EXOTIC: A FETISH FOR THE FOREIGN

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.

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Judy Sund is Professor of Modern European Art and Art of the Americas at the City University of New York. She has written books and articles on Vincent van Gogh and other artists, on the exotic in Euro-American visual culture, on intersections of high art and popular culture, and on 20th-century appropriations of Pre-Columbian artefacts.