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.