Art and Creativity in a New Guinea Society: The Kwoma in Cross-Cultural Perspective

This book explores the Kwoma of Papua New Guinea's Sepik River region-creators of some of the Pacific's most distinctive visual art.
Through case studies of painting, sculpture, architecture, and ritual, Ross Bowden reveals how the Kwoma understand art as a cultural phenomenon: its spiritual origins, standards of quality, and notions of creativity. Their beliefs are contrasted with the modern Western concept of art, which emerged not in the Enlightenment, as often assumed, but centuries earl...