Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in great bright condition. No notes or highlighting. Dustcover worn/damaged. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> This book combines two approaches to the study of art neither of which is as yet widely accepted among specialists and connoisseurs of what most art historians continue to call “primitive art.” The first is an attempt to interpret the artistry and aesthetics of a particular people from an ethnographic and ethnoaesthetic (“inside”) perspective rather than allowing objets d’art to speak largely for themselves. The second is an effort to trace the development of aesthetic ideas and artistic forms over time to view from an historical per- spective arts that have often been assumed to be relatively static and unchanging. It may be useful to elaborate briefly on the importance of each of these ap- proaches Today there is a widespread and respectable scholarly belief that Euro american audiences have become sufficiently sophisticated about the arts of the rest of the world so that “primitive art is best presented with minimal interpretation. This view advocates an “osmotic approach to the presentation of works of art holding that “explanatory devices…are] more properly handled by the ethnographic museums” (Newton 1978-45-46). In contrast the present book is guided by the view that learning how to look at understand and fully appreciate an artistic creation depends on knowing something of how its creators (and those for whom it was created) themselves viewed understood and used it. For us interpretation and aesthetic appreciation go hand in hand. (MP)