Description: Art and Discontent ended with an appeal for non-Eurocentric approaches to cultural history. This volume brilliantly elaborates that idea, beginning with the author's famous controversy with the Museum of Modern Art over the 1984 exhibition, Primitivism in 20th Century Art. That essay inaugurated a host of multicultural issues which dominated much art discourse through the 1990s and seems likely to remain in the foreground for some years to come. The concept of a global art history was progressively articulated in later writings collected in Art & Otherness, including the keynote statement of the exhibition, Les Magiciens de la Terre; various writings concerning the reception situation for contemporary art entering the West from China, India, and Africa; and McEvilley's most recent analysis of alternative, available models of history. Even when dealing with paradoxical situations, McEvilley's prose is exceedingly precise, inviting, and understandable.
