The Art of Clothing: A Pacific Experience

The Art of Clothing: A Pacific Experience
Author: Susan Kuchler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2014-05-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134056583

The Art of Clothing: A Pacific Experience is a collection of richly textured and tremendously engaging empirical studies of cloth and clothing in colonial and post-colonial Pacific contexts. By challenging readers to reconsider the very nature of the materiality of clothing, the editors productively situate this volume at the intersection of a number of ongoing interdisciplinary projects that are coalescing around an interest in cloth and clothing. The book as a whole speaks lucidly to issues of current concern in a wide range of academic fields - including cultural studies, material culture, Pacific history, art history, history of religions, and museum studies.

The Art of Clothing

The Art of Clothing
Author: Susanne Küchler
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2005
Genre: Design
ISBN: 9781844720156

The Art of Clothing: A Pacific Experience is a collection of richly textured and tremendously engaging empirical studies of cloth and clothing in colonial and post-colonial Pacific contexts. By challenging readers to reconsider the very nature of the materiality of clothing, the editors productively situate this volume at the intersection of a number of ongoing interdisciplinary projects that are coalescing around an interest in cloth and clothing. The book as a whole speaks lucidly to issues of current concern in a wide range of academic fields - including cultural studies, material culture, Pacific history, art history, history of religions, and museum studies.

The Pacific Arts of Polynesia and Micronesia

The Pacific Arts of Polynesia and Micronesia
Author: Adrienne L. Kaeppler
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2008-03-27
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0191539996

The Pacific Ocean covers one-third of the earth's surface. Comprising thousands of islands and hundreds of cultural groups, Polynesia and Micronesia cover a large part of this vast ocean, from the dramatic mountains of Hawaii to the small, flat coral islands of Kiribati. Including both traditional and contemporary arts, this book introduces the rich artistic traditions of these two regions, traditions that have had a considerable impact on western art in the twentieth century through the influence of artists such as Gauguin. Instead of looking at Polynesia and Micronesia separately, the book focuses on the artistic types, styles, and concepts that they share, placing each in its wider cultural context. From the textiles of Tonga to the canoes of Tahiti, Adrienne Kaeppler looks at religious and sacred rituals and objects, carving, architecture, tattooing, personal ornaments, basket-making, clothing, textiles, fashion, the oral arts, dance, music and musical instruments - even canoe-construction - to provide the ultimate introduction to the rich and vibrant artistic cultures of the Polynesian and Micronesian islands.

Authenticity and Authorship in Pacific Island Encounters

Authenticity and Authorship in Pacific Island Encounters
Author: Jeannette Mageo
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2021-04-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1800730551

The insular Pacific is a region saturated with great cultural diversity and poignant memories of colonial and Christian intrusion. Considering authenticity and authorship in the area, this book looks at how these ideas have manifested themselves in Pacific peoples and cultures. Through six rich complementary case studies, a theoretical introduction, and a critical afterword, this volume explores authenticity and authorship as “traveling concepts.” The book reveals diverse and surprising outcomes which shed light on how Pacific identity has changed from the past to the present.

A Companion to Textile Culture

A Companion to Textile Culture
Author: Jennifer Harris
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 528
Release: 2020-09-16
Genre: Design
ISBN: 1118768906

A lively and innovative collection of new and recent writings on the cultural contexts of textiles The study of textile culture is a dynamic field of scholarship which spans disciplines and crosses traditional academic boundaries. A Companion to Textile Culture is an expertly curated compendium of new scholarship on both the historical and contemporary cultural dimensions of textiles, bringing together the work of an interdisciplinary team of recognized experts in the field. The Companion provides an expansive examination of textiles within the broader area of visual and material culture, and addresses key issues central to the contemporary study of the subject. A wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the subject are explored—technological, anthropological, philosophical, and psychoanalytical, amongst others—and developments that have influenced academic writing about textiles over the past decade are discussed in detail. Uniquely, the text embraces archaeological textiles from the first millennium AD as well as contemporary art and performance work that is still ongoing. This authoritative volume: Offers a balanced presentation of writings from academics, artists, and curators Presents writings from disciplines including histories of art and design, world history, anthropology, archaeology, and literary studies Covers an exceptionally broad chronological and geographical range Provides diverse global, transnational, and narrative perspectives Included numerous images throughout the text to illustrate key concepts A Companion to Textile Culture is an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, instructors, and researchers of textile history, contemporary textiles, art and design, visual and material culture, textile crafts, and museology.

Pacific Apostle

Pacific Apostle
Author: David D McKay
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2019-12-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0252051718

In 1920, David O. McKay embarked on a journey that forever changed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His visits to the Latter-day Saint missions, schools, and branches in the Pacific solidified the Church leadership's commitment to global outreach. As importantly, the trip inspired McKay's own initiatives when he later became Church president. McKay's account of his odyssey brings to life the story of the Church of Jesus Christ’s transformation into a global faith. Throughout his diary, McKay expressed his humanity, curiosity, and fascination with cultures and places--the Maori hongi, East Asian customs, Australian wildlife, and more. At the same time, he and his travel companion, Hugh J. Cannon, detailed the Latter-day Saint missionary life of the era, closely observing logistical challenges and cultural differences, guiding various church efforts, and listening to followers' impressions and concerns. Reid L. Neilson and Carson V. Teuscher's meticulous notes provide historical, religious, and general context for the reader.Blending travelogue with history, Pacific Apostle illuminates the thought and work of an essential figure in the twentieth-century Church of Jesus Christ.

Lines That Connect

Lines That Connect
Author: Graeme Were
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2010-08-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0824860489

Building on historical and contemporary literature in anthropology and art theory, Lines That Connect treats pattern as a material form of thought that provokes connections between disparate things through processes of resemblance, memory, and transformation. Pattern is constantly in a state of motion as it traverses spatial and temporal divides and acts as an endless source for innovation through its inherent transformability. Graeme Were argues that it is the ideas carried by pattern’s relational capacity that allows Pacific islanders to express their links to land, genealogy, and resources in the most economic ways. In doing so, his book is a timely and unique contribution to the analysis of pattern and decorative art in the Pacific amid growing debates in anthropology and art history. This striking and original study brings together objects and photographs, historical literature and contemporary ethnographic case studies to explore pattern in its logical workings. It presents the first-ever analysis of the well-known patterned shell valuable called kapkap as revealed in New Ireland mortuary feasts. Innovative research in the study of Christianity and the Baha’i faithful in the region shows how pattern has been appropriated in new religious communities. Were argues that pattern is used in various guises in performances, church architecture, and funerary images to contrasting effect. He explores the conditions under which pattern facilitates a connecting of old and new ideas and how missionary processes are implicated in this flow. He then considers the mechanisms under which pattern is internalized, paying particular attention to its embeddedness in spatial and numerical thinking. Finally, he examines how pattern carries new materials and technologies, which in turn provide new resources for sustaining old beliefs. Drawing on a multitude of fields (anthropology; art history; Pacific, museum, and religious studies; education; ethnomathematics), Lines That Connect raises key questions about the capacity of pattern across the Pacific to bind and sustain ideas about place, body, and genealogy in the most logical of ways.

Divine Domesticities

Divine Domesticities
Author: Hyaeweol Choi
Publisher: ANU Press
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2014-10-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1925021955

Divine Domesticities: Christian Paradoxes in Asia and the Pacific fills a huge lacuna in the scholarly literature on missionaries in Asia/Pacific and is transnational history at its finest. Co-edited by two eminent scholars, this multidisciplinary volume, an outgrowth of several conferences/seminars, critically examines various encounters between western missionaries and indigenous women in the Pacific/Asia … Taken as a whole, this is a thought-provoking and an indispensable reference, not only for students of colonialism/imperialism but also for those of us who have an interest in transnational and gender history in general. The chapters are very clearly written, engaging, and remarkably accessible; the stories are compelling and the research is thorough. The illustrations are equally riveting and the bibliography is extremely useful. —Theodore Jun Yoo, History Department, University of Hawai’i The editors of this collection of papers have done an excellent job of creating a coherent set of case studies that address the diverse impacts of missionaries and Christianity on ‘domesticity’, and therefore on the women and children who were assumed to be the rightful inhabitants of that sphere … The introduction to the volume is beautifully written and sets up the rest of the volume in a comprehensive way. It explains the book’s aim to advance theoretical and methodological issues by exploring the role of missionary encounters in the development of modern domesticities; showing the agency of indigenous women in negotiating both change and continuity; and providing a wide range of case studies to show ‘breadth and complexity’ and the local and national specificities of engagements with both missionaries and modernity. My view is that all three aims are well and truly fulfilled. —Helen Lee, Head, Sociology and Anthropology, La Trobe University, Melbourne

Gauguin and Polynesia

Gauguin and Polynesia
Author: Nicholas Thomas
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2024-02-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1801105251

Paul Gauguin is commonly regarded as one of the greatest modern artists. He is renowned for resplendent, mythic imagery from Oceania, for a life of restless travel and for his supposed immersion in Polynesian life. But he has long been regarded ambivalently, and in recent years both Gauguin's sexual behaviour, and his paintings, have been considered exploitative. Gauguin and Polynesia offers a fresh view on the artist, not from the perspective of European art history, but from the contemporary vantage point of the region – Oceania – which he so famously moved to. Gauguin's art is revealed, for the first time, to be richer and more eclectic than has been recognised. The artist indeed did invent enigmatic and symbolic images, but he also depicted Polynesia's colonial modernity, acknowledging the life of the time and the dignity and power of some of the Islanders he encountered. Gauguin and Polynesia neither celebrates nor condemns an extraordinary painter, who at times denounced and at other times affirmed the French empire that shaped his own life and the places he moved between. It is a revelation, of a formative artist of modern life, and of multicultural worlds in the making.

Artifak

Artifak
Author: Hugo DeBlock
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2018-11-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789200431

In Vanuatu, commoditization and revitalization of culture and the arts do not necessarily work against each other; both revolve around value formation and the authentication of things. This book investigates the meaning and value of (art) objects as commodities in differing states of transit and transition: in the local place, on the market, in the museum. It provides an ethnographic account of commoditization in a context of revitalization of culture and the arts in Vanuatu, and the issues this generates, such as authentication of actions and things, indigenized copyright, and kastom disputes over ownership and the nature of kastom itself.