Art Without Borders

Preface

Acknowledgments

Note on Transliteration

1 AN OPEN AESTHETICS

Why There Is Art · The Aesthetic Dimension of Life · Being Aware · Seeing · Remembering · Preferring · Forgetting Self · Grasping · Theorizing

2 SELFLESS TRADITION

Tradition, Traditionalism · Problems Anthropologists Encounter and Create · The Anthropology of Art · Ceremonial Celebrations of Life · Memory Preserved · Authenticity · Ephebism · Four Symbolic Images · From Apprentices to Masters · Exacting Rules · Classicism and Archaism · Chinese Connoisseur, Archaist, Collector · Creative Copying from the Chinese Past · Classicism in European Art · Creative Copying from the European Past · The Ideal of the Anonymous Craftsman · The Metaphysical Ideal

3 EGOCENTRIC INNOVATION

Egocentricity against Tradition · Inspiration, Heroism, and Uniqueness ·Islamic Hero-Artists · Hero-Artists of the European Renaissance · “Genius” · Genius, Melancholy, Madness · The Romantic/Egocentric Artist · Chinese Romantic/Egocentric Amateurs · Indian Romantic/Egocentric Artists · “Primitive” Romantic/Egocentric Artists · African Artists’ Creative Egocentricity · All Alike, All Different

4 INTERSECTING WORLDS AND IDENTITIES

Creative Chaos · The Camera’s Liberating Light · Historical Relativity · The Encompassing Influence of Japan · Gauguin and Other Savages · European Borrowing · Japanese and Chinese Borrowing · The Excessive Past of Chinese and Western Art · Symbolic Deaths and Erasures of the Past · Modern “Primitives”: Creating and Debating Identities

5 THE COMMON UNIVERSE OF AESTHETIC DISCOURSE

Human Perceptual and Emotional Responses · Old and New Criteria of Judgment · Fame and Price · Diminishing the Subjectivity of Judgment · Local Art and Universal Art · Judging Art Fairly · Fusion, Oscillation, Realism, Equilibrium, Beauty · The Snow Woman as a Universal Paradigm · The West: Intimations of Neoplatonism · Africa: Statue-like Beauty and Goodness and Clarity · India: Depersonalized Emotion · China: Reverberations of the Life-Breath · Japan: Beauty Tempered by Regret · The Common Universe of Aesthetic Discourse · Final Thoughts

Notes