Pacific Art in Detail

The latest title in a beautiful and successful series of strikingly designed, collectable books offering a closer look at the rich variety of styles, decoration, motifs and patterns - and the sheer craftsmanship - of world cultures.
The art of the Pacific Islands is exciting, varied, vibrant and ever-changing. Across the great breadth of the Pacific, artists have always employed a wide variety of materials and techniques to create objects for specific purposes. These have been central to the management of land and ocean, of political and spiritual power, and of connections to gods and ancestors. This book focuses on objects from the domestic to the sacred, from the elegantly simple to the sumptuously ornate, and from the historic to the contemporary. The author draws on striking and colourful examples from the Pacific's major cultural regions: Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, beginning with an introduction asking "What is Pacific art?