Art as Culture: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Art, 2nd Edition

This text applies anthropological theory and information to the study of art. The author contends that the concept of art as being purely for aesthetic contemplation, that is typical of industrial civilization, is not a very useful one for cross-cultural studies. The majority of art forms that can be seen in museums and art books that have come from Native America, Africa or Oceania are objects that were once part of a larger artistic whole from which they have been extracted. In order to attain a deeper sense of the import the piece provides, the author believes it is necessary to piece together and imagine the artistic context as well as the cultural one.