Primitive Art
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 3rd ed., revised and enlarged//
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Signed with inscription
Long before the Western world developed the vocabulary to articulate it, the peoples of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas were creating objects of breathtaking complexity and spiritual power — and Primitive Art by Leonhard Adam stands as one of the most authoritative early surveys of this remarkable creative legacy. Adam presents a rigorous yet accessible examination of the art forms produced by non-Western, pre-literate societies, cataloguing the masks, sculptures, textiles, and ceremonial objects that served as conduits between the human and the divine. Tracing the geographical and cultural contexts of each tradition, the work illuminates the formal principles and symbolic systems that governed artistic production across vastly different civilisations. Adam writes with the precision of a trained ethnologist and the passion of a true connoisseur, arguing compellingly that so-called primitive art deserves the same critical rigour applied to any Western canon. His analysis bridges anthropology and art history, situating these objects not as curiosities but as sophisticated expressions of human culture. A cornerstone text in the study of world art, this Penguin edition brought these ideas to a broad readership at a pivotal moment in the twentieth century — leaving one to wonder how profoundly its arguments reshaped the way we understand creativity itself.
Author: Leonhard Adam
Format: Hardback
Published: 1954, Penguin Books
Genre: Anthropology
Edition: 3rd ed., revised and enlarged//
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Signed with inscription
Long before the Western world developed the vocabulary to articulate it, the peoples of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas were creating objects of breathtaking complexity and spiritual power — and Primitive Art by Leonhard Adam stands as one of the most authoritative early surveys of this remarkable creative legacy. Adam presents a rigorous yet accessible examination of the art forms produced by non-Western, pre-literate societies, cataloguing the masks, sculptures, textiles, and ceremonial objects that served as conduits between the human and the divine. Tracing the geographical and cultural contexts of each tradition, the work illuminates the formal principles and symbolic systems that governed artistic production across vastly different civilisations. Adam writes with the precision of a trained ethnologist and the passion of a true connoisseur, arguing compellingly that so-called primitive art deserves the same critical rigour applied to any Western canon. His analysis bridges anthropology and art history, situating these objects not as curiosities but as sophisticated expressions of human culture. A cornerstone text in the study of world art, this Penguin edition brought these ideas to a broad readership at a pivotal moment in the twentieth century — leaving one to wonder how profoundly its arguments reshaped the way we understand creativity itself.