Cultural Arts Books

About the Book :
The present encyclopaedia in seven volumes gives exhaustive descriptions of mythical, legendary and poetic traditions related to art, religion, culture and literature. Volume One throws lucid light on the Celtic mythology, which tells about the Gaelic gods and their stories and also about the British gods and their tales. Volume two has dealt with the development of the early myths, beliefs, customs and habits of life of the Teutonic people. Volume Three speaks of the mythical and legendary tales of Egypt, Volume Four deals with the abundant storehouse of Sanskrit literature and the rise and growth of Brahmanism, Buddhism, Jainism, etc., besides the manifestations of the Hindu deities and their artistic forms, and also narrates the story of Nala and Damayanti and the two great epics of the Hindus³the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Volume Five gives a survey of the ancient Crete civilization, its art, mythology and literature, besides the cultural activities. Volume Six gives a vivid description of the myths and legends of Babylonia and Assyria, Volume Seven has dealt with the religious practices of the pre-Columbian America, the habits of life and growth of civilization. This multivolume set has been profusely illustrated, to add graphic value to the factual data it contains.

I just received this wonderful, new book within the past few days and have enjoyed reading all the entries. In his Introduction, Mr. Oweis states: "I see this book as an attempt at writing our own histories and creating our own narratives." He succeeded as this book is THE monumental work in its field and Fayeq Oweis is to be congratulated for his efforts.

He profiles about 100 Arab-American artists and organizations. The book is replete with B&W photos of the artists and their works as well as several pages in color. Each profile provides the vital statistics of the artist, their preferred medium/media, a biography, a description of their work, a listing where one can review the artist's works, and the resources used in the writing of the profile. After the profiles, the book has a section on Resources on Arab American Artists and Arab Culture in the US; a Selected Bibliography; a Materials Index; and, a standard Index to the references and names appearing within the book. If you're an Arab American or interested in art, do not pass this by.

great for everybody who is interested in russin culture

A variety of individuals offer their perspective on different aspects of re-engaging the audience in the creative artistic experience. It becomes increasingly clear that art's managers are as much a part of the problem as they are of adopting some of the potential improvements that could and should be made. In short, if the creative experience is not a reciprocal one in which the viewer, attendee or reader has a role, true engagement is problematic.

Coco Fusco writes about culture and identity with keen insight, wit and passion. I take the title for this review from one of her own performance pieces in which she describes herself as Yoruba-Taino-Catalan-Sephardic-Neopolitan-Cuban-American. She notes wryly, "In the 1990s that makes me Hispanic." Her outlook transcends conventional notions of ethnicity and illuminates how "American" identity is undergoing transculturation. Her chapter providing a "reverse ethnography" of how whites behave at exhibits of native peoples is brilliant. I've incorporated her material for use in a college race relations course, and students of all ethnic backgrounds relate strongly to it.

Esopus is neither a magazine nor is it truly a book, really earning the label "paperback." It sits on the rack with other magazines and fraternizes beneath its sealed container, sure, but the things inside allow it to become more of a canvas with print than a display window, adding to itself all sorts of mixed media. On the cover of this one, for instance, are the battle drawings of a 13-year-old that are beautifully rendered and show something of what a child sees in war (there are pictures of Romans, pictures of Nazis, and pictures of everything in-between). The first time I picked up the those pages I thought "why put that there," but as I looked it over and noticed all the detail in those little mean going to meet either death or absolute glory, I wondered to myself "why wouldn't someone put something like that right there?" There are other projects here as well; the history of the Ouija board is laid out in vivid detail, showing how a board that was once talked of as if it could commune with the spirits is now a toy put out by a boardgame manufacturer. It goes through the controversial topic, laying out the very elements that defined the article itself, and left itself open for a label - if a label is indeed required.

One of my absolutely favorite things from this paperback is "tiny book of smokes," where a person hanging around with his friends kept a diary of those moments by having people, sometimes random and sometimes the same, burn a hole in a piece of paper from a ledger he would carry with their cigarette as they smoked and then would date it, write who it was and where they were and what type of cigarette it was, and continued to do so until there was this momento showing all these places and all these things simply by collecting cigarette burns. A few patterns had been "burned" into the paper, too, allowing the magazine to lose its gloss for a moment and to look and feel a little like what that paper must have looked at felt like; it was beautiful when you looked at it and the thought that hide behind it. And then there are the removable parts pieces, the debates about different types of art and even the opinions about art given by art gallery guards.

Each of these paperbacks is like this and yet not, allowing you to touch some type of art you've never seen and to experience some type of theme you might not ever experience. One episode had a pull-out picture of a vast sea of color surrounding this tiny speck, and above that tiny speck were the words "you are here." While this doesn't seem all-that-impressive it really was, because the piece kept folding out and folding out until the speck was a tiny thing and the world had become this enlarged color. There was another piece I well remember that comprised almost sixteen pages, taking me from beginning to end on how a piece of art is traced s colored and crafted into existence, with its folds manipulated and its sides tucked and folded and every little element with a line at the table, showing me how to make some end-product that, until that moment, had seemed as foreign as a distant planetoid ranging from "it" to "me."
Each paperback comes with a CD as well, allowing you to do whatever with the parts you have in the magazine and still keep the elements of the experience around - almost like the tiniest inkling of a scrapbook allowing you to retrace a moment.

I love this book; the experiences allow me to be a child and an adult all at once, understanding how to make objects that are so much more than I ever imagined and to touch them and to experience creation myself.
Everyone should buy at least one - they become addictive and you want to have them all.

"Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary" is an outstanding volume worth adding to the collection of anyone interested in African Tribal Art. The color plates alone of Fang, Embette, and Kota Reliquarys make the price (low for a book of this magnitude) worth while.
Highly recommended.

This goal of this volume is to present a variety of perspectives on cultural heritage issues to a broad audience, from archaeologists to collectors, museum curators to the general public. As editor of this volume of essays originally published in 1989, and author of the 1999 update, I believe it is extremely important for all of us to be part of an ongoing dialogue about how to preserve the past for the future. When the University of New Mexico Press approached me to update the original volume, I was struck by the changes that have occurred in the last decade. In the United States, the passage and implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, has had a major impact on the treatment and disposition of American Indian objects of cultural heritage. And the world wide web has had a major impact on the kinds of information that is readily available to anyone, whether for the trade of antiquities or for tracking down stolen artifacts. At the same time, the problem of illegal and unethical destruction of the past continues--and in some areas of the world, has worsened. I hope the reader will find the essays thought-provoking and the appendices, including an overview of U.S. and international laws, statements of professional ethics, and a listing of resources and organizations, to be helpful in developing one's own stance on stewardship of the past.

Over the past couple of decades there has been a virtual explosion of informative data on and about the pre-Columbian native populations of Central and South America. A seminal work of dedicated academic scholarship, "Ethnic Identity In Nahua Mesoamerica: The View From Archaeology, Art History, Ethnohistory, And Contemporary Ethnography" is the collaborative effort of a team of researchers and academics that includes Frances F. Berdan (Professor of Anthropology, California State University - San Bernardino); John K. Chance (Professor of Anthropology, Arizona State University); Alan R. Sandstrom (Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Antrhopology, Indiana University - Purdue University at Fort Wayne); Barbara L. Stark (Professor of Anthropology, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University); James Taggart (Lewis Audenreid Professor at Franklin and Marshall College); and Emily Umberger (Professor of Art History, Arizona State University). A compilation of eight major papers ranging from Professors Stark and Chance's 'Diachronic and Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Mesoamerican Ethnicity', to Professors' Sandstrom and Berdan's "Some Finish Thoughts and Unfinished Business", provides the reader with a multifaceted, multidisciplinary survey on Mexico's Nahuas population's ethnic identity, history, and social conditions drawing upon perspectives provided by archaeological researches, contemporary ethnographical studies, historical overviews, and art appreciation. Enhanced with the inclusion of figures, tables, notes, reference citations, and an index, "Ethnic Identity In Nahua Mesoamerica" is an impressively informed and informative contribution which is confidently recommended for academic library reference collections, as well as Native American Studies, Mexican History, and Nahua Ethnographic Studies supplemental reading lists.

Ethnographica Moralia: Experiments in Interpretive Anthropology is a scholarly anthology of essays written by anthropologists studying human cultures around the world (Greece, Bali, Taiwan, and the United States) with input from classicists, historians, and scholars in cultural studies. The common theme binding individual essays is tracing the cross-pollination among disciplines in the humanities and social sciences that have evolved from anthropologist Clifford Geertz's concept of "interpretive anthropology" emphasizing meaning over form when constructing a meticulous social analysis. Writings present in Ethnographica Moralia include "'Real Anthropology' and Other Nostalgias", "Cannonical and Anticannonical Histories", "Text and Transnational Subjectification: Media's Challenge to Anthropology", and many more. "Interpretive anthropology involves visual practices as both a source domain (seeing) and a target domain (objects to be seen). What are the preconditions of the anthropologist's interactive gaze? To what extent is anthropology's self-critique based on forms of self-observation? In what ways, then, could interpretive anthropology benefit from a theory of visuality that would transgress the observer-observed divide or the real-virtual dichotomy?" Extensive notes and an index round out this worthy commentary on the modern study of human beings, which takes into account such up-to-date global realities as the September 11th attacks and the commencement of the Cypriot Green Line.