How are we to think of works of art? Rather than treat art as an expression of individual genius; market forces; or aesthetic principles; Michael Jackson focuses on how art effects transformations in our lives. Art opens up transitional; ritual; or utopian spaces that enable us to reconcile inward imperatives and outward constraints; thereby making our lives more manageable and meaningful. Art allows us to strike a balance between being actors and being acted upon.Drawing on his ethnographic fieldwork in Aboriginal Australia and West Africa; as well as insights from psychoanalysis; religious studies; literature; and the philosophy of art; Jackson uses an extraordinary range of referencesmdash;from Bruegel to Beuys; Paleolithic art to performance art; Michelangelo to Munchmdash;in exploring the symbolic labor whereby human beings make themselves; both individually and socially; out of the environmental; biographical; and physical materials that affect them: a process that connects art with gestation; storytelling; and dreaming and illuminates the elementary forms of religious life.
#3417354 in eBooks 2016-10-03 2016-10-05File Name: B01LY3JRO9
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