Tiwi Textiles: Design, Making, Process tells the story of the innovative Tiwi Design centre on Bathurst Island in northern Australia, dedicated to the production of hand-printed fabrics featuring Indigenous designs, from the 1970s to today. Written by early art coordinator Diana Wood Conroy with oral testimony from senior Tiwi artist Bede Tungutalum, who established Tiwi Design in 1969 with fellow designer Giovanni Tipungwuti, the book traces the beginnings of the centre, and its subsequent place in the Tiwi community and Australian Indigenous culture more broadly. Bringing together many voices and images, especially those of little-known older artists of Paru and Wurrumiyanga (formerly Nguiu) on the Tiwi Islands and from the Indigenous literature, Tiwi Textiles features profiles of Tiwi artists, accounts of the development of new design processes, insights into Tiwi culture and language, and personal reflections on the significance of Tiwi Design, which is still proudly operating today.

Roads, Mobility, and Violence in Indigenous Literature and Art from North America explores mobility, spatialized violence, and geographies of activism in a diverse archive of literary and visual art by Indigenous authors and artists. Building on Raymond Williams's observation that "traffic is not only a technique; it is a form of consciousness and a form of social relations," this book pulls into focus racial, sexual, and environmental violence localized around roads. Reading this archive of texts next to lived struggles over spatial justice, Rymhs argues that roads are spaces of complex signification. For many Indigenous communities, the road has not often been so open. Recent Indigenous writing and visual art explores this tension between mobility and confinement. Drawing primarily on the work of Marie Clements, Tomson Highway, Marilyn Dumont, Leanne Simpson, Richard Van Camp, Kent Monkman, and Louise Erdrich, this volume examines histories of uprooting and violence associated with roads. Along with exploring these fraught histories of mobility, this book emphasizes various ways in which Indigenous communities have transformed roads into sites of political resistance and social memory.

Performing the jumbled city is a complex artefact beyond its own materiality. Linked to a dedicated website hosting additional audio-visual materials, the book acts as a connecting device allowing an exchange between texts, audio-visual materials, and original artworks, situating it in the emerging field of multi-modal ethnography. From this stance, and as an edited collection co-authored with urban indigenous artists and activists, it interrogates the ways in which knowledge is built and shared. The book is constructed as a particular kind of edited collection, shifting between different authorships. The resulting interaction between individual and collective essays draws together scholars' and activists' perspectives in a rich exchange between textual, visual and dramatic sections, for the book is organised around the original script of the site-specific performance Santiago Waria, and the related exhibition MapsUrbe. Making a claim for creation, rather than recuperation, the essays contained in the book put forward alternative imaginations that disrupt the social and material landscape of the (post)colonial city, defying the spatialities usually assigned to colonised bodies and subjects. As such, and actively engaging with current debates through collective writing by indigenous people raising questions in terms of decolonisation, the book stands as both an academic and a political project, interrogating the relationship between activism and academia, and issues of representation, authorship, and knowledge production. -- .

With the rise of projects to create global histories and art histories, the Mongol Empire is now widely taken as a fundamental watershed. In the later thirteenth century, the Mongol states reconfigured the basic zones of Eurasian trade and contact. For those they conquered, and for those who later overthrew them, new histories and narratives were needed to account for the Mongol rise. And as people, ideas, and commodities circulated in these vast and interconnected spaces, new types of objects and new visual languages were created, shifting older patterns of artistic production. The Mongol rise is now routinely cast as the first glimmering of an early modernity, defined as an ever-increasing acceleration in systems of contact, exchange, and cultural collision. Yet what is at stake in framing the so-called Pax Mongolica in this way? What was changed by the Mongol rise, and what were its lasting legacies? It is the goal of essays in this book to address these and other questions about the Mongol impact and their modern role, and to make these debates more widely available. Contributors include specialists of Mongol history and historiography as well as Islamic, East Asian, and European art, writing on topics from historical chronicles to contemporary historiography, and case studies from textile production to mapmaking and historical linguistics.

In this highly original study, Vanessa Russ examines the gradual invention of Aboriginal art within the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This process occurred as the social histories of Australia expanded and recognised Aboriginal people, through wars and political shifts, and as international organisations began placing pressure on nation states to expand, diversify, and respect multicultural perspectives. This book explores a state art institution as a case study to consider these complex narratives through a single history of Aboriginal art from early colonisation until today. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, museum studies, and Indigenous studies.

This book aims to redefine Australia's earliest art history by chronicling for the first time the birth of the category "Aboriginal art," tracing the term's use through published literature in the late eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Susan Lowish reveals how the idea of "Aboriginal art" developed in the European imagination, manifested in early literature, and became a distinct classification with its own criteria and form. Part of the larger story of Aboriginal/European engagement, this book provides a new vision for an Australian art history reconciled with its colonial origins and in recognition of what came before the contemporary phenomena of Aboriginal art.

Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Cote d'Ivoire is an investigation of the methods employed by art historians who study creative production in Africa. While providing insights into the rich visual arts of the Lagoon Peoples of southeastern Cote d'Ivoire, this study is one of the few attempts by an Africanist to situate local and regional artistic practices in the context of the global art market, and to trace the varied receptions an African art work is given as it leaves a local context and enters an international one. Drawing on her three seasons of fieldwork among Akan populations in Cote d'Ivoire, Monica Blackmun Visona provides a comprehensive account of a major art-producing region of Africa, and explores such topics as gender roles in performance, the role of sculpture in divination, and the interchange of arts and ideas across ethnic boundaries. The book also addresses issues inherent in research practices, such as connoisseurship and participant observation, and examines theoretical positions that have had an impact on the discipline of African art history.

It is often assumed that the verbal and visual languages of Indigenous people had little influence upon the classification of scientific, legal, and artistic objects in the metropolises and museums of nineteenth-century colonial powers. However colonized locals did more than merely collect material for interested colonizers. In developing the concept of anachronism for the analysis of colonial material this book writes the complex biographies for five key objects that exemplify, embody, and refract the tensions of nineteenth-century history. Through an analysis of particular language notations and drawings hidden in colonial documents and a reexamination of cross-cultural communication, the book writes biographies for five objects that exemplify the tensions of nineteenth-century history. The author also draws on fieldwork done in communities today, such as the group of Koorie women whose re-enactments of tradition illustrate the first chapter's potted history of indigenous mediums and debates. The second case study explores British colonial history through the biography of the proclamation boards produced under George Arthur (1784-1854), Governor of British Honduras, Tasmania, British Columbia, and India. The third case study looks at the maps of the German explorer of indigenous taxonomy Wilhelm von Blandowski (1822-1878), and the fourth looks at a multi-authored encyclopaedia in which Blandowski had taken into account indigenous knowledge such as that in the work of Kwat-Kwat artist Yakaduna, whose hundreds of drawings (1862-1901) are the material basis for the fifth and final case study. Through these three characters' histories Art in the Time of Colony demonstrates the political importance of material culture by using objects to revisit the much-contested nineteenth-century colonial period, in which the colonial nations as a cultural and legal-political system were brought into being.

The rock paintings and engravings of southern Africa have long been considered obscure, yet research has managed since to piece together that message, and we now know that this beautiful and detailed art tells us about the religious experiences of the San (bushmen) who made it: centuries ago the San believed that the art carried messages from the spirit world. This book traces the story behind that research, how it started, its failures and successes, and some of its debates, linking the art to the people who made it.

Delight in a different work of Asian art every week of the year with this stunning 2023 engagement calendar from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. From Japanese prints and textiles to Chinese ceramics and paintings, from Korean screens and sculpture to Persian manuscripts and calligraphy, immerse yourself in the world of Asia through different artists and cultures as you note occasions and appointments throughout the year. All the works featured are from the world-renowned collection of The Met. Features include: Cover image by Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760-1849) 7" x 9" (14" x 9" open) Paperback with spiral binding Printed on FSC-certified paper with soy-based ink Packaged in a sturdy, full-color gift box Spans 12 months from January-December 2023 Sunday-Saturday weeks Pages alternate between glossy for images and matte for calendar pages for ease of writing Generous grids with space to add appointments and reminders Widely celebrated and nationally recognized holidays and observances Moon phases, based on Universal Time 2023 and 2024 full year at-a-glance planners Lined notes pages to record special events and other occasions An identifying caption and a brief descriptive historical text accompany each work of art

Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Cote d'Ivoire is an investigation of the methods employed by art historians who study creative production in Africa. While providing insights into the rich visual arts of the Lagoon Peoples of southeastern Cote d'Ivoire, this study is one of the few attempts by an Africanist to situate local and regional artistic practices in the context of the global art market, and to trace the varied receptions an African art work is given as it leaves a local context and enters an international one. Drawing on her three seasons of fieldwork among Akan populations in Cote d'Ivoire, Monica Blackmun Visona provides a comprehensive account of a major art-producing region of Africa, and explores such topics as gender roles in performance, the role of sculpture in divination, and the interchange of arts and ideas across ethnic boundaries. The book also addresses issues inherent in research practices, such as connoisseurship and participant observation, and examines theoretical positions that have had an impact on the discipline of African art history.

""This is a stimulating book, which covers much new material Scholarship on sub-Saharan Africa is very thinly theorized. Few scholars seem to have the range to make connections with art practice elsewhere and generally offer interpretations which struggle to get beyond ethnographic documentation. Few monographs engage with the wider debates. This book is an exception.""
--John Mack, Professor, University of East Anglia (UK)

"African Dream Machines" takes African headrests out of the category of functional objects and into the more rarefied category of "art" objects. Styles in African headrests are usually defined in terms of Western art and archaeological discourses, but this book interrogates these definitions and demonstrates the shortcomings of defining a single formal style model as exclusive to a single ethnic group.

This book has been in the making for fifteen years, starting with research on the traditional woodcarving of the Shona-and Venda-speaking peoples of Zimbabwe and South Africa. Among the artifacts made by South African peoples, headrests were the best known and during a year spent in Europe in 1975-1976, Anitra Nettleton discovered museum stores full of unacknowledged masterpieces made by speakers of numerous Southern African languages. A Council Fellowship from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1990 enabled the writer to develop an archive in the form of notes, photographs, and sketches of each and every headrest she encountered. Many examples from South African collections were added from the early 1990s onwards, expanding the field vastly. Nettelton executed drawings of each and every headrest encountered, and they became a major part of the project in their own right.

"African Dream Machines" questions the assumed one-to-one relationship between formal styles and ethnic identities or classifications. Historical factors are used to demonstrate that "authenticity," in the form sought by collectors of antique African art, is largely a construct.

"Anitra Nettleton" is a professor in the Wits School of Arts, Johannesburg (South Africa). This manuscript was awarded the University of the Witwatersrand Research Committee Publication Award in 2006.

This international volume draws together key research that examines visual arts of the past and contemporary indigenous societies. Placing each art style in its temporal and geographic context, the contributors show how depictions represent social mechanisms of identity construction, and how stylistic differences in product and process serve to reinforce cultural identity. Examples stretch from the Paleolithic to contemporary world and include rock art, body art, and portable arts. Ethnographic studies of contemporary art production and use, such as among contemporary Aboriginal groups, are included to help illuminate artistic practices and meanings in the past. The volume reflects the diversity of approaches used by archaeologists to incorporate visual arts into their analysis of past cultures and should be of great value to archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians. Sponsored by the World Archaeological Congress.

Indexed in Clarivate Analytics Book Citation Index (Web of Science Core Collection)

The belief held by Aboriginal people that their art is ultimately related to their identity, and to the continued existence of their culture, has made the protection of indigenous peoples' art a pressing matter in many post-colonial countries. The issue has prompted calls for stronger copyright legislation to protect Aboriginal art. Although this claim is not particular to Australian Aboriginal people, the Australian experience clearly illustrates this debate. In this work, Elizabeth Burns Coleman analyses art from an Australian Aboriginal community to interpret Aboriginal claims about the relationship between their art, identity and culture, and how the art should be protected in law. Through her study of Yolngu art, Coleman finds Aboriginal claims to be substantially true. This is an issue equally relevant to North American debates about the appropriation of indigenous art, and the book additionally engages with this literature.

Surrealism and the Exotic is the story of the obsessive relationship between surrealist and non-western culture. Describing the travels across Africa, Oceania, Mexico and the Caribbean made by wealthy aesthetes, it combines an insight into the mentality of early twentieth century collectors with an overview of the artistic heritage at stake in these adventures. Featuring more than 70 photographs of artefacts, exhibitions and expeditions-in-progress, it brings to life the climate of hedonism enjoyed by Breton, Ernst, Durkheim, and Mauss, It is an unparalleled introduction to the Surrealist movement and to French thought and culture in the 1920s and 1930s.

Related link: www.anthropologyarena.com
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San rock paintings, scattered over the range of southern Africa, are considered by many to be the very earliest examples of representational art. There are as many as 15,000 known rock art sites, created over the course of thousands of years up until the nineteenth century. There are possibly just as many still awaiting discovery.
Taking as his starting point the magnificent Linton panel in the Iziko-South African Museum in Cape Town, J. D. Lewis-Williams examines the artistic and cultural significance of rock art and how this art sheds light on how San image-makers conceived their world. It also details the European encounter with rock art as well as the contentious European interaction with the artists' descendants, the contemporary San people.

In this study of Northwest Coast art, Jonathan Meuli has not only outlined a history of ideas associated with Northwest Coast art objects from pre-Contact time to the present day, but has also examined the ways in which the physical location and contexts in which the objects are produced has helped to determine their meanings. Locating his linear historical narrative within a wider exploration of ethnographic art ideas, which emphasizes links across cultures, Meuli examines the differing attitudes towards Northwest Coast material culture, particularly as these are embodied in oral mythic narratives, collection methods and architectural constructions.

Knowing Native Arts brings Nancy Marie Mithlo's Native insider perspective to understanding the significance of Indigenous arts in national and global milieus. These musings, written from the perspective of a senior academic and curator traversing a dynamic and at turns fraught era of Native self-determination, are a critical appraisal of a system that is often broken for Native peoples seeking equity in the arts. Mithlo addresses crucial issues, such as the professionalization of Native arts scholarship, disparities in philanthropy and training, ethnic fraud, and the receptive scope of Native arts in new global and digital realms. This contribution to the field of fine arts broadens the scope of discussions and offers insights that are often excluded from contemporary appraisals.

Explore the history and tradition of Wabanaki art.

In Indians in Color, noted cultural critic Norman K. Denzin addresses the acute differences in the treatment of artwork about Native America created by European-trained artists compared to those by Native artists. In his fourth volume exploring race and culture in the New West, Denzin zeroes in on painting movements in Taos, New Mexico over the past century. Part performance text, part art history, part cultural criticism, part autoethnography, he once again demonstrates the power of visual media to reify or resist racial and cultural stereotypes, moving us toward a more nuanced view of contemporary Native American life. In this book, Denzin-contrasts the aggrandizement by collectors and museums of the art created by the early 20th century Taos Society of Artists under railroad sponsorship with that of indigenous Pueblo painters;-shows how these tensions between mainstream and Native art remains today; and-introduces a radical postmodern artistic aesthetic of contemporary Native artists that challenges notions of the "noble savage."

A collaboration of visual art and poetry inspired by Funkadelic’s classic albums Standing on the Verge of Getting It On and Maggot Brain. Adrian Matejka's (Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry for The Big Smoke) new book Standing On the Verge & Maggot Brain is a chorus of poems and visual art that is psychedelic and bright, full of quarter notes disguised as words. The poems bend like a solo bends the big ideas of Funkadelic’s glitter and unrepentant funk. The colletion also bends the design of books themselves. Standing On the Verge & Maggot Brain is more accurately described as a double-chapbook, featuring two front covers and no back cover. Essentially, it is a two-in-one book. For the Standing On the Verge section of the two chaps, sculptor and artist Kevin Neireiter translates music into stained glass graffiti in honor of the landmark record. For Maggot Brain, Nicholas Galanin’s (also front man of the Sub Pop band Ya Tseen) art creates musical compositions from monochromatics in response to the quintessential album. Matejka's collection of poems is synesthesia for the ear and alchemy for the eyes and heart. Standing On the Verge & Maggot Brain is both a tribute to the iconic band Funkadelic and deep introspection of the contrasts in poet Matejka's celebrant hips and maggot brain. Just as the album Standing on the Verge of Getting It On is a celebration of energy and action, Maggot Brain is a place of deep sorrow. Matejka explores both the light and dark within the original visual art by Kevin Neireiter and Nicholas Galanin, reflecting the poet's radiances and shadows.

Surrealism and the Exotic is the story of the obsessive relationship between surrealist and non-western culture. Describing the travels across Africa, Oceania, Mexico and the Caribbean made by wealthy aesthetes, it combines an insight into the mentality of early twentieth century collectors with an overview of the artistic heritage at stake in these adventures. Featuring more than 70 photographs of artefacts, exhibitions and expeditions-in-progress, it brings to life the climate of hedonism enjoyed by Breton, Ernst, Durkheim, and Mauss, It is an unparalleled introduction to the Surrealist movement and to French thought and culture in the 1920s and 1930s.