper, cloth, and sometimes wood to create different texture and meaning to the finished artwork. If it was a silk cloth, than the value of the painting increase, but if the painting was done on the rice paper, than the value of it will decrease no matter how detailed the actual painting is.
The other factor that affects the context of the image is the way it is physically displayed. If the artwork is displayed in the emperor’s room or it was hang on the wall in the working class family. While the value of the artwork can fluctuate, the framing also can make a difference on the type of wood or type of material it was mounted.
However, the methods for interpreting image by this approach is universal for westerners, a researcher can add some of his or her values to the research depending on experience that can slightly change the ending result what is considered a weakness for this kind of approach.