20th century art history
acrylic painting
african art market
american art
anthropology
art
art world
australian aboriginals
authenticity
avant garde art
beat music
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censorship
commodification of remote music
contemporary west
cultural studies
culture
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ethnography
exotic other
indian art
indigenous art
international market
music
national endowment for the arts
new york
obscenity
postmodern art
postmodernism
postmodernity
primitive
representation
sexuality and art
world beat music scene
Product details
- ISBN 9780520088474
- Weight: 635g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 21 Dec 1995
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The essays in this collection signal a new relationship between anthropology and the study of art. The authors explore the boundaries and affinities between art, anthropology, representation, and culture, casting a critical, ethnographic light on the art worlds of the contemporary West and their 'traffic' in non-Western objects. Starting from the premise that the traditional anthropology of art has been developed within categories and practices of Western art worlds themselves, this volume develops a new framework for understanding how western art - its avant-gardes, scholars, commentators, and collectors - have appropriated anthropological subjects like the 'primitive' and the 'exotic other'. The success of Australian Aboriginal acrylic paintings in the New York art world prompts Fred Myers to explore the circulation of indigenous art in the international market. Steven Feld looks at the contemporary world beat music scene and the commodification of remote music cultures. Carol Vance takes on the contentious struggles over art, censorship, obscenity, and the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States.
George Marcus looks at the meaning of new, oppositional artwork in the context of the institutionalization of the avant-garde and postmodernism more generally. In contrast to a previous anthropology of art concerned with representing non-Western objects to Western audiences, this volume uncovers the practices and processes that drive the Western art world itself.
George E. Marcus is Professor of Anthropology at Rice University and the coeditor (with James Clifford) of Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (California, 1986). Fred R. Myers is Professor of Anthropology at New York University and author of Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place, and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines (California, 1991).
