Cross-Cultural Issues in Art ─ Frames for Understanding

"Stephen Leuthold has created a perspective on art that is intricate in its focus yet global in its embrace. It is wildly refreshing. With a painterly style of prose, colorful and textured, and a deep understanding of the theories and studies that precede him, Leuthold has dared, where others have not, to focus on art for the sake of world understanding, no less. This is a book that will inspire generations of students to journey the world with an eye on the visualities offered up by its cultural and individual geographies and another on the universal nature of its very palpitations." Liza Bakewell, Assistant Professor of Research, Brown University, USA

"Cross-Cultural Issues in Art presents a lucid consideration of the foremost works of art, themes and artists that affirm both the specificity and universality of the human experience. Through careful analysis and critical comparisons of objects, installations, sculptures and paintings of the past and present, Professor Leuthold places these culture-crossing issues within the framework of an increasingly interdependent and unequal world. His clear prose and respect of the works of art in and of themselves is refreshingly radical." Alejandro Anreus, Associate Professor of Art History and Latin American/Latino Studies. William Paterson University. USA

Cross-Cultural Issues in Art provides an engaging introduction to aesthetic concepts, expanding the discussion beyond the usual Western theorists and Western examples.

Steven Leuthold discusses both contemporary and historical issues and examples, incorporating a range of detailed case studies from African, Asian, European, Latin American. Middle Eastern and Native American art. Individual chapters address broad intercultural issues in art, including art and culture, primitivism and Otherness, colonialism, nationalism, art and religion, symbolism and interpretation, style and ethnicity, a sense of place, art and social order, gender, and the self, considering these themes as constructs that frame our understanding of art.

Cross-Cultural Issues in Art draws upon ideas and case studies from cultural and critical studies, art history, ethno-aesthetics and area studies, visual anthropology, and philosophy, and will be useful for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in these fields.

Steven M. Leuthold is Associate Professor of Art History at Northern Michigan University, USA. His research and teaching interests include intercultural art theory and comparative aesthetics, modern art and design history, and Native American, Japanese, European, and other world art. He is the author of Indigenous Aesthetics: Native Art, Media and Identity (1998) and has contributed to numerous books and journals. He is also a practicing artist and musician.