Style and Meaning
Subtitle: Essays on the Anthropology of Art
Publisher: Sidestone Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 300
ISBN-13: 9789088904479
Subjects: Art and anthropology
Description: Anthropology?s engagement with art has a complex and uneven history. While material culture, ?decorative art?, and art styles were of major significance for founding figures such as Alfred Haddon and Franz Boas, art became marginal as the discipline turned towards social analysis in the 1920s. This book addresses a major moment of renewal in the anthropology of art in the 1960s and 1970s. British anthropologist Anthony Forge (1929-1991), trained in Cambridge, undertook fieldwork among the Abelam of Papua New Guinea in the late 1950s and 1960s, and wrote influentially, especially about issues of style and meaning in art. His powerful, questioning-raising arguments addressed basic issues, asking why so much art was produced in some regions, and why was it so socially important?