The Aesthetic Experience: An Anthropologist Looks at the Visual Arts [INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR TO WOLF LESLAU]

Maquet, Jacques. The Aesthetic Experience: An Anthropologist Looks at the Visual Arts [INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR TO WOLF LESLAU]. New Haven: Yale University Press, (1986). First edition. 4to. xi,272pp. Gray cloth with silver lettering on spine in original photographic dust jacket. Inscribed by author on half-title page to Wolf Leslau and his wife: “To Lotte & Wolf, with affection, Jacques. 30. IV. 86.” Leslau was a famous expert on Semitic languages as well as a former Professor at UCLA. “Analyzing the way we observe various examples of sculpture, architecture, painting, and crafted articles from many cultural traditions, noted anthropologist Jacques Maquet demonstrates that our specific experience is essential to what is socially recognized as art. Maquet’s discussion of actual aesthetic perception draws an analogy with contemplation and compares the beholder’s experience of art to certain forms of meditation…Using a rich array of illustrations from worldwide cultures of all periods, he illustrates the processes by which conceptual elements, natural environment, techniques of production, and social institutions have an impact on aesthetic forms.” Illustrations are b/w photographic reproductions. Very minor creasing, scuffing and sunning on dj. Top corner of pages bumped slightly throughout. Minor age yellowing to outer edges of interior pages. Dust jacket in very good, book in very good to near fine condition. A tight copy from the last library of Professor Leslau. 12 page stapled booklet “The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Volume 24, Number 4, Winter 1990,” laid-in. Booklet near fine. vg. Hardcover. (27177) $65