Art works created by indigenous people on other continents in European and American museums have become subject of controversial debate. How exactly these collections of tribal art from Africa, North and South America, Asia, and Oceania in rich countries have been amassed over centuries, and how such works continue to be sourced and traded today, is under close scrutiny and claims for their restitution to the places and people of their origin are voiced loudly. Zurich's Museum Rietberg, one of Europe's most renowned museums of non-European art, has undertaken an extensive research project to explore the history of its own collection. The essays by expert authors in this illustrated publication investigate the pathways along which objects travelled from their origins to the museum. They shed light at the shifts in meaning of these artefacts that have occurred in the course of the transfers. And they demonstrate the importance of provenance research for learning comprehensively about and taking a critical approach in the assessment of the complex biographies of artefacts. Pathways of Art offers an important contribution to the current debate about the status and impact of non-European art in the global North. It aims to foster awareness of colonial and post-colonial contexts of trading and collecting such art works and to help establishing new, more informed and just, and less Eurocentric, museum narratives.

This collection focuses on David Lewis-Williams and the extent of his personal impact on the field of rock art research. It is largely through his work that San rock art has come to be understood so well, as a complex symbolic and metaphoric representation of San religious beliefs and practices. The purpose of this volume is to demonstrate the depth and wide geographical impact of Lewis-Williams' contribution, with particular emphasis on the use of theory and methodology drawn from ethnography that he has used with inspirational effect in understanding the meaning and context of rock art in various parts of the world. "Seeing and Knowing "explores how best archaeologists study rock art when there exist ethnographic or ethno-historic bases of insight, and how they study rock art when there do not appear to exist ethnographic or ethno-historic bases of insight--in short, how to understand and learn from rock art with and without ethnography. Because many of the chapters are based on solid fieldwork and ethnographic research, they offer a new body of work that provides the evidence for differentiation between knowing and simply seeing. This volume is unique in that it focuses exclusively on rock art and ethnography, and covers such a wide geographic range of examples on this topic, from southern Africa, to Scandinavia, to the United States. Many of the chapters explore studies in other rock art regions of the world where variation and constancy can be observed and explored across distances both in space and in time. The editors have entitled the book "Seeing and Knowing "to echo Lewis-Williams' "Believing and Seeing "published" "almost thirty years ago; they say "seeing" again because" "looking at rock art is and will always be central, and then" "what is seen when human eyes and minds look; they say" ""knowing" in recognition that, by his work and by his" "example, archaeologists now know a little more than they" "knew before. Even so, as Lewis-Williams will be the first to" "say, we still know only a fraction.

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.

In this beautifully illustrated volume, the fascinating story of Himalayan art is illuminated through a selection of significant objects from the Neolithic era to today. Paintings, sculptures, drawings, textiles, architectural structures, and more serve as a guide to the historical traditions, rituals, social practices, and art forms from Tibetan, Indian, Nepalese, Bhutanese, Mongolian, and Chinese regions, emphasising cross-cultural exchange with Tibet at the centre. Photographs and essays bring each object to life, introducing readers to the diversity and uniqueness of Tibetan, Himalayan, and Inner Asian art and practices, while highlighting the importance of the region in understanding broader Asia. Selected and authored by an international group of scholars and curators, these 108 objects offer an accessible introduction to this rich yet underrepresented field. This highly anticipated publication is part of the Rubin Museum’s Project Himalayan Art, an initiative to cultivate resources for teaching and learning about Himalayan art and cultures.

Miniatures - canoes, houses and totems, and human figurines - have been produced on the Northwest Coast since at least the sixteenth century. What has motivated Indigenous artists to produce these tiny artworks? Through case studies and conversations with artists themselves, So Much More Than Art convincingly dismisses the persistent understanding that miniatures are simply children's toys or tourist trinkets. Jack Davy's highly original exploration of this intricate pursuit demonstrates the importance of miniaturization as a technique for communicating complex cultural ideas between generations and communities, as well as across the divide that separates Indigenous and settler societies.

In April 1966, thousands of artists, musicians, performers and writers from across Africa and its diaspora gathered in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to take part in the First World Festival of Negro Arts (Premier Festival Mondial des arts negres). The international forum provided by the Dakar Festival showcased a wide array of arts and was attended by such celebrated luminaries as Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker, Aime Cesaire, Andre Malraux and Wole Soyinka. Described by Senegalese President Leopold Sedar Senghor, as 'the elaboration of a new humanism which this time will include all of humanity on the whole of our planet earth', the festival constituted a highly symbolic moment in the era of decolonization and the push for civil rights for black people in the United States. In essence, the festival sought to perform an emerging Pan-African culture, that is, to give concrete cultural expression to the ties that would bind the newly liberated African 'homeland' to black people in the diaspora. This volume is the first sustained attempt to provide not only an overview of the festival itself but also of its multiple legacies, which will help us better to understand the 'festivalization' of Africa that has occurred in recent decades with most African countries now hosting a number of festivals as part of a national tourism and cultural development strategy.

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.

This anthology considers how the Day of the Dead has been celebrated in visual art and culture, from the traditional and iconic illustrations of Manuel Manilla and Jose Posada to the paper cuts of Aaron Velasco Pacheco, folk art of the Linares family and paintings of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. With a foreword by the ceramic artist and curator Carlomagno Pedro Martinez, this compendium also includes poems, songs and literature celebrating the festival, as well as dedicated chapters that focus on contemporary representations, such as urban art, graffiti and the street photography of Yolande Andrade.

South African beadwork has a rich and diverse history and is abundantly represented in the beaded art pieces in the Wits Art Museum (WAM) collection. Some works date back to the 4th century CE but most date from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Currently numbering over 9 000 items, the three major collecting areas of classical, historical and contemporary African artworks are broad in their geographical range and deep in some local areas of specialisation. Paying homage to this collection, Beadwork, art and the body is a compilation of essays by scholars who have researched and written about the traditions, practices and aesthetic forms of beadwork in southern Africa. The book covers an expansive history of beadwork in South Africa from the 19th century to the contemporary moment. The artists and the beadwork featured range from Sotho-, Tsonga-, Xhosa- and Zulu-speakers, ending with a focus on fashion designer Laduma Ngxokolo, whose work has been inspired by Xhosa beadwork. Questions of ethnic affiliation and beadwork patterns are explored in relation to the different aesthetic forms of beadwork and its use as a marker of identity and status within and beyond communities.

This beautiful book brings you the very best of art throughout history - using a truly innovative timeline-led approach. Savour iconic paintings such as Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper and Monet's Waterlilies, and discover less well-known artists, styles, and movements the world over - from Indigenous Australian art to the works of Ming-era China. And explore recurring themes, such as love and religion, and important genres from Romanesque to Conceptual art, along the way. Timelines of Art provides detailed analysis of the works of key artists, showing details of their technique - such as Leonardo's use of light and shade. It tells the story of avant-garde works like Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Lunch on the Grass), which scandalised society, and it traces how certain artists, genres or movements informed the works of others - showing how the Impressionists were inspired by Gustave Courbet, for example, or how Van Gogh was influenced by Japanese prints. Comprehensive, accessible, and lavishly illustrated throughout, Timelines of Art is an essential guide to the pantheon of world art, so dive straight into discover: - An overview of each movement, including the social and cultural background of the period, grounds the works of art in the spirit of their times. - Turning-point paintings that triggered or epitomised each artistic movement are identified and explained, against a backdrop of influences - the technical advances, admired techniques of an earlier artist, and changes in society that enabled new directions in art. - Glossary of technical terms and comprehensive index help make this an indispensable work of reference for any art-lover. Timelines of Art is the perfect art history book for students of art and/or history, proving ideal for families, schools and libraries and doubling up as a great gift for the art lover in your life.

In its classic union of gleaming silver and blue turquoise, Native American jewellery of the Southwest is an iconic art form. Internationally recognized and locally significant, Native American jewellery has a compelling history--it represents the persistence of tradition while encapsulating the vitality of Native American communities and the continuously transforming nature of the jewellery makers' art. Author Henrietta Lidchi focuses on jewellery in the cultural economy of the Southwest, exploring jewellery making as a decorative art form in constant transition. She describes the jewellery as subject to a number of desires, controlled at different times by government agencies, individual entrepreneurs, traders, curators, and Native American communities. Lidchi explores the jewellery as craft, material culture, commodity, and adornment. Considering the impact of tourism, she discusses fakes in the market and the artists' desires to codify traditional styles, explaining how these factors can affect stylistic development and value. Surviving Desires suggests the complexity and reinvention innate to Native American jewellery as a commercial craft. Drawing on the author's archival research and on interviews she conducted with Native American jewellers and with traders, dealers, and curators, this volume examines British collecting, exchanges between British and American institutions, and the development of the British Museum's contemporary collection. Lavishly illustrated with 300 color photographs of jewellery in the British Museum, the National Museums Scotland, and major collections in the United States, Surviving Desires presents many previously unpublished pieces and showcases works by Native American jewellers who include the best-known names in the field today. The volume is a visually stunning exploration of the symbolic, economic, and communal value of jewellery in the American Southwest.

The Japanese phrase "hodo-hodo" originates in ancient times. When contemporary designer Taku Satoh applies it to his work, it means "just enough." Hodo-hodo design deliberately holds back, leaving room for individuals to engage with objects according to their unique sensibilities. In the midst of a consumerist age, Satoh has built an illustrious design career around this philosophy, creating iconic work in fashion, food, and architecture. His ideas speak not just to professional designers, but to anyone who wishes to move more thoughtfully through the world. Within this slim but powerful volume, Satoh explains his philosphy through tangible examples-from the aesthetic of a timeworn ramen shop to a rooftop playground inspired by onomatopaeia. Urging readers to appreciate everyday objects and spaces and to question the lure of convenience, he delivers a message rooted in the past yet perfectly suited to our times.

Glory and Exile: Haida History Robes of Jut-ke-Nay Hazel Wilson marks the first time this monumental cycle of ceremonial robes by the Haida artist Jut-Ke-Nay (The One People Speak Of)-also known as Hazel Anna Wilson-is viewable in its entirety. On 51 large blankets, Wilson uses painted and appliqued imagery to combine traditional stories, autobiography, and commentary on events such as smallpox epidemics and environmental destruction into a grand narrative that celebrates the resistance and survival of the Haida people, while challenging the colonial histories of the Northwest Coast. Of the countless robes Wilson created over fifty-plus years, she is perhaps best known for The Story of K'iid K'iyaas, a series about the revered tree made famous by John Vaillant's 2005 book The Golden Spruce. But her largest and most important work is the untitled series of blankets featured here. Wilson always saw these works as public art, to be widely seen and, importantly, understood. In addition to essays by Robert Kardosh and Robin Laurence, the volume features texts about each robe by Wilson herself; her words amplify the power of her striking imagery by offering historical and personal context for the people, characters, and places that live within her colossal work. Glory and Exile, which also features personal recollections by Wilson's daughter Kun Jaad Dana Simeon, her brother Allan Wilson, and Haida curator and artist Nika Collison, is a fitting tribute to the breathtaking achievements of an artist whose vision will help Haida knowledge persist for many generations to come.

Thirty years ago Australian Aboriginal art was little more than a footnote to world art. Today, it is considered to be an important contemporary art movement, often promoted as being connected to a deep cultural past. Becoming Art provides a new analysis of the shifting cultural and social contexts that surround the production of Aboriginal art. Transcending the boundaries between anthropology and art history, the book draws on arguments from both disciplines to provide a unique interdisciplinary perspective that places the artists themselves at the centre of the argument.Western art history has traditionally regarded Aboriginal art as distanced from time and place. Becoming Art uses the recent history of Aboriginal art to challenge some of the presuppositions of western art discourse and western art worlds. It argues for a more cross-cultural perspective on world art history.

Dempsey Bob: In His Own Voice is based on the first full-scale solo museum exhibition of this extraordinary Tahltan-Tlingit artist, one of the finest living carvers of the Northwest Coast. Drawing from extensive interviews with the artist by the exhibition's co-curator, Sarah Milroy, the book presents the story of his life told his own way, including extensive and intimate reflections on the creation of particular works. Gorgeous photographs of the artworks, which are drawn from key private collections in Canada and public collections in Canada, the US and beyond, are supplemented with material from his sketchbooks to create a vivid portrait of the creative process.

One of the most important collections of modern Native American art assembled by one individual, the James T. Bialac Native American Art Collection is an encyclopedic compilation of easel paintings and three-dimensional works. Showcased in this stunning catalogue, the collection comprises nearly four thousand items, including drawings, sculptures, prints, kachinas, jewelry, ceramics, rattles, baskets, and textiles.
James T. Bialac began collecting art in the 1950s, when he was a student at the University of Arizona School of Law. It was then that he purchased the first of what would develop into a collection of more than one thousand kachina dolls. In 1964 he acquired his first painting, Robert Chee's "Moccasin Game, " and he went on to expand his collection to reflect the diversity of Native American art forms. Inspired by his connections with other collectors, Bialac learned the importance of documenting, cataloging, and preserving his collection. In 2010 he bequeathed the collection to the University of Oklahoma, where the art will be displayed at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, as well as at other locations, including Bialac's native Arizona.
The Bialac Collection represents indigenous cultures across North America, especially the Pueblos of the Southwest, Navajos, Hopis, and many of the tribes of the Great Plains. It encompasses such important and innovative artists as Fred Kabotie, Alfonso Roybal, Fritz Scholder, Joe Hilario Herrera, Allan Houser, Jerome Tiger, Tonita Pena, Helen Hardin, Pablita Velarde, George Morrison, Walter Richard "Dick" West, and Patrick DesJarlait, all of whose work is featured in this volume.
Along with its rich sampling of works from the Bialac Collection, this catalogue offers informative essays by art historians, who draw on their areas of expertise to explain the significance of the artwork. The volume also features a foreword by David L. Boren, President of the University of Oklahoma, a preface by Ghislain d'Humieres, Director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, and an introduction by Mary Jo Watson, Director of the School of Art and Art History.
Published in cooperation with the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma

Five decades of work by groundbreaking Indigenous artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith Throughout her career as artist, activist, and educator, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940) has forged a personal yet accessible visual language she uses to address environmental destruction, war, genocide, and the misreading of the past. An enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Smith cleverly deploys elements of abstraction, neo-expressionism, and pop, fusing them with Indigenous artistic traditions to upend commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Her drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures blur categories and question why certain visual languages attain recognition, historical privilege, and value, reflecting her belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.�  Also central to Smith’s work and thinking is the land and she emphasizes that Native people have always been part of the land: “These are my stories, every picture, every drawing is telling a story. I create memory maps.� The publication illustrates nearly five decades of Smith’s work in all media, accompanied by essays and short texts by contemporary Indigenous artists and scholars on each of Smith’s major bodies of work. Distributed for Whitney Museum of American Art   Exhibition Schedule: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York April 19–August 13, 2023 Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth October 15, 2023–January 7, 2024 Seattle Art Museum February 15–May 12, 2024  

A timely re-examination of European engagements with indigenous art and the presence of indigenous art in the contemporary art world. The arts of Africa, Oceania and native America famously inspired twentieth-century modernist artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Ernst. The politics of such stimulus, however, have long been highly contentious: was this a cross-cultural discovery to be celebrated, or just one more example of Western colonial appropriation? This revelatory book explores cross-cultural art through the lens of settler societies such as Australia and New Zealand, where Europeans made new nations, displacing and outnumbering but never eclipsing native peoples. In this dynamic of dispossession and resistance, visual art has loomed large. Settler artists and designers drew upon Indigenous motifs and styles in their search for distinctive identities. Yet powerful Indigenous art traditions have asserted the presence of First Nations peoples and their claims to place, history and sovereignty. Cultural exchange has been a two-way process, and an unpredictable one: contemporary Indigenous art draws on global contemporary practice, but moves beyond a bland affirmation of hybrid identities to insist on the enduring values and attachment to place of Indigenous peoples.

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 knowledge of the world expanded through exploration and trade, conquest, colonisation and research into other cultures, present and past. It considers the issues arising from the historical relationships which brought diverse artistic traditions together under the influence of Western art values, looking at how art has been used by colonisers and colonised in the causes of collecting and commerce, cultural hegemony and autonomous identities.World Art questions conventional Western assumptions of art from an anthropological perspective which allows comparison between cultures. It treats art as a property of artefacts rather than a category of objects, reclaiming the idea of 'world art' from the 'art world'. This book is essential reading for all students on anthropology of art courses as well as students of museum studies and art history, based on a wide range of case studies and supported by learning features such as annotated further reading and chapter opening summaries.

Dive into the life and work of master craftsman Jeronimo Lozano and his extraordinarily detailed retablos. Steeped in ancient Peruvian traditions, these small sculpted figures show religious and secular scenes housed in structures large and small, ranging from pistachio shells and matchboxes to handmade wooden boxes and freestanding installations. Lozan's retablos are both traditional and innovative, visualizing the cultural life of people in the mountains of Peru, from ceremonies, processions, and market stands to fiestas, street performance, historical tableaux, and current events. Writer, documentarian, and folklorist Alan Govenar shares an in-depth interview with Lozano, tracking his childhood in Ayacucho, Peru, to his arrival in the US; how he's navigated his hearing disability; and his process from start to finish. Divided into My Story, My Life, and My Process, the interview is paired with colourful photographs of his work. A celebration of the form of the retablo, one of the many folk and traditional art forms that make up the American arts-and-crafts landscape.

Although some aspects of pre-Roman and pre-Christian beliefs remain shrouded in mystery, the author of this comprehensive, profusely illustrated volume contends that neither the Roman invasion of Britain nor the coming of Christianity eliminated pagan religious practice. Dr Anne Ross, who speaks Gaelic and Welsh, writes from wide experience of living in Celtic speaking communities where she has traced vernacular tradition. She employs archaeological and anthropological evidence, as well as folklore, to provide broad insight into the early Celtic world. She begins by examining Celtic places of worship, the shrines and sanctuaries in which sacred objects were housed and from where they could be ritually displayed with various rites and sacrifices were conducted before the people. Dr Anne Ross describes the divine warriors with their aquatic, therapeutic and fertility connection. Dr Anne Ross is truly gripping as she leads the reader through her evidence from ritual pits and cult sites, votive wells, sacred precincts and monuments. This is a brilliant piece of historical and archaeological reconstruction.