What do we mean by 'art'? As a category of objects, the concept belongs to a Western cultural tradition, originally European and now increasingly global, but how useful is it for understanding other traditions? To understand art as a universal human value, we need to look at how the concept was constructed in order to reconstruct it through an understanding of the wider world.
Western art values have a pervasive influence upon non-Western cultures and upon Western attitudes to them. This innovative yet accessible new text explores the ways theories of art developed as Western...
What do we mean by 'art'? As a category of objects, the concept belongs to a Western cultural tradition, originally European and now increasingly g...
The Things We Value takes as its subject the creativity and cultural heritage of Solomon Islands, focusing on the kinds of objects produced and valued by local communities across this diverse country in the south-west Pacific. Combining historical and interpretive analyses with personal memories and extensive illustrations, the contributors examine such distinctive forms as red feather-money, shell valuables, body ornaments, war canoes, ancestral stones and wood carvings. Their essays discuss the materials, designs, manufacture, properties and meanings of artefacts from across the country....
The Things We Value takes as its subject the creativity and cultural heritage of Solomon Islands, focusing on the kinds of objects produced and valued...
Building a beautiful ornamented 'white canoe' was a way for the Lau people of Malaita in Solomon Islands to honour the ghosts of their ancestors in the days before they became Christians. This book tells the story of the last of these canoes, built in 1968 by one of the few clans still following their traditional religion, as witnessed by the late anthropologist Pierre Maranda. Maranda observed how the great artistic projects of Malaita were once supported by elaborate ritual procedures and celebrated with community festivals, all richly illustrated here by his photographs. James Tuita was...
Building a beautiful ornamented 'white canoe' was a way for the Lau people of Malaita in Solomon Islands to honour the ghosts of their ancestors in th...
