What's the Use of Art?

What's the Use of Art? PDF Author: Jan Mrazek
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824830636
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Post-Enlightenment notions of culture, which have been naturalized in the West for centuries, require that art be autonomously beautiful, universal, and devoid of any practical purpose. The authors of this multidisciplinary volume seek to complicate this understanding of art by examining art objects from across Asia with attention to their functional, ritual, and everyday contexts. From tea bowls used in the Japanese tea ceremony to television broadcasts of Javanese puppet theater; from Indian wedding chamber paintings to art looted by the British army from the Chinese emperor’s palace; from the adventures of a Balinese magical dagger to the political functions of classical Khmer images—the authors challenge prevailing notions of artistic value by introducing new ways of thinking about culture. The chapters consider art objects as they are involved in the world: how they operate and are experienced in specific sites, collections, rituals, performances, political and religious events and imagination, and in individual peoples’ lives; how they move from one context to another and change meaning and value in the process (for example, when they are collected, traded, and looted or when their images appear in art history textbooks); how their memories and pasts are or are not part of their meaning and experience. Rather than lead to a single universalizing definition of art, the essays offer multiple, divergent, and case-specific answers to the question "What is the use of art?" and argue for the need to study art as it is used and experienced. Contributors: Cynthea J. Bogel, Louise Cort, Richard H. Davis, Robert DeCaroli, James L. Hevia, Janet Hoskins, Kaja McGowan, Jan Mrázek, Lene Pedersen, Morgan Pitelka, Ashley Thompson.

What's the Use of Art?

What's the Use of Art? PDF Author: Jan Mrazek
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824830636
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
Post-Enlightenment notions of culture, which have been naturalized in the West for centuries, require that art be autonomously beautiful, universal, and devoid of any practical purpose. The authors of this multidisciplinary volume seek to complicate this understanding of art by examining art objects from across Asia with attention to their functional, ritual, and everyday contexts. From tea bowls used in the Japanese tea ceremony to television broadcasts of Javanese puppet theater; from Indian wedding chamber paintings to art looted by the British army from the Chinese emperor’s palace; from the adventures of a Balinese magical dagger to the political functions of classical Khmer images—the authors challenge prevailing notions of artistic value by introducing new ways of thinking about culture. The chapters consider art objects as they are involved in the world: how they operate and are experienced in specific sites, collections, rituals, performances, political and religious events and imagination, and in individual peoples’ lives; how they move from one context to another and change meaning and value in the process (for example, when they are collected, traded, and looted or when their images appear in art history textbooks); how their memories and pasts are or are not part of their meaning and experience. Rather than lead to a single universalizing definition of art, the essays offer multiple, divergent, and case-specific answers to the question "What is the use of art?" and argue for the need to study art as it is used and experienced. Contributors: Cynthea J. Bogel, Louise Cort, Richard H. Davis, Robert DeCaroli, James L. Hevia, Janet Hoskins, Kaja McGowan, Jan Mrázek, Lene Pedersen, Morgan Pitelka, Ashley Thompson.

Between the Folds

Between the Folds PDF Author: Jill Forshee
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824823467
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Textiles have long been integral to the social life and cosmology of the people of East Sumba, Indonesia. In recent decades, the people of East Sumba have entered a larger world economy as their textiles have joined the commodity flow of an international "ethnic arts" market stimulated by Indonesia's tourist trade. As Sumba's villagers respond to an immensely expanded commerce in their cloth, tensions and ironies emerge between historical and innovative forms in both cloth and lives. Such responses involve gender, ethnicity, and social rank, and are especially highlighted within global market spaces. The stories in Between the Folds vary widely and include those of animists, Christians, and Moslems; Sumbanese, Indonesian Chinese, and Westerners; inventive geniuses, master artisans, and exploited weavers; rogues, entrepreneurs, nobles, and servants.

Early Indonesian Textiles from Three Island Cultures

Early Indonesian Textiles from Three Island Cultures PDF Author: Robert J. Holmgren
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN: 0870995383
Category : Repetitive patterns (Decorative arts)
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description


Textiles of Southeast Asia

Textiles of Southeast Asia PDF Author: Robyn Maxwell
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462906982
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 1613

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Book Description
Textiles provide a visual history of a country's culture and crafting traditions in a way few other things can accomplish. In Textiles of Southeast Asia, Dr. Robyn Maxwell provides the definitive work on Southeast Asian textiles. Traditional textiles are one of the most widely collected and important categories of Southeast Asian art. Using an extensive range of locally produced raw materials and an astonishing array of techniques--including applique, weaving, batik and embroidery--the textiles of Southeast Asia are astonishing in their versatility and originality. Textiles are used to fashion everything from everyday clothing to sacred and ceremonial costumes, shrouds and wrapping cloths, hangings, banners and ritual regalia--all of which are represented and explained in Textiles of Southeast Asia. This authoritative text focuses on the changing relationship between indigenous Southeast Asian traditions and the outside influences continuing to be brought to the area, which change the nature of the region's textile traditions. This book considers the various ways Southeast Asian textile artisans reacted over the centuries to the steady stream of new and powerful ideas and raw materials arriving from India, China, the Islamic world and Europe. A detailed and definitive resource, Textiles of Southeast Asia is a welcome addition to the field of textiles.

System and Meaning in East Sumba Textile Design

System and Meaning in East Sumba Textile Design PDF Author: Marie Jeanne Adams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description


Cloth and Human Experience

Cloth and Human Experience PDF Author: Annette B. Weiner
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 1588343847
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Cloth and Human Experience explores a wide variety of cultures and eras, discussing production and trade, economics, and symbolic and spiritual associations.

Iban Ritual Textiles

Iban Ritual Textiles PDF Author: Traude Gavin
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004489053
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description


The Flow of Life

The Flow of Life PDF Author: James J. Fox
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674306752
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Indonesia east of Bali is perhaps the least known of all major cultural areas of Southeast Asia. Yet the anthropology of the region has long held a prominent place in the development of structuralist theories of marital exchange and symbolic classification. Falling in a distinguished lineage running from van Wouden to Levi-Strauss to Rodney Needham, The Flow of Life presents a comprehensive set of essays by a distinguished group of international scholars, which provides both a full picture of this culturally rich area and an important extension of earlier structuralist theory. This volume is bound to become the standard source on the social anthropology of eastern Indonesia. But it is a work of more than regional significance, providing a variety of empirical resources to address the questions which lie at the bottom of much structuralist thought about mind and society: what is the nature of symbolic thought? how does consciousness intertwine with society and ecology? what is the difference between "primitive" and "modern" society?

Textile Economies

Textile Economies PDF Author: Walter E. Little
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 0759120617
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Textiles have been a highly valued and central part of human societies across culture divides and over millennia. This volume is centered around the a number of themes textile production, textiles as trade goods, textile as symbols, textiles in tourism and textile the transnational processes. Textile Economies appeals to abroad range of scholars image in the intersection of material culture political economy, and globalization such as sociologists, cultural anthropologists, economists, Museum curators and historians. Book jacket.

Weaving Identities

Weaving Identities PDF Author: Carol Hendrickson
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292779445
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Traje, the brightly colored traditional dress of the highland Maya, is the principal visual expression of indigenous identity in Guatemala today. Whether worn in beauty pageants, made for religious celebrations, or sold in tourist markets, traje is more than "mere cloth"—it plays an active role in the construction and expression of ethnicity, gender, education, politics, wealth, and nationality for Maya and non-Maya alike. Carol Hendrickson presents an ethnography of clothing focused on the traje—particularly women's traje—of Tecpán, Guatemala, a bi-ethnic community in the central highlands. She covers the period from 1980, when the recent round of violence began, to the early 1990s, when Maya revitalization efforts emerged. Using a symbolic analysis informed by political concerns, Hendrickson seeks to increase the value accorded to a subject like weaving, which is sometimes disparaged as "craft" or "women's work." She examines traje in three dimensions—as part of the enduring images of the "Indian," as an indicator of change in the human life cycle and cloth production, and as a medium for innovation and creative expression. From this study emerges a picture of highland life in which traje and the people who wear it are bound to tradition and place, yet are also actively changing and reflecting the wider world. The book will be important reading for all those interested in the contemporary Maya, the cultural analysis of material culture, and the role of women in culture preservation and change.