Exotic

Exotic explores our obsession with the lure of distant lands and their promise of the weird and wonderful, the beautiful and grotesque. Through a host of evocative images, this book shows how the absorption of 'the foreign,' through arts, design, architecture, and other cultural elements, has consistently enriched Western society, contributing to it cultural dynamism and artistic energy. Exotic's focus is especially relevant to the modern globalized world in which our engagement with cultures and traditions from around the globe is easier - and potentially more fraught - than ever before.
- Judy Sund is professor of modern European art and art of the Americas at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her publications include Van Gogh, in Phaidon's Art & Ideas series (2002).
Key Selling Points - The first image-led survey of this intriguing topic to have been written for a general audience, with insightful text and glorious images combining to explore the exotic in art, architecture, and design - Decodes how things now considered everyday in Western culture were once considered exotic, such as tattoos, tulips, and images of such now common- place animals as elephants, parrots, and giraffes - Spotlights the ways in which Western society has absorbed and adapted elements of foreign cultures, usually with invigorating effect - Using up-to-the-minute scholarship and having previously written on the intersections of high art and popular culture to great acclaim, Judy Sund is perfectly positioned to demystify and unravel this often overlooked cultural phenomena