Grass Roots Art Of New Guinea
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.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Long before Western eyes turned their gaze upon the Pacific, the indigenous peoples of New Guinea were crafting a visual language of breathtaking complexity — and Grass Roots Art of New Guinea, collected by E.F. Hannemann, brings this extraordinary tradition into vivid focus. The work presents an intimate survey of the decorative and symbolic art forms produced by ordinary New Guinean communities, chronicling the geometric patterns, carvings, and motifs that formed the visual backbone of daily and ceremonial life. Far from the rarefied world of gallery art, these are the creative expressions of villages and clans, rendered with a sophistication that challenges every assumption about so-called primitive art. Hannemann's collection argues, compellingly and without condescension, that artistic genius is not the province of elites but is woven into the fabric of communal existence. The work stands as a landmark document in the anthropology of art, illustrating how pattern, symbol, and craft function as living repositories of cultural memory and identity. Richly informative and quietly radical in its democratic premise, this volume leaves the reader with a lingering question: what other masterpieces of human creativity have we been too narrow-minded to recognise?
Author: E.F. Hannemann
Format: Paperback
Genre: Anthropology
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Long before Western eyes turned their gaze upon the Pacific, the indigenous peoples of New Guinea were crafting a visual language of breathtaking complexity — and Grass Roots Art of New Guinea, collected by E.F. Hannemann, brings this extraordinary tradition into vivid focus. The work presents an intimate survey of the decorative and symbolic art forms produced by ordinary New Guinean communities, chronicling the geometric patterns, carvings, and motifs that formed the visual backbone of daily and ceremonial life. Far from the rarefied world of gallery art, these are the creative expressions of villages and clans, rendered with a sophistication that challenges every assumption about so-called primitive art. Hannemann's collection argues, compellingly and without condescension, that artistic genius is not the province of elites but is woven into the fabric of communal existence. The work stands as a landmark document in the anthropology of art, illustrating how pattern, symbol, and craft function as living repositories of cultural memory and identity. Richly informative and quietly radical in its democratic premise, this volume leaves the reader with a lingering question: what other masterpieces of human creativity have we been too narrow-minded to recognise?