The Kwoma, the subject of this book, are one of a number of peoples in the Sepik River region of northern Papua New Guinea who have created some of the most distinctive visual art in the Pacific. Through case studies of their painting, sculpture, architecture and ritual this book examines in detail how people in this society understand their art as a cultural phenomenon. This includes how they understand its origins in the spirit world, how they judge quality in art and how they understand artistic creativity. The book contrasts Kwoma beliefs with the radically different approach to art found in the modern West. The modern Western concept of art first emerged not in the eighteenth century in the Enlightenment, or even later, as anthropologists and art historians often assume, but several centuries earlier in the Renaissance. The book gives an account of radical changes that took place culturally in Europe between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries in the way human intellectual creativity was understood, and how this gave rise to a new concept of art, one that remains unchanged in the modern West today.

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 earlier during the Renaissance. Bowden traces the radical cultural shifts in Europe between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries that redefined human creativity and gave rise to an idea of art that still shapes Western thought today, contrasting this development with the form and function of Kwoma creativity.