Art and exoticism

This book is about the yearning for authenticity via art and exoticism. Exoticism related to art cannot be reduced to primitivism alone and also encompasses a search in one's own unconsciousness among other things. The yearning for authenticity through exoticism is explored in a cultural anthropological perspective in the realms of Western philosophy ( capita selecta) and colonial literature, currents of art, and in the appreciation of Western art conceptions in non-Western societies. An array of firsthand ethnographic illustrations of art production in Asian and Pacific societies demonstrates complementary processes in the non-Western world. A major hypothesis is that exoticism is closely related to, and often motivated by eroticism, a reason why exoticism should be considered as gendered. Case studies of the falsification of authentic art, the de-sacralization of sacred objects, and of the use of natural materials deriving from endangered species complete the analysis.