Tribal Art

For the great travelers of the 16th to early 19th century, the exploration of the Pacific Islands had been an exceptional adventure, for de Queiros, Cook, La Pérouse, Bougainville and Dumont d'Urville who had braved these unknown seas to discover what they believed to be paradise.
Today, the traveler can follow in their footsteps, yet many aspects of these island cultures remain as unfamiliar as they once were. Among these unfamiliar aspects, one of the most interesting is the extraordinary artistic wealth created by the inhabitants of these islands.
The Oceanic world covers thousands of islands, from immense New Guinea to simple coral atolls. The natives developed more autonomous and varied cultures there than anywhere else in the world. In most of them, the arts hold a fundamental place because they are an essential factor of integration into social and religious life. They include not only architecture, painting and sculpture, but also music, dance, prayer, and bodily adornment.
Almost all available materials are used, either durable or ephemeral. However, for mainly historical reasons, Pacific Island art has been relatively neglected. While a large number of specialized, technical or anthropological publications exist, mainly in the form of articles, no major synthesis has been published for thirty years. This is despite the many important discoveries and in-depth studies on the art of these communities, past and present.
Presenting Oceanian art to the general public based on contemporary research and theories on this complex set of societies and cultures is what this book achieves through high-quality texts and iconography that brings together masterpieces, a good third of which are unpublished. Precise documentation on the main cultural groups provides the indispensable complement for a good discovery of this continent scattered between sky and ocean.

Authors: Christian Kaufmann, Adrienne L. Kaeppler and Douglas Newton
Publisher: Citadelles & Mazenod
Condition: new
Language: French
Number of pages: 637
Dimensions: 255 x 320 mm
Bound
ISBN : 978-2850880612