"As a major scholar of Meso-American art, Pasztory has written a
valuable and substantive text." --Art Documentation"It would
greatly contribute to the revitalization of art history if its
practitioners would respond to Esther Pasztory's book with an
energy commensurate with its critical polemic. She views art from a
very long historical perspective, places it in a social science
context, shifts the emphasis from taste to cognition, and brings it
under the methodology implied by her title Thinking with Things.
Taken together, this involves nothing less than a transformation of
vision, with the widest implications for the practice of her
discipline."--Arthur C. Danto, art critic, The Nation"Thinking with
Things is an ambitious essay that addresses some of the fundamental
issues in the fields of art history, anthropology, and aesthetics.
Extending the discourse of George Kubler's classic The Shape of
Time, Pasztory more directly confronts questions of form,
representation, and the meaning of objects created by homo
faber."--David Rosand, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History,
Columbia University"Esther Pasztory, a renowned art historian, has
immersed herself in the data and theory of anthropology, helping
her forge tools which she employs to great advantage in this
volume. Eschewing a narrowly 'esthetic' point of view, she shows,
over and over again, how a people's art emerges from and reflects
its social context. Fearlessly invading the thorny thickets of
esthetic theory, Dr. Pasztory grapples with its great issues and
presents to the reader a succession of views that are at once
engaging, incisive, and provocative."--Robert L. Carneiro, Curator,
American Museum of NaturalHistory
What is "art"? Why have human societies through all time and
around the globe created those objects we call works of art? Is
there any way of defining art that can encompass everything from
Paleolithic objects to the virtual images created by the latest
computer technology? Questions such as these have preoccupied
Esther Pasztory since the beginning of her scholarly career. In
this authoritative volume, she distills four decades of research
and reflection to propose a pathbreaking new way of understanding
what art is and why human beings create it that can be applied to
all cultures throughout time.
At its heart, Pasztory's thesis is simple and yet profound. She
asserts that humans create things (some of which modern Western
society chooses to call "art") in order to work out our ideas--that
is, we literally think with things. Pasztory draws on examples from
many societies to argue that the art-making impulse is primarily
cognitive and only secondarily aesthetic. She demonstrates that
"art" always reflects the specific social context in which it is
created, and that as societies become more complex, their art
becomes more rarefied.
Pasztory presents her thesis in a two-part approach. The first
section of the book is an original essay entitled "Thinking with
Things" that develops Pasztory's unified theory of what art is and
why we create it. The second section is a collection of eight
previously published essays that explore the art-making process in
both Pre-Columbian and Western societies. Pasztory's work combines
the insights of art history and anthropology in the light of
poststructuralist ideas. Her book will be indispensable reading for
everyone who creates or thinksabout works of art.
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