What's the Use of Art? Asian Visual and Material Culture in Context

'Post-Enlightenment notions of culture, which have been naturalized in the West for centuries, require that art be autonomously beautiful, universal, and devoid of any practical purpose. The authors of this multidisciplinary volume seek to complicate this understanding of art by examining art objects from across Asia with attention to their function, ritual, and everyday contexts. From tea bowls used in Japanese tea ceremony to television broadcasts of Javanese puppet theatre, from Indian wedding-chamber paintings to art looted by the British army from the Chinese emperor's palace, from the adventures of a Balinese magical dagger to the political functions of classical Khmer images— the authors challenge prevailing notions of artistic value by introduction new ways of thinking about culture.' (Front flap)

Access level

Onsite

publisher

University of Hawai'i Press (Honolulu, United States)

editor

Jan MRAZEK,

Morgan PITELKA

Location code

REF.MRJ

Language

English

Keyword

visual culture, folk art, museum studies, Asia, tradition, India, China, Japan, Indonesia

Publication/Creation date

2008

No of pages

313

ISBN / ISSN

9780824830632

No of copies

Content type

anthology

Chapter headings

Introduction: Wrapping and Unwrapping Art - Morgan PITELKA

From the Living Rock: Understanding Figural Representation in Early South Asia - Robert DECAROLI

Disposable but Indispensable: The Earthenware Vessel as Vehicle of Meaning in Japan - Louise Allison CORT

From the Wedding Chamber to the Museum: Relocating the Ritual Arts of Madhubani - Richard H. DAVIS

In the Realm of the Indigo Queen: Dyeing, Exchanging Magic, and the Elusive Tourist Dollar on Sumba - Janet HOSKINS

Plunder, Markets, and Museums: The Biographies of Chinese Imperial Objects in Europe and North America - James L. HEVIA

Situating Moving Objects: A Sino-Japanese Catalogue of Imported Items, 800 CE to the Present - Cynthea J. BOGEL

Angkor Revisited: The State of Statuary - Ashley THOMPSON

An Ancestral Keris, Balinese Kingship, and a Modern Presidency - Lene PEDERSEN

Raw Ingredients and Deposit Boxes in Balinese Sanctuaries: A Congruence of Obsessions - Kaja M. MCGOWAN

Ways of Experiencing Art: Art History, Television, and Javanese Wayang - Jan MRAZEK

What's the Use of Art? Asian Visual and Material Culture in Context

Citation

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