Style and Meaning : Essays on the anthropology of art.

Intro -- List of figures -- Biographies -- Preface -- Introduction -- Anthony Forge on art, -- 1960-1990 -- Introduction to Primitive Art and Society1 -- Three Kamanggabi Figures from the Arambak People of the Sepik District New Guinea2 -- Notes on Eastern Abelam Designs Painted on Paper, New Guinea9 -- Paint: A Magical Substance10 -- Art and Environment in the Sepik11 -- The Abelam Artist20 -- Style and Meaning in Sepik Art27 -- The Problem of Meaning in Art40 -- Learning to See in New Guinea -- The Power of Culture and the Culture of Power47 -- Draft Introduction to Sepik Culture History, the Proceedings from the second Wenner-Gren conference on Sepik Culture History 1986, Mijas, Spain56 -- On Forge -- Anthony Forge and Alfred Bühler: From Field Collecting to Friendship -- Style and Meaning: Abelam Art through Yolngu Eyes143 -- Anthony Forge and Innovation: Perspectives from Vanuatu -- The problem of agency in art160 -- Ludovic Coupaye -- Looking back: Abelam art and some of Forge's theses from a 2015 perspective -- Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin -- Communicating with Anthony Forge -- Michael O'Hanlon -- Appendix -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgements -- Lege pagina -- Lege pagina.

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, question-raising arguments addressed basic issues, asking why so much art was produced in some regions, and why was it so socially important? Fifty years later, art has renewed global significance, and anthropologists are again considering both its local expressions among Indigenous peoples and its new global circulation. In this context, Forge's arguments have renewed relevance: they help scholars and students understand the genealogies of current debates, and remind us of fundamental questions that remain unanswered. This volume brings together Forge's most important writings on the anthropology of art, published over a thirty year period, together with six assessments of his legacy, including extended reappraisals of Sepik ethnography, by distinguished anthropologists from Australia, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.