Art and Exoticism

Download or read book Art and Exoticism written by Paul van der Grijp and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2009 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the yearning for authenticity via art and exoticism. Exoticism related to art cannot be reduced to primitivism alone and also encompasses a search in one's own unconsciousness among other things. The yearning for authenticity through exoticism is explored in a cultural anthropological perspective in the realms of Western philosophy (capita selecta) and colonial literature, currents of art, and in the appreciation of Western art conceptions in non-Western societies. An array of firsthand ethnographic illustrations of art production in Asian and Pacific societies demonstrates complementary processes in the non-Western world. A major hypothesis is that exoticism is closely related to, and often motivated by eroticism, a reason why exoticism should be considered as gendered. Case studies of the falsification of authentic art, the de-sacralization of sacred objects, and of the use of natural materials deriving from endangered species complete the analysis.