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Publication: Oceania
Publication Date: 01-NOV-06
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Sutton, Peter

Article Excerpt
Painting Culture. The Making of an Aboriginal High Art.

By Fred R. Myers Durham (North Carolina) and London: Duke University Press. 2002. Pp:xvii + 410 Price: US$24.95. Paper

This substantial book complements Fred Myers's monumental but more anthropologically traditional Western Desert ethnography Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self, published in 1986. The more recent work revolves around a study of the making of cultural meanings constituted within the mesh of social relationships that join Australian desert painters and other people to each other, and which also sometimes tears them apart. The meanings of these relationships are more vital to this particular story than the meanings originally encoded in the paintings by the painters, although Myers does give us a detailed exposition of a large series of works by Yanyatjarri Tjakamarra and Wuta Wuta Tjangala (pp86-117).

This is one of a number of recent works which happily reverse the trend of de-socialising anthropology and attempting to turn it into a branch of semiology. On the other hand, it is also part of the widespread rehabilitation of anthropology's traditional but previously somewhat faded attention to...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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