Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics

Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics PDF Author: Jeremy Coote
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198279457
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
The anthropology of art is a fast-developing area of intellectual debate and academic study. This beautifully illustrated volume is a unique survey of the current state of anthropological thinking on art and aesthetics. The distinguished contributors draw on contemporary anthropological theory and on classic anthropological topics such as myth and ritual to deepen our understanding of particular aesthetic traditions in their socio-cultural and historical contexts. Many of the essays present new findings based on recent field research in Australia, New Guinea, Indonesia, and Mexico; while others draw on classical anthropological accounts of the Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia and the Nuer of the Southern Sudan to form new arguments and conclusions. The introductory overview of the history of the anthropology of art, by Sir Raymond Firth, makes this volume especially useful for those interested in learning what anthropology has to contribute to our understanding of art and aesthetics in general.

Anthropology and Art

Anthropology and Art PDF Author: Charlotte M. Otten
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description


American Muse

American Muse PDF Author: Richard L. Anderson
Publisher: Pearson
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
True to anthropology's hallmark relativism, Anderson includes the popular arts in his analysis, giving as much attention to such things as wedding cakes, rock-n-roll, and tattoos as he does to fine arts, such as gallery paintings, classical music, and serious literature."--BOOK JACKET.

Art and Agency

Art and Agency PDF Author: Alfred Gell
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191037451
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description
Alfred Gell puts forward a new anthropological theory of visual art, seen as a form of instrumental action: the making of things as a means of influencing the thoughts and actions of others. He argues that existing anthropological and aesthetic theories take an overwhelmingly passive point of view, and questions the criteria that accord art status only to a certain class of objects and not to others. The anthropology of art is here reformulated as the anthropology of a category of action: Gell shows how art objects embody complex intentionalities and mediate social agency. He explores the psychology of patterns and perceptions, art and personhood, the control of knowledge, and the interpretation of meaning, drawing upon a diversity of artistic traditions--European, Indian, Polynesian, Melanesian, and Australian. Art and Agency was completed just before Alfred Gell's death at the age of 51 in January 1997. It embodies the intellectual bravura, lively wit, vigour, and erudition for which he was admired, and will stand as an enduring testament to one of the most gifted anthropologists of his generation.

Light in Dark Times

Light in Dark Times PDF Author: Alisse Waterston
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487539134
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
What will become of us in these trying times? How will we pass the time that we have on earth? In gorgeously rendered graphic form, Light in Dark Times invites readers to consider these questions by exploring the political catastrophes and moral disasters of the past and present, revealing issues that beg to be studied, understood, confronted, and resisted. A profound work of anthropology and art, this book is for anyone yearning to understand the darkness and hoping to hold onto the light. It is a powerful story of encounters with writers, philosophers, activists, and anthropologists whose words are as meaningful today as they were during the times in which they were written. This book is at once a lament over the darkness of our times, an affirmation of the value of knowledge and introspection, and a consideration of truth, lies, and the dangers of the trivial. In a time when many of us struggle with the feeling that we cannot do enough to change the course of the future, this book is a call to action, asking us to envision and create an alternative world from the one in which we now live. Light in Dark Times is beautiful to look at and to hold – an exquisite work of art that is lively, informative, enlightening, deeply moving, and inspiring.

The Aesthetic Imperative

The Aesthetic Imperative PDF Author: Peter Sloterdijk
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 074569988X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
In this wide-ranging book, renowned philosopher and cultural theorist Peter Sloterdijk examines art in all its rich and varied forms: from music to architecture, light to movement, and design to typography. Moving between the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, his analyses span the centuries, from ancient civilizations to contemporary Hollywood. With great verve and insight he considers the key issues that have faced thinkers from Aristotle to Adorno, looking at art in its relation to ethics, metaphysics, society, politics, anthropology and the subject. Sloterdijk explores a variety of topics, from the Greco-Roman invention of postcards to the rise of the capitalist art market, from the black boxes and white cubes of modernism to the growth of museums and memorial culture. In doing so, he extends his characteristic method of defamiliarization to transform the way we look at works of art and artistic movements. His bold and original approach leads us away from the well-trodden paths of conventional art history to develop a theory of aesthetics which rejects strict categorization, emphasizing instead the crucial importance of individual subjectivity as a counter to the latent dangers of collective culture. This sustained reflection, at once playful, serious and provocative, goes to the very heart of Sloterdijk’s enduring philosophical preoccupation with the aesthetic. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy and aesthetics and will appeal to anyone interested in culture and the arts more generally.

Anthropology and Aesthetics

Anthropology and Aesthetics PDF Author: Tarek Elhaik
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781350168824
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
This book offers an alternate approach to aesthetic anthropology through an inquiry into the work of 5 contemporary artists. The author shifts traditional ideas of aesthetic experience and the creative act away from the faculty of the imagination towards the faculty of cogitation, suggesting a new "anthropology of cogitation" that is underwritten by a general, artistic intelligence.The book draws from three interconnected resources: the vital "ecology of mind," theorized by anthropologist Gregory Bateson; the salutary play in intermediary "potential spaces," advocated by British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott; and the virtus cogitativa found in the oeuvre of Ibn Rushd (Latin Averroes), the 12th century rationalist thinker known for innovating Aristotelian psychology and science of the soul.By opening a new dialogue between anthropology, art history, and philosophy, Tarek Elhaik examines image-work, ethical demands, and aesthetic struggles of his interlocutors, the artists Adrian Piper, Anna Maria Maiolino, Mathias Goeritz, Mounir Fatmi, and Silvia Gruner.

Folk Art Potters of Japan

Folk Art Potters of Japan PDF Author: Brian Moeran
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136796738
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
This is a study of a group of potters living in a small community in the south of Japan, and about the problems they face in the production, marketing and aesthetic appraisal of a kind of stoneware pottery generally referred to as mingei, or folk art. It shows how different people in an art world bring to bear different sets of values as they negotiate the meaning of mingei and try to decide whether a pot is 'art', 'folk art', or mere 'craft'. At the same time, this book is an unusual monograph in that it reaches beyond the mere study of an isolated community to trace the origins and history of 'folk art' in general. By showing how a set of aesthetic ideals originating in Britain was taken to Japan, and thence back to Europe and the United States - as a result of the activities of people like William Morris, Yanagi So etsu, Bernard Leach and Hamada Sho ji - this book rewrites the history of contemporary western ceramics.

Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production

Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production PDF Author: Maruska Svasek
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781783714742
Category : Art and anthropology
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
An introduction to anthropological perspectives on art that links the production of art to political and cultural processes.

Contemporary Art and Anthropology

Contemporary Art and Anthropology PDF Author: Arnd Schneider
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000323625
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Contemporary Art and Anthropology takes a new and exciting approach to representational practices within contemporary art and anthropology. Traditionally, the anthropology of art has tended to focus on the interpretation of tribal artifacts but has not considered the impact such art could have on its own ways of making and presenting work. The potential for the contemporary art scene to suggest innovative representational practices has been similarly ignored. This book challenges the reluctance that exists within anthropology to pursue alternative strategies of research, creation and exhibition, and argues that contemporary artists and anthropologists have much to learn from each others' practices. The contributors to this pioneering book consider the work of artists such as Susan Hiller, Francesco Clemente and Rimer Cardillo, and in exploring topics such as the possibility of shared representational values, aesthetics and modernity, and tattooing, they suggest productive new directions for practices in both fields.