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

Published by University of Hawaii Press 2008

What's the Use of Art?

Asian Visual and Material Culture in Context

Edited by: Jan Mrazek and Morgan Pitelka

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824865580

Overview
Contents

About this book

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 functional, ritual, and everyday contexts. From tea bowls used in the Japanese tea ceremony to television broadcasts of Javanese puppet theater; 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 introducing new ways of thinking about culture.

The chapters consider art objects as they are involved in the world: how they operate and are experienced in specific sites, collections, rituals, performances, political and religious events and imagination, and in individual peoples’ lives; how they move from one context to another and change meaning and value in the process (for example, when they are collected, traded, and looted or when their images appear in art history textbooks); how their memories and pasts are or are not part of their meaning and experience. Rather than lead to a single universalizing definition of art, the essays offer multiple, divergent, and case-specific answers to the question "What is the use of art?" and argue for the need to study art as it is used and experienced.

Contributors: Cynthea J. Bogel, Louise Cort, Richard H. Davis, Robert DeCaroli, James L. Hevia, Janet Hoskins, Kaja McGowan, Jan Mrázek, Lene Pedersen, Morgan Pitelka, Ashley Thompson.

Author / Editor information

Pitelka Morgan :

Morgan Pitelka is associate professor of Asian studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Wrapping and Unwrapping Art Morgan Pitelka Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Functions
One. From the Living Rock Understanding Figural Representation in Early South Asia Robert De Caroli Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
Two. Disposable but Indispensable the Earthenware Vessel as Vehicle of Meaning In Japan Louise Allison Cort Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
Three. From the Wedding Chamber to the Museum Relocating the Ritual Arts of Madhubani Richard H. Davis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
Four. In the Realm of the Indigo Queen Dyeing, Exchange Magic, and the Elusive Tourist Dollar on Sumba Janet Hoskins Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	100
Movements
Five. Plunder, Markets, and Museums the Biographies of Chinese Imperial Objects in Europe and North America James L. Hevia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
Six. Situating Moving Objects: A Sino-Japanese Catalogue of Imported Items, 800 Ce to the Present Cynthea J. Bogel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	142
Memories
Seven. Angkor Revisited the State of Statuary Ashley Thompson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
Eight. An Ancestral Keris, Balinese Kingship, and A Modern Presidency Lene Pedersen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	214
Nine. Raw Ingredients and Deposit Boxes in Balinese Sanctuaries: A Congruence of Obsessions Kaja M. Mc Gowan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	238
Conclusion. Ways Of Experiencing: Art Art History, Television, And Javanese Wayang Jan Mrázek Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	272
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	309

Language: English
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 328
Illustrations
- Other: 52 illus.

eBook

Published: December 3, 2007
ISBN: 9780824865580