How to Respond to Strangeness in Art

Description

Working through four case studies, this book focuses on conceptual issues involved in coming to terms with works of art that bear significant marks of more than one culture. The introduction identifies the conceptual problems of joining elements from two cultures that are strange to one another. It distinguishes between joining these elements, and merely juxtaposing, blending or mixing them. When the joining is genuine, it leads to a concord that does not erase the otherness of the joined elements to one another; instead, it continues each of the joined traditions. The case studies examine Mahlers Das Lied von der Erde , Ming landscape paintings, Iranian rugs, and Guatemalan architecture, textiles and folk tales. The first analysis focuses on the difference between the cyclical time of the neo-Daoist poetry in Mahlers text and the end-directedness of European music. The next chapter describes the Ming period struggle to join Yuan period elements with the very Song period elements that the Yuan painters had rejected. Thinking about Iranian rugs in European interiors opens up a contradictory valuation of the exotic when the far-away has become familiar. The last chapter brings to the surface the possibility of invisible strangeness when differences are too deep to be seen, and the even greater strangeness when the differences are surpassed.