Thinking with Things

Download or read book Thinking with Things written by Esther Pasztory and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2005-08-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At its heart, Pasztory's thesis is simple and yet profound. She asserts that humans create things (some of which modern Western society chooses to call "art") in order to work out our ideas - that is, we literally think with things. Pasztory draws on examples from many societies to argue that the art-making impulse is primarily cognitive and only secondarily aesthetic. She demonstrates that "art" always reflects the specific social context in which it is created, and that as societies become more complex, their art becomes more rarefied."--Jacket.