Exploring World Art

The contemporary visual arts of non-Western peoples are increasingly part of a capitalistic, global art world with diverse gatekeepers, tastes, venues, individuation of artists, and hybrid sources of inspiration. In this collection, ethnographic case studies from around the globe are used to examine the contemporary art world, from both local and comparative global perspectives, and span such critical topics concerning visual culture as artistic agency, new art forms and media, arenas of cultural production, and the role of gender in these innovative traditions. What new parameters comprise world art? Each of the articles in Exploring World Art speaks to this theme. They suggest that the intercultural traffic in art has reshaped how indigenous identities—an integral part of cultural production—are formed. The cases illuminate what is actually going on in the production of art and sale of art in a variety of places around the globe. Since anthropologists and art historians have moved away from the study of "primitive" art in a single tribal society, blurring the cultural distinctions of Western and non-Western art, each article highlights a different aspect of the new international processes that give meaning to artworks made in one social context but sold to people in another.